We have a home!

Hello everyone! A little shot at the view from our casa for you - a little cloudy today. That is the East China Sea - right outside of our house! (Oh yes, AND when we were leaving today there was a man with a truck of BAKED GOODS - you all know how I enjoy good bread products. Well, the Japanese don't have ovens, therefore they don't bake...but everyone needs good baked products, so this nice man brings his truck by your street and you buy yummy things. As Sara noted earlier on skype - we must have rented the right place!)

We finally have a home! Our new apartment is located in Kitamae, Chatan-Cho, Okinawa.

Not only that.. but we have our stuff! Brad spent some quality time in our place today (while Olivia was at a friend's and Alessandra and I came back to the Lodge for naptime and lunch). By the time we came back later today, a sea of boxes and most importantly TOYS met us! Olivia hasn't been back there yet (since it was empty this morning) so we can't wait to let her loose with her own goodies.

Here is a photo of our living room: Alessandra yelling "cheese" as she gives me a smile!

The other new thing of note: A photo of our new van. We really like it (but terribly miss the automatic doors on both sides from our Odyssey). We will just have to get used to it!

Interesting new license plate eh?

We are SO ready to be in our new home! We are NOT looking forward to unpacking or organizing (I mean, we sort of are, but things like BATHROOM DRAWERS are a lot smaller here.. argh! I am going to have to get creative!) The other thing we are not looking forward to is trying to find Japanese curtains to cover all those big windows at the back of the house! They have some at the Exchange here on base, but MAN are the ugly! So, I have to try and figure out the whole metric measuring thing - in CM and how to read the Japanese curtain containers, but I think we will make it.

ALL in ALL, the good outweighs the bad. OH NO, there is one more bad thing. We are going to go to fiberoptic internet (apparently it is WAY fast), and since our vonage works off of internet and I am addicted to this whole blog thing, we have to wait a little while until they can install it (I think 3 weeks or something, we will find out details tomorrow). SO, in the time being, Skyping and blogging will be at a minimum (yuck!). I will be stopping by the many WiFi places on base and checking email and trying to get some blogs on, so be patient and in due time we will meet again! In the meantime, if you do NEED to call me (and please feel free to), my new cell phone here is: 080-3516-9070 (I am not sure how to dial Japan, so you may need to figure that out!)

Otherwise we are all well. We feel every day by 6:00pm that we have been run over by a truck, but hopefully those feelings too shall pass and some sense of normalcy will enter into our world.
Olivia went with me to check out the 2 Montessori schools nearby. We liked them both, but didn't love either of them, so we still aren't sure of how we are going to proceed with Kindergarten. We will sort that out very soon. Also, Alessandra is starting to talk more.. in Japanese. She loves to say moshi, moshi (greeting for the phone), Konnichiwa (Good Afternoon) and Arigato (thank you). She especially loves it when she can say it to the gate guards on base. Brad checks in on Friday (officially). Not sure when the true work will begin, but our little vacation world will end soon enough (except for me, I am on permanent vacation - except for that parenting and house-managing thing).

Love to you all!