Delicious!!

Here is a recipe for a smooth and creamy mousse-type dessert (Heather's Version!)

1/4 cup General Mills Foods International Coffees - French Vanilla Cafe
1 tbsp. Hot water
2 cups Cold milk
1 pkg. (4-serving size) JELL-O Vanilla Instant Pudding & Pie filling
1/2 cup Thawed Cool Whip (more if you want some for topping)
Magic Shell ice cream topping - chocolate or caramel would both work great (for decoration)

In medium bowl, desolve coffee in hot water. Add milk and dry pudding mix. Beat well with wire whisk 2 minutes or until well blended. Gently stir in cool whip.

Spoon/pour into glasses. Refrigerate for about an hour before serving. Makes approx. 6 servings (1/2 cup each)

I used some champagne flutes to make them look "fancy" but be sure you can fit a spoon into whatever you choose!! You can also pour just a little of the magic shell topping into the bottom of the glasses and swirl it around to dress it up a bit. You can add more of the topping filling the glass 1/2 way then finish filling. I used my new decorator toy to add cool whip to the top. Finish by adding a little more of the magic shell to the top.

Here she is!!!!

Chelsea scanned our ultrasound pictures from yesterday and here they are!

It's a GIRL!!!!!!!!

We are going to have a little girl!! We are both very excited and can't wait for her to get here. We'll try to put some pictures from the ultrasound on here after we get them scanned (our scanner is broken so we have to get a friend to scan them for us) We had friends stop by tonight to bring a present for Grace Elizabeth... a CUTE picture frame, a pink and white sleeper with a strawberry on the front and a bunch of cute onesies! We also went and bought a cute little pink sleeper and pink bibs that say I love Mommy and I love Daddy!

A Birthday & A Half Birthday

Today is Heather's Birthday (in Japan at least). In the states, it will be tomorrow of course. Don't forget, it is also our baby's half birthday as he/she will be halfway to being born. Heather is 20 weeks along, and Dustin spoils her rotten. Last night he decorated the house so that when Heather got up this morning, she saw crepe paper, balloons, and a birthday banner. Sunday, she got to open presents and have an ice cream birthday cake from Baskin Robins. It was chocolate chip with Oreos on top! We went to church and then we got home and decided to go bowling. Heather says she is having a GREAT birthday and I love her very much. (Oops I just gave away the author of this post--Mike you got me:)

The Waiting Game

We went down to the Air Terminal to see what we need in order to sign up for Space-A travel. They gave us some paperwork and a sample letter of what we need to get bumped up a category. So, Dustin made a nice looking memo and it just so happened that his commander stopped by the office while we were there getting some of Dustin's books organized so that gave Heather time to run to the house and get the papers and get his signature in all the right places. We went down to the terminal today to get put in the system and right now I am on the list to fly back to the states. We found out there are some options that might be even better than the Patriot Express (commercial flight that is charted by the military twice a month from Kadena to Seattle) So I might end up flying to HAWAII and then on to Travis AFB from there. The original plan was to try to catch the Patriot on the 8th or 21st of Aug. and then fly commercially to Oklahoma and then back to Okinawa (I really don't want to get stuck in Seattle for 2 weeks!) but as it stands now, I will be packing my suitcases and trying to get on a C-5 (recommended by the Airmen at the terminal becuase of the space, size, and availability) that just gets me somewhere in the states. I think my first attempt will be Aug. 5 since I probably shouldn't skip out on my next appointment with my midwife which is on the 4th... It might be a good idea to get her to OK my plan! I might not even have to buy a plane ticket back to Okinawa which was in my original plan if the Hawaii thing works out because there are several flights each week between Hickam and Kadena. I am going to stay tuned to Channel 17 to see if maybe there is any type of sequence but right now there is a flight scheduled to leave on Tuesday that goes through Anderson AFB, Guam, Hickam AFB, HI, then somewhere in Arizona before ending up in New Jersey. Something like that would be a good option. And if I got stuck in Hawaii that wouldn't be half bad!

Earthquake

An earthquake just hit the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, which is where Okinawa is located. We felt a pretty good shake but we are safe! The preliminary magnitude of this earthquake is 5.9, but now it is registering at 6.2! Surprisingly, none of our wall hangings are out of place despite the shaking walls. Dustin did an excellent job hanging them!

Fireworks, fireworks, and more fireworks!

That's right, we saw 3 firework diplays! We went out to the flight line on Kadena for America Fest on the 4th. We got to see lots of aircraft set up and on display. We got to go inside the cockpit of a C-130 and down in the boom deck of a KC-135 and then we walked through the AWACS which was pretty neat! After walking around on the flight line we went home to cool off and wait for the fireworks. After driving around for a while we finally scoped out where we wanted to watch them from. So we went back to reserve our spot about 45 min. before the show started. Tonight, we decided to see the firework display on Torii Beach at 10pm. We decided that there would be just enough time to watch the show on Kadena again (but from a different spot) before heading to the beach. We pulled off alongside the road off-base and waited a few minutes and then saw the fireworks. I think we had the best seat in the house! Then we got back in the car and drove over to Torii, just in time to scope out where they were shooting the fireworks off from and set up our blankets and chairs right beside the ocean. We got a little closer to the fireworks than we thought (Dustin almost caught one in his lap!) but the view was great! We both agreed that tonight was definitely better than last nights show!!

Here are a few pictures from yesterday.

tail of an F-15 - these fly over our house almost everyday

Heather in the cockpit of the C-130

Dustin in front of an F-16 - they don't have these on Kadena so it was flown in from Osan

Happy 4th of July!

Hope everyone has a fun and safe 4th!!

It's the weekend... on Wednesday!

Today starts the weekend.. not too many times you can say that on a Wednesday! We have an FRG meeting (the very first one!) tonight, we probably won't stay long but it is good to make an appearance to events like this. We don't have too much planned this weekend but we are looking forward to going to America Fest on Friday. Kadena hasn't done this in 4 years and this year it will be the biggest since 9/11. They are going to have all the fighter jets and some other large aircraft set up on the flightline for display. After the sun sets they are having a firework display!! Then on Friday we will probably head over to Torii Beach for the Wine and Jazz Festival, but we will probably just go for the fireworks since wine and jazz aren't our kind of thing.

On another note, we got the bedding set in today for our guest bedroom so that should be open for business soon!