HOME AT LAST!

Well, it's finally happened! The Man has returned home! After weeks of prep work and cleaning the house and primping, the ship finally brought Brian back. They were supposed to pull in the Friday before Halloween, but due to the typhoon that was hitting Japan, they were not allowed to put in, and we were notified last minute. Only a few of us were affected by this change, since most of the other pilots got to fly off ahead of time, so we banded together, and had ourselves a Typhoon Party! That, mixed with Halloween parties and prep kept our minds off of our returning husbands, for the most part, and the weekend flew by. In order to make sure I got a spot to park close, and a close up spot to see the guys walk off the boat, I drove down to Yokosuka the night before (Sunday) so I wouldn't have to get up so early the next morning.



4am came early the next day when I got up and prepared to go down to Pier 12 to await the arrival. I was so excited, I had butterflies in my stomach, almost as bad as my wedding day. Arriving at the pier 3 hours before the boat was supposed to pull in sounded good in my theory, but in actuality, I was 3 hours too early. Almost no one was at the pier to welcome the ship in! So, my friend and I got a front row seat to all of the festivities. It was cold, and a bit drizzly, but fortunately it wasn't raining like it had on other days the ship pulled in, so our carefully done signs and hair didn't get all messed up (thank goodness)! Finally, around 930, after the ship had pulled in, officially docked, and hooked up the walkways, it was time for the guys to escape their gray prisons. Everyone rushed forward closer to the ladders, while we were staring, eagle-eyed, looking for our husbands. Finally, out of the corner of my eye, I spied a bag that looked familiar, and upon closer inspection, I decided that it was Brian, and I threw up my "Welcome Home" sign and started shouting. I ran up to Brian as soon as he got down off the ladder and threw my arms around him. I was so excited to see him, and him me!! It was one of the best moments of my life, seeing him get off that boat, officially. Luckily, my friend was there, and her husband got off the boat at a different time, so she was able to take pictures of us, and us of them. Nice trade off.



Now we're home together, and after 2 lovely days off of relaxing and enjoying the fall weather, Brian is at the squadron again, working hard for his money. We have lots of things planned for when he's home, including our 2nd Anniversary next weekend. Exciting! We will post more when things happen!!

Is it fall yet?

After many, many months of heat and humidity here, fall is coming to Japan. The cold weather brings along many fun things as well, such as pumpkin carving, baking, holiday decorating, and probably the most important, HOMECOMING! Since I'm not in America, I have been fighting to get myself into the holiday spirit, decorating for Thanksgiving in the beginning of October, carving pumpkins 2 or 3 times already, and starting my holiday baking early. You could say I've been successful. After wrestling with some disgruntled butternut squash, I made some delicious soup with homemade Oreo cookies the other night. Who would have thought that butternut squash would be so tough?! Almost lost my hand twice in the process! Oh well, everything turned out well, and I have added both recipes to my repertoire.


I have also been busy preparing for the return of The Man. As I am going down to welcome in the boat, I had to have a sign to carry. Although, as I started to work, I realized he might get embarrassed by my first attempt at amusing, yet original sentiments, so I figured I would leave that one at home and make a newer, less embarrassing one for the boat showing. Check. Copious amounts of cleaning, organizing, purchasing and preparing of favorite foods, and finishing up last minute projects that I have been working on all summer commenced after the sign was made. Now, all that's left is to pick out the perfect outfit, and I'm ready to go! So excited to have him home with me again-I can't wait! =)

A Guest Author...

Brian wrote this recently while on detachment in Kadena, Okinawa:

Hello everybody,
So it has been a while. If I remember correctly, last time I sent out a mass email I had pulled out of Singapore and was starting to prep for my next step in the pilot training quals, H2P (helicopter second pilot). I am happy to to say that I blew through those boards with no problems and I am now an H2P. All this allows me to do is to walk out to an aircraft and engage the rotors, I can not even take-off unless I have a HAC (Helicopter Aircraft Commander) present. Which is my next qual I will be working on, I hope to have that wrapped up by the end of next May. Plenty of work to be done between now and then.

