FEELING BLOGGY

I Found Nemo! (And Much, Much More!)

2011-04-23T19:42:00.000+09:00

Em was kind enough to let me go out alone on my SCUBA trip. We had talked of going to one of the pontoons and taking turns, me SCUBA, her snorkle, me SCUBA, her...
But the day before she decided she'd lounge and browse around Cairns. (Speaking of browsers...did you know the Internet browser "Firefox" is named after a real animal--the firefox or Red Panda?!? It is now my favorite animal!!!!)

Anyway, after much research and going back and forth between dive tours/company's I took the advice from the life guard on Green Island and went with Silverswift. They do 3 dives. I was only planning to do 2 but it was only $12 more to add the third and I was feeling good after the 2nd dive. All the companies have different reefs and many different sites at each reef to choose from, depending on conditions.

We did one dive at Milln Reef, Fish Town site and then went to Flynn Reef and dove at Gordon’s Mooring and Tracy's. The first dive was a little tough as I had a large underwater camera with me. I hadn't been diving since 2004 but everything came back to me right away, including the difficulty keeping a neutral buoyancy. To do this you have to put in the right amount of air into your buoyancy control device or BC. I kept putting too much in and then taking too much out, plus the deeper you go the more the air compresses giving you less buoyancy. This wasted too much air and cut my first dive a little short. This combined with one hand trying to not let go of the expensive camera I hired (rented) gave me some added awkwardness.

*Insert: It is not easy taking underwater photos. The fish don't tend to hold still, even the lumbering sea turtles drift away at a pace making it hard to photograph. Then when you do have a subject that doesn't leave, like Nemo, he darts around and as I try to take the picture I begin to either sink or rise (remember the buoyancy problem). As if that isn't hard enough, I was constantly trying not to land on, bump into, or disturb the fragile coral.

On to the dives:

The first one was cool just to be under the water again. I don't remember this one as well as I was focused on remembering how to dive and what not. There had been a recent HUGE cyclone that had come through the area and destroyed a lot of the hard coral. I remember seeing tons of staghorn coral broken off and littering the sea floor.

Kinda sad. It was still amazing though. The first dive's highlight was the blue spotted sting ray. I saw a white and black stick and wondered what it was.

I then followed its to 2 bumps and then saw the outline of ray just under the sand. Totally awesome, one of the things I really wanted to see (the others being Nemo (clown fish) and a shark, never found a shark =(.) The first dive was quickly over (fastest 33 minutes ever!) Who knew 200 bar could go so quickly?

The second dive started off great with an immediate sighting of a green sea turtle. Then we found Nemo, or at least his one stripped cousin. (I did see the real Nemo variety while snorkeling on Tuesday).

This dive went much better for me, I was much more graceful with my camera and buoyancy and extended my dive by 4 minutes.

I loved seeing the pink anemone fish (Nemo). The photography guy said it is a cliche' for a professional to photograph them, but they all do and just don't talk about it.

They are so pretty and are set against a beautiful back ground. I found a "field" of this anemone and thought it was beautiful.

As the dive master was about to take us one way I spotted another turtle hiding down in some rocks and swam over to visit.

He soon noticed me and began his slow and effortless withdrawal. All the other divers then came over to see him too. This one is a hawksbill sea turtle. Very pretty and very large. About 3x the size of the green sea turtle.

Another cool thing about this dive was the coral "swim-throughs". One was a tube we swam through and another a pretty canyon. This maori wrasse swam through with me, he's about half my size. It was so cool to look up and see the surface through these coral walls.

The third dive got even better. There seemed to be a lot more fish and the coral was even prettier here. One of the best parts was the unbelievable landscape. This area had a lot of pretty corals and colorful fish. We saw some more turtles and another Nemo cousin residence. Our goal on this dive was to find a reef shark but we never did. Bummer but still probably my favorite dive. This site also had a lot of these giant boulder corals. These stand alone from the rest of the coral shelves and are massive--20 feet with corals domes. They take about a hundred years to form. Other coral varieties were growing on them too.

After my last dive I went back out with my snorkel and explored some more. I'm glad I did because I realized how much better SCUBA was, it was easier to swim under the water instead of on top, I got more salt water in my mouth with the snorkel and it is awesome to be able to just stay below the water.

Here are some of my other favorite pictures:

(Another of my favorites sights were these pretty which hard coral bushes. They had about a hundred tiny blue fish and sometimes some larger black and white stripped ones which would swim out like a cloud and then dart back in, over and over. They proved very difficult to photograph though.

One that I was very excited to see (this one is small but I saw some huge ones too) was the brain coral, such a cool pattern!

It was a great day of diving!

Sumo-A battle of Wedgies

2011-01-23T17:58:00.000+09:00

Max and I went on a trip to Tokyo to see the Sumo Tournament. We rode down on a tour bus on Sunday. He started out throwing up on the bus twice before we left the city limits, but did fine on the rest of the 8 hour ride. Though he was real angry that I wouldn't let him get ice cream at each of the rest stops! He did get some the next day at the tournament. We got to Tokyo and went on a walk to see The Temple. Being Sunday it was closed but he enjoyed seeing it and I again felt a great sense of peace just standing on the corner in front of the temple gates. We then went and found some dinner, Max- McDonalds and me Subway, yes I am getting tired of trying to find food for Max and sometimes myself to eat in Japan, kinda wanted to have some american food around but didn't want to take the Subway to Outback (Tokyo actually has a few american options).
We spent the rest of the evening in the hotel reading and we watched a conference talk of President Monson for our spiritual dinner.

Monday was the tournament. Our tour, through the Misawa Travel Agency, took us to the Edo-Tokyo Museum and the Sumo venue which are neighboring buildings. The good Sumo wrestlers don't fight til later in the afternoon so we spent the a few hours at the museum first. They had free museum guides and she was great. If you can make the history of Tokyo, (how it started out as a little town in the 1600s called Edo and then grew through the powerful influenced of the Tokugawa Shoguns into a thriving city which became know as Tokyo as the Emporer Meji allowed the Western influence to enter the Japanese culture), interesting to a 9 year old and a 33 year old, then you are a fabulous tour guide. It was fun. It took you through scale models of what Edo looked like and had some life size building replicas and so on and then took you into the transition from Edo to Tokyo.

After the Museum we headed to the Kokugikan, the Tokyo Sumo Arena. We ate lunch and watched the lesser Sumo guys while we ate lunch. We enjoyed it a lot. It was fascinating stuff with a lot of ceremony. Each match takes about 5 minutes and the wrestling part is about 5 seconds. It rivals baseball for excitement. I definitely got into it and cheered. There were a lot of good matches and a few that lasted less then a second as one wrestler would move out of the way as they lept for each other causing the other to fall on the ground. (One wins by forcing the opponent out of the ring or to touch the ground with any body part.) There are numerous moves one can do by grabbing their loin cloth, thus making a "Battle of Wedgies." Sam thinks they are all immodest. After an exciting final match, where the guy who was undefeated almost lost but pulled off a great victory, we headed back to the hotel for dinner, where Max forwent his hot dog and had two salads!, then went swimming.

I turned my reading light out around 10:30 and later heard Max exclaim, "Wow. It's 12:30!" as he turned his off. He had tried to finish Harry Potter Book 5 but just couldn't pull it off. The next morning was comical. I could barely get him out of the room to go the breakfast buffet, his favorite thing in the world. After one bite of french toast and two bits of pineapple he took the room key and left me eating my yummy scrambled eggs and potatoes. I returned to find him back in bed, which is where he was when I left at 9:30 for the Temple, leaving him with some Filipino hotel babysitter, and where he was when I came back at 12:30.

I eventually forced him back out into Tokyo and we visited the Sensoji Temple, dated back to 1600's.

Max finally got his souvenir samurai swords, he's been wanting for 2.5 years. After this we took a variety of subways and monorail to get to Odaiba island, a man made island where one can find Joypolis (the spelling still bugs me I want it to be Joyopolis), an indoor Sega themepark.

Max loved it. There was a giant half pipe where you were strapped to a giant skate board and could try 360's. Max screamed the whole time, awesome. At the end of the evening I started feeling sick and Max had to go on the last ride by himself. Outside, despite a growing sense of queasiness, I stopped to take some pictures of the beautiful night scene of the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo skyline.

Then I looked around for a garbage can and barely made it to one before I throw up. Let me tell you, I did not like having the Tokyo subway system between me and the hotel with my queasy feelings. I made it eventually, only having to hover above a squatty potty in the subway station for a minute before my body thought it was ridiculous to attempt that one!

We eventually made it back to Misawa the next day and we glad to see Em and the other 3 boys again. It was a fabulous trip with Max. He is such a good kid. It was nice to share this trip with him.

Oirase Gorge and Lake Towada Cycling Tour

2010-10-09T22:57:00.000+09:00

My friend Merrill and I have been wanting to bike around Lake Towada all summer and finally did yesterday.

Our ride was about 34.4 miles. 3 miles of the Gorge and then the rest around the lake. Around the lake started out with 6 miles of accent of a never ending hill. It kept teasing us with brief down slopes followed by endless switch backs. That was even fun. After the 2 hours of accent we descended in about 20 minutes! That was really fun. There was only on turn I almost didn't make. The views were amazing, the air clean and crisp on a perfect autumn morning. After the quick 8 miles descent the rest was ups and downs around the shoreline.

This little stretch was one of the nicest: a long straight decent with a slight breeze causing a few leaves to fall as we road through this beautiful forest.

This is one of the most beautiful peaceful places on earth. The lake itself is serene and perfect, but combined with the gorgeous gorge with it many stunning waterfalls...the combination is heavenly!

Lake Towada (十和田湖 Towada-ko^?) is the largest crater lake in Honshū island, Japan. Located on the border between Aomori and Akita prefectures, it lies 400 meters (1,800 ft) above sea level and is 327.0m (1,073 ft) depth, and is drained by the Oirase river. With a surface area of 61.1 km², Towada is Japan's 12th largest lake, its bright blue color is due to its great depth. The lake is roughly circular, with two peninsulas extending from its southern shore approximately one-third into the center of the lake.

Fit to Fight...almost...well now I am

2010-09-15T17:13:00.002+09:00

Em has been asking me to do a blog about how the Air Force PT (physical training) test is done. (Some of my Army friends would laugh and ask if the AF really has a PT test...but they wouldn't really be funny.) So, we have to test two times a year unless we pass with a 90% or higher. They have recently changed the rules of engagement (ROEs) making the test harder. There have subsequently been a lot of people getting kicked out of the AF.

The PT test is composed of measuring height, weight and waist. Only your body's waist measurement (20 pts) factors into the score.
Next comes push-ups (10 pts) and sit-ups (10 pts). As many as possible in 1 minute.
Then, the final and biggest part of test is the 1.5 mile run (60 pts). There are also, new July 1, minimums for each category as well as a max for the points:
Run: 14:00 minutes (9:34 max)
Waist: 39.0 inches (32.5 max)
Push-ups: 27 (57 max)
Sit-ups: 39 (54 max)

There you have it in a nut shell, the AF PT test. The testing has become much more strict over the past two years. The testers are notorious for not counting your push ups unless your arms are precisely 90 degrees and your body straight. Some people do tons of push ups but have 20 or so not count.

Flash back to 1 July: I take my annual PT test. I max out the run (9:28), the sit ups (60), the waist (31 inches), and then ... I get 25 push-ups with 3 not counted. I got stuck on the way up on 26 and then collapsed. Now if you add these up I get an amazing 94.5%!!!!!!! Well it would be awesome until you realize that 25 push ups doesn't meet the minimum and then I become the AF's first person to fail the new PT test standards (remember 1 July is when they started the minimum.)

So I had to go to the "Be Fit" class to learn about eating healthy and how to run faster. Hmmm not really the problem. Even the Group Commander (very important person, head of all the hospital people) took a personal interest since I am such an odd ball failing with a 94.5%. Em said "I have failed a lot of tests in my life, but never with a 94%!" I have also become the butt of A LOT of jokes. I.E. After winning the Australia Trip Sgt Laffitte (the most constant of those making fun of me) said, "I guess push ups wasn't one of the events!" No, it wasn't!!!!

So I started working harder on my push-ups. Started doing bench presses and triceps dips and butterflies but really for a month never felt any difference and felt even weaker on my push-ups. My friend Merrill and I started doing the 100 Push Up program. Still after weeks of doing this I didn't feel much improvement. Then after about 7 weeks, repeating weeks 4 and 5 of the program twice, I thought I could do over 30.

Fast forward to today.
I tested again: run-9:33,
waist-31,
sit-ups-61,
and wait for it...
42 push-ups!!!!!

