Life, Love, and the Military: May 2013

We really have been so blessed to have been given this opportunity to live and work in Japan. My whole life I have dreamt of traveling everywhere. We have seen and experienced so much these past three years that it literally blows my mind.

I didn't keep up with the blog as I had planned, and that's okay. Because I spent so much time enjoying myself! I really am in amazement by it all. God is so good!

We've made friends.

And lost friends.

Said "goodbye for now" to people we care about,

and "goodbye forever" to some family members along the way.

We've had visitors,

made it through a deployment.

We've fought and laughed and cried and laughed some more.

We made some mistakes, but grown together as well {who hasn't!?}

We moved (and then moved again),

accomplished goals-and maybe even fell short on some.

And now here we are, May 2013. It's hard to imagine we arrived on this little island 2 1/2 years ago. It was scary and wonderful and exciting and terrifying.

I remember networking with some wonderful ladies like crazy from the states, trying to gather as much information as possible to make the move to Okinawa seamless.

I remember telling people I was moving to Japan, and not really believing it myself.

I remember sitting in our tiny room at the Westpac, praying for everything to work out with housing so Boomer could stay with us. Then we got an apartment, and a car. I got my first real job teaching. What a blessing and what a learning experience that has been, especially after doubting myself so much as a teacher and not knowing whether or not I could actually be the teacher I wanted to be.

We both started our Master's Degrees.

I haven't been back in the United States since we arrived in Japan, and I've dealt with my fair share of homesickness.

Our time is now coming to a close, perhaps even sooner than we expected.

A new chapter is ahead of us, and it is again scary and wonderful and exciting and terrifying at the same time. We have no idea what is in store for us, where we will wind up, or even really how we will get wherever it is we are headed.

I can only hope the next 3 years are as incredible as the last.

Here are some of the many highlights of our life these past years