Since Singapore I have found my way to two other ports. Port one was Manila. We spent four days there, one day I was on duty on the boat and another I spent working on the ship to prepare for my H2P boards. Between my two days there I managed to catch up on some sleep and eat some good food (Wendy's, you do not get that in Japan) and also enjoy some of the local establishments. Not much sightseeing was done, or shopping. I hope to go back in my next two years to take in the sights. We departed Manila and went underway for about a month and found our way to Thailand. The GW pulled and bused us all about an hour down the road to Pattaya. As a New York Times article put it on Pattaya, "If Las Vegas is Sin city, then Pattaya is a bear hug away from Lucifer." So I figured this would be a great place for my wife to see. I deceived her and convinced her to buy a ticket and then we were in Pattaya together. We had a really good time there, Allison did a wonderful job at picking out a hotel that had a really nice pool that we spent a fair amount of time around. We ventured out in town and managed to purchase some "name brand" items for a more than fair price. We rode an elephant down to this Sanctuary that was huge and made complete of wood, even the joints were created by interlocking wooden pieces, it was pretty impressive. As always our time together was too short, but we knew that I had to leave if it meant me being home would happen sooner. So off I went packing. So we are five days after pulling out of port, and I am currently in Kadena, an Air Force base in Okinawa. HS-14 decided to fund a detachment to complete some training ashore. North of the base is fairly large area that is essentially a playground for helicopters. There we practice our procedures for low level flying, personnel recovery, and having an overall good time kicking up the dust. Flying over open ocean can get pretty boring so the chance to see trees blowing around and climbing up and down hillsides is always welcome. I will be here for a little bit, and then I will return to the steel prison known as the GW. Not for long though, we are set to be home shortly. Sometime after Thanksgiving we will be pulling back out for a little bit, and then returning home in time to do a little prep for Christmas. I will be taking leave while I am home from 13 Jan to 31 Jan. Allison and I are sorting our how we would like to spend our time, but most of all we are looking forward to being together.

Hope all is well for everyone. Look forward to hearing from you.

Try Thai!

After spending 7 days running around Thailand like crazy, I am finally home. On October 1st, I flew into Bangkok, Thailand, only to hop in a mini-bus and head to a small beach town about 2 hours south, called Pattaya. Oh Pattaya. Left much to be desired, but needless to say, Brian and I had a blast.

We lounged by the pool, ordered frilly drinks with umbrellas on them, and even drank out of a floating coconut or two! We strolled around town, bought some "name brand" items, experienced Thai culture and food, checked out a hand-crafted wooden temple of sorts, and rode elephants! After 5 days of fun-in-the-sun, Brian had to hop back aboard the good ole' GW, bound for someplace thus unknown, and I was left to my own devices in a city worse than sin. So, not one for wasting much time, I hoped aboard another mini-bus with 3 of my friends, and high-tailed it back into Bangkok to absorb as much of the city as we could in the 8 hours before our plane left for Tokyo. We took our lives into our own hands as we rode tuk-tuks around the city, then jumped into a long boat for a canal tour of rural Bangkok, then shopped around, and took the skytrain back to the airport to jump on our red-eye back home. Boy am I glad to be back home in Japan! Kinda weird to say that. Now we're on the home stretch to the end of our first deployment, and I am eagerly awaiting the return of my Brian!

Where else will we go this year???

So much traveling has happened since the last post! About a month ago, I flew to Singapore to meet Brian's ship when they pulled in for about 5 days. We had such a blast on the Garden Isle, eating great food, seeing beautiful sights, and just relaxing with each other by the pool. A week later, I hopped on another 8 hour flight to Hawaii with one of my good friends and her son. We proceeded to spend the next TWO weeks there! It was such a wonderful little break, and it put a little taste of home back in our lives. Two weeks in paradise was wonderful-we got to go to the beach, do a LOT of shopping, and eat such great food! Right at the tail end of my trip to Hawaii, Brian pulled into port in Manila for a few days, and got to take a break from the ship life. Now, back on the boat, he is busy completing his qualifications to make H2P. He's flying right now, and if all goes well, he'll be an H2P by the end of today! One qual down, a million more to go! =) There are a few other ports that I will be visiting in the next two months, and I'll write more after they happen. Good news is that we are over the hump, 4 months down, only about 1 and a 1/2 to go! Can't wait to have my pilot back home again. <3

Remote Post

Wanted to share this with all of you, Brian wrote it from the boat on Sunday:

Well if you have been paying attention to the world news, you all know that we were in Busan, South Korea for the past few days. I had a good time there. A bunch of us guys got a room at the Westin Chosun, a very nice hotel. Situated right on the beach and along a board walk, it offered lots of opportunities for various food and drink. Cass and Hite beer were the Bud and Miller of the city. While we were there we dined in many countries. We ate Italian (Papa Johns), Indian Food, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, and American (Hamburgers). Papa Johns was a treat for us, in Japan all we have is Pizza Hut and it is $30 a pizza there. Papa Johns in Korea tasted just like home. The beach would have been nice had we been allowed to go swimming in it, but the George Washington decided that we all should not enjoy the water. They were worried about all the various types of “sickness” we could bring back on to the boat. Going in to the port I had low expectations, based on what everyone else was telling me. All together, I had a pretty good time. There are a couple spots where cheap shopping can be had. Valued items there are leather, sport jersey’s of any team you can think of, knock of purses, and any number of other things. Managed to pick up a couple things for Allison and myself. As always, all good things must come to an end and now I am back on the ship waiting to fly.