98.6%!!! and I passed. I feel a huge burden lifted. I guess working out does actually work!

These shorts are hot! not! (that "not" is in honor of Shawn Spencer's efforts on Psych to revive the term "not." said the Liar.)

I'd like to thank all those who helped make this possible:

Emily-for believing in me
Col T-for for making me not want to let him down
Ryan-my OB and work out partner for 2 weeks
Merrill-my push up partner
Janeen-my personal trainer and healthy eating coach and Duathlon nemesis
Wes-my pilot
Nice PT Testing lady-who counted all of my push-ups

No Thanks to:

Roxanna
TSgt Laffitte
and all the other people who think they are funny and kinda were!
;)

The Tribe Has Spoken!

2010-08-27T23:20:00.003+09:00

So get this...yesterday I saw an email advertising an event at The Club (each base has an enlisted and an officer's club, or a combined "collocated" club). It was a meet and great with some of the Survivor All-Stars!

Em and I are moderate to big Survivor fans; in fact I had just been looking into the application process to get on the show but gave up. The event was for tonight from 5-7 and they were going to choose random people to compete in a "Survivor Challenge". I wanted to attend and told Em to get a babysitter.

Then at lunch Em ran into some of the "Stars" signing autographs at the BX (Base Exchange or the equivilant of Mervyns meets Walmart) and called me very excited saying she put her arm around James and got to chat with Russell and Sandra. (Winner of last season.)

But then she couldn't find a babysitter. That combined with me being very tired, (all four boys woke up and came into our room at various times last night) led me to not feel up to going by myself (no kids allowed at event). BUT, my fabulous and selfless wife encouraged me to go without her saying it was a "once in a lifetime experience." This is true. Thank you, Hon!

So I popped over to have some light hors d'oeuvres hoping to meet some of them. I did just that and got to talk to Ami Cusack ( Survivor: Vanuatu and Survivor: Micronesia).

She was quite nice, personable, fun to talk with, pretty and I got to get some behind the scenes questions about Survivor answered.

As I ate my snacks, they did the drawing for the competition and I got chosen.

This is how it worked: They picked two teams: an enlisted team and an officer team. Each team competed in a challenge with the last person to finish being eliminated and not moving on to the next round until one person from each team is left to compete in the final challenge.

First Challenge: Drinking giant pixie sticks the fastest.

Second: Using the pixie stick as a straw to pick up ping pong balls and carry them across the ballroom floor and drop them into a bag. Repeat.

Next challenge: Race around a bunch of tires with some weird plastic cups under your feet with strings connected that you hold to help move your feet.

Next: While paired up with a Survivor All-Star race around the same tires while stepping into them with your foot at the same time as your partner. My partner was Russell Swan (a very nice guy, Em says!) (Survivor: Samoa)

Next: A nasty one!!! A couple of scoops of squid guts had to be eaten. (My strategy quickly changed from trying to eat it all at once, (cue immediate gag reflex) to eating smaller bites on the count of three, (this worked once) to holding it in my mouth until the other guy gave up and threw up: making me one of two finalists!!! (I can still taste it and smell it.)

For the final challenge I had to peddle a large tricycle with Ami on the back. I was blind-folded and Ami was my guide. She led me around the tires where our handle bars got bent-losing precious time- but we corrected them and sped on.

Ami then directed me through a maze where I kept going left and then left until I spilled out of the maze passing the other guy.

Back onto the trike, Ami expertly led me around the ballroom to the final obstacles. I tore through the combat crawl sustaining multiple rug burns and losing my flip flops but ultimately emerged the winner!!!

And guess what?

I am going (with Em) to

CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA!!!!!

And to think that I almost laid down at home and went to sleep. Em had no idea that any of this was happening and when I walked in with giant check/coupon for the trip she was completely dumb founded and still doesn't believe I really did win.

What an awesome night!

THANK YOU FOR COMING SURVIVORS!
THANK YOU AMI!
THANK YOU AIR FORCE!

And most of all...
THANKS FOR THE TRIP!!!!!!!!!!

Nebuta

2010-08-23T22:19:00.000+09:00

Last year we went to the Nebuta parade, in Aomori City, during the day. This year we wanted to see how amazing they would look in the dark, lit up. They were amazing. The people are so energetic and happy. Despite it being so crowded everyone seems to enjoy it. The boys were all dressed in their festival Jimbae.

Em took a little girl for her mom since she was struggling to see over us and 3 other rows. We were with the Balls at a street corner. At each corner they stop the floats and then quickly spin them around.

Nebuta is our favorite festival! (Too bad it was blisteringly hot.)

There are many theories about the origin of the Nebuta Festival. One is that it originated with the subjugation of rebels in the Aomori district by "General TAMURAMARO" in the early 800's. He had his army create large creatures, called "Nebuta", to frighten the enemy. Another theory is that the Nebuta Festival was a development of the "TANABATA" festival in China. One of the customs during this festival was "TORO" floating. A "TORO" is a wooden frame box wrapped with Japanese paper. The Japanese light a candle inside the "TORO" and put it out to float on the river or the sea. The purpose for doing this is to purify themselves and send the evil spirits out to sea. "TORO" floating is still one of the most impressive and beautiful sights during the summer nights of the Japanese festivals. On the final night, "TORO" floating is accompanied by a large display of colorful fireworks. This is said to be the origin of the Nebuta Festival. Gradually these floats grew in size, as did the festivities, until they are the large size they are now. Today the Nebuta floats are made of a wood base, carefully covered with this same Japanese paper, beautifully colored, and lighted from the inside with hundreds of light bulbs. In early August the colorful floats are pulled through the streets accompanied by people dancing in native Nebuta costumes, playing tunes on flutes and drums. Many Aomori citizens are involved in the building of these beautiful floats. The Nebuta designers create their designs patterned after historical people or themes. They begin developing themes immediately after the previous year's festivities come to a close. Consequently, it takes the entire year, first in the development, then in the construction of the Nebuta float.

Conquering Mt Fuji

2010-08-03T22:52:00.001+09:00

Yesterday I climbed mount Fuji with Merrill and Janeen, Ryan B, and Robert W. It was great. We kept a steady pace, all staying together and all got the branding stamps on our walking sticks at most of the huts. The ascent was very challenging. There were some rugged up-hill parts, a bunch of switch backs, and some stairs. I think the variety on the ascent was good. The last 200 or so meters were very exhausting. Standing still I was fine but almost immediately after starting up again I became out of breath and a little wobbly at times from the combination of being tired with less oxygen in the atmosphere. We ended up at the top a little after noon, 5 hrs and 15 minutes. It was a great feeling to have made it to the top. I continued and hiked around the crater, which offered some cool views of the crater and got me to the actual highest point. So it was mostly worth it to hike an extra 45 minutes. The weather on the way up was nice. Foggy, humid a bit of sunshine, a slight drizzle towards the summit and then a lot more sunshine at the top. Eating ramen at the top was yummy and just cool!

After my crater trek, I got back to the rest of the group just as the rain began and it continued the whole way down. We were pretty soggy and wet all the way but it wasn't too bad since it didn't get too cold or windy.

Coming down was probably just about as hard as going up and my knee started hurting. It didn't hurt if I went backwards so I went down a lot of it backwards. The descent takes you down a different route with a bunch of switch backs and a lot of loose volcanic gravel/shale. It was pretty exhausting but it was a great hike and well worth the trip. It was an awesome group to go with.

This morning we, in insanity, woke up and caught a taxi to the fish market at 4 am. Why you might ask? Because we wanted to witness the Tsukiji Fish Market Auction. We got there just in time to get tickets. These days they only let 70 people into the each of the 2 auctions since tourists got it closed down to visitors a while back.

We made it into the second auction. It was insane. Tons (literally) of tuna lined up in a large warehouse, with lots of people inspecting the quality with touch, taste, visual and even using flash lights to get a better sense for the true color of the meat.

Then the auction starts with the different auctioneers ringing their bell and then they sell each fish one at a time. It goes really fast and each person moves about 100 fish in 10 minutes and there are probably 10 auctioneers going at the same time. The guys are really animated and excited and they seem to be having a great time.

It was a really fascinating thing to watch. Once we got shuffled back out, we walked around the busiest, largest, coolest and most dangerous (due to the small trucks speeding around without any consideration for the American tourists!) fish market ever.

Then we headed back to the New Sanno hotel and had a fabulous buffet breakfast, (Maxwell worthy) had naps, then headed out for lunch and a temple session. It was neat going to the Temple of the Lord after having summited a physical temple the previous day.

After the Temple we headed back to the hotel, swam and then went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. It was nice to be able to have American food again. You just need to have it once in a while. I even had a hamburger in front of Janeen (our healthy eating friend) who ordered two half salads. I thought that was funny but definitely not unusual for her.

It has been a great trip and I am ready to go to bed and go home tomorrow. Thank you Emily for being a lone woman in Misawa with the boys while I did this. (Though it sounds like you have been partying with your girl friends a lot!) See you soon!

Gray's Birth

2010-04-21T22:37:00.002+09:00

Here's a slideshow of his first couple days.

Two Favorites and Service- A New Family Tradition

2010-04-17T07:43:00.005+09:00

One of the nights, when Emily was still in the hospital, I joined our great friends the Pats for dinner since they were the ones caring for the boys during the first two days of Gray's life. At the completion of dinner everyone stayed at the table and then they went around and each told of their two favorite things and one act of service they did or had done to them. (Kinda like President Monson mentioned in conference last year.) So last Sunday I started the same routine in our family.

Here is one round from me for these past two weeks:
Two favorite things:

1. Falling asleep on the recliner in the middle of the day with Gray bundled in my arms and then waking up and having Gabe cuddle with us for 20 more minutes!
2. Trying to eat Grayson's little soft cuddly fuzzy face. I love his head with its smooth skin and soft hair.

Service (we have been focusing on service we provide, but I will make an exception in order to praise my wife):

-Em has been serving me by sleeping downstairs so Grayson wont wake me up as much. (The idea is this will allow me to have more energy to handle the other boys, which has had some success if not as much as she would like.)

(They also read the Book of Mormon while a the dinner table and we are adopting that technique as well.)

Baby Hog!

2010-04-13T14:58:00.002+09:00

Em has confined herself to her room today. She sits in her bed as upon a throne, issuing demands for breakfast and lunch. She will only allow me access to Grayson in order to change his diaper and clothes. Give me my baby!!!!!
Maybe I'll eat the last of the yummy cookies our awesome friends, the Kennelly's brought last night. That will show her!!!

Visiting Hours

2010-04-05T21:36:00.005+09:00

The thought of bringing 3 wild boys to Labor and Delivery and controlling them in Em's room around a new born wasn't too appealing, so with the assistance of our neighbor Roxy I took each of them to see their mom and baby by themselves. They were all very calm and cute and loving with him. What great boys ALL 4 of them!

Sam doesn't seem to like the name Grayson, (Its OK Sam, I'm sure uncle Dave has made fun of it already!), but accepted it and reported back to his friend that his name is Grayson because he looks gray. I guess I'm to blame because I said "He looks like a Grayson doesn't he?" "Yeah, I guess so." He was probably thinking, "He looks more like a Purpleson to me."

Thank you to all of the friends who are/have and are offering help. It has made is so much easier since we are so far from family. You all rock!!!!!

Thank you for all the prayers. Thank you Ryan for the blessing. His lungs are now clear and his breathing is great! The doctor is very surprised since the chest X-ray showed some aspirated meconium. We are happy his is healthy and doing great.

What's wrong with this photo?

2010-04-01T22:14:00.002+09:00

I've been going through my Thailand photos trying to make a photo book on Blurb and started noticing little oddities about this photo. I shot it from the hip and never noticed all that was going on. What can you find?

Today's Engrish

2010-02-28T07:48:00.004+09:00

This is a sign on the top of a self serve rice cooker at a Raman shop I went to yesterday. In other words, Obama or Americans eat too much rice!

Some Cool Links

2010-02-22T20:02:00.009+09:00

Click HERE to see a video report of the Cobra Gold MEDCAP in Thailand. I even get a speaking part. No HERE! (And if you haven't visited for a while, look at the rest of my Thailand Posts).

