walkin, talkin, and holdin hands....

Yesterday, Ben and I enjoyed such a nice walk outside near our apartment! Its still crazy hot and humid here, but in the shade with a breeze, its not bad at all! We took the camera out and got some fun shots... so here are a few! (and we dyed my hair a couple of days ago...)














We still look at each other sometimes when we are out walking around and say, "ummm... We are living in Japan!! Crazy!" =)

Stuck in Customs - The Icy Pit to Hell

The Icy Pit to Hell, originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs.

I'm a huge fan of the Stuck in Customs flickr photo stream. This is one of my favorite photos, but there are so many amazing ones! This fellow makes expert work of HDR and Photoshop! =D

O-bon festival

Recently we went out to watch the O-bon festival here in Sasebo, Japan. It was a pretty interesting festival that the Japanese celebrate. We got the impression it was about remembering their dead. Anyway, here are a few fun pictures from that day.

Kristi eating a sno-cone, it was VERY hot outside! =D


Lantern passers, who bow and take the lantern and pass it down to the end where it is placed into the water.


This picture shows the lantern passers better.


This is a picture of the people that had the lanterns and what they looked like.


This is a Japanese national named Eriko that is involved with a lot of Japanese/American relations on our base, she runs tours, Japanese Classes, and is shown here trying to explain about the O-bon festival.


A hanging lantern that was put up for the festival. I tried to make these next two pictures look a bit gloomy, appropriate for a festival of the dead.


Two hanging lanterns


I was chewing on the straw from Kristi's sno-cone.

wedding pictures!

These are just some favorites of mine of the wedding pictures that our photographer, Graeme Pitman took.... (http://pitmanphotography.com/) I know most of you have seen some of these, but I thought I would share them anyway! =) Happy Tuesday from Japan!

duty calls...

Well, I must admit that I am not a huge fan of these days that are stuck right in the middle of our weeks. What days, you might ask yourself (a good question!) -- Ben's duty days! Every 6 days he has to go and stay on the ship overnight! And for whatever reason, these days seem to go soooooo slow! Maybe it's because I know he isn't coming home for dinner, or at all that night, that it just seems to drag on til it finally becomes a reasonable time that I can go to bed! haha. BUT - I really have no right to complain, because at least he is home for 6 out of 7 nights a week... right? =)

I have been trying to keep myself busy by doing various craft projects until school starts back up in a couple of weeks.... (right now I am all lined up to be a substitute at the elementary and high schools on base). I took a watercolor painting class while Ben was out at sea for 2 months, and I really enjoyed it! I posted some pictures of my paintings on our alumni website, and one of the girls on there that I don't actually know in person, but have chatted with via the internet, asked me to paint her a set of sunflower notecards! So she sent me the supplies, and I have been working on those for the past week or so! Here is a picture of one of them for an example. =)

Other than that, I busy myself with laundry, and cooking, and cleaning. (and playing our wii! It's so fun!! haha.) It's been fun to be a stay-at-home wife for a while, being able to take care of Ben and the house, but I am looking forward to getting into the school a few days a week to work with kids, too. There is something so refreshing about being around a bunch of kids... their innocence, and way to see right through you, and accept you just the way you are. I love it! Hopefully when we get back from California I will be able to dive right in!

Well, just wanted to update on whats been going on in my days, while Ben is off painting and being stuck on the ship all day! =P I gotta say, I am just so glad to have Ben home again. It is wonderful having my best friend around to talk to and laugh with.... and I love learning new things about him, and how he thinks. Marriage is such a neat experience - unlike anything else I have ever done! It definitely has its challenges, but the rewards are so great! =) Hope you all are well and wrapping up your summer days in fun ways! Love from Japan!

A nice relaxing weekend...

It has been a very laid back weekend for us here.  Kristi and I were basically bums for all of Saturday and Sunday actually, watching a few movies and playing our Wii.  Kristi made some delicious butterscotch brownies, and they were better than I thought they would be!  hah hah...  =D  She's amazing at cooking, especially considering we don't have a real oven, just a toaster oven.  (Oh trust me, we'd have a real oven if the apartment could fit it!)

I know that this free time is really a rare and wonderful thing, and I wanted to spend it as much with my wife as possible.  Next weekend I'll have duty on Sunday, and the weekend after that I'll have it on Saturday.  About a weekend past that we'll be getting ready to head to San Diego where I'll be starting a month long school for a computer system for the Navy.  Kristi will meet up with me a few days after I arrive there. (That's the plan anyway) During that time I'll be working on my Intro to Mass Communications class as well as the Navy School.  After that month in San Diego we'll head back to Sasebo and a short time after that I'll probably be getting underway again for about 2 months.  We expect to visit the Philippines, Hong Kong, and South Korea during that time.  Hopefully if nothing else in the world goes wrong during that time we'll stick to the schedule and get home sometime in December for a Christmas stand down time.  That should be a nice and welcome break after being underway and away from Kristi. 

Ahhh, my camera's sensor seems to be malfunctioning and I will have to send it in for repairs sometime soon.  I am pretty sure it's still under warranty but I'm betting it will still cost some amount to get it fully repaired.  Oh well, I haven't been taking very good pictures recently anyway.  I guess this is just an excuse...hah...

Kristi and I definitely are missing home and our friends, I think for me I miss my friends the most when I see a movie or something that reminds me of a group of friends that act as family.  It's hard I think, to be away from that kind of love.  Especially when it is so infrequent where we are.  God is faithful though, and He will bring us back safely.  I stand on His promises with Kristi, and we patiently wait for the time when we can be back with the rest of our wonderful brothers and sisters.

Just being bums!

This week has been ridiculously long for me, especially with my ship being in it's summer maintenance period. Everything in my shop seems to be covered in dust from the Japanese contractors welding, grinding, and installing new bases for our new computer systems that are coming in. Evidently we are getting several upgrades that will improve the overall communications ability of our ship. Hooray for that, since some of this stuff is super out of date! haha...No cameras allowed in where I work or I'd show you....

I spent Thursday up at the very top of the forward mast of the ship painting with 2 of the guys I work with. That was actually a nice break from the boredom of being stuck in a windowless box all day. We got our safety harnesses on and went out early in the morning to start painting. Now the forward mast of this ship is....WAAAY up there! I took a few pictures with my cell phone's camera.

Yesterday after work our friends the Rush's came over and Shaun helped me get our bed's box spring up to our apartment on the fourth floor. We couldn't fit it up the stairs or into the elevator, and the only way the bed fit when the movers came last month was to smush the bed into the elevator. We had considered cutting the box spring in half sort of, but I wanted to try to lift it up with a rope to our balcony. Rush brought some spare rope he had and I tied the knots. We started lifting from our balcony and after about 10 feet one of the knots gave way and the rope smashed my left hand into our balcony. (It felt nice...really it did...) The other knot I tied however held and we continued to lift carefully! We finally got it to our balcony and were able to take off the sliding doors and get it into our apartment! Thank God for good friends, and the Rush's have been that to us!


=D Later we went out to town and ate some good Tex Mex at a place called Mikes. My left hand is better today a bit, still a bit sore from yesterday though.

Well that should be plenty for our first real post here!

Our new blog!

Kristi and I finally figured out how to get blogger to show up in English instead of Japanese! =D