Enough Already!

I've seriously had enough of the aftershocks, the blackouts, and everyone worrying and freaking out! It's been over a week since the earthquake, and we haven't been completely immune from the affects of it. We continue to have aftershocks and quakes, which really isn't surprising. That's to be expected for a while. We had about a 24 hour period where we had to boil the tap water before using it. That wasn't too bad since we really don't drink tap water and I just tried to avoid making anything that I would need water for. Because of the nuclear power plant problems they've had rolling blackouts across Japan. We've been hit with them 3 times now. Usually only goes out for 3-4 hours, but when you're trying to clean house and it's dark outside and you have no heat, it's not very fun. Then you have everyone freaking out. It started with all the aftershocks and now it's because of the fear of radiation. I find myself avoiding facebook because I get tired of reading about it from everyone. Starting today they are having VOLUNTARY evacuations. Pretty much all the women and children from our branch at church are leaving in the next day or two. Not everyone, but a good chunk. We are NOT! We leave in a week anyway. There's no sense in rushing things if we don't absolutely have to. They are still testing the radiation levels here at Zama every three hours and so far it's been in the normal range. Particularly the lower end of normal. So I'm not worried. Unless something drastic happens in the near future, I think we'll be ok for a few more days. Ben says if not we'll at least glow in the dark. :)
Ok enough complaining. Just had to get that out there. Now some happy news! All our stuff is gone! The movers came on Wednesday and the house is pretty empty now. We've got some major floor scrubbing to do, but the rest of the cleaning shouldn't be too bad. We have our final inspection next Wednesday. A couple of my friends threw me a baby shower last night. Turned out super cute! I'll make a post about that itself when I get the pictures though. I forgot my camera and the power was out, so I used my friend's with the flash. There was only 4 of us there (plus a couple husbands and kids) because of everyone getting ready to evacuate, but oh well. We still had a good time. They are some of the few people that I will actually miss when we leave.
So all in all things are still good here. We're still ok, the dogs are ok, and our move is on track. We fly out a week from today. YAY!!! We'll be home in a week!!!

Hold On! It's A BIG One!

Before I start getting flooded with phone calls and emails from worried family and friends, we are OK after Japan's big earthquake this afternoon. And when I say big, I mean HUGE! It was registered at an 8.9 about 240 miles north of Tokyo, so less than 300 miles from where we are. And we sure felt it! I was up at the office with Ben, and we actually had to evacuate the building. I couldn't believe how long it lasted! In the three years we have been here, that was the biggest quake we have felt. A half hour later we had to evacuate the building again because of one of the aftershocks. They finally told everyone to go home about 3:30, and that's what we did. I had left the dogs out on the back patio, and I'm glad I did. There was no major damage when we got home. A lot of things out of place and a couple broken glass candle holders, but nothing too serious. It moved a couple pictures on the wall, knocked some things off the entertainment center, moved the TVs, knocked over the surround sound speakers, knocked books off the bookshelf, scattered my craft stuff all over the guest room, knocked a bunch of stuff off the bathroom counter and shelf, spilt the dog water all over the floor, and opened the window in the living room about 4 inches, and moved other various little things. Crazy! But like I said, no serious damage. We are getting tired of the aftershocks now. It's been almost 3 hours since it first hit, and we are still having decent size aftershocks. Not good for the pregnant mama! It doesn't take much for me to get lightheaded, and the house swaying back and forth doesn't help at all. And they are happening every couple minutes. They don't usually last very long, but still enough to make us sick. The dogs don't like them either. Just one more reason why we can't wait to leave. Can't wait to get back to Idaho where they don't have crazy things likes earthquakes, tsunamis, and all those other natural disasters (at least not very often anyway). 2 weeks! And speaking of tsunamis, you don't have to worry about us being hit by one of those. We are far enough inland, that Japan would have to start falling off into the ocean before it would reach us. :)