Here is an excerpt from the Army Website:
KANCHANABURI PROVINCE, Thailand (Feb. 1, 2010) – U.S. Air Force dentist, Capt. Douglas W, a pediatric dentist assigned to the 35th Dental Squadron, Misawa, Japan, pulls the tooth of a child at the first Medical Civic Assistance Program site at the Baan Kroeng Kra Reaon School, in the Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand, in support of Exercise Cobra Gold 2010, Feb. 1. This was the first of seven MEDCAP sites scheduled throughout the course of the exercise. The MEDCAP sites will bring together doctors, dentists and veterinarians from the armed forces of Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, the Republic of Korea, Thailand and the United States. Cobra Gold is a regularly scheduled joint and coalition multinational exercise hosted annually by the Kingdom of Thailand. This year marks the 29th anniversary for the exercise, which consists of a Global Peacekeeping Operations Initiative Exercise, Command Post Exercise, H/CA projects and field training exercises. (Photo by U.S. Army Master Sgt. Christina Bhatti-Madden)

Also, Go here to vote for St Joseph Hospital to win a grant from Tom's of Maine for the pediatric dental clinic! That's where I was training to be the Pediatric Dentist Extraordinaire that I am today! (You can vote once a day if you'd like)

Funny Sign

2010-02-20T13:17:00.003+09:00

This was a sign at the Priew Waterfall we went to in Chantaburi.

Any ideas what this medicine is used for? We are still laughing about this!

P.S. Stay tuned I have a few more Thailandish posts coming. Thanks for sharing the trip with me!

Thailand Last Day

2010-02-17T11:05:00.009+09:00

We had a late check-out time for Anantara (which is Sanskrit for "without end") so Emily slept in while I went out to do some flower photography and scope out the breakfast choices.

The breakfast here was the best yet: awesome omelet station, Belgian Waffles, fresh fruit, fried egg station, fresh fruit, fruit smoothies (banana vanilla was the best), fresh pineapple and mango, bacon, breads and cheeses.

I ate A LOT! It was fabulous. Then we headed down to the beach and and relaxed in the sun for an hour and played in the ocean for a long time.

We headed to the pool for some more sun and refreshing swimming.

We then retired to the luxurious bath tub with the provided bath salts--which left a wonderful fragrance in our room.

Alas, we had to pack up and check out and then went to enjoy one last poolside meal, and one last chocolate and banana and whipped cream smoothie by the pool for Em.

We loved Anantara! And luckily we were charged in Bot so we have no idea how much it was!!! (I wish.) Our driver came and took us back to Bangkok were I stayed the night while Em took the red eye back to Tokyo, stopping for the a temple visit and then on to Misawa. Before she left we went across the street to the massage parlor. Em was in heaven and I had a Thai lady walking on my back! Which is actually heaven for me too!

The next morning I uneventfully flew back to Tokyo, I about cried when our plan was landing from happiness to be home! (Weird since it was Japan soil and not US, but I happen to live in Japan.) I stopped by the JAL counter in hopes of running into Em checking into her flight, but was too late. So I headed out to the Temple and and successfully navigated to the correct subway station. As I got off I saw a white man in a suit who looked like he had to be heading toward the temple. So I followed him and realized I had gone the complete wrong direction as he stopped at the New Sanno (military) hotel nearby. Oh well, I went in and got directions to the Temple from the hotel. Shortly I arrived at the temple, which was a block away from my original subway station.

As the Angel Moroni atop the temple came into view I was overwhelmed with joy. I stepped into the temple and my mind was filled with peace and I felt full of light. I had been to many different Thai temple (Wats) and shrines and even felt some holiness at some of them, but nothing compares to the presence of the Holy Ghost I felt as I entered just the lobby of the Tokyo Temple not to mention the rest of the Temple rooms.

I stopped for Raman and then came back to the hotel and now am awaiting my flight the next morning. Can't wait to be home again!!!! I miss my boys!!!

I'm off to check into my flight now!

Anantara

2010-02-14T23:55:00.003+09:00

We all know that Emily is the better blogger so I just say that Hua Hin is beautiful, or at least the Anantara Resort in Hua Hin is beautiful. We spent the whole day either in the pool or in the ocean! It was fabulous, except that now we are feeling sun drained.

This is the private pool for the lagoon room residents like ourselves. It is right next to a beautiful lagoon.

This place is very luxurious. They brought out cold hand towel to the poolside to refresh yourself. And they came in while we were at dinner and turned down our bed leaving little palm leaves with a happy valentine note on them. Plus there is a pillow menu! You call and tell them which of the eight types of pillows you want. I chose the orthopedic comfort pillow. Good Night

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Chinese New Year

Bangkok Doll Museum

2010-02-13T22:09:00.006+09:00

We love Creches, aka nativity scenes. We collect them. So we wanted a Thai Creche. Let me tell you, it is not as simple as you think. I have asked 3 or 4 interpreters. My private interpreter worked hard trying to find me one. We went on a made dash through Chantaburi trying to get one. I found a website, www.bangkokdolls.com , and they had one on there. But when you go to their directions and contact info there is none! So I kept trying and trying to find out how to get one. Then the other day I found a website for doing things with kids in Bangkok and one of the activities was to visit the Bangkok Doll Museum. I suspected it was the same place since some of the awards matched the awards won by the orginal doll maker on the first website. Still the hotel didn't recognize the address and told me to look in a completely different area. Then last night I found another website that had a map to the museum and then I confirmed that it had the same nativity. The map showed it to be in some out of the way neighborhood.

So today we headed out in a hurry, leaving around 10 am. =) and set off to try and find this place on our way to the weekend market. We got off the skytrain, hired a taxi and wound our way through some very narrow streets deep inside a real Bangkok neighborhood, you know not where tourists go. We eventually found this cute little shop/museum tucked away in this Soi (Thai for side street).

We found the nativity and after trying to understand one of the little doll makers the owner, the son of the famous doll maker came to help us. He has retired from teaching law to care for the company since his mother is old and in the hospital. He was a very kind man and very helpful and even gave us a discount since I was there doing humanitarian work for the Thai people. We were sooo happy.

This lady has been working here for over 50 years and is one of the original workers. It was cool to see this little group of about 6 working over all these dolls!

One Night (and a Day) in Bangkok

2010-02-13T00:34:00.006+09:00

Em and I had a great day together. We (she) slept in and then we had a leisurely breakfast, followed by a taxi ride to the Royal Palace, also home to Wat Phra Kaew, you know the one with the Emerald (actually Jade) Buddha. (It was originally covered in plaster til a monk noticed some green where it had flaked off on his nose.) This place was massive and beautiful!!Em took advantage of the dripping flower water blessings. We walked around there for a while and then had our first Tuk Tuk ride. It was crazy, weaving in and out of traffic on this little thing with a loud buzzing motor. It dropped us off at Wat Po. Em was just going to sit and wait since she was tired and feet were hurting (swollen =( ). But when I saw how awesome and ginourmous this reclining Buddha was I went back and had her come in. She was glad. His feet are inlaid with various mother of pearl scenes and designs.Em found us a yummy restaurant on the next street and did her first bits of shopping with the street vendors.

We then took a long traffic jammed taxi ride back to the hotel and relaxed until the Dinner cruise on the Chao Phraya River. This was so much fun. It had a live band that was actually not too bad. The river was beautiful at night with the temples and palaces lit up. It was a very romantic and fun way to celebrate Em's birthday, valentines and especially Chinese New Year. Royal Palace at night. Wat Arun or Temple of the Dawn. My favorite one on the river. (Rama (or King) VIII Bridge, I guess he was assassinated and they build it in his name. I love having my new travel buddy!!! (My picture count for today was 172! Mostly used to get good night shots that weren't blurry. Grand total so far is 894.)

Cobra Gold Endex

2010-02-12T02:19:00.005+09:00

I am writing this blog at the Starbucks at the Bangkok Airport waiting for Em. My heart keeps leaping every time I see someone that might be her, even though the last one was Asian and was holding a child. I’m a little jumpy after the crazy taxi rides I’ve had today. I assume the plane that arrived from Tokyo is hers despite the different arrival time and different flight number since the one on her itinerary doesn’t seem to exist.

Today we did half a days work at our last site since we had to high tail it to Bangkok today. Most people are leaving early tomorrow morning. It was the wrong day to cut short, especially for dental. I took out more teeth on my first patient (8) then I did all day yesterday!! My assistant May, Pim my interpreter and I have been doing tooth brushing instructions each morning for all the patients waiting to be triaged and seen. Today’s was a lot of fun. There were a lot of kids that came over to listen. They all laughed when during the brush your tongue demo. I guess I have a rather large tongue and my tech keeps making me show them and laughing! A lady yesterday visibly flinched when I showed them. Good things my self-confidence is made of steel!

While in doing one of these oral hygiene instructions this morning I saw a kid that didn’t look well and had a large swelling. I brought him over afterwards and his teeth were just horrible. I thought the swelling/asymmetry was due to an abscess but it turned out not to be tooth related. The parents claimed it was since birth, along with a history of hydrocephaly. I’m still not sure what is the cause or what it is. I took out four rotted teeth, but didn’t see a dental cause for the englarged area, neither did the physicians. Any ideas?

When we got back to the hotel, I had forgotten how nice it was!, we headed out to the night market. It was pretty cool with lots of cool stuff to buy. I thought I am in trouble if I bring Em here. So I’ll have to make sure she doesn’t know about it! =)

She’s here!!!! Buy!

Here are some of my Singaporean friends. They were two of the many great people I became friends with and worked with.

P.S. The pool party was lots of fun last night! I think we ended up throughing in about 15 people. How many people can say they threw a Thai Army Colonel into a pool and lived to tell about it! Thanks Colonel Pete!!!

Almost Done...!

2010-02-10T19:12:00.005+09:00

Not too eventful of a day. We visited our 6th site today, and have one more left tomorrow. Today was really slow with very few kids; whereas most of the others sites had tons of kids come. We're also in a less rural area.

So, since we had some extra time, I taught one of the physicians how to anesthetize and extract teeth. He did a good job!

I did see one kid who needed a tooth extracted and was very uncooperative. I got her through it, but she cried the whole time. I knew that if I didn't get it out, though, it was destined to become infected/abscessed.

Here is a picture of her after. Looks very happy and grateful don't you think?
I'll throw this one in too...
The traffic is crazy here. They have so many scooters, and they pile the whole family on!
I saw a family of four with two little kids all on the same little scooter driving through the busy streets.

These guys are pretty cute:
Tonight we are having a farewell pool party to say thanks to all the interpreters. They really have been extremely good. My interpreter Pim was great at helping us set up, work with patients, break down our dental stuff, help load the trucks each day and interpret for us, as well as being our tour guide on our excursions! Thanks Pim!

Now just one more day of work and then I get to see my BEAUTIFUL WIFE!

Namtokphlio National Park and Chaolao Beach

2010-02-09T20:15:00.006+09:00

First off, this hotel's breakfast is absolutely amazing. A lady is on standby ready to make fresh juice with her juicer. I visited her three times for about seven glasses of juice. Awesome! Pineapple-guava turned out to be the best. There is another station of omelet and fried egg makers: my omelet was fabulous as well. Can't wait until morning!

Following breakfast, a group of us headed out to find the Priew waterfall in a national park. As we approached we saw lots of really long green beans for sale. A few minutes later I found out they were to feed the fish. These fish were insane. You throw a piece of bean in and a hundred fish all dive after it.

Later we dangled our feet in, after seeing people swimming with them, and they nibbled my toes rather innocently. After feeding the fish we went on a trek around the park above and around the water fall. At one point we followed the wrong trail for 20 minutes until we figured out the correct way to go.

Afterwords we went to a little beach town called Chaolao. We had lunch in a little open air hut: lots of yummy Thai seafood. Followed by a some fun in the water.

We couldn't believe how warm the water was. It was as warm as a nice bath! Warmer than our swimming pool, which is really nice. I've never been in ocean water that warm. The beach was beautiful.The afternoon ended with a mad dash through Chantaburi to find the Catholic Church that said they had a Nativity for sale. We finally found it after running across a bridge, around the Church courtyard only to find a very disappointing Nativity you could buy at the Dollar Store. So the search for a nice Thai Nativity is still on!

Now I'm going to go spend the rest of the evening and night at the pool! (After talking to Em via Skype! HAPPY BIRTHDAY EM!!!)

Em is Great

2010-02-09T08:00:00.000+09:00

A Few of the many things that make Em the Greatest:

She makes the best chicken noodle soup for me when I am sick
She is the best at folding fitted sheets
She is very playful and "spirited"*
Christmas Tree Decorating skills are most superb
She makes the best whipped cream with ease
Her birthday cake skills are untouchable
She is the best ceramicist or potter I know
She likes to spend time with me
Excellent taste in everything
So very artistic
She is the best and most loyal friend to others and Me
Has a great decorating eye
Is a very tender mother, full of love
She is letting me miss her B-Day to go to Thailand for 3 weeks without her!
She is a hot chocolate connoisseur

*this is what I call it when she tries to pick fights with me and pick on me and/or torment me especially when I am trying to fall alsleep.
**My sister doesn't like it when I talk in the superlative but I can't help it when referring to Em!

