First Duty Station!!!

Well we’ve officially got word where we go next after Dan finishes school in Rhode Island… (drumroll) …Okinawa, Japan! Japan was our first choice so we’re super excited to have this chance to go overseas. We’ll be stationed there for a whole 3 YEARS so it will certainly be a new adventure. We’re sure to come back with lots of cool Japanese merchandise, and God willing, maybe even a kid or two! Hehe.

Another great thing is that our good friends, who live down the street from us, are also getting stationed there as well! It’s a huge blessing to have people we know travel to the same, unfamiliar place. My friend and I will be planning and researching A LOT in the next few weeks…and I’ll attempt to reduce our belongings to very little since we’re restricted to only 25% of the weight allowance you typically get when moving within the US. Anyone need to buy a refrigerator?! Haha.

We’re definitely glad we will be able to spend some time with our close friends and family when we visit CA this Thanksgiving, since its unpredictable when we will visit again before we report to Oki. We’ll try to say our farewells at least one more time before we leave, but it’s really hard to say at this point. In the meantime, we’ll keep you informed as we figure everything out. For now all we know is that we’re gonna end up in Oki!

After FEX

Anything beats FEXs, diggin trenches, sleeping out in the mud and freezing cold, getting gassed in the early dawn, and a 15 mile hump at 0300...Dan was happy to be home and enjoy a nice long 72...

It felt like a real weekend for once…plenty of time to rest, shop for the ball, celebrate our friends birthday, attend our church’s family potluck, make 100 lumpias for the potluck, catch up on tv shows and movies, and finally stopped by the Marine Corps Museum for the first time! It’s a beautiful place.
We’ll definitely be making another trip to the museum since we only checked out the first floor. History was my least favorite subject in school, but I know, it’s far too important to avoid learning it. Of course I had the most fun at the interactive displays. In the “Making of a Marine” portion, you get a taste of getting yelled at by a drill sergeant, lifting their heavy packs (which essentially I could try to do at home with Danno’s stuff anyway), decision making for various obstacle courses and missions… I was very impressed to see a bunch of artwork and paintings made by Colonels and Lts. They were really good artists! It was also cool to see the “Big Dog” robot that’s in development. I never heard of it before. Click the photo and you can watch the video of it working. It's responsiveness to various terrains, like walking on ice , rubble, and even getting pushed around, is pretty crazy. The technology is amazing, though its buzzing noise is annoying so you may want to lower or mute the volume while you watch.

Silly Pets

After chowin down a house centipede, feeding session comes to a sudden halt when Turbo can’t seem to locate his next victim....Emo had a talent of balancing things on his head and nose...from tennis balls, to dog biscuits, plastic cups...remote controls...

Last September Emo reached 33 (dog) years old (his 5th birthday)! I got him free as a puppy from my bro's friend around the same time our small group started, so Emo's been around since Dan and I first met. We both really miss the guy. He’s so smart and talented. Aside from balancing things on his head, he can give "hi-fives" (shake), make a sad face on cue, stand, spin, will wait at an open door and won't step inside the house unless invited... At the same time he’s such a goofball and always makes us laugh with his funny faces and underbite, loud snoring, and occasional mischief.

If we can’t take him with us to your first duty station, we hope he gets in a good home. It’s difficult to find someone willing to take him considering he has Addison’s Disease…which very much treatable with a monthly shot, yet can be pricey. It’s the reason why the Irvine Animal Shelter wouldn’t take him. Boo. He toughed through a lot before we left Cali...numerous trips to the vet when we were discovering his condition, trip to the emergency room, hospitalized on I.V. for a few days, in kennel obedience boot camp for a month. It's hard to give him up after all we've invested in him, but we're glad he's now healthier and well trained, and we’ll keep trying to find someone who would want to take care of him. Meanwhile he’s at home in Highland with Puma (my brother's first Pit Bull). Here are just some (of many) favorite pics of Emo!

Sayonara Land Nav

Hallelujah Dan passed Land Nav!!! He’d surely tell you it has been a very humbling experience for him out there in the field…just him, God, his mapping tools and a list of coordinates for scattered boxes hidden across miles and miles of Quantico’s wilderness. As a graduation requirement, it was essential that he passed one more test. Sure enough, after many prayers, many early mornings to early evenings, many Saturdays..his perseverance and hard work resulted in victory (with a lot God’s help of course)! We're so happy to have our Saturdays back..there's so much we're looking forward to.

