Life with two dogs.

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Things have been pretty hectic at the Shortt's residence.  This week we've had furniture delivered, getting ready for furniture to be picked up, getting Mally neutered and finding a surprise... Lucy in heat.

When we got married, we had practically no furniture to our names. We had my bed/mattress/box springs/armoir. That is it. The military decided to be oh so kind and give us loaner furniture since we're overseas with nothing. It did it's job but it was hideous to look at. So since we've been here we've been buying furniture up. Last year we bought a leather reclining sofa & loveseat & a huge entertainment center. This year we have bought a new computer desk, dining room table and last week we bought a new bedroom suite. I'm so in love with it. They delivered part of it on Wednesday and will be delivering the rest of it when it gets here(it's being shipped from the states).  So we have been VERY busy moving the government loaner furniture into other rooms until they can come pick it up tomorrow.  Our house is a disaster because of this and it's driving me crazy.  I am an organized OCD person and having your house look like a disaster area is not cool. 

Besides the furniture ordeal, we finally got Mally our Maltese neutered. He had been on a waiting list at the Vet here since November and we finally got in on Wednesday. To our surprise, the night before Mally's surgery we noticed Lucy looking a little different... SHE WENT INTO HEAT! I've been trying to get her into the Vet to get spayed but they are always booked up. She had her last set of shots just 5 days before Mally had his surgery so they wouldn't do hers as well.  Lucy's only 7 months old so we thought we had a couple more months but we're not that lucky.  So she has walked around with diapers on for the last couple of days. She absolutely hates it.  

Ok, time to get busy. We have to clean all of the government furniture before they come pick it up tomorrow. I'll update a couple of times this week!

Gotta love Okinawa

Today I woke up super exhausted.  We bought our new bedroom suite on Friday. I'm so in love with it. We got a King bed, dresser with mirror, chest, two night stands, and my favorite one of all a king memory foam mattress/box springs. I swear that mattress is AMAZING! I know that I will not want to wake up in the mornings once it gets here. So back to the reason of why I am exhausted.  They are coming to deliver our furniture on Wednesday so therefore I needed to paint our bedroom. For anyone that is a military wife they know the dingy nasty looking Government color of paint. For those of you that don't. It looks like snot when you have an infection.  We got a white color called 'Crisp White Shirt'. I love having a nice clean wall. So I painted the whole room by myself. Daniel only taped the trim for me.  Now I'm wondering if the bedroom suite is going to even fit. I know the dresser with the mirror and chest will. But I'm not too sure if the King bed & both night stands are all going to fit on one wall. Our room is seriously the size of a match box. One more reason that I cannot wait to get back to the states.

So here's the reason for the title of my blog. I woke up this morning and it was all ugly outside. I figured it was going to be a pretty crappy day. So I get ready, head to the commissary(grocery store for you civilian people) and when I walk back out from doing my shopping, it's super sunny, somewhat humid and very very warm. Only in Okinawa can things change SOOOO fast. 

Here in Okinawa produce among many other things are VERY expensive. We do get American foods on base but the prices are MUCH different on certain things than in the states. Just the two of us spend close to $200 every two weeks or so.  Today I was so happy because when I walked in I saw that the Japanese fresh strawberries were on sale. Normally they are around $5-6 for one pack. Japanese strawberries are nothing like American. Japanese strawberries are very small but soooo much better. They haven't been injected with steroids to make some humongous strawberry like Americans. These actually look like strawberries. Anyways, they were on sale for $2.99 a pack so I ended up getting like 3 packs.  

So with the yummy strawberries sitting in my refrigerator and the warm weather, it feels just like Summer. I have beach fever so bad. I have bought so many new Summer clothes just waiting to be worn. Bring on the Okinawa summer!

Hope everyone is having a great day/weekend!

You gotta start somewhere

So I decided to start blogging. Since being in Japan, I find it hard to keep in contact with everyone back home. A lot of people want to know what's going on in our lives & are interested in the many interesting things we see & do here. It's so hard to tell EVERYONE what's going on. I'm not a big fan of blogging on myspace so I decided to make our own blog site. Maybe I can convince Daniel to update this thing every now and then.. So I will just start off with things that have been going on in our life the last couple of months.

We went home in December. What a relief that was. The 15 hours that we traveled were well worth it.  We got on the plane wearing jeans, flip flops & short sleeved shirts to getting off of the plane in Detroit, Michigan freezing to death with coats on. We flew into snow, something I hadn't seen in 1.5 years.  My best friend came to pick us up with a surprise... My MIMI! I wasn't expecting to see her because I thought she had to work. I was so excited to see the both of them. We drove to VA while it snowed, such a great first night back home.  Seeing my beautiful niece staring out the door was bittersweet. I couldn't help but to tear up looking in the door, seeing my beautiful mother cooking me dinner, my dad all dressed up to see his daughter & son-in-law and of course Isabella who was hammed up to the max.  To cut it short, we had a great time back home. I loved seeing all of my family & friends. We didn't get to see everyone because I managed to stay sick the ENTIRE time. My body did not do well with VA climates anymore. Being here in Japan, it's humid and warm practically all of the time. VA was so cold & dry.  I can definitely say I don't really like cold weather anymore. I love snow during the Holiday's. It gets me in the spirit. But I'm not a sucker for it anymore like I used to be.  But we had a great time.

Coming back to Japan was like a death sentence for me. Two nights before I left VA, the crying began. I cried and cried and cried even after we got here, for about a week.  Then I realized how lucky I am to have this opportunity. Everyone keeps telling me that but I never believed them. Okinawa is beautiful and I will be sad when I can no longer call it my home. We will definitely be back, eventually.   We are taking advantage of this opportunity. This Summer we have plans to go to Thailand and Tokyo. We are hoping to just relax and sight see in Thailand but for Tokyo we want to climb Mt. Fuji. We're going to a couple of different islands that we can get to by a ferry to take advantage of the beautiful waters and go snorkeling. I am very excited about beach season. We even talked about extending here because we are going to miss it so much, but we decided not to. This Summer also hosts our wedding anniversary. I cannot believe we have been married for almost 2 years. Time flies! 

Reason why, we want to have children soon. We haven't started trying... yet. Both of us want to see a little more of what life has to offer and travel. We both want our children to be very close to our families. Plus, I know my mom would fly to Japan and kill me if she found out I was pregnant here.  It's so hard not to give in because EVERYONE around me is pregnant. I seriously feel like the odd-ball out because I'm not pregnant nor do I have children. But we will start trying in January 2010 if things go as planned.  That way I would only be 3-4 months pregnant by the time I leave Okinawa.

We are hoping to get Charleston AFB in South Carolina as our next duty station. We wanted to stay overseas and go to Germany since my husbands Oma is from Berlin. I think it would be great for him to experience his culture. We will eventually go, but both of us miss the states too much to do a back to back overseas assignment. 

So since I've wrote a book for my first blog entry, I will go now. I have to do the wifely duties of making dinner. It's Taco Night :)

Keep checking in. I will be posting a couple of times a week and I will add pictures as well!