Happy 2012

Happy New Year!
It's 2012. Does that seem right to you? Me? Not so much. Yet, here we are! 2011 was eventful to say the least. We faced our first deployment, I faced my first earthquake. I graduated college, George will be done with his masters in just a few weeks. In a nutshell, we've been busy. We traveled to Singapore, Thailand, and Bali together. He traveled the middle east. I traveled some of America. It was crazy.

2012 promises to be equally crazy. I'm sure of it. I think the only big event planned is my sister's wedding this June, so we'll do a trip out to the A in the spring, but generally there isn't anything life changing on the agenda for the year (as of today) but being a military family we know that can change at the drop of a hat. I look forward to the challenges that'll eventually be thrown at us. I'm going to take them down.

We rang in the new year by heading to a party at the officer's club here on the base. We always have a good time hanging out there and when we got there there was a jazz band on stage in one room, and food in the other. We chose the room with the food because hey--I'm not kissing 2011 goodbye with an empty stomach. Right? We mingled, ate, had a drink and then headed over to the room where the band had stopped but a very sad selection of music from the DJ booth was playing. It wasn't going well, and the actual DJ didn't exist. They tried to do a drawing for prizes but needed help because the sound system wasn't working and the microphone was muffled and it was in general a tad chaotic.

I heard several different groups talking about getting an iPod hooked up at the booth to play some more current and fun music but no one seemed to think their iPod's were worthy enough. However, I knew that George had lots of good songs on his iPhone! So we tracked him down and asked him to plug his in. He agreed and was able to make it to the DJ booth and with some other friends figured out how to play the good songs so we could properly rock away from 2011. And so he did. And we rocked it out!

Even today I was stopped and asked to tell my husband how great of a job he did and how he saved new years eve! Between him and other various friends stopping in to help at the DJ booth the party turned out to be a huge success and we danced until 2am. Three cheers for George and our other awesome friends!

I had a few weeks off from teaching for the holidays so we really just enjoyed our time together!

Happy new year!

Catching up!

Oh my word. I've really been slacking on updating this thing. At the insistence of my dear husband, I'll write one now. I think I've gotten discouraged because I'm so far behind that it just feels pointless. So... to give a quick rundown of what's been going on here you're getting bullet points. Ready? Go.

• Sometime in November (it is all blurring together) George was put in charge of the 'spouse day' his squadron held. It's an opportunity for the spouses of the airmen to see what they do all the time and a way for them to show that they appreciate all we do, so they took care of the food and everything (Lord knows we make enough dishes for all the events around base so it was nice that they added in that little detail). It was a really neat day and they had a ton of spouses that got to experience a flight on a C-130, a C-12 or a UH-1 helicopter. I must admit that when George asked me which aircraft I wanted to fly I chose a helicopter. People pay hundreds of dollars to get to helicopter flight around Tokyo and this was my shot to get a free one. This hurt George's feelings so I decided to do a C-130 ride to really be able to appreciate what he does, seeing as how that's what 'spouses day' is kind of all about. I am glad that I did! We flew down along the coast and then did a lap up to Mt. Fuji; we all got to take turns riding in the cockpit,  flight deck. Here's a few pictures from that! 
• For Thanksgiving we went to Bali. It was awesome. We laid on the beach for 4 days and had beer and cocktails. We also played a ton of games: darts, ping pong, pool, archery. I didn't win once. Except for when George let me win at ping pong. Darn him. We hired a driver on our last day and he took us to a traditional dance show, silversmith, art gallery, and a neat temple. I was sick on this day so I struggled to make it through all of this, but somehow did! Then we went to a monkey park and fed the monkey's bananas. It was pretty cool! We walked around Ubud and enjoyed seeing all of the crafts of the Indonesian's, particularly the art. We bought a couple of pieces and really had a good time!



• We had a Thanksgiving dinner from the crockpot when we got home. I threw turkey legs, carrots and potatoes in. Called it good. It was.
• On December 2nd we went to George's squadron's Christmas Party and had a great time!
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• I came down with the first sickness since I had my tonsils removed August of 2010, I really made it that long without getting sick! But this time I got Strep so it put me in bed for about week. Ugh!
• I'm the co-chair this year for the base's OSC's culture club. It's about 50 Japanese women and 50 American women (and one guy this year!) and it's keeping me plenty busy! We had our annual Christmas party on the 8th and Kim (the other co-chair) and I planned and hosted a "Down Home Country Christmas" complete with a visit from Santa Claus (GEORGE dressed up as him! HA!), catfish and fried chicken, and line dancing. And yes. Kim and I taught the line dancing to about 100 people. EEEK. It was pretty funny and overall a success. I had "Achy Breaky Heart" stuck in my head for about a week before hand and a few days after because I practiced so much. We only had a small problem when they learned it so quickly (cause we were such great teachers, ha!) that we had 10 more minutes to kill, so we tried to play the Electric Slide real quick to kill time but couldn't find the right track for it so it went haywire and then I taught the wrong steps. Oh well, everyone laughed and had a good time and I for one am glad that was over! 
• George went on his squadron's annual holiday trip to deliver supplies to Micronesia, it's called Christmas Drops and it's one of the longest running missions in the Air Force; and it's really neat. The highlight of the trip was delivering medical supplies to an island that recently broke out with Dengue Fever (something kind of similar to Malaria). Our peeps saved countless lives by delivering that stuff. I'm so proud of all of them. And they're in Guam so they just have a great time partying on a tropical island. They work hard to get them all home by Christmas, so I'm looking forward to seeing George in a few days!
• I think that catches you up.

I also did learn how to make Mochi this weekend and that was a neat experience, but I didn't take any pictures. Some friends of mine had their camera's so I'll have to see if I can hijack some of their pictures. It involves me using a gigantic wooden mallet and hitting rice in a tree stump. I'm sure you want to see them. :)

Hope you're having a great December!