What's New....

Life in the U.S. continues to be wonderful and we are having a great time. We really miss our friends in Oki and were freezing most of the time we were in Washington but just keep pretending we are on vacation! Here are some pictures of the fun we had up in Sammamish. We never got a good group shot so these will have to do. It was great the way things picked up where we left off. We had a fun at the park, it was nice and cool, I even brought jackets!

We went to the Science Center in Seattle, it was awesome. Here is Tom and Randy (also a dentist) at the phobia exhibit

We road on this bike that was balanced way up high and wasn't attached but couldn't fall off do to the balancing weight... it was a lot of trust to put in science and very scary!

Lunch by a fountain

We went swimming in the lake by their house. Alyssa was brave and enjoying it.

Danica agreed with the rest of it: It was COLD!!! Where is our warm Okinawa water?


After enjoying a full week with the Ball's it was finally time to leave and we headed down to Vancouver to "move in" with Tom's parents. We had lots of fun hanging out with all of Tom’s family while in Washington. The kids loved seeing their cousins and getting reacquainted.

We did Karaoke one night, did a beautiful trail run around some waterfalls, played games and lots of fireworks on the 4th of July and tons of other things. We finally got to see the house we are buying and walked through it for the first time. We LOVE it and thankfully just got the letter accepting the short sale so we have a closing date of August 17th. Hooray!!! We can’t wait for the day to come but luckily have a ton of things planned between now and then!

Our vacation continues and we are in Utah right now hanging out with my family and having a good time.  We've been to Lagoon, a waterfall and the fair. My mom keeps making fantastic food and taking such good care of us!!! It's so nice to be here! I've been spending time with my niece and nephew who are both adorable!
Apparently Hayden didn't get enough military stuff in Oki and was enthralled by this army tank and it's guns!

The girls worked hard and made all sorts of awesome crafts at the fair.

Next week we are going 4-wheeling and to Snowbird and visiting more family and friends among other stuff.  The kids have really enjoyed their cousins and all the time with grandma and grandpa.  Poor Alyssa gets so confused, every time we go to a new place she asks if it's our new house and if we've finally moved.  It started with the Westpac and hasn't stopped.  Even the hotel we stayed at in Boise on the drive to Utah she asked if it was her new house. Her birthday is August 17th so that will be a wonderful day to get the new house then!!

I haven’t done much shopping but did hit Target once and thoroughly enjoyed Costco and bought so much stuff just because I couldn’t believe it. Hayden finally said “Mom, really, when are you going to stop be so amazed by everything.” But really Hayden, did you see the price of those apples??!!! Getting used to driving has been okay, only once did I go to the car and get in on the wrong side. Tom's done it a few times but just gets to pretend he's a gentleman opening my door. I still have moments when I try to make sure I have my I.D. ready for something but that is fading. I'm okay with some things fading away but look forward to hanging on to some of the memories forever! Here are a few pictures from some of the memories of the last days:

Here are Danica and Alyssa with their great friends on our last big outing to a Japanese garden, the spot on our bucket list!

My most amazing next door neighbor and our crew. This is moments before they left on the shuttle to the airport the day before we did!
On our last night on the island we went to Coco's Curry House and got great food and took it over to eat Araha Beach with all our friends. Although many members of our wonderful Oki Family had already moved we still got some fun pictures with the rest of the gang. I can only hope to have friends even half as good in the future!