Family Scripture Study--With Horses

The other night we were reading scriptures as a family. As Aubrey can't read yet, I usually will read her a phrase that she then repeats. Usually she is very adamant that she have her scriptures open to the right place. That night as we read 1 Nephi 17:33, her verse went like this:

Dad: And now, do ye suppose
Aubrey: And now, do ye suppose
Dad: that the children of this land,
Aubrey: that the children of this land,
Dad: who were in the land of promise,
Aubrey: who were in the land of promise,
Dad: who were driven out by our fathers,
Aubrey: who were driven out by our fathers,
Dad: do ye suppose that they were righteous?
Aubrey: do ye suppose that they were righteous?
Dad: I say unto you, Nay.
Aubrey: I say unto you, neigh, like a horse.

Sports Day

The hospital here host a Sports Day every year. They have games for people to play and a picnic. The base news came out and did a feature on it. That shows you how little is really happening here in Misawa. Here is a copy of the feature they did. If you watch closely you can see Di twice in the video. Jonathan is next to her once and the kids are in another section.

Smiling and Wiggling

Well, it's official. Squirt has learned to smile. She is just starting to get the hang of it, so capturing the grin on "film" is not so easy, but I did manage to get one to share with you. She has also started to wiggle a lot. She flails those little arms and legs all the time. At night we have to wrap her tightly, so she doesn't wake herself up. I got a video of it but it is too large to put on the blog, so I will have to see if I can find a way to cut it down and post it for all of you.

This week Ashley also had her first experience in the pool. She only fussed for a second when I first put her in the water, but she calmed down after only a couple of seconds. She swam for about 45 minutes and seemed to enjoy it, but when I let go of her for a second and the water covered her face she had a very stunned look.

Where We Live

I thought that you all might like to see where we live, so I found it on Wikimapia. Here the the link to our house: http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=40.6882653&lon=141.3594264&z=17&l=0&m=a&v=2

You can scroll around and look at the school, hospital, flight line, etc. I can walk to my office in 5 minutes, and the kids school is even closer. Shopping is done at the commisary and BX which again are about a 5 minute walk. We have a car, but on base things are so close that we could walk almost anywhere we needed to go. Walking back with all of the groceries would be a little trickier though.

The cross hairs are right over the top of our apartment. Each of these buildings has four apartments in them. In our builing there are three member families, and there are now three other member families in the circle with us. The back is one open area where the kids can (and do) run around with the other kids in the area. To get a four bedroom apartment you have to have at least 3 children, so you can imagine how many of them there are around.

The apartment is a 1545 sq ft town house with four bedrooms. The living room is a little smaller than our old house, but we will make do. I think what we will miss the most is the lack of a playroom. We do have an area that we will use, but it is about 1/5th the size and just off the kitchen instead of on a different floor.

Jet Lag in the Land of the Rising Sun

Jet lag was worse than I was expecting. When I came home from Europe I found that switching back to the local time was much easier than it had been going to Europe. I, incorrectly, assumed that since I was traveling east it would be relatively easy now.

The first night we got the children to bed about 8:00 and then they woke up at about 1:30 a.m. About 3:00 we got them back to sleep for another couple of hours and then had to get up and get ready to catch our flight from Tokyo to Misawa. The next night we went to bed about the same time, arose briefly for our earthquake adventure, went back to sleep, and they woke up about 3:00 and then, under duress, went back to sleep. The next night they went to bed at about 8:30 and slept through the night—until 4:30. At that point they came into our room. Jonathan, in all seriousness, asked, “Can we get up now—it’s 4:30?” Aubrey, in the meek voice she so artfully uses, (she really can be meek when she wants to) added, “It’s weally light outside.” Yes, indeed, it is light at 4:30 a.m., and I don’t mean the crack of dawn. Now I know why it is called the land of the rising sun.

This photo was taken our first morning in our new house at about 4:30. Di made me get up to record the beautiful sunrose. She was busy (don't be surprised now) feeding Ashley.

Of course half of the battle was getting the kids to stay awake all day long. See what I mean?

The Earthquake

Our first night we were awakened to our first earthquake here in Japan. After our long journey, it wasn’t actually the earthquake that woke us, but Di, who was already awake nursing Ashley. She said that at first it felt like a little tremor. Being an earthquake veteran she wasn’t worried until it got stronger and the closet doors started shaking and the building started to sway (we were staying on the third floor). At that point she cried out, “Ryan, we’re having an earthquake.” I awoke to find everything shaking. We woke the children and got into the door frame just in time for it to stop. There wasn’t any damage in our hotel room, but a cereal box fell off of the refrigerator into the sink.

The base initiated a recall, so Jason called to make sure we were OK. He said that they had several things fall and break and his TV would have fallen off of the armoire if he hadn’t jumped out of bed and held it in place.