I was pretty surprised at the coverage the GW was getting on CNN. Base on reports from other people’s families, we have been in the news quite a bit. Funny how you can loose perspective on the situation when you are in the thick of it. Our roles as helo pilots is to protect the ship, wherever she goes we go, pretty simple and it makes it easy to very near sighted on our overall mission. All the guys in the room and I got a kick out of watching the news about us. To tell you the truth, we do get CNN on the ship, but we rarely take or have the time to watch it. We also got a kick out of the photos they were showing on CNN, most of the photos were taken out of the back of our aircraft with my buddy at the controls. Not less than fours after he had taken the photos, they were being broadcast on the news. Crazy.

Now that we have pulled out of port we are off to exercise and show off what skills we have as a Navy. If all goes well I will be seeing Allison at our next port call. If that happens, we run the risk of seeing each other once a month. Really doesn’t give me much room to argue with dad about how rough the Navy is now days.

Big items on my plate for the next month is making Helicopter Second Pilot (H2P). Just a basic designation provided by the squadron to say they trust you as a co-pilot and that I have proven my worth. HS-14 uses it more as a hazing ritual, we go into a room with all the H2P and they just badger us with questions based on knowledge from any one of many publications we must reference from time to time. Some questions are legitimate and some are off the wall just to see how you respond. Hope that they will go well for me. In the meantime I will being hitting the books hard and living this groundhogs day they call deployment.

As always, I think of you all often. Hope all is well back home. I love and miss you all.

6 Months!

Hard to believe time has flown this much, and that we've been here 6 months! It also makes me realize I need to blog more, as it's been about 3 months since my last blogging adventure. So much has happened, where to begin!?! I guess I can start with the fact that Brian is gone, and has been for a few months. Thus began my journey alone in Japan! Things have been going really well so far, I've been able to kill all my own spiders, change my own oil, and do all those things that husbands are REALLY supposed to do! I've also managed to do a lot of things out in town with fellow wives, like going to Tokyo and trying a handful of new restaurants.

On the plus side of things, Brian has been able to come home every so often, so we've been able to take mini side trips, like when we went to this island south of here, called Enoshima Island, and walked around and explored the local area. We found a cool cave into the side of the mountain, and a bunch of cool shrines located on top after a long hike.

We also went up to Tokyo and had a nice dinner right before Brian had to go back the first time. Then, he was able to surprise me for the 4th, and they're ship pulled into port! One of our good friends had people over, so we were able to have an almost normal 4th of July!

Sadly, their ship pulled out again a few days after that, and they'll be gone indefinitely. However, I plan on making the most of this summer, traveling, hiking and sightseeing, so keep checking up on me, see how I'm doing, and experience Japan with me!

3 Months!

Yesterday was our three month anniversary of living in Japan! Time has really flown by for us-Brian is busy working and settling in to a new squadron, and I am busy setting up the house, making friends, looking for a job, and finding my way around a new country! These last three months have also seen the Carnes Family doing some traveling and enjoying time together while Brian's schedule is not so hectic. We've been to Odawara Castle, Kamakura to see the Giant Buddha and a shrine built into a cave, to Tokyo to see the Tokyo Tower the Imperial Palace, but unfortunately, the Palace was closed that day. We've also eaten some local flavor, like cows tongue, and tried our hand at making our own sushi! Brian and I have finally (I think) settled into the house and are enjoying the fact that we will not have to move for another 3 years! Oh to be settled for that long!

It's taking a while to get used to some things though, like not having a dishwasher or microwave! Or not having central heat or airconditioning! We're definitely getting good use out of our winter clothes and slippers! Driving on the opposite side of the road has become old hat to us-when we watch an American show on our Japanese cable, we often mention to each other that it's funny looking to see the American's driving on the wrong side of the road! We're slowly learning a bit of Japanese, although since I have more free time that Brian, I am able to make more progres on our Rosetta Stone than he is. I guess someday I'll have to be the translator for both of us!

We're really blessed that we have made some great friends out here, and were able to even have some of our friends from San Diego come out and join us here. Some even live close by! It will be so nice to have a support network of friends for when the guys leave. Though we still miss our friends at home, it's nice to have some familiar faces here.

Next week we are going to Kyoto during Brian's leave period, so we'll post again soon!

We Made It!

After a quick stint in Hawaii, Brian and I made it to Japan on 8 January! We spent a busy next couple of days checking in to Brian's squadron, and making the Navy Lodge our home! We searched for houses, and tried to experience as much of the surrounding area as we could! After about 3 weeks here, we were finally able to find a house, buy a car, and learn to drive. We will move into our house this Friday, 5 February, and have some of our stuff delivered.