Mom. Wife. Military Life.

I could start in so many places with the things we have done and places we have gone since arriving on the island, honestly we have done more here in a month then we did compiled over a near 5 year time window in Oklahoma. We have seen beaches, ate authentic cuisine, learned how to politely nod our way through conversation (even though we have no idea what they are saying) only to end with a botched version of “arigatou gozaimasu”, we have been introduced to the daiso (think target dollar section, but EVERYTHING for your life…Eve.Ry.Thing.), managed to convert our American dollar to yen by going back to basic elementary rules of moving decimals around…. the list goes on and on.

I was driving home from being out with the kids running “errands” (I use that term loosely considering the sea wall and local farmers market hardly seem like chores) and found myself already thinking about how sad I am to leave… I know we just got here but Japan, for me, it was love at first sight. It was an arranged marriage of sorts considering I have no say as to where we would end up, my mistress (The Air Force) gets to choose that. The fact that I had any sort of animosity or sadness towards  this move seems like such a waste of time… I started feeling guilty for ever feeling that way. The moment we landed here and got off the airplane my whole perspective changed. This place has never had to grow on me, it never had to coax me to like it, it was intended to humble my perspective on thinking I know what I wanted and where I wanted to be in life. I had a narrow vision of thinking and used the word “never” definitively… joke was on me.

I don’t mean to make it sound like everything is absolutely perfect and put on this fake facade of eternal happiness, but it’s pretty damn close. This past year has been a whirlwind of emotions… as a family we rounded out Jason’s 2nd deployment, celebrated a first birthday, sent Jason off again for a month, found out we were moving to Japan, found out we might not be moving to Japan, I got published, Everly started school, we actually did move, and you can throw the a million other birthdays/anniversaries/engagements/babies…. it was an eventful year. A year that I found some of my highest highs and also some of my lowest lows… lows, that since being here, seem like a distant memory. The second I looked out to the ocean here I made the conscious decision to throw all of my fears and preconceived notions about what I thought this adventure was going to be like, into the deep blue abyss.

I only have 2 years and 11 months left and I plan to learn, love and grow every step of the way. I want to be fearless in my pursuit of life here, I want to explore the things I always said “never” to and prove to myself that I am the only one setting limitations on my life. We are rounding out this year with new friends, a new home, and a new perspective. Thank you 2016, but we have 2017 to conquer.

So here we are, one week in. Let me preface with Japan. Is. Beautiful. So lets start with our travelling over…

We had all of our bags packed and crammed into our tiny TLF (temporary living facilities) for a few days before we left Oklahoma. Its amazing how somewhere you have lived for over 4 years can seem so different when just staying in a different location on base. Everything looked and felt different… It could have been because we knew we were leaving it all in a few days or it could have just been the ruckus and nervousness of what was to come. Our dear friends the Kuczeras’ went above and beyond helping us… feedings us, washing clothes and hauling us around since we were carless. Moving across the world becomes very familiar to that feeling of being 15 and being just weeks away from a drivers license… you know freedom is in your near future, you know you have all the skills to drive, but you just cant make time move any faster to get you where you want to be.

Wednesday afternoon arrived and it was time to say farewell to our friends, and our home. After a quiet lunch and a tearful goodbye the Bond’s stood on the curb of Will Rodgers World Airport with 2 adults, 3 kids, 1 car seat, 2 booster seats, 4 large luggage bags, 2 small roller bags, pack-n-play, 5 back packs, one stroller and blankets and snuggle toys for all. We looked at each other, took a deep breath and dove in head first.

Check in went a lot smoother then expected, everyone went above and beyond to make sure all our luggage got throw in the right piles and honestly our hands were so full we really didn’t care. They were tagged and we just had faith they would end up in the right place. We made it through security and to our gate in OKC just in time for boarding. This is the first time the kids got to fly so the excitement was out the roof for them. They had the chance to dig through their long awaited “Backpacks” that our families and friends stuffed will all sorts of books, games and snacks. Thankfully they loved it. Jax napped on and off on that first flight which really worked out for the best. We arrived in Seattle around 7:30 their time (9:30 OKC time) and made it to the hotel around 9 (11 OKC time)… We had 5 hours to rest before heading out for the long day of flights that next morning.