The LONG Road to Chantaburi

2010-02-09T01:04:00.004+09:00

We left Ratchaburi and headed across Thailand through Bangkok to Chantaburi this morning and about 10 hours later we arrived at the hotel. (This is part of the Bangkok Skyline.)Everytime we drive somewhere the estimated drive time is only half of what the real drive time has been. The first trip was 3 hours=actual time 7 hours. Today was supposed to be 3 or 4 and ended up beign 10. Now today we did take a 2 hour break in Pattaya. The drives during the day is brutal. The "air conditioning" is grossly inadequate for the heat along with the sun beating through the windows. (Except for a couple of the vans, one person even had a blanket on as they drove by us!!!) Even our Thai interpreter is struggling with the heat!

I was quite glad to leave the Golden City Hotel in Ratchaburi. It housed all the smells of Thailand in one place. The rooms smelt bad (as we checked into the rooms a maid was running around spraying air freshener into all the rooms.), and then the hallways had their own aroma as did the lobby. Then all that was compounded by the agriculture smells from outside. The previous motel at the resort was less smelly but we shared rooms and the beds were the hardest substance known to man. This is all meant to lead up to the resort at which we are staying for the last 3 days of our trip. It is nice. There was a lady waiting with glasses of juice as we approached the reception desk and another with cool towels to refresh ourselves. Instead of the film and feathers in the pool at the last place, this pool is perfectly warm and refreshing. The rooms are nice and best of all there are no unpleasant smells so far.

Those 2 hours mentioned above were great hours. We stopped at a Garden Park where you can see different Thai culture shows, elephant shows and rides and the grounds are covered in beautiful plants. My friends and I headed straight for the elephant rides. I'm not sure what our interpreter told the elephants drivers, but we got hooked up. Instead of the quick ride the other tourist had, the drivers took us farther away and then let us get down from the seat and onto the neck of the elephant where the driver had been sitting! It was great and actually a lot more comfortable then the padded bench seat. It was great riding ON the elephant as it lumbered back and forth with its large ears whipping my ears.We followed this awesome experience with an equally awesome meal at one of the restaurants. Then we headed back to the elephants and feed them some bananas. As we gathered for a group photo we jumped at the chance to take one with one of the elephants that came walking by. I asked the driver guy if he would let the elephant lift me up onto its back. Next thing I know he is having the elephant wrap me up in its trunck and hefting me up in the air. It was so fun!!! And look at how cute this little guy is!! This is my disgust after she blew elephant snot all over me. It was worth it though. We had a great great time.

Two Peas in A Pod

2010-02-08T12:00:00.004+09:00

One thing I love about Em is how much we have in common. Here are a few things that come to mind.

We both:
love mystery books and shows
(including Agatha Christie, Mary Higgins Clark, Rumpole)
and books by PG Wodehouse
love NCIS, Lie To Me, White Collar, PSYCH, Monk, Burn Notice, 24, Alias, Lost, Survivor, The Office, and 30 Rock
enjoy collecting sand from beaches
love to read
love to eat out and try new ethnic foods
love chocolate
enjoy a competitive game of backgammon (she taught me how to play)
Have same taste in pictures, decorating
like to blog (though she forced me to start since she wouldn't ever let me post on hers)
like to pester each other
enjoy BBC videos/miniseries: Miss Marple, Poirot, Cadfael, Sherlock Holmes
love Audio Books (one of our favorites was "The Amulet of Samarkand" by Jonathan Stroud, part of the Bartimaues Trilogy)
love to frequent public libraries
love classical music and Symphonies
forget to take our books/movies back to the library on time
think we are funny (we differ in that I am the funniest)
sleep with at least 2 pillows
get cranky if we don't eat by 5 pm
love California
love to camp
love the same music (though there are some (huge) outlying differences there, the bulk is shared...)
Have an awesome sense of humor! =)
love to travel
love all things European
have the same taste in Art (though we differ on whether we think nude "Art" is p*orn or not)
in other words,
We are perfect together!

Last Day of Ratchaburi

2010-02-07T21:17:00.009+09:00

Today’s highlight was the visit to the Vet by the pet porcupine! Yes, there was a 3 year old porcupine on a leash. And since I had learned my lesson last night about approaching wildlife, I naturally avoided any interaction with this little girl. (The Vet and owner argued a bit about the gender. It looked female to me, but what do I know.)

Well, I didn’t exactly leave her alone: I did pet her and then feed her some Doritos.

(The picture will have to suffice, I've been trying to upload the video for hours now! But that Dorito was in my mouth first! She took it right out of my lips!) Good Times!!

We had a good day of steady patients. One was behaviorally pretty tough. He was a large 6 year old who was just sobbing and didn’t want any of his BOMBED-out teeth pulled. I wasn’t able to calm him and knew he was too large and strong for me to safely “force” him to do it. He really needed general anesthesia, as do most of the kids I’ve been treating. So I pretty much gave up, which is rare for me, and told the mother I couldn’t safely do anything. Then Pim, my interpreter, asks if she can try with him outside for 5 minutes (not sure if she was going to talk to him or rough him up). So they come back in and he is only sobbing a little and I was then able to talk him through each step, showing him all the things I was going to do. So I finished with out any problems. Thank you Pim! Nice work.

On the van ride back to the hotel (we drive out to each site from our central hotel, usually about 1-2 hours), I asked Pim what she said to him. She to him he had a worm in his tooth. That if the American doctor didn’t take it out it would go into his stomach and make him very sick. Also, that the American doctor is a foreigner and is the best (that part was true) and wouldn’t hurt him, but some other dentist might. Oh my! It worked I guess. A worm. Really! Into his stomach!!

Here are the cows outside my window: They smell...nice. Good morning, Ratchaburi!

Happy Birthday

2010-02-07T12:00:00.000+09:00

The Day is dragon without you here.Can't wait to see you!

This One is For Mom

2010-02-07T00:29:00.008+09:00

Sorry Mom I was very photographically, dentally, and blogily uninspired yesterday. Mom and Emily were both disappointed with lack of Thai post yesterday.

We went to our first site in the Ratchaburi Province yesterday and it wasn't very busy for dental, while for the optometry clinic they had over 450 patients! We did get a visit from a 2 star US Army General and a handfull of Colonels. They flew into the site on a Blackhawk and landed/took off from a cattle field next to our school. It whipped up a bunch of cow smell and debris!
Today was a bit better at the second site (4th total). Still, a few too few patients for my taste, but I got to teach a few of the Army how to pull some teeth: one medic and a Singaporean Doc. They thought it was awesome and I agree.

I may also have picked up head lice from some of the kids today! There were a lot of patients with it today. But there were some really cute kids too! I got to hold a very beautiful 10 month old Thai princess baby today! She was so cute!!!!

After work today we went and visited the Bat Cave! Why do they call it that? No, it's not because Bruce Wayne lives there, rather... Well just look at the pictures!
(Justin is in the blue shirt, he's the medic)
Every night around 1800 (6pm) millions of these cuddle birds take flight to gather food! They pour out of their cave for over an hour!! It is quite the sight to behold.

Notice the black "line" of bats between the temple buildings:
That's not smoke!The rock below is not usually black!!
We then went to eat at the great floating restaurant from two days ago and then visited a night Flee Market which was pretty cool! (Note to self, you cannot appease two vans full of people!!! Too many people came on this outing and we had a bit of drama. But fun nonetheless.)

Now for the horror of the evening: To get up to the bat cave you had to climb up a hill of stairs and then walk down a path. We should have believed our noses and stopped at the overwhelming smell of ammonia/bat guano. Justin and I continued down not having seen the cave and saw some monkeys. I immediately switched lenses and got some cool shots of a mama and her baby. Then saw some more as we continued on. Then we came upon some males that we scooted past a bit wary. (this is where past where we should have turned back.) As we got past them, I saw the male monkey bare his teeth at Justin's back. We soon discovered we had come to the end and had to face the monkeys again.

They however bared more teeth at us and appeared threatening-- so we retreated back to pagoda up on the mountain where Justin found us some sticks and I found an old 2X4 that was wield-able. Notice the mean one in the middle!
Newly armed we approached these primates who by now seemed a bit more cooled off. We slowly approached them, scooted down the path, and then ran!!! I could hardly take pictures of the flocks of bats as my body was shacking from the adrenaline! Justin was back down the mountain in no time. I left the path to approach the cave of bats--to my interpreters chagrin.

She got me back on the path by telling me the monkeys were coming again. WoW, was that a stupid experience!!!! Yes, Em I said it for you. Later I said to Justin, "Who is stupid enough to get that close to wild monkeys?" REALLY?

So mom, your fear of bats is nonsense, you should be deathly afraid of Thai Monkeys, like I am now!

Happy Birthday

2010-02-06T12:00:00.000+09:00

Have a Roaring Good Day !

Emily's Crushes

2010-02-05T12:00:00.002+09:00

It started out innocent enough with her elephant sized crush on John Cusack. This began to worry me when she said I have nothing to worry about unless he moves in next door. Luckily that will never happen. She even commisioned one of the young women in the ward in SF to make a Cusack Strip. So I tried to compete with that by commissioning my own of Kristen Ball. (I miss you Veronica!)
Then this crush turned into two, and then three. She tried to justify it by accusing me of having a crush on the Safeway butcher, but it was a feeble attempt. So, here to honor Em is a list of a tenth of the crushes that I can remember her admitting:

Mechanic: Jim Moone (Our RI mechanic, not sure if it was the dad or son, probably both!)
Pottery Teacher Crush: Some guy on You-Tube with NICE forearms
John Cusack
Old Man Crush: Mark Harman NCIS
Female Lab Tech Crush: Abby from NCIS
Prophet Crush: President Hinckley (Can't blame her on this one)
John Cusack
Slightly overweight Chef crush: Julia (America's Test Kitchen)
Ugly Man crush: Gary Sinise.
Japanese Piano Tuner/Restorer Crush: Abe-san. (I guess it is because he wears a suit and bow-tie while fixing pianos. And parts his hair down the middle.)
Mr. Darcy.
Doctor Crush: Dr. B., Max's pediatrician in S.F. (may also be a gay crush)

I'll just feel lucky she chose me!

Ratchaburi-Floating Market and Phra Prang Wat

2010-02-04T17:51:00.011+09:00

After our driver took us to the wrong spot, a floating market that had no boats and no market, we eventually got to the right place. The Damnoensaduak Floating Market. It is a series of canals with tourist traps/shops along the side and people in boats trying to sell you their wares. The boats had mostly food, fruit, and drinks. Pim, my interpreter and barterer extraordinaire, got us some Thai pancakes to try, they were thin crispy crepe' type things with what was either a melted marshmallow or meringue with some shredded things on top. I'm hoping for marshmallow so I don't get sick tonight. They were yummy, but I was a little scared of getting sick. We keep getting braver and braver or stupider and stupider the longer we are here, trying things less and less "safe." But I haven't gotten sick yet! This is Pim. I got some good wood elephant statues and a few other cool things. I did some hard core bartering via Pim. For example one elephant started at 4000 Bot and I eventually got one for 800 at different stall. That's a difference of about 110 Dollars!!
After the market we had a great lunch with a yummy Thai soup and awesome cashew chicken. Then we went to a cool temple patterned after Ankor Wat. It was over 1000 years old and had hundreds of statues of Buddha in different poses. This is my favorite picture from today.

Emily as a teenager+ (Caution)

2010-02-04T12:00:00.000+09:00

What a cute missionary couple! "I'll wait for you T!" (yeah right!)
Not sure on this one.
Who gave you those?

Hmmmmmm? Don't let out daughter see this one!

Kanchanaburi, Thailand

2010-02-03T23:20:00.006+09:00

I am really tired today so just a little blog with some pics. We drove to our new city today and it was HOT and the van had very little if any poor AC and the sun was beating down on my side of the van. We left Vachiralongkorn Resort, where we have been staying, and drove to Ratchaburi. This is an actual hotel in an actual, albeit small, city. It is a stark contrast seeing some actual city life after living in such a rural area the last 5 days. On the way we stopped in Kanchanaburi to see the bridge over the River Kwai. Again this is part of the death railway that claimed over 90,000 asians and 15,000 POWs in WWII to supply the Japanese with weapons from Burma-Thailand.

