A Thanksgiving Post from Peter

I am Thankful for many things.

1. My family of course. They love and support me no matter what.

2. My friends. Who are merely an extension of my family.

3. The Marines. Because without them none of us would have number 4.

4. A country where I can be thankful for whatever I want… and express it freely.

Be thankful for what you want but, always remember somebody paid a price for it.

Last and most importantly…

Her. I am so thankful for her. She has helped me grow in so many ways I can’t begin to count. Her smile brightens my day. A few words in an email keep me going day in and day out. Her Love is why I choose to fight for my country. Because without Love like ours… life isn’t worth it. Semper Fidelis. ILY OXXX

Happy Thanksgiving!

When I hear the word Thanksgiving, the first thought that pops into my head is PUMPKIN PIE!! Followed by turkey, mashed potatoes, greenbean casserole, pretzel jello salad (it's heavenly and my family only serves it during the holiday season), spice cookies, corn pudding, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and....well basically as soon as the weather gets cold (or slightly "chilly" here in the tropics) and people start talking about the holidays, I start thinking about stuffing my face. It's the only time of year when I will voluntarily bake.

But eating until I puke is not the point of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is about being thankful.

There are a lot of things I am thankful for. Here are some of them:

My Amazing Family (all of whom really suck at holding still for photos):

(My perfect husband)

(The best parents ever)

(My favorite brother)


(The above two photos seem to be the only two photos I have of my favorite inlaws)

(And my favorite sisters-in-laws)

My Wonderful Friends:

(My Colorado Friends)

(Rebecca - The Bestest Pal Eva - My Almost Sister)

I'm thankful for friends who still care enough to keep in touch regularly, even though I have been gone for a decade (Megan, James, Jessica's Family, Tara).

And I'm thankful for Rachel (far right) - who had her brain bashed in by a reckless driver this summer, and is getting a second chance at life thanks to her wonderful doctors, supportive family, and her own personal miracle. I'm so glad you're still here Rach.

I'm also thankful for all my Okinawa friends, but I don't have room to post the hundreds of photos I have of you guys. It's nice to have a family away from home though.

My Neurotic Animals:

(The Fierceness)

(The Queen Bee)

(The Goofball)

(Bigfoot)

(Lover Boy)

I have a nice apartment with ocean views in a nice neighborhood on a tropical island.
I have plenty of food to eat, even when it isn't Thanksgiving.
I am not only employed - I have four jobs.
I had the opportunity to go to college.
I have the means to go to college AGAIN so I can get ANOTHER degree and ANOTHER job.
I have two cars.
I can afford to travel.

But the biggest things I am thankful for this year are Peter.

I am thankful he is mine.

I am thankful we have such a happy marriage.

I am thankful that he is on a boat right now, and not in The Sandy Place (he was supposed to be).

I am thankful that he has the means to communicate with me almost daily.

I am thankful that he had the opportunity to train extensively before he deployed, so that he will be better able to do his job.

Hopefully next year, I will be thankful that he is HOME.

Running Around Like a Chicken With My Head Cut Off

I have been very bad at keeping the blog updated lately. I have just been too busy to keep up! But before I talk about my busy life, let me give you a Peter Update.

Peter Update: Peter is on the boat now, and they shipped out a couple of weeks ago. They were near Hawaii, but he was not allowed off the boat. Peter has been sick quite a bit on the boat. For the first few days he had the flu because his flu shot made him sick. Then he was sick with diarrhea. Other than that, there isn't much to report. Things on the boat are pretty dull right now, which is fine by me!

Kristin Update: I am back in Okinawa now. When I got back, I had messages on my answering machine from students wondering why I wasn't in class. Turns out I am teaching a class of twelve students this term, and no one thought to inform me! In addition, no one told the students that I was on leave the first week of class, so they all showed up to class and I wasn't there to teach them. So I spent the first week home sorting that problem out. This class is the largest and smartest math class I have ever taught.

In addition to teaching, I also went back to school to get my teaching license. So I am studying to get my Masters in Secondary Education and a teaching license. I will figure out what state to get certified in when we get closer to PCSing. School is eating up a lot more of my time than I expected though. My first class, Communications, was three weeks long, and during that time I had three presentations, three papers, and several homework assignments due. This week I start my second course, The Art and Science of Teaching.

And I'm still subbing and tutoring (although the tutoring is minimal this term).

As if that weren't enough, I also joined the Navy Cheerleading Squad and Dance Team. I won't be on the sidelines cheering, but I WILL be the halftime entertainment during the Island Army-Navy football game. And entertainment it will be - I'll be doing HIP HOP. So if you're on island, come have a good laugh at my expense. And if you aren't on island, well I'm sure there will be Youtube videos. Dancing is fun, but the practices are eating up all my free time, and I will be relieved in two weeks when the game is over with. At the moment, I'm busy to the point where simple things like grocery shopping are stressful, just because I'm never home when the stores are open!

Fall Leaves - Which Don't Exist in Okinawa!! (This photo caused quite a stir with the Japanese ladies that developed it)

So Happy Together!

We just realized that it's been a month since we last updated the blog. We apologize.

So lets recap the last month.
1) Peter rode on a boat to "Yemen."
2) Kristin worked a lot.
3) Rebecca visited Kristin in Okinawa. They made bingata.
4) Now we are together on leave in Colorado.