Our little stroller got lost between OKC and Seattle and Jason and I just shook it off… We were just getting on a couple planes this next day so we didn’t want to deal with tracking it down… Joke was on us. We woke up at 2am in Seattle (4am OKC time) and gathered the troops…. They were tired and little did they know what was to come. We got them up and out the door and on the shuttle and checked in only to realize that Cruz left his backpack on the shuttle, the kind people at Hampton Inn made their way back to the terminal and dropped our bag of sanity, I mean, Cruz’s backpack off and on we went. We made it through security and had to find our way to the tram to take us to the terminal where we would finally get on our plane. We probably resembled a small tribe of pack mules with the amount of shit we were carrying. We finally made it to our terminal. We found coffee, breakfast, and wifi and sat there and waited to board.

Finally the time came and we got called to get on the plane. We locked in carseats, got pillows and blankets comfy, tucked our backpacks in safely, buckled up and were ready to go. We began our taxi out for take off, said a quick prayer and… wait…. why are we stopping? Hold on. The plane is turning around. “Yaaaa, uhhh. Ladies and Gentlemen were having and issue with on of the sensors in the door and were going to have to go back and get this issue fixed or possibly get a new plane.” WELL….shit. That’s ok though. We were in no rush to be anywhere and knew this was going to be a process. We unloaded the plane and an announcement came on letting us know we would have to make our way back to the original terminal we departed from and we would now be leaving at 12pm. Right about this point Jason and I started wishing we would have found that stroller that “we weren’t going to need anyways”… I would have paid $500 at this point. Jason had grabbed us coffee right before we realized we were going to have to hike it back across Sea-Tac and about 5 minutes in I chunked mine, our hands were FULL, my husband and all his pride carrying a carseat 3 backpacks, blankets and snuggle toys hauled that damn coffee all the way back. We made it back and sat down, covered in sweat, and he sat there and spitefully drank that coffee. We just laughed. It was comical now. The kids still hadn’t complained once, it was all still a very new adventure and we were making the most of it.

The plane was finally fixed. We boarded at 12pm (2pm OKC time) and hit the skies… Jax and I were sat next to each other and Jason and the bigs were in a row together. We figured out this seating arrangement works best for us, I can wrangle Jax and Jas can take on the bigs. For a 10 hour flight it FLEW by. We napped, we ate, we watched Ipads, napped some more and by that time we were landing in mainland Japan. We got there and got of the plane for what was planned to be a “quick flip” so we could head on to our next stop. We sat down in the terminal and time just started ticking by… something was up. Our old faithful plane was broken again. The guy came on the loud speaker “We are having some issues with the plane and it looks like we are going to be delaying…. WE ORDERED PIZZA!”… He saved himself with the pizza because everyone was hungry and sleepy. So my first official food in Japan was a slice of Pizza Hut pizza… Don’t be jealous. We hung around for about 5 1/2 hours, the kids feel asleep, Jason grabbed a power nap and they came in and announced our plane was fixed AND we got to skip our next stop and head straight into Okinawa. THANK YOU LORD! We all loaded back up, and headed in for the last leg of our flights. Jaxsyn slept this last 2 hours and I think the rest of us were just to excited to get there. We landed around 2am and made our way to gather our bags.

We. Were. Here. We walked through customs and up to these frosted glass sliding doors and a man from the USO walks up to us and says “Name, and affiliation?” we tell him and the doors slide open (Mind you it is 3AM at this point) and there must have been 70 people standing out in this lobby… the man screams “BOND, AIR FORCE”…. We head “SIIILLLLVVVEEERRRR!!!” (Jason’s call sign) our friends pop out from the crowd, a beer in hand for Jason, they scoop up our trollys of luggage, our friends hand the kids and I gifts immediately. This is what our new home was going to be like. Our sponsors (The Butlers, I’m bowing down to you right now) and our friends the Rays’ (babies included) hooked us up. (Also thank you to, Johnsons and Kinneys!!!) We got to our hotel room with Subway to eat (we were HANGRY), a fully stocked kitchen, a ton of local information, Jason’s work stuff in line, I could just go on and on. Once everyone left I was in tears from the gratitude these people, our new friends, had given us. This was no easy feet taking us on and I cant say thank you enough to yall!!

