We have arrived!

The moment we had been anticipating since the 1st week of December came this last Wednesday when we got on a plan headed for our new home in Okinawa, Japan. Definitely a bittersweet moment, leaving family and moving forward to a new adventure living overseas. Our day started out at 9:30am Wed. leaving my parents home headed down to Indy to catch our flight. With our 8 checked bags and 6 carry-ons the four of us took off at 4:00pm for Chicago (why we had to drive to Indy only to turn around on a plane and go to Chicago is beyond me. all i can say is thats the Marine Corps for ya.). We arrived in Chicago to catch our connecting flight an hour later to Seattle. We stayed in Seattle overnight getting about 5 1/2 hrs of sleep we started out the longest day of our lives it seemed. At 4:30 we woke up, by 6:00 we were back at the airport and about 3 hours later we were boarding an Air Bus with approx. 300 military members and their families all on our way to Japan. We boarded and found our selves sitting in 1st class. You have no idea how releived i was to see how much space we had for our upcoming 10 1/2 hr flight into Tokyo. It was amazing, our seats fully reclined, we had personal TVs with access to different movies and games and lots of leg room. God was really watching out for us. The kids did great. Madelin watched movies and colored. And Maddox slept, ate, and pooped. HaHa. Andy and i took turns sitting with each of the kids and getting some sleep when the kids were sleeping. After we landed in Tokyo we still had a 2 1/2 hr flight into Okinawa, which was a little ruff because of the weather. Our travels finally came to an end at 7:00pm Friday night.
It rained the first day and a half we were here, but today we found out the sun does shine in Okinawa and it is a beautiful day. Our first venture out was yesterday when we went to the Macaroni grill for breakfast, which is right next to the hotel we are staying in for 2-3 weeks. Our room is actually 2 conjoining rooms. Its pretty nice, with a small kitchen two tvs and two computers. We went to the commisary yesterday to get some groceries. It was a bit differnt than what I had expected. The store only carried about half what Martins or WalMart would carry, leaving some brands of cereal, salad dressing, and hair moose non-accounted for. The milk we bought only comes in cartons and was some brand i had never heard of before. Not a huge deal, but is going to take some getting used to. As well as, driving on the left side of the road which is still weirding me out. We are still getting used to the time change too. We are 14 hrs ahead of Indiana. So as i write this in the afternoon on Sunday, everybody back home is sleeping Saturday night. Weird, huh? Today we have been up since 4:30 this morning b/c we were all passed out by 7:00 last night. Needless to say we are all pretty tired, but on the brightside we've gotten a lot accomplised.
Well, i must go for now. Sorry there are no pictures yet. Don't worry, we are taking them, it's just downloading that's the problem (at least for now).