Coming Together

Things are finally starting to come together for our move. Yay! It's hard to believe that we'll be home in two weeks and a couple days. We finally got our plane tickets figured out. It was a headache and a hassle, but they are purchased and we don't have to fly to Hawaii first. The transportation office that takes care of the tickets and travel was saying that they would only pay for our tickets from Tokyo to Honolulu. We finally got it worked out though. We had to pay for our tickets, and once we get to Hawaii we'll be reimbursed for the money that they would have paid to get us to Hawaii. It's all very confusing, I know. So we ended up paying out of pocket, and we'll get about half back. But this way the dogs can fly with us back home, making it so they have to spend less time in quarantine in Hawaii and saving us some money. So we fly from Tokyo to Seattle on March 25th, and then we have a rental car reserved in Seattle and we'll drive down to Boise. It's going to be a lot of traveling, but we'll finally be home! And our report date is still May 2nd (although the amended the orders so we can report early and have our car shipped over if we decide to do that) so we'll be home for about a month. We haven't bought our tickets from Boise to Hawaii yet, but I'm not going to stress about that right yet. There's enough to worry about in the next couple weeks that we can put that off for a little bit.
Our calendar is pretty full for the rest of our time here though. We've got something going on almost every day between now and the 25th. Ben has two more days of work (Thursday and Friday). He picks up his clearing papers Friday and then we can start out processing Monday. The past few days have been full of getting things scheduled to get ready to go. The movers are coming on Wednesday (a week from today) to pick up most of our stuff. Then they'll be back the following Tuesday to pick up everything else. We move into lodging on the 22nd, and have our final housing inspection the morning of the 23rd. A couple of my friends are throwing me a baby shower on the 17th and then I have one more OB appointment on the 23rd before we leave. The dogs have a vet appointment on the 21st and then we take them to the kennel on the 22nd. Plus we still have to find time to make trips to the Navy and Air Force bases to pick up our various medical records to take with us and do all the paperwork to sell our car. Then of course just other little various things that have to be done. The Relief Society sisters have volunteered to come help us clean. Not that our house is a huge mess, but it will be nice to have a few extra helping hands before our final inspection.
So like I said, things are a bit crazy around here right now. It's all for a good reason though. We can't wait to be home. Japan has been fun (for the most part), but we are ready to be back in the states. I just have to keep telling myself "soon." :)

Destination: Hawaii

We finally got our orders. We are headed to the Warrior Transition Unit in Hawaii. Our report date is May 2nd, but that's really about all we know. Things have become a bit of a mess and a nightmare since we got them. There are some problems with the orders. The biggest being they say we are not authorized to arrive/check in early and they don't mention whether or not we can have our car shipped over. Ben made some phone calls this morning, and both of those are supposed to be authorized, so they are working on getting them fixed. Another problem we are having is with our leave. The plan was to take leave between Japan and Hawaii and go back home for a while. We were also planning on the military paying for it. That's not going to happen. They will pay for our flight to Honolulu, but that's it. We figured because we are going from one overseas assignment to another (Hawaii is considered overseas) we would get COT leave. Makes sense, right? Well because we don't know how long we will be there, we are not eligible for it. Nor are we eligible for the 10 days permissive TDY which is typically used for finding a house and everything. All because we don't know how long we'll be there. It could be anywhere from 3 months to 12 months, if not longer. If we are there at least a year they'll give us the COT leave, but we won't know any of that until we actually get there and meet with the doctors. So then our next plan was we'll have them fly us to Hawaii and then we will either buy our own tickets to Boise or try to get on a Space-A flight back stateside. That plan kind of works, except for the dogs. We figured we would just leave them in Hawaii at the quarantine facility while we go back home. That way we don't have to try to find someone to watch them, and there won't be problems at home with my family's dogs. What we didn't realize with that plan is that the time they spend there, has to be paid for upfront. That will be nearly $2000. We can't afford that, plus tickets home. We may be able to fly them home with us, but we're still trying to figure out how much that will cost. It wouldn't be a problem if the military was paying for our flights home, but since they aren't, that's a lot of money that we don't have budgeted. It's a mess. Hawaii makes it very difficult to take pets there. It's ridiculous. They have a pet quarantine here in Japan, but at least we could do a home quarantine here. Hawaii's is a state run facility. UGH! So frustrating! So that's where we are right now. We are scheduled to leave Japan on March 25th. The movers are coming on the 16th and 22nd to pick up all our stuff. Things are going to happen quickly now, so hopefully we don't have any more issues. I'm very ready to be out of here and back home. A vacation would be wonderful right about now. And one that doesn't involve a bunch of medical appointments. So hopefully we get everything figured out soon.