Happy Halloween

These three little ghosts have come to shout BOO!

They'll whistle and shriek and turn your hair blue.

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These three little witches have come to brew all night.

They'll cackle and chant and cause such a fright!

These three little monsters have come along too.
They'll shout and they'll scream, "We really do miss you!"

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Jessica's Missing Tooth

I lost my tooth on the bus on Tuesday. The toothfairy came, and I got bubble gum and a silver dollar. It's my first lost tooth.
Posted by Jessica Cowley

First Band-Aid Owie

Yes, I have a boy. Yes, he is two. Yes, he hurts himself daily. He's had black eyes, a constant bump on his head for the first few months that we moved here, and constant bruises up and down his legs. But for some reason, he's never had a cut that required a Band-Aid (i.e. it's bleeding and I don't want it to get all over his clothes). He's had Band-Aids when he's had shots, but not from hurting himself.

Wednesday was our first Band-Aid experience. He cut himself on his sister's hair beading tool. As upset as he was about the cut, he was even more upset when Mom tried to doctor it up.

After the doctoring, Jason put a movie on his iphone and tried to distract him. He'd forget for a second, and then feel the Band-Aid, and say, "Owie" and grab his arm. Jason ended up putting a Band-Aid on himself to try to make Carston feel better. Poor kid. He was still traumatized about it at bedtime an hour later.

My First Couches

For fourteen wonderful years of marriage, Jason and I have been blessed with very generous people who have been willing to hand us down their living room furniture as they have acquired new furniture. We have always really appreciated these hand-me-downs. There have been times when we have been offered a piece of used furniture for a good price, and I have turned it down. It wasn't what I really wanted; so I figured I might as well use the hand-me-downs, and save my money until we were ready to buy what we wanted. From family, to friends, to friends of family, we appreciate the living room sets that have made an appearance in our home.

But now is the time. It all started when I decided I needed a love seat for my bedroom. Why? Well, 1- my bed is too tall. a- I can't just sit on it (I have to crawl onto it), and b- my kids have a hard time getting on, and off it, which is dangerous. 2- I don't have a headboard. This is due to the fact that a- my bed is so tall, my headboard barely makes and appearance, and b- we have this weird shelf built into the wall behind our bed, which would make a headboard look funny. The lack of a headboard/wall makes it difficult to sit in bed and read or watch TV. And 3- my bed is in a 'dead spot' for my wireless phones and wi-fi. (I don't know why.) I can't sit on my bed to talk, and I can't watch the slingbox on my bed. So, I needed a love seat in my room. Hey, there's space for it!

So Jason and I headed down to the Foster Furniture Store looking for a simple love seat, and what we found was the living room set that we've always wanted, at a great price. We figured, this was a love seat we'd want to take home. And if we were going to take it home, we better buy the matching couch, as well. So, we put our names on the waiting list, since they were out of stock, and about two weeks ago they came in. What do you think?

Now the current hand-me-down furniture, sweetly provided by my friend, Lisa, has moved into my bedroom and into the girls' bedroom. Now we have a comfortable place to sit in my room, and the girls, while a little crowded, have made great playing use of their new couch.

Happy Birthday, Carston- 2 years old!

Let's face it, I didn't plan Carston's birthday very well. He was born on September 5th, 2008. For starters, it's right around Labor Day, and it's hard to plan a party with Labor Day taking everyone out of town. Also, it's at the end of the hunt, which might be great for him when he's older, but makes it hard to plan a party when his dad is out of town. And, when I'm a working Mommy, it's right in the middle of the busiest time of the month, which makes it hard for me to plan a party. In my defense, I really tried to get the little stinker here a week earlier (not that it would've relieved the hunt issue), but he was having none of it.

