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.

11 Weeks

I had my 10-12 week appointment this morning. Everything looks great! The doc did an ultrasound and we got to see our little alien for the first time. :) I was so excited to post the pictures, but they printed out really dark so you can't really see the baby. :( Totally bummed about that. But things do look good. The baby is quite the acrobat and didn't like being poked, giving the doc some trouble measuring it. It was kinda funny. I can only imagine how active it's going to be once I can actually feel it moving around. But judging from the measurements he did take, I'm about 11 weeks. We went in thinking I was about 10 w/ 5 d so we weren't too far off. And actually this is about where I thought I was originally. I had been tracking my BBT and everything daily so I had a pretty good idea of when it happened. And I was right! Not that it's a huge deal, it's like a 2 day difference. And they didn't change my due date or anything, so I'm still due 15 September.
It's really starting to sink in now that I'm going to be a mommy after seeing our little one today. I mean it's still kind of surreal, just because after trying for so long it finally happened and I really haven't felt much different. I really haven't had any morning sickness. Nausea once in a while, but never to the point of actually throwing up. (Ben's actually been sicker than I have.) I haven't put on any weight yet. In fact, I weighed -.6 lbs less than I did at my first appointment when I did all my paperwork and everything. That one surprised me since we just got back from 3 weeks in Hawaii where we eating out most of the time. I mean really my only complaints are I'm always tired and I feel like I have a constantly stuffy nose, which I'm told is pretty normal. Not very fun, but it's not really much to complain about. It could be a lot worse. But in reality I've had it pretty easy. :)
We are still super excited though. We are slowly getting all the baby stuff we need. We finally found a diaper bag we liked and got some cute gender neutral clothes while we were in Hawaii. I want to start stocking up on other necessities like diapers and stuff, but we'll wait until after we move for that (which by the way, we are moving to Hawaii for those that haven't heard but I'll make that a separate post in the near future. We're still waiting on some more info...).
So all in all, things look good and we're excited. It's crazy to think I'm pretty much through the first trimester. Hopefully things continue to go as well as they have been. :)

3rd Time's A Charm???

Let me just start by saying I'm much better at updating Facebook with all the details of our life than I am our blog. So if you feel like you're missing something, chances are I probably explained it on my Facebook page. Just sayin'...
Anyway, Ben had his shoulder surgery this past Monday. Things went well, as far as we know. I say that because the doctor never came and talked to me after the surgery and only talked to Ben while he was still in the recovery room (where I wasn't allowed to be). So let me try and start from the beginning. We flew to Hawaii Wednesday (the 26th) and had he pre-op appointment the 27th. Things seemed to be great. We were impressed with the doctors and felt that maybe things might actually be taken care of right this time. They wanted an MRI done and said they would call us over the weekend to let us know what it showed. The MRI was done Saturday morning, and we never heard from the doctor. We get to the hospital Monday morning, get all checked in, etc. Everything seems to be going alright still. The staff is nice and helpful and the wait isn't too horrible. The surgeon comes back to talk to us while we're waiting and said the MRI looked alright (well as alright as it could be) and that there didn't appear to be any bone loss like he thought there might be. So the surgery should be able to be done with the scope instead of having to actually cut him open. That's a bit of a relief. The finally take him back to the OR a little before 10. I don't hear anything from anyone until 1. 3 hours later! And only then it is one of the anesthesiologists saying "we can't get his pain under control. We need your consent to give him a nerve block." He very adamantly refused a nerve block before the surgery because it caused problems for a good year after the last time he had one. But they let me go back to talk to him, and I could tell he was hurting. He's not one to cry, but he was. I tell them to do it, sign the paper and tell them to let me know when he's feeling better. I go back to the waiting room and 10 minutes or so later they come and get me. I go back for a few minutes just to make sure he's alright and he was already doing better. His pain had gone from about a 10 down to a 3. They keep him a bit longer before transferring him over to the other recovery area, and apparently that was when the doctor came and talked to him. About all he remembers him saying though (because he was all drugged up at the time) is that his shoulder was really loose and he tightened it back up. So that's all we know about his surgery. The doctor never came and talked to us in the other recovery area like he said he would. At this point my opinion of him has started to go down. We spend about another hour or so there before we head back to the hotel. We stop at Wendy's to get some dinner and spend the rest of the evening in the room. By about 6 the nerve block has started to wear off. It was supposed to last anywhere from 8-24 hours. His shoulder started hurting 5 hours later. The rest of his arm was still numb, but the place that needed to be wasn't. Not a very good sign in my opinion. It was a rough night to say the least. By about 130 the block had completely worn off, lasting only about 12 hours all together. (On the plus side though, his had isn't still half numb like it was the last time, so that's good.) We didn't do much the next day, Tuesday. We waited for the hospital to call and check up on him, but they never did. Again, my opinion of them went down. It's Friday and still no one has called to make sure things are ok. Not that we've had any major problems, but it has been a bit of a struggle to keep his pain under control. The only pills they gave us were a narcotic and stool softener. Every other time they've given him ibuprofen to help with the swelling, but not this time. So I had to go get some. Granted it's not as strong as what we could get from the hospital, but it's better than nothing. I've also had to make our own ice packs using the hotel ice and ziploc bags. We were supposed to get a machine to help with that, but because we aren't stationed here in Hawaii we couldn't get it for whatever reason. I don't know. So that's where we are. Surgery went well and he's still hurting. Hopefully he's still hurting because they fixed it right this time and this will be his last shoulder surgery. At least for a while anyway. This was his 3rd surgery in the past year (the other two were for his stomach), 4th in the past year and a half, and 5th in the past 3 years. I think that's quite enough. I think I handled this one a bit better than the past ones though. Could have been better, but we'll blame it on all the pregnancy hormones surging through me. (I've been blaming them for a lot of things lately...) I think that pretty much covers it all though. We go back for his post-op appointment on the 10th, and we'll see if we get the ok to fly home then or if he wants us to stay until the 16th as planned right now. Not that I'm in a hurry to get home. I'm loving the sunshine, warm weather and driving around a convertible. I'll try to get some pics posted soon. We haven't done a whole lot (mostly just shopping and eating out) but we did spend a little time at the beach this afternoon. Hopefully Ben will be feeling better soon and we'll be able to get out and see some more before heading back to Japan. Only time will tell though. :)