Now we're going to go enjoy our fifteen minutes of being in the same hemisphere. We'll talk to you all later.

Military Life

Over the past few days I have been helping our good friends Andrew and Lauren get ready to move back to the States from Okinawa. The military has a pretty extensive check out process before a move, and one of the first steps along the way is de-registering your car. Of course, with typical military planning, all subsequent steps require car transportation between remote offices. This meant I was a taxi all week. During the car rides they asked some good questions that I've been thinking about all week.


The first question was "Did you know what you were getting into when you married the military?" The answer is both yes and no. My military stereotype involved lots of moving and a frequently absent husband. Did I expect Peter to get deployed? Yes. Did I expect him to be gone for over a year, while I was left alone in a foreign country? No. Did I know I would have to move a lot? Yes. Did I know I'd have to give up my job when I moved, and that it would be hard to find a new job? No. Did I know I'd have to make new friends roughly every six months because everyone else in the military moves frequently too? No. In my mind, everyone else was going to stay the same while we moved around.

The frequent farewells are one of the hardest things for me to deal with in the military. I've only been doing this for two years, and I already feel like I spend a significant portion of my time managing my e-social life with all my absent friends. The rest of my social energy is spent making new friends. I have very few good friendships where I'm currently living. As soon as they reach "good friend" status they move.

Another thing that I didn't realize about being a military wife was that in addition to having to sacrifice my home and my job and my friends, I would also have to sacrifice my identity. In all things military, I am a "dependent." At the doctor's office, I am identified by my husband's social security number, not my own. His rank determines what clubs I can enter and what friends I can have. I use an ID card with HIS name and rank when I go grocery shopping. His name is on our cars and bank accounts. I am just a tag along. This was really hard for me to deal with, so I went out and got a government job that issued me my own ID card with MY social security number on it and my own rank: contractor. But it took significant effort on my part to be someone other than Peter's shadow.

The next question was "How did Peter ask that sacrifice of you?" The answer to that one is simple: he didn't. Just like Peter volunteered for the Navy, I volunteered to be a Navy spouse. I'm proud to be his wife. I'm proud to support him. Even when he's deployed and I'm stranded on an island using his social security number to schedule my medical care, I don't regret it. I never have. I LOVE him, and if I have to marry the Navy in order to be married to him, then so be it.


The last question was "Are you counting down until you see Peter again?" The answer to that one is also no. I'll see him in roughly a month, and then he's gone for a LONG time. Instead of counting down the days, hours, and minutes of this deployment, I think it's easier to count up. It boosts my morale to think of how many days I've conquered without him rather than to think of how many I have left to get through. I do count down to mini-goals, like when I'll hear from him again (hopefully by Friday, and if I'm lucky I'll have an email from him tomorrow), or how long until the SPED teacher gets here so I can teach normal-intelligence, mentally stable children again (hopefully four days). I try to find weekly things to look forward to, because I still have 10 months to go, and that's a long time to wait. But I've made it through nearly 100 days already.

I Love you Peter!

Roommates

We've all had to live with roommates. Some at college, some while we pretended to go to college, etc. We all know the sacrifices you have to make with a roommate. Shoved into an 8 x 12 foot room and sharing a bathroom, only a small space to keep ALL of your stuff. You're forced to keep everything shoved into that small space otherwise you'd never be able to walk down the two foot gap between your beds or find your bed.

There are of course certain things that you must do to keep the peace while living with a roommate. Keeping your things cleaned up, keeping the music down, not turning on the lights when you come in at four in the morning. You know, common sense things. I abide by these unspoken laws (right now, my room is actually pretty messy on account of me). However, I have not experienced any of the common courtesies displayed towards me. As I write this my eardrums are being blasted by about 100 decibels of horrible R&B music. The mess in our room? Half my fault right now and the other half is his. Usually, it's all his fault. The bathroom? Only gets cleaned by myself so, it hasn't in the last month (okay we weren't here but that's besides the point). My roommate came back here to the room several times while we were out for training and I know for a fact that he didn't clean anything because it was indeed messier than what I left it.

Sorry, this was a rant because I'm fed up. Some people are just so ignorant.

A hard act to follow

Wow, those are hard blogs to follow. Especially given what I did the last month... nothing. I guess I should start by congratulating my wife on her hard work and the spirit and drive that she's shown in the face of adversity (namely me being gone and her having to carry the groceries up the stairs). I can not express how proud I am of her that her teaching career is skyrocketing, she's making new friends (even ones who don't speak the same language as her) and she is starting ANOTHER career in writing/photojournalism. She is the shining star of the military wife and I feel she deserves some public recognition. I Love her so much.
Now for my exciting month. I can pretty much sum it up like this. We sat, sweat, ran, sweat, sweat, sweat, sat in humvess, sweat, sat some more, the AC in our tent broke (again and again), slept a little, sweat and sat. That was pretty much my month of August. Interrupted by a mortar shoot about halfway through and various vehicle chases at Ft. Irwin. My platoon also managed to get three role players fired and get three E-4/5s busted all the way down to E-1. It was a busy month of sitting. Of course the hardest thing about all of it was the lack of communication with my wife (who handled it quite gracefully I might add).


This is the military life. Welcome to it.




ILY OXXX