This year, Carston's birthday happened while we were trying to get back to Okinawa. We didn't really think it would take us a whole week to get back. We figured we'd have a day or two when we got back to put together a fun day for him and to get him some gifts. We were so wrong. On September 4th, we left Hawaii, and we crossed the International Date Line about mid-day on September 5th. Basically, Carston lost half of his birthday. When we realized this, and that we were going to spend the rest of that day in a terminal in Guam, I told Jason to pretend it wasn't his birthday, and we'd reschedule. Then we found out our flight plans were changed and we were stuck for two days. Nice birthday, huh?

So, we got back into town, but we were behind at school preparation and school homework, we had to unpack and do laundry, and Jason had signed up to take his Advanced Open Water Diver class that week. Carston's birthday got pushed back to Saturday- and only Saturday evening at that. Poor guy. Good thing he's only two. But, here's what we did:

Birthday dinner is hard to plan for Carston. He is my worst eater, but my least picky eater. It's really more about how hungry he is than about what he wants to eat. This is nice, because he will go try new things at Japanese restaurants, if he's hungry. That means he usually eats off my plate. For his birthday dinner, we chose personal pizzas. Carston's personal pizza is really just a bread stick that he dips in pizza sauce, but to each his own!

What we lacked in preparation and time, we made up for in gifts and in gift size. This year it seemed like all of Carston's gifts were large, and I ran out of wrapping paper. Here he is getting down to business. Check out the paparazzi action! Do you think we adore him, or what?

So far, he's opened a toy story race car track from Jessie and a sand dump truck from Cassie. A t-ball set from Mom & Dad, which might, I hope, keep him busy for a few minutes every day. A shake and go race track from Grandma & Grandpa Bohn. And basketball (Carston calls it "b-ball") hoop from Mom & Dad. Plus, money and cards from Grandma & Grandpa Cowley, Grandpa Jones, Great Grandma B, and Great Grandma & Grandpa Jones; all of whom were on time with their gifts, but I kept them until the 'big party' anyway.

Then we had some chocolate football cake. He had a little trouble blowing out the candles:
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What can I say about this little guy? He's definitely ALL Boy. He loves playing with balls of all types and he likes watching ball games on TV. He wants to play video games with his Daddy, as well. He has the cutest laugh, especially when he's being tickled. The month before his birthday, we saw him really grow up. He started trying to express himself with words more and his vocabulary grew. I still often have a hard time understanding what he's trying to tell me, and we both spend a good part of the day frustrated with each other. His pretend play has matured, as well. I love to see what things he pretends that are different from what his sisters pretended, and what things are the same. We still struggle a lot with hitting, but I'm hoping some of that will change as he gets better at using words. He's doing great in nursery- getting along with the other kids and starting to sing the songs and do the actions. He loves books, and will pull one after the other off the shelf to read. He also loves to watch movies and his favorite is Cars, but he also like Toy Story. Carston likes to go to the beach and play in the sand, and he'll even go into the water now. He loves jets, and gets so excited when they fly over (which happens all the time here). He's a little ball of action, and he wears me out, but he gives great squeezes and I love him very much. Happy Birthday, Little Boy.

First Day of School 2010

The girls started the 2010-2011 school year on Wednesday, September 8, 2010. Cassie is starting 5th grade and has one more year in elementary school here. She missed the first five days of school. Jessica is starting her Kindergarten year. She missed the first day of school. She has all day Kindergarten, so this is going to be a big adjustment for all of us.

Carston is going to be so sad without his playmate, Jessica, all day. mommy's going to be sad, too. As long as she's been a semi-stay-at-home-mom, Jessica has been with her.

Bye, sisters. It's been fun having you around all summer.

Home from school. Cassie has a week's worth of work to catch up n. She's still not sure how she feels about her teacher, but she has some familiar faces in her class, and a good friend to play with at recess- after she gets caught up again. Overall, she's in good spirits when she gets off the bus.

Jessica had a great first day of school. She was nervous, but her teacher is nice and she met a friend- Abigail. She managed to find something to eat for lunch, eve as picky as she is. Luckily, she can ride the bus with her sister, which took away some of her nervousness. At school, aides walk her to and from the bus, which helped with mom's nervousness. This should be an exciting year for Jessica.

