February Adventures

February has been a pretty busy month so far! On the 3rd of February, I celebrated my 25th birthday! I had to work all day, but when I came home Chad had the whole house clean and he had drove an hour away to get my favorite Okinawan cake! He even managed to put 25 candles on this tiny cake. It was perfect! We went out to dinner to one of our favorite restaurants, Sams by The Sea. It was delicious! I started going to the gym at the end of January, so for my birthday I got a lot of fitness related gifts. I got a new set of ear buds that actually stay in my ear when I'm moving and my favorite part is on the cord there is a button where I can turn the volume up/down, stop/play the music, or go to the next song. I love them! I am still waiting on a couple of my gifts to arrive in the mail. Chad ordered me a Polar Heart Rate Monitor watch, which I am so anxious to get! My Mom sent me an Amazon gift card, so I bought an mp3 player with it. It's tiny and will just clip on to my clothes. It will be perfect to use at the gym instead of having to wear a big armband with my iPod touch. I can't wait to get all my gear, hopefully my packages will arrive early this next week!

The best part about my birthday weekend was Chad surprising me by booking a trip to go whale watching! It was an amazing experience! We've been wanting to go but I was hesitant to pay the money to possibly not see any whales or get sea sick. We took dramamine the night before and the morning of, and thankfully the water wasn't very rough, so neither of us got seasick! Plus, we saw a ton of whales. I was surprised about how much whale activity we got to see and how long we got to watch it. It was a beautiful perfect day for it as well! The only thing that could have made it better if we saw multiple whales jumping. I did see one jump for a split second but that was it. Regardless, it was amazing and I highly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to go!

My coworkers also made my birthday special! Blossom had my desk all decorated when I came in to work. And the day after my birthday, everyone from my work went to dinner at Chili's. It's nice to have coworkers that you get a long with and consider friends.

The first couple days post-treatment, Myah was being such a baby.

Besides my birthday and being extremely busy at work these last few weeks, another thing that has been going on is Myah's heartworm treatment. We had to drop her off in the morning at the Vet for her first heartworm treatment on Valentine's Day. We were able to pick her up later that day to take her home. For the heartworm treatment, they don't have to give her anesthesia but they had to put a big needle deep into her muscle so it was really painful. We could tell she was in a lot of pain when we brought her home. She would try to lay down but just couldn't get comfortable. She likes to hide from us when she is sick, so she kept trying to go in our spare bedroom or office. I felt so bad for her! The next morning though, she started acting more like herself and now 3 days post treatment she seems to be in no pain. The only tough part is for the next month, she pretty much has to be on bed rest. She is not allowed to exercise. The worms in her heart are going to begin breaking up and if her heart gets pumping fast then there is a higher chance that one of the worms will get lodged and then terrible things will happen. Myah LOVES her walks, so it breaks my heart that she can't go and there's no way of explaining to her why. We have to take her back on March 13th for her second and third treatment. She will have to spend the night that time, but hopefully after that she'll be healed. She will then have to be calm for the following month as well, so it's going to be a long 2-3 months!

I almost forgot... another exciting thing that has happened this month is Chad sewed on! For all of you who are unfamiliar with this slang, it means he ranked up. He is now a Senior Airman! As mentioned in one of my previous posts, he got BTZ so he got to sew on 6 months early! Woohoo! One of the traditions that the Airmen have is to have their new stripe "punched on," usually resulting in bruises. Chad only got punched by 2 people, but his bruise is HUGE! 

Other than that, Chad and I have just been trying to get out and explore on weekends. We just take off and drive with no end in sight. We usually find neat little interesting villages and get to see a lot of the culture. Today, we went for a walk and I snapped some pictures to show everyone back home a little bit of what Japan looks like, so I'll leave you with those.

Our Adventure in Michigan!

We've been back in Okinawa for almost a month now and I've been meaning to update my blog about our trip home!

On Wednesday, December 18th, we started our adventure back to the United States! We had 3 legs of our journey. Our first one was from Okinawa to Tokyo. As we were getting off the plane for Tokyo, they were holding up signs and announcing for any passengers going to Washington D.C., which happened to be our next flight. They rushed us through security, and then we had to get to our gate, which little did we know was at the other end of the airport. As we were fast walking through the airport, there were several airport attendants who were looking for us and other passengers on the flight. They would radio ahead and let the people at the gate know that we were on our way. I had to add this story into my blog, because I just thought it was so nice of the Tokyo airport workers to get us as soon as we got off our first flight, escort us through security and pretty much all the way through the entire airport. I'm pretty sure we would never experience that kind of customer service in the United States. End of story is that we made it to our gate before the plane took off, even if I was sweating a little bit from running through the airport. It was a 13 hour flight to Washington D.C. and I barely slept a wink, which made it very long and tiring! After being delayed a couple hours in Washington D.C., we finally made it to Detroit where both of our parents were there waiting our arrival! It was so nice to see them all again! :)

On Thursday, Chad and I went out to lunch at Panchero's with my best friend, Brittany and got to meet little Miss Audrey for the first time!

On Friday night, we went out to dinner at City Limits and met up with a lot of friends we hadn't seen in awhile!

Before we knew it, Christmas Eve was upon us and the festivities with our families began. My brothers, who live in Kentucky, came up for a few days around Christmas. It was nice to see them, even if Adam left us all with his sickness! I was so happy to be home for Christmas this year! It just isn't the same celebrating without family around. My Mom and I went on a shopping spree and she bought me a ton of clothes for Christmas! It was nice to go shopping again, especially with my Mom!

One of the things that made me miss home the most was hanging out with our friends. It was so nice to just hang out, laugh, and have fun with our old friends. Brittany and Eric got stationed in Hawaii, while Chad was at basic, so it had been a long time since the 4 of us go to hang out. I am grateful that they were able to be in Michigan as the same time as us! We got to catch up with Amy and Kyle a lot while we were home too! Like I said, it was so nice to be around friends. It didn't feel like we had been gone for a year a half, it felt like just yesterday we had left them.

Another thing that I really miss while I am over here is Mason Cheerleading! I am happy that I was able to make it to a couple of their practices and a competition while I was home! I miss those girls so much! And I got to catch up with my good friend, Becca, who I used to coach with/work with/do everything with! It was really nice, but it made me miss cheerleading even more!

And a third thing that we both missed was all the scrumptious food here! I think we ate out just about everyday. We got to eat at all our favorite restaurants and we totally pigged out! (I'm happy to say, I got back to my pre-vacation weight a week after being back in Okinawa).

Toward the end of our trip home, I made a day trip up to Frankenmuth with my Mom and Greg. It was a fun day! We ate lunch, walked around all the little shops, toured a brewery museum, went to Bronner's (aka the World's Largest Christmas Store) and bought some customized ornaments and then ended the day at the outlet mall.

Another thing to mention about our trip is the horrible weather we experienced! We obviously knew it was going to be cold in Michigan but we got to experience first hand one of the worst Michigan winters in history. The first week, there was an ice storm that left us without power for about a day and half. We literally slept without any heat one night. The next week, we just got dumped on with snow! Tons of snow! We were snowed in for a day, but at least we had power and heat!

Despite the weather, we had an amazing trip home! The only reason we wanted to come back to Okianwa was for the warm weather and our dog, Myah! We had an awesome flight back to Okinawa. On our longest flight, we had a row all to ourselves so I was able to lay down and sleep for a few hours! It was a lot more comfortable than on the way over to the states, so we were happy about that! I could write for days about our trip home, but I'm sure it would get boring to you all. We have a year and half left in Okinawa and we're hoping we get stationed stateside after this! Seeing the world is great, but being closer to family is priceless.