And our new home is.......

Newport, RI!

Our plans have changed! We were awaiting orders for VA Beach, VA, but Adam received notice this morning that it's Newport now. I am ecstatic! I loved Newport when I visited him while he was attending Naval Justice School there just before we came here. It's beautiful! The weather's nice....although I hear the winters are pretty harsh, but we're from Utah, we should be used to harsh winters.

Adam got notice this morning that the monitor (person in DC in charge of figuring out where we go next) took the final list of all the JAG placements that are rotating this summer to the Commandants lawyer for a final review and he only made one change....Adam. He cut Adam's billet (job) in VA Beach and put him in Newport. Adam will be an instructor at Naval Justice School. He is not as ecstatic as me, he'd much rather be in the courtroom than teaching, but he'll have plenty of PT time, and play a lot of softball, along with teaching. It will be different experience than in the courtroom, but I'm sure valuable experience in other ways. Still don't have orders in hand, but should have them soon, and then know an exact PCS (moving) date. We should move around the end of June, so we can vacation and see family for about a month before getting started in RI.

I get sad when I think about leaving Japan, I have loved it so much and still have so much to see and do, I really have to try not to think about it too much. But this really helps...I am really excited about Newport.

Today was "Hapyoki" Day at Yochien!

"Hapyoki" means music festival. Isaac has been dancing in the kitchen for us for weeks. It was fun to see it all put together on stage with costumes and music today!
Above, Luke on Valentines.
Below, Jacob having a little stage fright.

To right--Isaac all ready for his performance.

Below--Isaac all ready for "The Monkey and the Crab" skit.

Finally on the last song Jacob decided it wasn't that bad. He didn't actually dance up on stage, but he didn't cry, and he did look pleasant. I'll take it.

Above--during a dance that the girls in Isaac's class were doing, Isaac said, "Mom, that Japanese girl (and pointed to the girl in the middle), I love her". I said, "great, let's go take pictures of her".

Above--we saw this move many times in the kitchen.

Emma had only scored 1 foul shot point so far in their games (they've had about 4), so we layed a little money out on the table for making hoops. Money seems to work wonders at our house, we had to stop at the bank on the way home from Saturday morning's game. Emma made 7 of their teams 9 points. Her coach asked her after the game in front of the team, "Emma, how did you do it?" She answered, "I didn't eat my eggs!". She had sat at the table for 2 hrs not wanting to eat her eggs. Finally, Duchess somehow accidently ate them just as it was time to get ready for the game....

Two weeks ago I watched my neighbor's 2 girls (my girls' ages) for 3 nights. It went pretty well once we got the "if you wake up before 6:00, help yourself to the TV downstairs and don't wake anyone else up" down. But w/7 kids in a 3 bdrm townhouse, I had to get a little creative finding a quiet place for Luke to sleep. Our bedroom closet in a laundry basket worked the best.

Isaac told Adam something pretty funny yesterday....he said very confidently, "Dad, when I was born when I was a baby, I remember you were taking me home out of the hospital and I remember a cinnamon roll store, and they smelled good". What?? Is that possible?? I know I remember most Cinnabun shops I've passed in my life, they all smell pretty dang good, But a 2 day old infant? Maybe I should call Baptist Med. Center and ask if they have a Cinnabun in there in the hospital.

Last Thursay I was checking my email at 4:30 pm, and found an email sayint that Elder Richard G. Scott was giving a fireside about 45 min. away, to meet a Japanese member (Yumi) at the front gate at 5:30 if we were going....so I threw church clothes on everyone and we hopped in the car, grabbed some Burger King, and were on our way. We were following Yumi, so hadn't worried about printing out directions. We totally lost them on the expressway, and didn't know which exit...knew it must be one of two, picked the wrong one, then went back to the first one. The kids were totally losing it--we'd been driving for over an hour, BK all over the car, baby crying, it was great. I felt very good about just turning around and going home, we'd tried, maybe we'd get a few bonus blessing for the effort. Adam said, let's just go a few blocks and see...hello, it's a totally heavily populated area, buildings everywhere (pretty much the whole country's like that). We had a 50-50 chance getting off the expressway, we took left. Then down a few blocks, we stopped and checked out a big building, but it wasn't it. Then kept driving a few more blocks, made a few turns, and hello--we found it!! I told the kids, "put this one in your testimony next month" (in a branch our size you get a turn every month!), it was so amazing, and I truly can't take any credit, I was all about turning around and going home. Anyway, the fireside was great, I love interacting with the Japanese church members, and the kids really enjoyed getting icecream and drinks on the way home.

So back to dropping everything at 4:30, Sarah and I were working on a poster that was due the next day, and I told her I'd have to wake her up early the next morning to finish it. She flipped on me, totally stressed out that we might not finish and she hates to wake up early. I told Adam about it a little while later, frustrated, and he consoled me with, "Just have patience with her Becky, sooner or later she'll come around and be a slacker too." I'm really not a slacker, I get everything done, I just like to procrastinate...I crank out my best work under pressure!