We were so scared to  dive into this… but we did it. Without a single fit from the kids, a ton of prayers from our friends and family all over the  world, and an incredible group of people who caught us when we landed here. God knew his plan sending us, and we had faith in his timing. So here we are, one week in and have already done more then I feel like we ever did in OKC. I will write about this past week and all the adventures we have experience since landing in a couple days because its A TON!  Again, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, to our friends on each side of this journey, because of yall this has been amazing so far.

SENDING LOVE AND LIGHT!!!!

-Inspire. Believe. Succeed.

Makinzy

***I figured I would start a small series as we go through this move. I will walk through our steps as we get through little turning points that deserve the notarization. For all my non-military friends a PCS is short for Permeant Change of Station… The military is EXTREMELY acronym heavy… Everything has some sort of term or abbreviation, ill do my best to break them down as they come along.

From the second you find out your moving everything seems to move in 2 motions, hyper-speed and snail-speed. Of course the things you want to move hyper-speed (orders, the time movers are suppose to arrive, paper work, medical clearance appointments… I could go on forever) seem to drag on for what seems like eternity and the things you want to move snail-speed (family time, time left in your home, time with friends) seem to fly by faster thing you can blink an eye at.

I’m sitting here writing at my dinner table looking around at my house with empty walls. This home, for over 4 years, has provided so much more then a roof over our heads. We have brought 2 babies home here, and celebrated our oldests’ 1st birthday here. We have had some of our hardest family moments in this house, and also laughed the hardest we have ever laughed here. We had the opportunity to have friends become family within these walls. We watched first steps for all 3 kids in this living room. We have been through 2 deployments as a family in this house. We have gone down into that stubborn tornado shelter more times then I care to remember. We hung pictures, we decorated a garden, we made this temporary house a home. This may not have been our dream house or forever home but for the time we have been here we have made it ours.

I think when you start realizing your leaving somewhere you begin to look around and take things in a little more. Inanimate objects begin to have a story, and deciding what things go in the stay/leave pile get a little more foggy. As I sifted through boxes that have sat in my garage for the past 4 years it clicked to me. These things I’m holding on to aren’t something that can be taken away or boxed up. These things are memories and moments that get to go with us wherever we choose to take them. Sure our next house wont see first baby steps, but it will see us do something we have never done as a family before and that’s… only having each other…on the other side of the world…as a family.

I expect our next home to see growth within us. I expect it to see tears of joy. I also know it will see days with tears of sadness missing the ones we love back in the states. We will have highs and lows and moments we will never forget. Our walls will be decorated the same, our furniture will be familiar, and even the pillows we lay our heads down on will hear the familiar prayers that we say every single night. That is my future prediction.

These empty walls don’t mean its the end, they just mean they are moving on along with all the memories that we have collected at our time here. Our friends will always be our friends, this home will always be the home we grew our family in, and the rest we will see in a few months.

As we watch our friends back home build their forever homes I can say part of me has some jealousy. The kids will go to school together for as long as they can remember. They can change their cabinets and wall colors to match their mood. They have backyards they can put pools in. They have family within a phone call away. They have something my family wont ever know… longevity. But do you know what? That’s ok because you know what my family will get?….

We will get to be immersed in a culture that most kids only read about in world history books. We get to consider the East China Sea a weekend swimming pool. We get to go back to the basics with no fancy cars (and expensive payments) or big houses and put our time and funds into seeing the world, not just looking at picture books about it. We get to meet new friends and grow our circle to welcome in people we never knew could become so close to us. We get this opportunity…. and opportunity (like this) is the thing that many friends back home will never get.

So here we go. The movers will begin to box things up next week and we will wave our stuff goodbye. I’m dreading the actual farewell to friends and family, I’m not gonna lie. But we will save that for another day once we get settled in our new home. I’m pretty set on the next blog in this series to be on the actual travel process….( lets pray I don’t have a lot to write about there).

Thank you again for reading and enjoying! Please feel free to share when and if you feel so moved!

Inspire.Believe.Succeed.

-Kinzy