Everyone I have talked to said that this is the worst earthquake they have had here in several years—probably because it was so close. It was centered about 60 miles south of Misawa, but fortunately it was very deep in the earth, so the damage was much less than it otherwise would have been.

A Trip to Japan--How Exciting

Our trip started at 6:00 driving to the SLC airport. Half way there we realized that the stroller (the new one that goes with the car seat) was still in the garage. No time to go back. Hopefully, we can get it shipped.

At SLC we tried to check in at Skycap, but they wouldn’t let us do it because we were international travelers. Fortunately, the skycap man wheeled our 10 pieces of luggage (There’s nothing better than traveling light) right up to the counter and got us checked in.

Our flight ended up leaving late and we only had a 1 hour layover in San Francisco. As we were arriving in San Francisco the flight attendant came over the intercom an announced that those of us catching the flight to Tokyo should meet the agent at the gate to be escorted to the next gate.

The agent was a short little Asian woman, but let me tell you she could move. Di was a trooper—remember the forgotten stroller? Yes, she ran across the airport with the Ashley in her car seat in her arms. I was trying to keep track of the agent and get the other kids to hurry faster than their little legs could carry them. Don’t you think that if the connection was tight they would have one of those handy little carts to move everyone? I was really hoping I had found my chance to finally get a ride. We finally made it to the gate after everyone else was on the plane.

At SLC they were unable to give us our boarding passes for the flight to Tokyo, so we had to get them there when we were already late. Wouldn’t you know it that we didn’t have two seats together? Two were on one side of the plane in adjacent rows and the other three were on the other side of the plane in three adjacent rows. Di took Ashley to one side of the plane and I took the other kids. A flight attendant helped Di get someone to move so she and Ashley could sit together. I was a little more direct. I told the people in our rows that my children and I had the three middle seats of their rows, so I needed two people from one row to move to the other rows or my kids would have to sit next to them alone. No one really seemed to mind. I guess they didn’t relish the opportunity of spending 10 hr 45 min of quality time with my children the same way I did.

In all fairness the kids were actually fairly well behaved on the flight. They each only had to have the person sitting in front of them ask them to stop kicking their chair back once, but after that I was constantly on their case to leave their feet off of the chair back. The most aggravating thing was the every half hour bathroom trips.

When Jonathan arrived in Tokyo, what was the first thing he wanted to visit?—the bathroom. We sent him in alone; after all he is 8 and can go to the bathroom by himself. When he came back out he announced, “Japanese toilets are so weird.” Apparently, the Japanese style toilet is a hole in the ground that you squat over to do your business.

Immigration was a snap, when they saw we had a baby we were ushered over to the short line reserved for the elderly, handicapped, pregnant women, and babes in arms. We then proceeded to baggage claim to get our luggage and clear customs. The luggage was already off of the conveyor, but circling the conveyor was a sign that read, “Mr. Bruce Ball, please see a United agent.” Remember our rush to our connecting flight? Two of our pieces of luggage apparently couldn’t keep up with the rest. I filled out the necessary paperwork so they could ship them to us in Misawa. The United agent then escorted us through customs.

Now with Ashley and her car seat stacked on top of the two full luggage carts we made our way to find a shuttle to the hotel. On arrival at the Holiday Inn they would not let us get our luggage to take in; they did it for us. When I checked in they asked us which of our bags we needed in the room. They brought those up and stored the others for us until we checked out in the morning.

The next morning we got up and went to get breakfast in the hospital restaurant. They had a buffet with some American style food and some Japanese food. I have never seen salad or soup on the breakfast buffet before, but I guess they do in Japan.

After breakfast we caught the shuttle bus back to Narita airport where we bought bus tickets to Haneda airport so we could catch our flight to Misawa. At Haneda we checked in with Japan Air Lines (JAL). The agents were so helpful. One of them pushed some of the luggage from the check in counter to the baggage check area. Once we got to the gate the gate agent saw Ashley and came over and told us that we would be able to board early with the baby. When it was time to board she came and got Di, Aubrey, and Ashley to board. Once on the plane one of the flight attendants brought Aubrey and Ashley little stuffed elephants to play with. After Jonathan and I got on the plane she came around again with a basket of toys for him to choose from—he chose a small Lego set.

After and hour and a half flight we arrived at Misawa. The airport and the base share a runway, so after landing the plane taxied to the airport and a very large gate closed behind the plane. When we got off of the plane Jason was waiting for us with almost the entire clinic staff there to greet us. We got our luggage loaded into about three cars and came to the base hotel. “Home” at last, at least for the next week or so.

Internet--finally

We finally got internet in our house today. It is amazing how much we have come to depend on it. I am sorry that we never got any blog entries posted, but it was too much of a hassle to take the laptop to the computer labs that they had with everything else we had going on. The good news is that I wrote a few blog entries on Word, so I will get them posted soon.