This is the Bridge: the curved spans are original, the middle ones the Japanese replaced after the war. We bombed the bridge. Nice shooting, Air Force!!!This is one of the trains they used:
And some of my new friends!
I got to pet and hold a little baby cat! Only 50 Bot!! (about $1.50)
He nibbled on my hand a bit. Here he is licking me and it hurt like really coarse sand paper over and over again on my hand.

Now I'm going to bed.
If you want to check out where the two sites were that we went to, type in these coordinates to google maps:
Site 1: N 14 56.075 E 98 39.891
Site 2: N 15 02.235 E 98 34.602

Emily as a child

2010-02-03T12:00:00.002+09:00

Again, she is the smaller of them all. Cute Kid!
I love the lion's mane of hair!

Site 2

2010-02-02T21:48:00.008+09:00

This was our second day of work. It went a lot like yesterday. We had a lot more kids though. So I only treated the kids, which was great. We had a lot more Burmese people as well. This added an even greater level of difficulty. So I struggle to speak to my interpreter who interpreted to the Burmese interpreter who then sometimes would communicate to the child. Ahhh! Very frustrating. The kids today we also much more scared and I had to hold them down a lot especially with the lack of communication.

This site was about another 20 minutes north of yesterday's school at the top of the lake/reserviour by the hotel. As we got up there we started seeing lots of huts/houses out on the lake. It looked so cool. I tried snapping photos from the moving van with out too much luck and then the school at which we worked was right on the lake with lots of these houses.
After our convoy returned to the hotel we went back out and drove to the top of the Dam near the hotel. I guess this resort is run by the energy dept of Thailand and the Dam is a hydroelectric dam. When we got to the top of the dam we found out that there is a herd of monkeys living up there. They were really cool. I've always wanted to see wild monkeys and havn't been able to see the ones up in Northern Japan yet.We ended the evenings adventures in another little town searching for fresh fruit and an ATM. I loaded up on another pineapple, more sapadilla, mangos, fresh whole coconut and mini bananas. Our interpreters introduced us to a yummy treat from one of the street carts (careful of these). It was like a cross between a lumpia wraper and a crepe' they cooked on a hot plate and then added in a mixture of egg, banana, and sweetened condensed milk. It was splendid! (We also had some fried banana at the work site.) Then we ended the night as the sun went down with another view of the river Kwai.

It has been so much fun helping these poor people (especially lots of little kids) and then being able to go and see their country and experience their culture. I LOVE the silhouette of these mountains!

Emily as a Baby

2010-02-02T12:00:00.000+09:00

How cute!
She is the littlest in these photos.

She is in her mom's arms.

Cobra Gold Site 1

2010-02-02T03:00:00.001+09:00

Today was the first day of our exercise. We showed up to an elementary school--where some Army guys have been building a school building for the past week--and set up our clinics. We had a triage area and from triage, patients went to Family Practice, Pediatrics, Dental, and Optometry. Optometry was the busiest as everyone seemed to want new glasses. It was great to finally start doing some dentistry! The people were awesome and very grateful. They were very stoic with their pain. For the most part, the teeth weren't quite as bad as I had expected: a lot like the really poor I saw in residency, though some were very bad. I guess the difference was that the poor dental state was the norm with them rather than the exception in residency. One little girl had a severely decayed tooth that had formed a fistula through the jaw and out the side of her check. Poor thing.I was happy to be able to use my specialty and help some of the kids, especially ones that the Oral Surgeon wasn't able to extract a tooth on. I was able, with the help of a great interpreter, to help the boy complete the procedure with minimal trouble.

I even got to play a little soccer with a few little boys before we left!
We did a lot of hard work and then packed everything up and returned to our hotel. We go back out in the morning to another school.

After we got back a few of us went out to finally see a bit of Thailand. We took a couple of interpreters and a driver and ended up at a hot spring. Though we were not prepared for this, we didn't let it keep us from enjoying it. At least until 50 Russian tourists showed up in bikinis and speedos! Luckily it wasn't a Japanese Onsen and people kept their clothes on!

Then the interpreters took us to a restaurant on the River Kwai. We let them order and ended up with some great fish dishes and I even tried fried frog! Not my favorite. This fried fish dish was my favorite. I took a lot of pictures of the people and here are two of my favorites, one old and one young. This little boy was watching the older boys play soccer. I grabbed him and let him play a little and then he retreated back over to watch. They are such cute kids.

Happy Birthday

2010-02-01T23:30:00.000+09:00

Good News I saw a dog today.
Happy Birthday!

Drugs and Karaoke (Yesterday's Post)

2010-02-01T23:21:00.002+09:00

I thought we would have time to go explore today, but instead we had to go through all the supplies and divide the drugs into predispensed packages. This was to make it go faster in the field tomorrow. And after counting pill for 5 hours I can see how it definitely would have decreased the number of people we could treat if we had to do all the dispensing in the field. So about 20 of us from 5 different countries sat around some tables on a patio and divided doses of about 20 different drugs: from ibuprofen to amoxicillin to mucinex to multivitamins. It was not the most fun thing to do, but we had a good time. Most of the fun was had at the expense of the only two Air Force personnel among the 97% Army personnel. There was much friendly banter going on. For example I tried to bring up a discussion on how the AF has changed it PT (Physical Training) test, and the Army Sergeant next to me said, without skipping a beat, “Did they make the walk shorter?” Funny Funny Funny. We looked like a drug cartel cutting and counting out a bunch of illegal drugs in some back shop.
Once we got the supplies sorted and split into 7 groups for our 7 treatment days, we loaded the truck and returned to our rooms to wash up for the icebreaker social.

Insert some background since some if not all may be clueless as to what I am doing in Thailand: It is a mission called Cobra Gold for the Thai people in some remote areas. What I didn’t know is that it is a multinational force. We have physicians, dentist, nurses, pharmacists from the US, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, as well as Thailand. All from their respective militaries. So I stayed up late last night chatting with a doctor from Singapore and an optometrist from San Diego. Its pretty cool meeting all these people.

During our break this evening 2 of the other guys, who happen to be Mormon, and I got together and held our own mini Sacrament meeting. It was very special. As we held a little service I was struck by how the work we are about to begin is following the example of the Savior: We are helping the sick and afflicted, trying to heal them the best we can. Christ spent much of his ministry healing people like we will see here. It is a special mission we get to be part of.

Then we had a social where we got to know some of the newly arrived people as well as our interpreters. Each of the doctors get an interpreter. I think this is pretty awesome. Mine’s name is Pim. She is a very nice Thai lady with a lot of spunk. She immediately started joking with us and is scared of teeth/dental stuff. It should be a blast. The dinner was followed by some Karaoke and let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you have seen a Thai man sing and dance to a Thai country song. Me and two others stood to leave once someone decided The Titanic song was a good choice. What is the only thing that could entice us to stay longer? A tray of fresh pineapple. We finished them off and then left. They have this mixture of course salt and course sugar mixed with ground chili pepper. It is spicy and good. I put on both some guava and pineapple. YUM YUM YUM!

Birthday Brat!

2010-01-31T22:36:00.001+09:00

Em will be turning "28" on February 9th! Unfortunately I will not be able to be with her this year, so since she is such a prolific talented blogger I will dedicated a blog a day until her Birthday! So Em, check each day for your Birthday Blog and maybe I'll bring you back an elephant from Thailand!

Some background on birthday traditions: The original Dubs hang birthday signs in the kitchen. Most of these were drawn with the help of Ed Emberly how to draw books. They were usually a little silly and a bit corny but fun and creative.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEETIE!

Fresh Fruit and a Round of Golf

2010-01-30T20:34:00.003+09:00

I woke up a bit early, 2 hour time change (nothing this world traveler can't take in-stride). I read for a while then went on a little jog with some of the other people on this trip, we can't go anywhere alone for safety and accountability reasons. Then had a yummy rice soup/porridge for breakfast.

We got briefed on what to expect starting Monday and had my suspicions confirmed that no one knows what we are doing. We are going to two sites on M and Tu. They are at elementary schools and people from the surrounding area will show up for medical, dental, veterinary, and optometry treatment. Its going to be crazy but fun. We sat around a lot waiting for our truck with all the supplies to show up so we could organize it.

I joined a group going into "town" (a main street with some stores) to get make some copies and get some Bot. I went cause my body has been craving fresh fruit. I spotted a little street side fruit vendor and bought a watermelon, pineapple, dragon fruit, mango, mandarins, and a some other little ball of goodness. Not sure what it was. (I just searched, and I mean searched and found that it is called

Sapodilla ละมุด Manilkara zapota.

It was really good. (They are the ones on the bottom right corner). This afternoon Me and a few of the other guys went and played 9 holes of golf here at the resort. It was a great coarse. We paid about 18 bucks for 9 holes, clubs, and a caddy! in the jungles of Thailand!! The caddies were great. They laughed at our poor golf game. Then I had the most fulfilling moment of my life to this point (no not really) when I hit a good shot onto the green and my caddy lady beamed and gave me a thumbs up.Notice the beautiful steep mountain at the end of the hole. These are surrounding us here.I may have spent a good amount of time in the trees. Darn slice!After golf I got some shrimp and rice noodles for dinner. It wasn't spicy so I placed a 2 mm segment of a tiny chili on it which just exploded fire into my mouth. It was great. I had another.

Then I ended the evening with a short swim in the pool and Skype with Em.

A fun day indeed.

So Was dee Krab

2010-01-29T21:14:00.004+09:00

I have safely completed my first and second legs of my trip, I'm not sure how many legs this animal has, but they are long legs! Our connecting flight out of Narita, Tokyo, was delayed 2 hours so we had 7+ hours to spend at the Airport. We arrived in Bangkok at 1:30 am (3:30 am Japan time!). Stood in line at customs for over an hour, they were really slow. Got the hotel and made it to bed at about 4:30 am, 23 hours after Gabe woke me up yesterday.

This morning, same morning as check in at the hotel, we had a fabulous buffet breakfast that ranged from french toast to fresh fruit to curry and ramen and back to omlets and potatoes. Maxwell, the lover of all buffets, would have been in heaven and I said as much to May, dental tech accompanying me. We met up with the rest of the MEDCAP, not sure what that means but it is all the medical people on this humanitarian mission, yes I am on a humanitarian mission in Thailand if you didn't know that yet. Then we got into van/buses and took a 3 hour, this is how long the driver said it would take, and arrived some where near Burma 7 hours later. My neck hurts from looking out the window so much!!! Let me interject that the driving here is insane!!! Our driver is driving half in the lane half out to allow faster cars to pass, yet there is a moped on the other side of us approaching a stalled truck on the side of the street!!!! Or there are mopeds weaving through the traffic on the wrong side of the road. Some how it works with some unseen sense of order. Multiple times though we saw little 2 year olds ridding on the mopeds with their mom. Scary!

We eventually made it to our hotel, which is like a motel on a golf course in some mountain valley area near the Burma (Myanmar)/Thai border. And I just finished my spicy chicken over rice which was 25 Bot, about 75 cents!!! I thought I ordered curry but it was still good and spicy despite being assured it was MILD. Loved it.

I have always been fascinated with Thailand and it was the one asian country I've really wanted to visit, yet I had a hard time getting excited since there is a lot of administrative hassle to going on a trip for the AF, and havn't had much clue about what I am going to do. Yet know that I am hear and felt the energy of Bangkok and have traveled through half the country of Thailand I am very excited. Now bring on those rotten teeth!!!! (I assume I'll be pulling lots of teeth, given there are any instruments to use!!!!)

The country side has been pretty. Lots of coconut palms and lots of banana trees. We past a lot of sugar cane fields as well. About 4 hours into the 3 hour drive there were some huge moutains looming on the horizon. We soon entered these and saw some cool rivers here and there. We passed through the area where the Japanese built the Death Railway with all the POWs and slaves in WWII, in Kanchanaburi Province.

Here are a few photos I snapped on the way today.
There are lots of overloaded trucks carrying various items. Here is the egg truck.
Friendly bus patron.
I loved seeing this monk in a coffee shop at one of the pit stops along the way. The pit stops started out nice, but started getting worse and worse til I found myself peeing in an exposed urinal on the side of a building, no walls no privacy just a urinal. Oh, and their squatters are even worse than the jappanese ones. They have a bucket of water for you to wash yourself in and then scoop to wash out the "debris." But I digress here is your monk.

Engrish

2010-01-24T21:17:00.004+09:00

Em and I went out to eat at our first Chinese Restaurant in Japan last night, Karinba. It was pretty good. While waiting to be seated I noted the clock had an airplane on the second hand flying around the clock. Em asked if I had read what it said on it. After reading it I decided to regularly share some good Engrish encounters with you. How regularly? As reuglarly as I fell like. For those of you not familiar with the word engrish, it is english words arranged in a manner as to have the appearance of a profound statement but which has no real meaning, usually the result of a translation from Japanese to English, which just doesn't make it all the way to real English. "Engrish" has an "r" because that is how an L is pronounced in Japanese. So what did the clock say you ask?

