Halfway Dinner & Sam's Birthday

On Saturday, our XO Spouse, Tammy, planned us a Halfway Dinner (to celebrate halfway done with this year's deployment). It was super fun and really sweet! We all dressed up, took a bus to a Shabu-Shabu place (you cook meats, veggies, and noodles in different flavored broths), and got a few goodies! Each of our husbands wrote us letters, which she tied to a cork and placed in a bottle (message in a bottle!), we got anchor cookies, pictures of our hubs, and bracelets. It was a great night!
Being part of the Navy, in whatever capacity is never easy. Being overseas with husbands on deployment is difficult; we spend about half of the year apart and that is tough. I feel really, really grateful to be part of such an amazing Spouses Club with such great ladies. They're so welcoming, fun, and supportive. It makes it better to have people around us going through the same thing and to do things with!

YUM!

 Sam's 5th birthday was this week! (16 September) I made him "pupcakes" (bananas, shredded carrots, PB, an egg, oats, a little flour, greek yogurt, topped with cream cheese and PB "frosting") He licked all the frosting off, took a nibble, and gobbled it up in one bite!

Tuckered out from all the fun!

Our Stuff!

Hallelujah! Our stuff arrived! I hope you'll forgive my absence when you see the hot mess of boxes I've been dealing with :) Everything arrived the week Alex left (2 weeks ago today!) I've been busy unpacking, organizing, and tossing boxes. Things are almost entirely unpacked, but I have a lot of organizing to do and a few projects before I hang things on the walls. All in all, the house is coming together quickly!

I know he misses Alex, but he does very much enjoy being able to snuggle on the extra bed space (especially now that we have more pillows!)

  

Unpacking is hard work. Very, very hard work.

One of the first things I purchased when we got here was a meat grinder attachment, so when my mixer arrived (like the 2nd thing I unpacked), I had to test it out! Ground meat is hard to find and very expensive when you do; this grinder has been AMAZING. I ground turkey and chicken; I made green chile chicken breakfast sausage, spicy italian sausage, turkey burgers, and more! I am loving it!

 What. A. Mess!! They pack everything in brown craft paper, which works pretty well, but I've taken probably 50 bags of it onto base to recycle (not to mention the trips for flattened cardboard too!) Speaking of, I don't think I've really talked about the trash and recycling here. We can take it to base, no problem and it's pretty easy if we do that, but then I have to load it up in the car and drive with stinky trash. My neighborhood has 4 pick up days throughout the week; I have to sort my trash and drop the particular items on it's assigned day. Sometimes they get to go in clear trash bags ("combustibles" i.e. kitchen refuse, real trash trash, goes in such a bag) and sometimes they have to get sorted into bins in their designated areas. So, we have 4 trash bins in our kitchen: combustibles, plastics, glass/aluminum (which I have to separate out for that pick up day) and paper. WHEW. It's a bit of effort, but now that things are a bit more normal life, it's not too bad to sort and drop it off on my walk with Sam late at night (because technically I'm only allowed to drop between 0730 and 0830...shhhh).Homemade Pumpkin Spice Lattes! There are Japanese Starbucks (they don't drink coffee too much over here), but apparently they don't make Pumpkin Spice in the fall! (My friend Casey said they do a toasted coconut?) So I made my own, and it's delicious!

Getting some puppy snuggles in! I tried to get him to take a picture for Alex, didn't go so well haha.

Yukata Photo Shoot

About 2 weeks ago, our XO's wife, Tammy, gifted me and the other HSM-77 Bon Odori dancers with a professional photo shoot in our Yukatas! She's a great photographer and did an amazing job!

Here are the photos she took of me:

Happy Anniversary!

 I can't believe it's been 2 years! So much has changed since then: 4 different cities, 3 states, 2 countries...Hard to believe Alex was still in Primary for Flight School and now he's left on a 2nd deployment. It's been an incredible adventure and I'd never change a moment of it!

1st Anniversary, San Francisco, CA September 2013

Unfortunately, this years anniversary picture is also our goodbye photo for deployment. We got to spend most of the day together, but then I had to drive to Yokosuka to drop Alex off at the boat (but not before some delicious molten lava cakes!) Yokosuka is a huge naval base about 48 KM away; it's where the ports are and where the boats are kept. 

So, Alex is off on the USS George Washington on deployment again for a few months: so very proud of him and miss him already!

Sam took the trip with us to get in some last minute cuddles.