Ocuma Resort

When a new couple gets to the island and gets assigned to the unit we were originally assigned to, they have a retreat you get to go to when you first get to the island. A couple days after we got into our house in Chibana, we were offered the opportunity to go.

What they told us: Free food for us and our family, beach side rooms for free, time away for Toby and I and they provide the childcare.. I was SOLD!

We were driven up to the resort called Ocuma. It was truly an amazing place. We were hooked up with a very nice room and checked into our retreat. What I DID NOT know is that it was a marriage retreat! Um.. yeah to work on your marriage?

So.. Toby and I smiled at each other and even though our marriage is great right now both of us wanted to have good attitudes and enjoy the weekend and all the freebies.

At the end of the first mini session were told about the meals. We are entitled to 15$ per person for every meal. If you want me to do the math for you.. that is 90$ for every meal for 3 days! What? Ya.. it was amazing food too.

For three days everyone got things we normally do not order. Soda, appatizers, and desserts!

We were just getting to the island and none of us had snorkling gear or anything so we rented a couple set of those. It was our first time in the ocean here and we noticed that the waves are not as harsh as we remember them in the states. You can just go float around and not worry about being sucked in. It was awesome.
The kids did have a couple times they got reminded of the sea water not being pool water with the salt but it was warm and beautiful.

On the walk back from dinner one night we saw our first fruit bats on the island. They are AWESOME! Never thought I would ever be close to bats, or think they are beautiful. They are not killer bats, so I have no reason to fear them.

We just had an amazing time and it was fun to start to unwind from our traveling and kindof do an end of trip/start your new life journey type of thing.

Ocuma is definetly someplace I will be talking about in the future, and when people come to visit (you are coming right) we will go there!

Random funny story:

Toby and I had been running together before we moved, but it had been weeks since we had that opportunity, so we thought Ocuma would be a great place. Until I hear "oh man" and find out he has brought two different shoes.. ha ha

Driving Backwards

I just found this labeled post and nothing written in it. I will run out and add in a bit a picture of my car and the driver side. It is still mind boggling to me that I sit on the right hand side of the car for the drivers side. And that I drive on the left hand side of the road.

Americans are considered professional drivers here, because Okinawa has not been driving cars as long as we have in America. So on that.. guess who gets blamed if there is an accident. I will try not to be negative, but it is one of my fears to get in a wreck here with someone that is local.


Off base and on base driving is sometimes different, so to keep all the rules straight it took me awhile. I think 18 months later, I might actually know most of them. Toby is the only professional driver in the family and I am practicing my backing skills here because spots are so small, it is easier to get out of the parking spot if you spend the time backing in.

I hope that my brain knows when to switch back in the states and I don't find myself on the wrong side of the road. Most embarrassing is when you go to get in the wrong side of the car. I always have to just pretend that I meant to do that and was looking for something. LOL

FUN TIMES!

Get in my Garden

Carmen a few months back was trying to wrestle with Cy and Dad. She kept yelling "get in my garden" I did not know what she was talking about. Toby and Cy went back at it that I heard what she meant. When they were setting up Toby was telling him to get in his guard. She thought he was saying for him to get in his garden. How funny would that be if that is what it really was! ha ha

Trip to Japan-part one

I guess I need to get down in writing our adventure to even getting over to Japan, because it was (like anything the Tennysons do)crazy!

Friday August 31st we stayed at Fort Bliss Inn and hoped we had everything in order to head out of the country.

I ran around to see old friends that I didn't want to miss saying good-bye to (Annette you were not home) and repacked everything after doing my last load of laundry. I was so nervous.. we had no sponsor. I had met a lady that new one of the people from my moms ward and hoped that I could count on her.. but honestly I had no idea.


While sitting in the hotel, I looked at our itinerary one more time and found out that instead of having an hour and a half layover in tokyo, we had to take an hour bus ride to a different airport in a different part of tokyo...uh oh!

I had packed all our bags and had packed a couple hard cases to take some cooking supplies with me. I thought it would save us some money if I took my skillet and some cooking utinsels and things so we didn't have to go out every meal.

All in all, we were alloted 12 bags and 6 carry-ons. We maxed that out and then had two car seats that went as well. Can you imagine?
Let us recap- 4 kids, 2 adults, 12 bags, 6 carry-on bags! Who are you kidding, we were not going to be moving fast on transfers. Good thing I had hurcules with me!

So, side funny story, after I tell you all the luggage we had. You should now think it is funny that when we got to the hotel we found out that the elevator was out for a week! Just so happens it was the week the Tennyson's are there.. so our room was on the second floor. I can laugh now because I am so used to things like this happening to us.


We get up first thing in the morning to have breakfast and be at the airport by 8. We just ate at the continental breakfast and then got the shuttle to take Toby, Cy, Court and all our luggage over to the airport. She came back and got the little girls and I, and we said good-bye to Fort Bliss! Toby hated Fort Bliss, but I found some great friends there and enjoyed it.
" />


Once we get to the airport everything is as normal as if you were to travel with everyone to another country. Pretty uneventful. We were leaving in the morning on Aug. 1st and would get to Tokyo and on to Okinawa the night of Aug. 2nd. The only child I was worried about was Cera Jane and just cause I didn't know if the dvd players were going to last for very long.