"MY DESIRE IS BASED COMMUNICATION WITH OTHERS"

So true don't you think!

My Best Day of Skiing

2010-01-16T22:50:00.004+09:00

I had Friday off and Em was supportive and encouraging of me to go skiing with a couple of buddies, Cole and Brad. We went to Appi, anyone been there it in northern Japan. Very accessible if you live here!
It was awesome. There was about 30 inches of fresh powder. The groomed runs even had 2-4 inches of powder. The longest line was for the gondola, about 6 people! It was a little cold and snowy but not too bad. After we had a great lunch of hot ramen with wontons we headed back out for a couple of runs in some strong winds that almost blew Cole on his snowboard down the wrong run. But we found some sheltered slopes and then finished the day at their jump park. It really was one of the best days of skiing I can remember.

Then today I took Max skiing at a one lift resort 45 minutes from our house where you can buy a lift ticket for 2 hours. The first run was good. Then Max got frustrated and I was so close to vowing to never take him again. Then after forcing him to do one more run he began having lots of fun and did another 4 runs and started getting the hang of it a bit more.

Merry Christmas To All....

2009-12-27T22:15:00.008+09:00

Here are a few of our CHRISTmas highlights. The first is the we had the two missionaries from Hachinohe over for dinner on Christmas Eve, one of which is Australian. It turns out he has no clue about Rudolph, but he shared the following song with us, who knew what Santa used Down Under!

We also made Gingerbread houses with some friends, The Webers, Beckers and Tuckers.

Had a fabulous Christmas Eve dinner with lots of friends: the Pattersons and Alleys minus Merrill, who did Skype us as he was boarding the plane to Afghanistan!

Did the Nativity with the children, it is very fun seeing their excitement. Here's the cast!

Went sledding as well as ice skating!

Had a fabulous Christmas Morning with the Boys, one of the best ever. Max loved his legos that Santa got on Ebay. Sam loved his "whool town Geotrax" Santa found on the Misawa virtual yard sale. Santa is a bargain shopper!

Farnsworths came over for a Christmas dinner and games just like last year, minus Em cracking her head open (on a sharp corner last year, luckily he's a doctor with super glue).

Igloo

2009-12-22T17:45:00.003+09:00

Today the snow was perfect. I got home from a couple of errands and Em wanted me to stay inside. I said No way the snow is too perfect. So I went out with the boys and wore myself out building this:
The whole neighborhood of kids ended up migrating over and taking part. Last year I never got the roof on, but was able to complete it this year!

Christmas Treats

2009-12-20T23:53:00.000+09:00

This year Em made home made marshmallows and I made peppermint fudge for our neighbors.

Why am I telling you this? Because I wanted to show you these:

These are the sticky beaters Em let him have from the marshmallows.And this is after I put them in the sink to be cleaned, after he'd been working on them for 15 minutes.

Favorite Pictures From Kyoto

2009-11-22T22:34:00.000+09:00

Here are some of my favorite pictures of the 300 or so pictures from our October Kyoto trip. IT was quite a daunting task to get through them and delete the extras. Em even accuses me of deleting some of the pictures she wanted to use, but that is bollocks I do declare.

The Kyoto tower. Seen from a high walkway over Kyoto station, reached by accident after riding 7 "terrifying" (for Em) escalators.
Also in Nara- Kasuga Shrine know for its thousands of lanterns. Really cool to see them lining every path. People donate money to the shrine and get on of these. Kinda like a donors wall.

Nijo Castle

The floors of Nijo Castle. Called nightingale floors, this metal apparatus causes the floor to creak so no one can sneak up and kill the Shogun. (The Shogun was the Military leader while the Emporer was the ultimate Divine leader. It seems this was a common power struggle for Japan. The Shogun had to live in Edo Tokyo while the Emporer lived in Kyoto, while it was the Capital. This castle is the place the Shogun stayed while visiting in Kyoto. It was filled with the most amazing wall paintings and wooden carvings on doors etc.)

Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion)

(Max's piano teacher wrote the name of this temple in Kanji in M's piano book after seeing the pics on facebook)This place was beautiful, but crowded with these fun kids. They loved seeing Gabe, who is on my shoulders right now, and then went crazy when I took out the camera.

The Gion-the district of the Geisha. I was among a group of paparazzi waiting out on this street to catch a glimpse of a geisha unfortunately I didn't see any before we went to see a show where two did perform a dance.

In Nara city is the Todaiji Temple, which houses the largest Bronze Buddha in the world and boy is he big.

This is also where the attack of the "tame" deer happened.
This one was Em's. I was trying to get a good shot but failed. Good work Em!
On the last day we went to Kiyomizu-dera, another Buddhist temple. This was the final thing I wanted to see. It was also in the same district where all the famous Kyotoware, ceramics that proved to be out of our price range. As well as the home of one of the most famous Kyoto potters. Em toured the house while the boys and I played Simon says in the little neighborhoods streets.
The wooden balcony is famous for being built of only wood. Ice cream of course.

Notice the Kyoto tower to the right of the pagoda. I liked having the modern tower with the ancient one.

Put Christ into X-Mas

2009-11-21T07:20:00.002+09:00

I was waiting for Max to finish his piano lesson one evening and saw a schedule on a white board. It was a group's meeting schedule. On it was a meeting for a X-mas party. So I wiped the X with my finger and wrote in Christ.

So there!!!!

Ever since being a little kid, no I not still a little kid Em, I have hated seeing X-Mas. The first time I remember seeing it was a sign on I-80 in Fairfield for X-Mas Trees. Ever since I cringe each time I see Christ's name abbreviated as an X. It it the perfect symbol for how far our society is from the true worship of Christ on Christmas.

Well, have a good Christmas, a happy x-ikah, a happy X-zaa, and a merry festivus for the rest of us!

Primary Program

2009-11-18T22:02:00.002+09:00

Sunday we had our primary program. It was awesome.

It was filled with equal parts humor, tragedy, drama, and of course some spirituality.

Naturally you had the little boy up there waving at his parents in the back of the chapel the whole time. Then there is the kid who does the drive by with his line: not stopping at the podium, but rather his voice starts out low as he approaches the mic and then then is unintelligible as he brushes by it with his lips and then fades out as he passes. The kid who seems to give his part in a foreign language (this is the majority of them) and one where only every other word is a real word. Those who forgot their lines and then there are the kids who know their line perfectly. Those who have an adorable voice. The little kid who surprises you by knowing his part and saying it clearly at the correct distance from the microphone. The most classic of all was showcased by Max at the beginning.

It was the song "I lived in Heaven." The primary chorister arranged it so that Max and two other 7/8 year old boys to sing the second verse. They were positioned in front of the podium and had even been correctly instructed in how/when to raise and lower the microphone for the second verse. I was seated in the back with the two babies (see Em's blog for explanation as the the acquisition of a second baby, yes Gabe is still a baby.) So I couldn't really see Max up front. Then the music started and there was Max's beautiful monotonic voice singing directly into the mic twice to three times as loud as all the other kids. Everyone was smiling and giggling as they looked backward at me. It got really hot in there for a while as I tried not to laugh at it too. It was very funny. He sounded wonderful though and knew all the words to the song. Eventually the microphone was repositioned but he was still near it and continued to out do the other kids.

It was a great program, spiritual as well as entertaining. I made me miss teaching primary while I listened to all those kids singing about Jesus and eternal families. Children are great.

Veteran's Day

2009-11-11T21:28:00.005+09:00

We went bowling today because the weather was as gloomy as Em's bowling. Usually she is a good to great bowler, but today she was a little off. We are attributing it to the fetus. We went with our good friends. We had two lanes of kids and one for the adults. I finsihed the game with a Turkey to take the lead! My first one! Alas, the combined spouse score wasn't enough to be the H's and we bought the milkshakes. =(

Em and I also got to go on a date to see "Julie and Julia." No Wes it wasn't my idea and I didn't enjoy it. (I actually did like it but don't tell my friends, I just like cooking and Meryl Streep did such a good job I forgot it was her so I enjoyed it.) (I don't like Meryl Streep). It was funny sitting next to two vegetarians while watching them cook so much meat and debone ducks.

Oh Yeah! We also watched and quoted THREE AMIGOS!!!!!!!!! True Story.

The Ride to the Post Office with Sam

2009-11-03T22:16:00.003+09:00

Dad after dinner after the Alley's leave can we pwease pwease pwease play Lego Star Wars?

No, I have a meeting tonight with the Branch President.

Oh yeah. He sucks.*

Why?

One time at the Halloween Party he spanked my bootie. For no reason.

Was he kidding?

No.

I think he was.

TRICKED YOU!! HA HA HA HA

(then a minute later)

Tricking is supposed to happen!

-----
Quote 2

Dad when you went to Jerusalem did you pray and then Jesus came down and you saw him?

No, but I did pray and feel the Holy Ghost.

Well you were more faithful than us.

*Emily would like to state for the record that she does not say "sucks" in front of children.

The longest Day of my life...Or how to get from Fairfield toTokyo

2009-10-21T06:16:00.000+09:00

On Tuesday morning I awoke ready to head to the SF international airport (SFO). I had buffered in a lot of time at each step of the trip, driving, traffic, bridge, rental car return, Airtrain to terminal, checking in, security. The only thing I didn't buffer for was the TCCOR 3. Turns out that the typhon that hit Japan, and caused Emily to have to move the trampoline, came to play with the bay area. I began to trip balancing between hurrying to the airport and hydroplanning. This became academic once I hit the halfway point and couldn't go much faster than a bannana slug. So I listened to liberal public radio and didn't stress since NPR kept telling me that the the average time for delays at SFO was over 2.5 hours. One 4 lane stretch of the freeway was reported to be flooded with only one lane passable. By the time I got there they had luckily drained it and the traffic began to move again. (That was about 3 miles from SFO). So I had buffered two hours for the drive and it took close to 3.

Anyway I got to the United Checkin counter and the lady asked if she could help me. It was 11am and the flight leaves at 11:30. "I'm really late for my flight to Tokyo." "Yes", she said, "come over here and lets see what we can do." Turns out that delay stuff didn't apply to my flight. She was super kind and helpful and got me on the 1:30 flight which luckily wasn't sold out and had an exit row seat available. At least this way I got to have lunch there and buy Em her Boudin sourdough bread round for her clam chowder I bought her at Boudin's at the Wharf. (She loved it.)

Made it onto the plane just fine and we taxied out. Then we sat at the runway for 2 hours!!! There was too strong a cross wind for the plane to take off. I guess the trampoline really was in danger if this mammoth 777 couldn't handle it! Luckily there was a nice Japanese stewardess (Ai) sitting near me. But the delay allowed some guy to come and sit next to me invading the little bit of heaven I had in my emergency row by myself. Due to this inconvienience the stewardess and her collegues treated me extremely nice the whole time. Offered me champagne at the end, extra snackes a whole bottle of water instead of just a cup and a little bag of comfort from 1st class. United was very kind to me that day. This long trip was fine since the people around me were nice. Thank you Ai and other ladies who helped me.

Once in Tokyo, Narita Airport, I took the 1.5 hours bus ride, on the Friendly Airport Limousine, (If you call a bus a limo does it make it more comfortable), to the Haneda Airport and spent the night in a smoking Hotel Room. Not happy about that one. The next day I flew up to Misawa with no untoward events and was reunited gleefully by my family. The boys gave me the three best hugs!

*Quick Airline Review for International Travel: Delta has the best in-flight entertainment, United was good, Northwest not too bad, American Airlines was not so nice.

5K for Fae

2009-10-19T06:03:00.002+09:00

I did the Misawa Air Base Breast Cancer Awareness 5K! I got my best time at 21:02.
(The route was allegedly 400m short, but who is counting)

Astronauts Rock!

2009-10-15T20:36:00.005+09:00

Today Sam and I and Gabe got to meet three of the NASA astronauts! They were in Misawa for the day and we happened to be in the building just as they were about to leave. I talked to the man next to me a bit and asked if he'd been "out there" yet and he said he'd been on one mission to the space station to drop off some Japanese parts and work on the Japanese part of the station. He did 3 space walks. I asked how it was and he said it is indescribable and life changing to see the earth from space. Wow! How cool. Yeah, well I get to do fillings on screaming kids!!! That is life changing too! It was real neat to meet them and feel a tiny particle of their coolness. I actually wasn't that exited when I heard they were here, but when I was next to them it was really cool and exciting. They were very kind to all the kids and adults.