Changes

Things have been pretty crazy since Christmas. I keep thinking "I'll update the blog as soon as we have more answers" but we keep getting are more questions than answers. So I'll go ahead and update it now. Let's start at the beginning...
The Monday after Christmas I got my wisdom teeth out. Nothing too horrible. They took out all 4 at the same time, so they gave me an iv, put me out, and pulled them out. From the time they gave me the meds to pass out to the time I remember looking at the clock again was only about a half hour. So it was quick and easy. I was numb pretty much the rest of the day though. Recovery took a bit longer than I would have liked, but there were no problems. Only one of them isn't fully closed up yet. Just about there though.
We didn't do much to celebrate the New Year. Just stayed in and had a quiet night at home. It's hard to believe another year has gone by. And that we are half way through January now. Time seems to just fly. Not that I'm complaining too much. We've got some big changes coming this year that we're excited for.
The end of December we found out that Ben was to be deploying in May. Once we got to Fort Drum, he would have two week of training and two weeks to get his personal affairs in order and then he would be shipped out to Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. Needless to say that won't be happening due to all his medical problems. His orders to Drum have actually been cancelled. So we won't be headed to New York. It was decided that he will be sent to a WTU (Warrior Transition Unit) instead. We should know this week whether it will be in Hawaii or Washington. And we'll be there either until they get everything taken care of or we get the medical discharge/retirement. We are headed to Hawaii next week so he can have shoulder surgery again. Once that is taken care of they can start the Medical Evaluation Board. I guess they can't start it now because his surgery is already scheduled and once they start it, it has to be done within 30 days. Or something like that anyway. It's all very confusing. But we will be in Hawaii for about 3 weeks (Jan 26th - Feb16th) as of right now.
I guess that brings me to our next big announcement... I'm pregnant!!! I'm only about 5 1/2 weeks right now, and my due date is September 15th. Granted that could always change by a little bit, but our baby should be here early to mid September. We are super excited! We've been trying for almost 5 years. I find Heavenly Father's timing and sense of humor to be kind of funny though. At a time in our life when the future is so full of uncertainty, is the time he decided to bless us with a child. Not that we're complaining. We'll take it. But if you look at all the time we've been trying, we've been in the military so we've had money and insurance and everything. And now that it looks like we'll be getting out of the military is the time we get a kid. Kinda funny to me. But it's all good. Things happen when they do for whatever reason and we just have to go with it. We are very ready for this baby. Well at least we think we're ready... :) It's been great seeing every one's reactions too. My parents are thrilled that they are gonna be grandparents, and my sister in law started planning a baby shower as soon as she found out. We are grateful for all the thoughts, prayers, congratulations, and well wishes. Hopefully it's a smooth and uneventful pregnancy, if you know what I mean. And so far it hasn't been too bad. A little nausea here and there, but nothing really to complain about. Let's hope it stays that way. :)
So that's what we've been up to. I'll update again when we have a better idea of where we'll be moving (which hopefully we'll know in the next few days) and we'll go from there. :)