Even though we missed the first official day of school, mom made cookies for the first day of school. Yummy!

Space A Travel

While living here in Okinawa the Air Force grants us two Environmental/Moral Leave (EML) flights a year. These flights are on Military Aircraft on a Space A (space available) basis. After being here for six months we were able to try our first Space A flight back home. The rules for flying Space A are you have to be on leave and then you are given orders. Space A has a ranking system where you are given a ranking depending on the type of orders you have and when you started your leave. All EML flights are category II and the only people ahead of you would be people traveling on EML with a leave date before yours, or people traveling on official business or on emergency leave. We tried to leave on a flight on Tuesday August 10th but we didn't make the list of passengers as there were a lot of people ahead of us on the list. Next we tried a flight on Saturday August 14th at 4:00 AM. We had to wake the kids up at 2:30 AM to head for the AMC (Air Mobility Command) terminal and when we got there we had to wait in a long line to see if we would make the list for the flight. We ended up getting on the flight and by 8:00 AM we were on a C-17 cargo plane headed for Elmendof AFB (Air Force Base) just outside Anchorage Alaska. We arrived at Elmendorf AFB at 12:00 AM on Saturday August 14th. So because we crossed the international date line we arrived in Alaska 8 hours before we left. After arriving at the AMC terminal in Elmendorf we were told that we would have to wait for a taxi outside because the terminal wasn't open between 10:00 Pm and 4:00 AM. We waited until 3:00 AM for a taxi and had to go to two places before we found and old run down hotel with sticky carpet to stay in until 11:00 AM the next morning. The next day we were able to get on another C-17 leaving from Elmendorf AFB and arriving at Travis AFB just outside of Sacramento California. We arrived at Travis around 10:00 PM but we didn't get our bags until 11:00 PM. We had to have the cab driver hurry to the Sacramento airport where we had a car reserved, but the rental agency close at 12:30 AM. We made it there with 15 minutes to spare and were are very happy with the service we received from Hertz rent a car. We rented a Nissan X-tera and drove the 11 hours to Salt Lake City. We were very tired when we arrived, but we were very happy to be back in Utah for a visit.

After visiting Utah for a couple of weeks we began our journey back to Okinawa on Tuesday August 31st. The problem with space A travel is that they will only give you flight information 24 hours in advance over the phone, so we had to head for Travis AFB to find out when we could get a flight heading back towards Okinawa. When we got there we found there was a flight heading for Hickam AFB on Oahu Hawaii the next morning. So the next morning (Wednesday) we got on another C-17 and went to Hawaii. When we got there we found out that they didn't have any flights heading towards Okinawa until Friday, so we went to an Air Force resort and stayed at a cabin complex with a private beach for a couple of nights. On Friday September 3rd we got on a KC-135 refueler that was going to Anderson AFB in Guam and then on to Kadena AFB in Okinawa after a 20 hour layover. After we got to Guam they told us that the mission for the Aircraft had changed and that it would now be going to Korea instead of Okinawa. We ended up staying two nights in Guam and finally got on another KC-135 refueler to Kadena on Tuesday September 7th. So it ended up being a frustrating week getting back, but it was worth it for us to be able to go back home at a fraction of the price commercial airline tickets would cost.

One of the benefits of traveling Space A is that after the Air Craft takes off and reaches altitude they let you unbuckle and lay on the ground or play in the open space. On one of the flights I blew up a beach ball we had with us and Carston and I spent a good hour throwing it back and forth to each other. Some of the cons are that the planes are noisy as they are not insulated for noise. They can also be too hot or too cold depending on where you sit. Below are some of our pictures from the flights we took.

A KC-135 Refueler

A C-17 Cargo Plane

The kids laying down in a C-17.

Kids in a C-17.

Kids in a C-17 looking towards the back

Carston and Jessie on a C-17.

Carston and I playing ball on a KC-135.