I asked Sam what they do and he responded "They go into space and protect us from the aliens."

*Thank you Mrs. Irvine for taking Sam's picture!
**Sam saw both his Kindergarten teacher and teacher's aid today. He ran to both of them and gave them both giant hugs. I'm so happy to see him doing well this year! He even walked around the track where we saw on of them holding her hand the whole lap.

I left my heart in San Francisco and just found it again!

2009-10-13T05:42:00.001+09:00

I spent the last weekend in SF for a dental seminar. It was so fun being back in my city by the bay. (Yes you can draw out the word bay in the voice of Steve Perry, most acceptable.) My mom was going to meet me at the Airport, from Utah, and when I spotted her, my Dad was there too!!!

So we started off our trip with Costco, of course. (You don't understand so don't try). Then reaffirmed my love for Chevy's Salsa. Followed by a trip through Golden Gate Park. We spent an hour on the chilly Baker Beach which has The GG Bridge at its northern end (as well as nude gay men, but we ignored that). Then we visited the art studio of Paul Ferny. He has awesome landscape paintings and was a very nice gallery host. (Thanks Paul!!!! We'll buy a painting someday!) Checked into the hotel and then ate dinner at my Dad's favorite SF spot, The Tadich Grill, also the oldest restaurant in SF. Fabulous calamari steak.

The next day we went to the Oakland Temple, bought Max some scriptures for his upcoming baptism in December, all are invited! Then we went to Fog City Diner, yum, topped off with a Ghirardelli Hot Fudge Sundae, the best in the world. Followed by an air show with the Blue Angels! They were practising for the Fleet Week Air Show on Sat/Sun for which they didn't fly, due to fog.

We then went up to my old school and home. I became teary eyed when I saw our old apartment and smelt the beautiful eucalyptus scent in the air. I loved it there! IT was weird though not having any friends there to visit.

My brother Mark came and we fulfilled our old tradition eating in North Beach, SF's Italian district, and getting Gelato. Trattoria Pinocchio is my favorite restaurant there and we tried lots. Get the gnocchi! He stayed the night with us and may or may not have slept in my bed. Brothers!

Then my class started on Friday. That night I went over to Fisherman's Wharf and got a whole dungenous crab and my fav Boudin's clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. Got Em some maternity clothes at Old Navy and the boys some star wars shirts. (Don't tell her she hasn't seen them yet.) Saturday was great cause I met our Friends from SF ward (yes we also went to Cheesecake Factory.) It was great to see Shelly, Alex, and Adrienne and Kathy too. It was awesome to hear about all the youth doing well with whom we worked while in SF. Good job guys!!!!

OK, Sunday the class ended and I took the Ferry across the Bay and my brother picked me up and brought me back to his house in Fairfield. Today we went golfing and did some of Em's bidding at Walmart. (Cheap stuff adds up fast!)

Now we are going to In-N-Out and tonight Pietros's, our fam's fav pizza!

So the trip can be summed up as Eating Shopping and Eating oh and some Family too. Its a nice life!!!!! Now I have to work some suitcase magic.

-pictures will most likely be added at some point.

One of my favorite Joys

2009-09-30T20:57:00.004+09:00

The Market!

Just off base is a little market with kind Japanese women running it. Just stepping inside lifts my spirit and soothes my soul. They usually have great prices on their produce too. For example, those giant green onions were 100Yen, the tomatoes 300Yen. The tomatoes at the commissary would have been three times that much probably, Plus its local and really fresh not to mention uniform dark red through out the whole tomato. They have some of the best little yellow cherry tomatoes too. You can't tell the scale but those green pears are about as big as my foot and the the onions as long as my arm! I also saw a Nashi or asian pear there today for 400Yen. It was beautiful and I barely was able to put it down and walk away. They are one of the greatest things to eat.

This feeling is only surpased by the trip to the Apple Lady. My friend calls it the Apple Market and since she was here first, I guess she is right. Anyway it is right by the train station and church. This lady is so nice and always throws in something for free, like a basket of plums or the like. There I buy a crate of about 80 apples for 1000Yen, where as they are at least a dollar at the commissary

Side note: I have never ever had as good an apple as I've had in Japan. They are so crisp, flavorful and juicy delicious.

One last market is the 9 day market. A true farmers market. It is at a plaza in the city on ever day of the month with a 9 in it: 9/19/29. Here you can get anything from fruit to veggies to honey to seeds to flowers to fish to garage sell items. There is one vendor there that is totally high pressure sales. Whenever I buy something she/they will pretend cry until I buy more. Kinda funny and it works.

Well, that is why I'm feeling bloggy today! despite being exhausted.

Darn Kids

2009-09-14T22:03:00.004+09:00

Today I was feeling happy, despite a generally hard/bad day, I guess it was just really sunny out. Anyway, I took Gabe Jogging in the bike trailer converted to jogger stroller and stopped at the BX to buy the boys some toys. Gabe was excited about his transformer and equally excited about giving Max and Sam theirs, well I think he was partial to Max.

So we got back and Gabe rushed to take them theirs. I gave M and S their new transformers and they were so excited jumping up and down cheering and chanting: DAD YOU ARE SO AWESOME. I LOVE YOU. I CAN' T BELIEVE HOW COOL YOU ARE!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YO SO MUCH!

well, that wasn't exactly what happened.

Gabe did rush to give them the toys and I did give them to them. After which Sam promptly took his and went back to watching his friend play the DS. Max at least forced out a meager Thanks Daddy after I stared him down.

Luckily I had prepared myself by trying to erase my expectations, at least the majority of them.

Anyway, they do like them and I was feeling like they could use a random gift from their yenny pinching father.

-I also understand that sometimes the true excitement doesn't show all the time when you get a present. I have been accused of this many a time by my family, dissapointing them by my reaction, despite feeling happy on the inside.

Lake Towada-The Perfect Memorial Day Weekend

2009-09-11T22:19:00.003+09:00

Last weekend was great. We found a great all you can eat Japanese restaurant on Th night (I gorged myself). Had a beach bash Friday night (yes Friday was a PACAF family day!)(Don't you want to join the AF and have a PACAF family day)(Don't you want to know what PACAF is?)(Guess). Saturday was a perfect day of kayaking at Lake Towada. (A volcanic lake about 1.5-2 hour scenic drive from us)We had previously found this perfect little park with a great lawn, playground, picnic area, small beach perfect for the kids and launching of kayaks. We had about 10 families up there playing. I didn't know "Three Flys Up" could be so much fun and painful as an adult, although the women would argue about us being adults. Then there was one final festival up at the Lake and I went to get some pics of the Nebuta floats lite up at night and the Akita lanterns, which I didn't see. Em was festivaled out so I went with some of the other friends and she headed home with other friends. Then Monday we watched the BYU-OU game and we didn't even know the result yet!! (We have to watch it on Monday since BYU plays on Sunday in Japan. So we have to have a college football "Fast" until Monday. Its almost as hard as a real fast!) That was followed by a fun round of Frisbee Golf with my buddy Wes and a few of our kids. Max actually played all 9 holes with us.

ENDEX

2009-09-02T20:40:00.006+09:00

ENDEX=End of Exercise

Never has an acronym brought such feelings of jubilant glee/happiness/cease of swearing/genuine relief. The past three days have been horrible. The base was doing an "exercise." This was to simulate attacks on the base and since North Korea are our naughty neighbors in this neck of the world the attacks were assumed "dirty" until proven otherwise. This is practice for the graded exercise by the Air Force.

What does this mean? It means I was not a dentist these past few days rather I was in charge of the Triage Team. We started out in MOPP2. This entails wearing over boots/pants/coat/very heavy helmet/even heavier protective vest and carrying the gas mask and gloves. Doesn't sound too bad, and it wasn't at first. The first alarm came and we had to go into MOPP 4. This added the gloves and the gas mask and ducking for cover. (Thank you Elementary School Earthquake drills for the preperation!) Still, not horrible. It lasted about 30 minutes and by that time I was in the middle of a panic attack and feeling very claustrophobic. But I survived. My friend, who "played" in the last exercise, said the longest they were ever kept in MOPP4 was about a half hour or so.

Then a few hours later we hear the next alarm and go back into MOPP4. Only this time the nausea hits me at about 90 minutes! We were in it for about two hours, shattering the last record! It was absolutely miserable.

Can't imagine it?

Let me illustrate the progression: It starts with an uncomfortable cement floor, lying down, trying to fall asleep but worrying about not being able to breath while asleep in a respirator, then about 4o minutes the gas mask feels like it is constricting your head and tearing into your ear, at times the nose itches but can't be scratched, the helmets weight begins to increase combining with the constriction to give the MOPP headache, the leaded vest weighs down on the shoulders increasing the headache, sweat soaks into everything, then Triage team is activated to go triage casualties and you stand up and get hit by nausea (yes these are all symptoms of heat exhaustion). Then you drink some water from the gas mask tube attachment and it takes like rotten plastic... You get the idea. This happened 3 or 4 times each day. Today, day 3, everyone cringed every time there was an overhead page, fearing the dreaded words, Alarm Blue MOPP4!

I survived the attacks and the exercises and did well as the Triage Team Chief. And am a much better person for enduring it. Yeah Whatever! I'm glad to be done and hope to never play this game again. I'm glad I'm not in Korea where they do this much more often. Their was much rejoicing when Endex was called.

ENDBLOG

7th Annual Wild Weasel Triathlon

2009-08-23T22:11:00.005+09:00

Saturday I did my first triathlon! and despite Em spoiling MY event to blog about, I'll continue with my post.
The base does a triathlon each year and last year my friends did it and I thought that'd be cool to do and half decided to do it the next year. Well, I did it!! and was very happy with my results at 1 hour and 4 minutes. And that with a crappy bike.

It was a little shorter than an offical "sprint triathlon" at 500 m swim, 9 mile bike and, 3 mile/5k run. The swim was the hardest part because of all the people around you that are kicking you as you kick them. It was hard to get a good stroke in and I even did a couple strokes of the doggy paddle as we crammed around the first turn.

I feel all excited still and can't keep thinking about doing another one. And my friend Merrill has me dreaming of a nice road bike purchase too!

Mike, Merrill, Me

The Mormons

Dad my tooth hurts!

2009-08-14T06:17:00.002+09:00

Max's teeth have been exfoliating a little late, but still in the norm. Last week he asked me if he could come to work with me to take Tooth D (not the middle tooth but the one next to it, the right lateral incisor) out. I told him we might be able to on Monday. Later that night he began to complain that it was really hurting and coming close to tears. So I looked and to my surprise he had an abscess! My only guess/explanation is that the neighboring permanent tooth ate away the root a little funny and bacteria got under his gums and to the root/tooth and thus the bubble.
I took him to the clinic, borrowed some supplies/instrument/toys/torture devices and brought them home since Em wanted to see it done. I didn't let her anesthatize him or pop the abscess either (or did I...). Then pulled it out! The top picture shows a little how he couldn't raise his lip on the right (left side in the picture). It was fun!

rase-rase-rase-ra or Nebuta Festival

2009-08-11T22:00:00.005+09:00

Last week we spent a long day in Aomori, the capital of our prefecture also called Aoromi, celebrating the Nebuta festival.

"There are many theories about the origin of the Nebuta Festival. One is that it is said to have originated after the subjugation of rebels in this district by "General TAMURAMARO" in the early 800's. He had his army create large creatures, called "Nebuta", for frighten the enemy. Another theory is that the Nebuta Festival was a development of the "TANABATA" festival in China. One of the customs during this festival was "TORO" floating. A "toro" is a wooden frame box wrapped with Japanese paper. The Japanese light a candle inside the "TORO" and put it out to float onto the river or into the sea. The purpose behind this is to purify themselves and send the evil spirits out to sea. "TORO" floating is still one of the most impressive and beautiful sights during the summer nights of the Japanese festivals. On the final night, "toro" floating in accompanied by a large display of colorful fireworks. This is said to be the origin of the Nebuta Festival. Gradually these floats grew in size, as did the festivities, until they are the large size they are now. Today the Nebuta floats are made of a wood base, carefully covered with this same Japanese paper, beautifully clolred, and lighted from the inner part with hundreds of light bulbs. In early August the colorful floats are pulled through the streets accompanied by people dancing in native Nebuta costumes, playing tunes on flutes and drums. "

We barely made it to Aomori, about an hour and a half away, in time to catch the last 10 minutes of the parade. One might think that it was too short, but with three kids that's about all you need of a parade. It was a great 10 minutes though. Just a bit better than the Riverton Days Parade.
It was filled with so much excitement. These Japanese really know how to celebrate! The floats were so big and detailed, they almost looked alive. We saw then during the day, but the rest of the week the parades were at night with them all lite up. During the parade one person would call out "rase-rase-rase-ra!" Then everyone else will chant it back, over and over. This is joined by a twitter of flutes and steady pounding of the drums. Surprisingly, for something so constant and repetative, it didn't get annoying and you find yourself joining in despite having no clue what they are chanting. (I believe it is the equivilant of cheering someone along. One site says it is just a chant used "to shake away the sleepiness of summer.")
Later that night we saw the longest firework show we've ever been to. It lasted 2 hours and had lots of "finales." A few were so grand that the smoke in the sky began to obscure the continueing fireworks. Fireworks were great and all, but the cool part was they took some of the floats and took them out on the water on barges. The night was filled with these brightly lite giant floats accentuated by huge fireworks and flutes and chants of Nebuta.

