Transition: The good, the bad and the ugly

Wow, moving overseas is a process! I feel like it’s never ending, this whole transition thing. The whole process started 2 months ago and the end is still a good 2-3 weeks away. It has been fun, exciting, full of adventure and it has also been dang hard! I’m shocked at how quickly we’ve adjusted to this new country and how much we already love it and feel like we are home. Yet, at the same time we are stressed and anxious for something closer to normal life. Now I understand why people say it’s like Christmas when they get their household goods after moving overseas. Its all I can think about lately!

 

As usual, Aidan has shown signs of stress during this transition. He did great the first month and a half but just a couple weeks ago he started having a tick. It’s always something different and this time around it almost sounds like a puppy whimper in his throat. At first it drove me crazy and I was constantly getting on to him and telling him to stop. I quickly noticed that my constant nagging was causing him more stress and he was feeling frustrated with himself that he couldn’t stop. I felt horrible and stopped bugging him. Not gonna lie, it drove me up the wall but the past couple of days he’s gotten a little better. He is always the one that struggles the most with change and his stress always presents itself as a tick. My poor boy.

We bought our cars! We got a grey Mazda MPV and a Mazda Demio.

I finally learned to drive on the wrong side of the car and road!

My first time driving!

 

It’s not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. It’s weird at first but quickly becomes natural. We had to take our van in to get cleaned last week so I was carless and completely losing my mind. We’ve had about all we can take of being stuck inside with none of our stuff. School doesn’t start until August 31st here and we are all counting down the days. I know you aren’t supposed to say “I’ll be happy when……” BUT we will all be sooooo much happier when we have something a little bit closer to a normal life and don’t have to spend so much time stuck inside.

We have ventured out a couple of times on the weekend. We hit up the new mall and it was incredible! It has like 5 levels. We just had enough time to quickly walk through the first level and we couldn’t get over this awesome bakery/grocery store. We each got a treat to eat there. So excited to go back!

 

On our way out I saw the store I’ve been dreaming of going to since I found out we were going to Japan.

Oh yes, it finally happened. Excited for the many hours I’m going to spend there during the next 3 years!

My first outing with just me and the kids was to take Rich his lunch at work. Not super exciting but it was cool to see the pharmacy and meet the people he works with. The pharmacy seemed so quiet and empty compared to Hill where there were so many people always running around busy. There were only 3 people working including Rich! He likes it though and is looking forward to implementing some of the things he learned at Hill.

I took a picture of the Shisa outside of the med group building.

These are all over Okinawa outside of almost every single business and home. It’s Okinawan tradition that one of the Shisa has an open mouth to ward off evil spirits and the other has a closed mouth to keep good spirits in. There are so many different kinds of Shisa, these ones are kind of creepy looking.

Other than the occassional escape from the house here and there we’ve been doing a lot of this-

all day long.

On an off day I did dress Eva in an outfit that Maya wore when she was her age and it blew me away how much they look alike!

Eva has a new favorite place to eat.

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Rich and Aidan are soooo into learning Japanese. Rich studies every night and Aidan loves to be taught by daddy.

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So, all in all it’s been pretty good…rough but good. Happy to be here but I’m sure we’ll all be even happier when our stuff is here with us:D

Reunited and it felt soooo good!

Cool story. 2.5 years ago, when we moved on base from Mountain Green, I was visited by my new wards Relief Society president doing her righteous duty and her 1st counselor. The 1st counselor was a little overbearing but the Prez and I were nice and let her enjoy listening to her own voice. There was a quick couple of minutes where we had the chance to make quick conversation but that was all it took for us to know we were meant to be BFF’s. How did we know that, you might ask? Let me make this simple-both our names are Jessica, both from Missouri and we both had previously owned our dream car, a new VW Bug. Meant to be? Obviously!

We went on to have the most awesome 2 years. We would ride together to Relief Society activities and without fail one of us would always say, “Soooo, where are we really going?” We spent countless hours sitting on my couch making plans for summer activities with the kids that we would never follow through with and talking about all of the crafts we should do and….yeah, that was it. Then, one day she decided to pray for the Air Force to give them a new assignment thinking that the grass was greener. Her prayers were answered and the grass was not greener. Before she left I was sure to sing the words of a country song to her whenever I had the chance. “You’re gonna miss this. You’re gonna want this back. You’re gonna wish these days hadn’t gone by so fast.”

So, she left me for San Antonio, Texas and I missed her terribly. I got over it though(jk). Then, after our reassignment call to Okinawa we thought we would never see each other again, but we were wrong! One scorching hot Missouri day while we were visiting our family in Marshfield and she was visiting her family in St. Louis, WE REUNITED!!!!

We met up in Rolla and had the best 3ish hours ever!

Boston(in the middle) is just as handsome as I remember him!

My gorgeous friend who I know is going to look at this perfect picture and pick it apart. Sorry about the peeking out G’s friend!

Little Lucy has gotten so big!

These boys are such good friends! My kids were so sad when they moved and looked forward to this reunion.

Their legs, hahaha!

It was like pulling teeth to get them all to smile and then I had to go and take a blurry picture *sigh*

Goofballs

I love her and miss her!

She has always been such a good friend to me except for Thanksgiving that one year(bahahaha!) That’s a whole other blog post that I won’t do, don’t worry Jess. Love you so much and can’t wait for you to come visit me in paradise! Okinawa 2017!!!!

Aidan and Eva early b-day bash!

We had the idea to have a big pool party/birthday party for Aidan and Eva with both sides of cousins since their b-day’s would fall right after we moved to Okinawa and had nobody to celebrate with. It was so fun for the kids to have both sides of cousins together!

Making fun of kissy face, haha!

Once it was cake time all of the Baker cousins came over.

Happy birthday to Aidan!

Happy birthday to Eva!

She thought it was so cool that everybody was singing to her, it was so cute!

After the cake it was pinata time!!!

Can I be honest and say that all I really remember about the rest of the party from this point on is how MISERABLY HOT it was! It was miserable! It didn’t seem to bother the kids all that much though.

Eva got first dibs on the pinata.

Then we went from youngest to oldest.

Thank you, Amy, for the one and only pinata whacking picture, haha! At some point the pinata was broken and the crowd went wild.

After the pinata I took Eva inside because she was getting too hot and Aidan stayed out and opened his presents.

It was a memorable day for Aidan and Eva, to be able to celebrate a birthday with their cousins.