And the real trip has just begun!!!!

WOW! So it's been a LONG summer!! The kids, my mom, and I arrived in Alaska at the beginning of June... It's now the day before my birthday, and the summer is almost over! I was in Alaska spending time with close friends and family for 2 months! I got in almost a full baseball season, including a trip to Fairbanks, met new friends, and got reacquainted with old!

The summer started off with some time in Kenai, with my parents and little brother. When I went back to Anchorage, Blake decided that he loved his grandparents more, so he stayed most of the summer in Kenai with them. I stayed with Melissa and Jeff in Anchorage for quite a bit of the time! Our kids all got along great, and for having 4 kids in her house most days, 3 of them being in the terrible 2's, it really was kinda peaceful!! :)

When the Bucs headed up to Fairbanks for a long week of mostly loosing {it was a bad summer}, I did what I would have done any other summer and went up too!! I stayed with Melissa while I was there for the most part, and loved every minute of it! My Aunt watched the kids on my last night there and Lissa and I went out together for the first time to karaoke and beer! I have pictures and videos that I will eventually post, as soon as we get a place here and our computer up and running! The girls did well on the trip up and back down... I think they are getting WAY to used to being in the car seats!

Then we headed back to Anchorage, where we spent our last few weeks. Our paperwork down in North Carolina was slowly getting fixed. The last obstacle was our medical release forms and what was the hold up on that you ask??? The doctors over here thought I was pregnant with twins!!! Apparently they missed the fact that I had the twins ~ 2 years ago! So once our sponsor cleared that up, it was only a matter of waiting on a flight that had 5 seats on it to Okinawa.

We got to the airport at 4 am on Monday and boarded a plane at 0600 to Seattle. Once in Seattle, we had 2 hours to get Jake's bags from the lost luggage section (he'd left them in Seattle instead of bringing them up to Alaska), check in, get food, and let the kids run around... Well, we got his luggage, checked in, and was JUST getting our food when they started the preboard from Seattle straight to Tokyo! No lay over in Alaska, but we did fly straight over Anchorage! The 11 hour flight went incredibly well... We boarded, fed the kids some, and then they came back around and fed us {free food on international flights!!} again, passed out drinks, and watched movies the entire way there. All the seats have their own little TVs and you can choose between 9 different movies, 21 different music channels, and a map. The girls watched the movies, Blake used the earphones and listened to his, and Jake and I even got to watch a few! No one really slept on the planes, which turned out to be a good thing! We got into Tokyo 1 1/2 a head of schedule! Good thing too 'cause the girls had peed through their diapers and the car seats were a mess!! We needed that extra hour to change and kinda sink bath them, go through immigrations, get luggage, go through customs, check our luggage back in, go through security {which is SOOOO much easier in a foreign airport, you even get to keep your shoes on!}, and then grab a drink before we took a bus to a new airplane!

On the last airplane I'm pretty sure we all slept most of the way. I say pretty sure, because I DEFINITELY slept the whole way! :) It was a nice 3 hour nap that I really needed. When we got off the plane there, we grabbed our luggage and 4 Marines met us outside security. One, our sponsor, picked up us, the kids and a few bags and drove us to the store to get the necessities ~ Coke {FYI Japanese Coke is WAYYYY better than American Coke!!} & diapers! And then to the hotel room. The other 3 Marines grabbed all our luggage and went to the hotel! Our sponsor had already been in our hotel room and left us milk, cereal, snacks, etc, so when we got in, we snacked a little, showered and slept!

So far, we're almost on the time difference schedule. We're waking up around 5 am, but still going to sleep pretty well. Blake slept for 18 straight hours yesterday! He went down for a nap at 1 pm and was OUT until we all woke up in the am!

Okay, I'm off to the beach to enjoy my birthday! I think I'm going to celebrate it for 2 days this year! Since my birthday falls a day ahead of normal schedule, I think that works out just fine right?

Oh, and I can't upload pictures from this computer. This hotel is GREAT in having the Internet in every room, but it's on lock down! :) So you will eventually get pictures! I promise!