Life is an adventure...or at least it should be. Most of the time, you never know how wonderful an experience can be unless you are willing to give it a try. We've always kept an open mind when it comes to new adventures and like to keep people guessing where we'll end up next.
Russ and I started out the year 2015 with two options in front of us. One was for him to retire in September after his birthday and the other was to do one more overseas tour before he retires. For the first part of the year we kept both options in mind and started preparing our house to be put on the market in the spring. We cleaned the house from top to bottom and then began the process of finding a realtor. I learned a long time ago that when you are selling a home, you need to find an agent who is aggressive, a good communicator and a good negotiator. After a little research I interviewed six realtors and chose our realtor, Kali, after putting them through a few tests. She came in and staged our home and we put a bunch of stuff into a storage unit to open up the rooms and make it look clutter-free for selling. The sign went in the yard in early May.
In early June, Russ got an email with a job offer with the Air Force in Okinawa, Japan. We were in Jacksonville at the beach when the offer came in and we talked about it and prayed about it and decided that we would go on one more adventure before retirement. Our house sold just when we needed it to and we began the process of preparing for the move to Japan. We started with passports and medical evaluations. Russ had a ton of paperwork to fill out and then eventually we got our orders for Japan. It was a little stressful getting all the details for the movers worked out at such a short notice but in the end it all worked out. Our first movers came on September 3 to pick up our quick shipment. This is the one we should see first (in approximately 6 weeks from when it left us). The second movers arrived on Friday to pick up our storage shipment. We had to sort our house into what we were taking to Japan and what we were storing. We decided to store our bigger items like the baby grand piano and king size bed and pare down to less furniture. Our last shipment was picked up on the 8th and 9th of September and we won't see these items for about two months. It's always an odd feeling watching your entire belongings ride away in a truck. We are living out of two suitcases each and began living in a hotel as of Tuesday, the 8th. Our house closing is today and we will be officially homeless until we arrive in Japan. We've found a buyer for our car and will give it to it's new owners on the 20th of this month. It's been a stressful summer preparing for the move but we can now relax a little bit and take care of all the last minute details before leaving the country.
We're both excited about this new adventure we are taking. It's all fallen into place so nicely and it feels like it's what we're meant to be doing right now in our lives. We know from experience that we'll enjoy our time in Okinawa and that we will meet some more awesome people to enhance our lives. We'll definitely miss our friends here in Fayetteville but we try to always keep our eyes looking forward to what is ahead. This will be our first overseas tour without the kids. It will be hard to say our goodbyes to them but we know that we can still keep in touch with texts, facetime, skype and email. I'm already planning my first trip back in January to welcome my newest granddaughter into the world. I hope to keep up with this blog so that anyone who wants to see our pictures and hear about our lives in Japan, will have a place to go to find out what we're up to. Feel free to leave comments and questions and I'll try to answer all.
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