Trying to warm up after the race with a cup of Joe. It's only hot chocolate.

Feeling the pain on the train ride home.

A little post-race celebration with the baby. We don't have Friday's down here in Iwakuni, or anything remotely similar. 2 appetizers and 2 entrees barely filled us up.

A nice pic Becky took of the skyline that shows how nice the weather got after the race was over.

Becky showing off with her medal.

A pic I got from the newspaper showing a small portion of the 30,000+ participants.

42,195 meters / 26.2 miles

Tokyo Marathon 2007

We survived the Tokyo marathon. The event started on Saturday when we dropped off the boys with a very kind neighbor who was willing to watch them, and we dropped off the girls with Yumi-San from church. Before we left we brought over the neighbor boy that would be taking care of Duchess to make sure she was familiar with him and wouldn't kill him when he came over to feed her.

After we got everyone taken care of we left at about 9:30. The trip to Tokyo is about 600 miles and it took a long time because the whether was bad and that slowed down the traffic. We had to check in for the marathon at the Tokyo dome and check in closed at 8:00. We got in line for check in at 7:59. (at least there was no line) I think we were officially the last ones, and we hoped it wasn't an indication of how we would perform in the race. The Tokyo dome was set up for a huge expo which looked pretty cool. They had all kinds of sporting goods vendors, but unfortunately they were packing up by the time we got there. This was the first annual Tokyo marathon. Tokyo is bidding for the 2016 summer olympics, and this was an attempt to show the world that the city could host a world-class competitive event. In my opinion they did a very impressive job, with over 30,000 people running in the marathon, and over 10,000 staff personnel. (they just needed a few more assigned to porta-john cleaning duty)

After we checked in at the Tokyo dome we drove down to Naval base Yokosuka where we would be staying. Yokosuka is normally about an hour from Tokyo, but we got lost and it actually took a couple of hours. We got there around 11:15. We went to sleep and got the wake up call at around 5. Some people we met at church last summer when Luke was born were nice enough to watch him for the day for us. This was a huge favor considering he is a nursing baby and this was the longest he had ever gone without Becky. We were on the train for Tokyo at about 6:15 and were headed for the Tokyo Metropolitan government building where the race started.

The weather was horrible. It was raining badly and was quite cold. The rain did not let up until we were about 30 minutes from the end of the race. Once we started running we stayed warm enough, but we were soaked to the bone. Nobody really seemed to notice how bad the weather really was, at least I didn't hear anyone complaining in English, not even me or Becky. Running through the streets of Tokyo with all of those people and no traffic was an awesome experience. The race route went by the imperial palace, the Ginza district, the Tokyo tower, and many other famous temples and buildings in downtown Tokyo.

We took a pretty comfortable pace and were feeling really good until about the halfway point, which is about as far as we got in our training. After about mile 15 we started looking forward to the race ending. At about mile 18 Becky got some crazy second wind of energy and took off on an extremely fast pace. I was amazed and could hardly keep up with her, of course I didn't say anything at the time. At about mile 21 my legs started cramping up really bad and I simply had to slow down. I tried to walk for a minute, but walking hurt almost worse because my muscles tightened up even worse. At about mile 23 I had to resort to what I would describe as an old man shuffle. I didn't say anything to Becky because she was still going strong, so I just kind of let her drift off ahead of me. Much to both of our surprise she beat me by about 10 minutes. She thought I had blazed ahead at some point though, and long story short, we spent the next hour and a half looking for each other.

Towards the end of the race we both cursed ourselves for being so stupid to volunteer and shell out a lot of money for something so painful. Within 24 hours we were already making plans for the Marine Corps marathon in October, and the London marathon in the spring of '08.

Since Becky seems to have abandoned the blog I will fill you in with an update. Monday I had the day off because the General is a football fan and the Superbowl is broadcast here on Monday morning. Becky and I saw it as a good opportunity to take off without the kids, since they all still had school. We went to a little island between here and Hiroshima called MiyaJima.

We had a great time without the kids. I must admit that I am glad we completed our family at a relatively young age. We should still be young enough to see and do a lot when they are out of the house. It will make the pain now definitely worth it later.

Tonight the girls had a basketball game. They do a great job hustling, which is my only demand of them (and I do demand it). They work their tales off chasing down the loose rebounds and playing tough defense. The coach has them in the game at different times, and has both of them play quite a bit of point-guard. That kind of surprises me because I haven't really worked on any skills with them, it is purely a result of their natural athletic ability. Sarah really surprises me because she seems to have a knack for knowing where to be on the court and how to handle the ball. In many ways she reminds me of her great-grandmother (Sarah), and my grandma used to always tell me that she could hoop it up back in the day. Maybe that is where she gets it.

The boys are doing well. Today is Luke's 6 month birthday. He is growing like a weed and eating solid foods. We can't seem to shovel it down him fast enough. We got his passport today, so the Hawaii trip should be right around the corner.