To celebrate, tonight we finally went to try the oh so popular “Five Guys” out here…which closely resembles In-N-Out and a bit of Fatburger. You don't see the word "double" on the menu since their regular sized burgers come standard with double patties and their "little" burgers come with just one. Their fat fries come in medium or large drink cups...we noticed they were ridiculously suuper duper salty, but little did we know that the technique is to empty them out into the greesy brown paper bag (which distributes the salt), tear it open, then enjoy. Ah, good to know. Still does not compare to the wonderful In-N-Out we love back home, but it was quite delicious being that we haven’t had fast food in a very long time. Dan's got a 15 mile hump on Friday so he'll burn this meal off in no time!

October Hump

We've begun to “X” out the days of the calendar as the end of TBS is approaching fast. September breezed by, and Danno had a great time as they got to work with all kinds of crazy weaponry like grenade launchers, machine guns, and C4! Imagine the amount of booms I’ve been hearing from home. Haha.

October is the start of a very busy month. Looking at the event calendar, the month is packed with the most late nights, early mornings, and overnight FEX (Field exercises). We’ve been so fortunate that so far the longest duration he has been gone will be just this week…5 days straight. We actually expected to see each other a lot less than we have, so we’re thankful I came out here with him! Any amount of time together is better than no time.

Soon we should find out our duty station assignments so we will know where we head after NJS in Rhode Island! Our first choice is Overseas. It’s possible the JAGS will “swap” duty assignments with each other since everyone practically wants to go different places. We hope somewhere in the mix is Japan so we can go there! We’ll see where God wants to take us next year…

Once he gets through the October, it’s pretty much all downhill from there. November he’ll have two “96’s” and we have the USMC Birthday Ball (a huge formal event), and graduation will be the right around the corner at the beginning of December! Wow there’s a lot to look forward to. Please continue to pray for Dan’s safety and that he successfully passes all graduation requirements as he approaches this challenging month. We’re almost done here…woohoo!

Wild Life continued…

Since the old post about the Virginia “wild life” we had several other encounters that I haven’t got around to blogging about. One being that we have a new pet. He’s a baby box turtle we found back when my mom was in town. While we were having our backyard lawn cut by the maintenance men, out comes this little guy onto our patio. We’ve kept him ever since and housed him in a little critter container. He loves eating caterpillars, slugs, worms, grasshoppers, roly pollies…and of course turtle food when there’s no live insects to feed him. So everyone, meet “Turbo”...

Anyways our most recent encounter tops them all. About a month ago I noticed an interesting white strip of something on the carpet, right by the base of our sliding door…
…there’s only one thing I know that sheds its skin inside out like that – snake! It was really tiny and not that long, but still, the thought of a baby snake inside the house…eh, no thanks. After emailing the photo to a local exterminator, they confirmed it appeared to be a snake’s skin. Splendid! Ok, so out here home insurance does not cover dealing with pests (unlike Irvine where it even covers ant infestations!) So there’s been a chance we probably have a baby snake lingering around the house…let's hope not, it'd be tiny and we just don’t think about it much!

Well last Sunday after finishing up lunch, I decide to take a look at the patio to find insects to feed Turbo. Just as I open the sliding door, I notice something wiggling right inside the tracks by my feet. I immediately realized it’s a snake! I quickly shut the sliding door – not slammed, because I’d rather not have guts everywhere. After “eewies” and “oh my goshes” Danno came over and slowly opened the door to see it crammed in the tracks still. So we relocate Turbo to another container…get some tongs, and Danno catches the snake... Phew!! We researched and found it was a Southern Ringneck Snake. This one is about 10” long so it an adult. Which makes me wonder, where's that baby one that shed its skin?..hmm. Anyways, there’s no way we’d keep the snake over Turbo, so eventually we let it go. Here's the guy that spooked me...
I think I handled myself well and kept the eeks to very low decibels, though I hope nothing else tops that. Especially while Danno is in the field this whole week...

96 Getaway

August was a busy month and Danno has reached the halfway point through TBS. Thanks to Labor Day and the “96” (as in 96 hours = 4 day holiday weekend for Danno), we finally had the chance to celebrate our 1 Year Anniversary. It was such a great getaway for the both of us!

We escaped the rainy Quantico weather to the sunny Homestead mountain resort 4 hrs away in Hot Springs, VA. Even the drive through the picture perfect countryside and wineries was beautiful in itself. The resort was huge and just an amazing place with everything you can think of…bowling alley, movie theater, gun range, fly fishing, falconry, tons of lounge/reading/gaming areas and afternoon teas! During the winter it’s even a ski/snowboarding resort. The brunch buffet was soo delicious with fresh-made everything omelets to chocolate chip pancakes! Overall it was exactly what we needed for a suuuper relaxing weekend together. So far its our favorite place since we've been out here. It was the first time we could completely rest and enjoy each other’s company without thinking about house chores and land nav! Here's a lil tour…