We made it out of El Paso and headed to Salt Lake. The plan was to get off there and eat at this great sandwich place in the Salt Lake airport. When we got to Salt Lake we headed over to see that our plane was being boarded. UHHHH we were not going to have time to eat lunch. Bummer.. Good thing I packed everyone their own seperate food baggies in their carry-ons.

This ended up being the most frustrating part of the trip when the plane was delayed an hour. The reason being the plane would not take on gas! So I guess I would rather them figure out before hand. This was just frustating for Cera to sit for that long. I for sure didn't want to pull the DVD players out yet.

I made a phone call to my Dad and Mom and told them how much I loved them. My Dad was super sweet and remembered to tell me Happy Anniversary for Toby and I. I was of course crying. It hit me, that I didn't know when I would see them again.

The plane is going to take off and I am thinking alot of things about my great Country and not knowing what kind of life I was about to start to live.

Come to find out that each seat had its own control to the movies they offered, which made it awesome for Cera to watch different stuff and not run out the batteries on anything.

Some of my first happened on that plane. 1st- I had never taken a plane ride long enough that it necessitated me using the bathroom. Usually I could just wait a couple hours, but I found I had to be ok to go and I also had to take Cera to change her diaper. I am more of a person, not scared to fly but one that would rather be seat belted in.

Our plane ride from Salt Lake to Tokyo was 13 hours. It was light the whole time. My watch said midnight but it was afternoon where we were flying. Thankfully.. Cera took a couple naps!

During the flight.. Toby said "Happy Anniversary.. for your gift you get to go to Japan!" He is so thoughtful.

To be continued.........

Waiting for Orders to Japan

I was going to name this post Waiting for Orders but we have and will in the future wait for orders to move so I wanted to be specific. We had quite a fiasco surrounding the orders and timeline for Japan. In April, I did the kids and my paperwork to get us on Toby's orders. In May, Japan still thought we were coming in November so was not in a big hurry. Well, everyone was gone on vacation for that month. In June Toby goes back to work and there is no-one that really cares if we go to Japan or not. Call after call I try to track things down. It takes until July until we start freaking out that we are supposed to move in 3 weeks overseas. I get on the phone and start calling.. I would not suggest this to all wives, but for us his chain of command could have cared less so I did the footwork.

I found the guy to talk to and he said to call him back in a couple days. When I called him back he said that he had just cut our orders for Japan and all of us were on there. We were so excited it was really going to happen. However, that was July 7th.. we were to leave in 3 weeks, and had alot to do.

We were on vacation at my moms when the orders came in, and decided to leave the kids with Grandma and Grandpa and get things done in El Paso.. ( thanks for keeping the kids for us.)

Why was it so hard to get orders you may be thinking? Well honestly it was all because of a couple people who did not care enough to do their jobs and they finally came in because of one guy who was very efficient at his. Thanks to Mr. Oneil at Fort Bliss for helping us out and doing his job..

SGT Board

So Toby went back to work and was pretty much forced to go to the Sgt testing boards. He didn't feel like he was ready but it was a good time for them to send him so he studied and studied. He knew most of the stuff, but there was not really anyone around to mentor him and let him know what it would be like. You are supposed to know a ton of stuff about the Army and your Unit and the Creed and things. He went to the pre-board and they pretty much told him he sucked and would not get promoted because he was such an idiot..( and no I am not exaggerating)

He was really upset and after 2 years in this stupid Unit I could almost see what Anger physically looked like. We thought once again they had set him up to fail.

He left and I kissed him good-bye. I went to help a friend that day and literally was so stressed out wondering if he would make it. He wanted this sooo bad and really it meant he was being recognized as being a really good soldier. He had only been in the Army 2 years and was going to the Sgt boards!

He calls and says he did it! I was so excited. So he earned promotable status and was waiting to see what points he earned at the boards. Not only did he pass, but he was the only one to get a perfect score that day!!!!!!!!!! So in your face all yous stupid idiots that are jealous of him because you have been in 10 years and are going nowhere. He is awesome and will be your Commander someday.

I am so proud of you Toby and just know that points will come out soon to push you up to the SGT status. You are the best babe!
(side note: after you get your points added at the boards you have to wait for a list to come out from the Army when they have openings for that position and then it will be automatic at that time. )

Redeployment is what they call it

So when the soldiers come home they call it redeployment. Who knows why, but who cares. So after Toby got home they got a day or so off and started back to work, working half days. It was nice, but we were just getting used to each other again and for my schedule it was definitley different. I added one extra person to the mix to give my time too, and I love him so much I just want to spend all my time with him. After a couple weeks of that Toby got the month of May off. We decided to just stay in El Paso and hang out becuase the kids were still in school and he was having a hard time adjusting back to the "real world" again.

We went on some dates together which were a blast and tried to spend some of the time to exercise, but mostly just hanging out together. When Toby got home they told him he was going to the testing board to be promoted to SGT so we spent a good amount of leave studying for that stressful test. We got some of our paperwork and things in order to be able to move to Japan. The kids finished school and the summer began.

Redeployment was pretty easy for me in some ways for him to be back home but it was a struggle for him.. He lived without kids around for almost 2 years, but did amazingly well for the circumstances. He is an awesome Dad and loves to be with the kids so that helped. The noises I could tell bothered him and actually still do, but we are working on it. Now that he has almost been home 6 months we are looking forward to making a normal life and really loving to be together as a family. How the time flies.