We tried to leave early to beat traffic out of the city. There were sooo many people there! So we headed back to the car only to be behold this:Our car was totally blocked and we had to wait another hour+ to be able to leave! We had a good time despite being so tired from lots of walking. We enjoyed a steamed bun, yaki soba, rice balls, chicken nuggets, and of course ice cream from the ever present festival vendors.

Another Earthquake

2009-08-09T20:26:00.001+09:00

We just had a little earthquake. Just a 3. We are at the top of the green parts on the map. It lasted about 30 seconds with a gentle rocking.

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/00000000053.html

Tanabata revisited

2009-07-28T21:04:00.004+09:00

Em pointed out that I left off one of the best photos.

Tanabata Festibal

2009-07-26T20:46:00.005+09:00

No I didn't misspell Festival. That's how the signs around Misawa spelled it in Engrish.
What is a Tanabata? It is a celebration they have every July. Here is my quick synopsis (i.e. Wikipedia version):
Tanabata (七夕 tanabata, meaning "Evening of the seventh") is a Japanese star festival.

Tanabata was inspired by the famous Chinese folklore, The Princess and the Cowherd.

Orihime (織姫, Weaving Princess), daughter of the Tentei (天帝, Sky King, or the universe itself), wove beautiful clothes by the bank of the Amanogawa (天の川, Milky Way, lit. "heavenly river"). Her father loved the cloth that she wove and so she worked very hard every day to weave it. However, Orihime was sad that because of her hard work she could never meet and fall in love with anyone. Concerned about his daughter, Tentei arranged for her to meet Hikoboshi (彦星, Cow Herder Star) who lived and worked on the other side of the Amanogawa. When the two met, they fell instantly in love with each other and married shortly thereafter. However, once married, Orihime no longer would weave cloth for Tentei and Hikoboshi allowed his cows to stray all over Heaven. In anger, Tentei separated the two lovers across the Amanogawa and forbade them to meet. Orihime became despondent at the loss of her husband and asked her father to let them meet again. Tentei was moved by his daughter’s tears and allowed the two to meet on the 7th day of the 7th month if Orihime worked hard and finished her weaving. The first time they tried to meet, however, they found that they could not cross the river because there was no bridge. Orihime cried so much that a flock of magpies came and promised to make a bridge with their wings so that she could cross the river. It is said that if it rains on Tanabata, the magpies cannot come and the two lovers must wait until another year to meet.

So there you have it, (I'm not sure why it isn't celebrated on the 7th). Although we do have a lot of crows around here, I didn't see any magpies. It did rain a bit so I guess these lovers will have to wait again until next year. It didn't stop us from having a good time though, besides my lover came back from across the Pacific this week. She may have used up all the magpies on her bumpy flight. Sorry Hikobaski, better luck next year!

This festival, like most Japanese festivals, is composed of cool decorations and lots of booths hawking different and food kitsch. In fact 5 minutes into our walk,while watching Sam on the "bumpy cars," Em asked, "Where's Max?" We turn around and he is walking back towards us with the biggest snow cone known to man. "IT was only 300 Yen!" (That's about $3.50, not too bad but definitely not a bargain.)
We had a pretty good time and even went back at night to see the cool lanterns they hang up, through which the boys loved walking/running. They also had different performances: singers, baton twirlers, hip hop dancers, orchestra, etc. Stay tuned for reports from the upcoming Nebuta festival in Aomori. Its supposed to be much grander!

Adorama Review

2009-07-19T23:23:00.000+09:00

Living overseas posses a few complications in life. No I'm not talking about being 3 plane rides and 24 hours of travel away from family. In this instance I am referring to the difficulty in buying things on line! It is always nerve wracking when I go to purchase things on line when I click on the shopping cart to see if my items indeed can/will be shipped to our location. Why are people APO haters! Its just like shipping anything else. Any why would Amazon not ship the same item that Target will even though I can sign into the same Target order with my Amazon account!? (That was the juicer.)

So today I had a wonderful customer service experience that warranted me staying up a little longer to accolade them. The company was Adorama, a highly recommended camera company. I believe they are based in NY since their voice prompts have New Yark accents. I am trying to buy a new macro lens for my camera and I keep getting thwarted by people, Amazon, not shipping to APOs. Adorama, however, was willing to put their neck on the line and ship through the United States Postal Service. But when I went to the checkout online, through Paypal (I love that feature), it didn't show the free shipping that was advertised. Well, I could have become upset, but I think the fact that they were shipping it allayed my anger. So I called them and they were very kind. It was easy and quick to get to customer service. Lea, at ext 2219, was very kind and said that unfortunately APO don't have the free shipping but to call her back after ordering and she would adjust it. So I did so. Again I easily reached her and she took $22 off the shipping! What a kind lady.

Thank you Lea and the unnamed Empire States Building attendant who let us skip the long line with our two kids! Both of you give NY a great name!

Friday

2009-07-17T23:37:00.003+09:00

After getting home from work a bit early I informed the boys of our plans for the day. Homemade pizza, earning a big YEAH from Sam, walk to the store for mushrooms and food for the trip to Lake Towada for the Firework festival, and then home for the pizza and movie night.

Anyway, the main purpose of this blog is to illustrate why it isn't lazy to drive the car 4 blocks to the store instead of walking. Sure its a nice day, we have a wagon for kids to ride in and/or to pull groceries, and lots of PEP. Then half way down the first street the 2 year old decides he doesn't want to ride and starts to screech and gesticulate for the only adult to let go and let him pull the 5 year( - 1 week) old brother. And no letting him run it into the grass and not being able to pull it any further doesn't trigger the logic mechanism telling him, "Hey, Dad is right. I can't pull this all the way to the store by myself. Maybe I should do it WITH him instead." Rather the 2 year old without a nap this day decides to keep trying while sobbing and crying in the grass. Then once this obstacle is overcome one might think we are home free. Nope, the 2 year old is now happy as we leave the store and doesn't care too much about the wagon, but sure likes the decorative rocks outside the commissary. No there is nothing wrong with this perse, but staying in them for 10 minutes does cause a little delay in the pizza plans. Eventually he decides to meander away from there and saunters over to the crosswalk where the rest of the family is waiting. Meanwhile biggest brother is 50 yards ahead waiting to cross the busiest street on the base. (I am very glad middle boy was content the whole time and even relished the task of pulling the wagon and groceries.) No Mr. 2 year old doesn't want his hand held, but he does want to sit down on the storm drain in the grass on the side of the road. (Don't worry I did take a few pauses on the trip to soak up how cute he was actually being and was very proud of how well the 7 year old did stopping at each intersection and being very safe and responsible despite being 200 yards ahead at this point.) Luckily too the little 2 year old didn't cry when he hit his face on the orange cone as he ran back and forth between them in the school parking lot and he was sure cute as he giggle uncontrollably as he purposely choose to go straight instead of turning and had me follow him. The gutter/mote was also fun for him and Sam to strattle and try to walk over. But alas as we was picked up and taken across the street to home he decided to start crying again and call for him mom across the street. Apparently he thinks his mother is in a gutter across the street. Go figure.

Anyway, the evening played out well. Gabe went to bed early after a good dinner of pizza and cantaloupe. (they didn't even know I pureed spinach and zucchini and squash into the pizza sauce! and used half whole wheat flour in the dough!) Then Sam got really frightened of the human version of Cruella de Vil in 102 Dalmations, so we went up and had a nice long cuddle while Max continued the movie. Then I let Max stay up late with me and he played some random computer game he learned about at school.

Well, I waited long enough for the time zones to align. I'm going to call my wife now. Good night y'all. Domo!

Hump Day!

2009-07-16T20:38:00.002+09:00

For most people hump day is Wednesday. But for us stay at home Dads with wives gone for 11 days Day 6 has come and gone! We all desperately miss her, except for Max who claims he has forgotten his mother. Ha Ha! Report to date has us at current tally of children still at 3, laundry done and 4/5 put away, house is clean, kids in bed (my bed tonight, they really wanted (and supposedly according the the pathologic liar Max, his mother said he could one night). (FYI don't give promises to kids if you are leaving or talking over Skype from another country it might make it hard for the other parent!)

Anyway, today, after piano, we went bowling! They have been wanting to go since She left. (Max has a mental check list of all activities ever suggested in preperation for Her departure. Bowling with those guys is so funny. M does a nice pinball approach along the bumpers. S runs and throughs it two handed into the air with the ball landing with a load clunk. This is followed by him laying on the floor and doing a reverse inchworm back to the chairs. G- rolls the ball from the ball return, another 2 minutes to the balls slow decent down to the pins. I swear at least 5 times I thought the computer wasn't recording their score, only to look down and see the ball still hadn't made it the full length.

Back to Sam's backward slide after his catapult. It caused a great yet sad sequence. Sam had completed his turn so Gabe went and picked up his ball and took a step backward and tripped on the Sammy inchworm. G falls back drops the ball onto S's back and hit his head on the ground. S gets up dazed and tries to help G up. Then G stand back up with the ball and hitting his head into S's chin, again dropping the ball, luckily it didn't hit anyone. I in the mean time just sat there and laughed at the comedy of it all. Then I took pitty on the napless 2 year old and helped him bowl his turn.

The boys have been great and we are having a great time, but need Em back!

Pretzel Time

2009-07-14T21:06:00.004+09:00

Max has taken a strong liking to cooking shows. AFN shows them every morning so most mornings I'll come downstairs to see him wrapped in a blanket watching the Take Home Chef, or Good Eats. It was one of these mornings where he was watching Good Eats with Alton Brown. (This is my favorite cooking show. I used to think he was a nut, but now I really like him. And I still think he is a nut, but entertaining in a corny way.) Sam was watching too. He was expounding on the secrets of how to make Homemade Soft Pretzels. Sam thought they were awesome and asked: "Can we make those daddy? Can we? Can we?" I told him probably, (my standard noncommittal answer), and that we could look for the recipe sometime. I had to leave for work before I got to see his trick for getting the nice golden brown crisp coating on them and have felt a little unfulfilled since then. (Though I suspected it was an egg wash and I was right). So tonight I found the recipe and got Sam to help me with the dough and then after dinner M and S both helped me roll them out. It turns out it was a pretty easy recipe. We/they didn't make the perfect shape, but they sure tasted great. Just as good as at a ball game with my Dad in Oakland! I ate two despite having a stomach ache.

4th of July... 10 days later

2009-07-13T20:33:00.005+09:00

I expected Em to post about our camping trip, but all we got was potty talk. So I'll give a run down of our 4th. It started for me on the 2nd when our dental squadron went down to Nango and spent the afternoon racing go carts. It was a blast and they were fast! My team won of course. One of the guys let us ride in his car while he did some drifting. Wow was that a ride!

Then Friday morning we went down to the Tanasashi Seaside south of Hachinohe (not that many of you know where that is). There we set up camp on a strip of grass right on the beach. Then we headed up the coast a half mile to an awesome climbing spot.(That is Max climbing up there). There were about 5 different routes of varying skill and a sandy beach area and a little tide pool for the little tots to tot around in. It was awesome. The climbing was followed by Em's magical dutch oven cooking and smores and a nice bonfire! It got really big as my friend Wes and I placed three palates on the flames!

The morning unfortunately found us cooking a dutch oven breakfast and packing up in a steady drizzle. (Gabe was not a happy camper this morning he kept stomping his foot at me as I took the picture.)
We headed home, recovered from the exhaustion, began the week long repacking of the camp gear (is it worth it to do so much work for one night? No! But yes it is!), then we headed up to the top of hill and watched some pretty awesome fireworks, complete with water bombs (Fireworks they set off in the water, quite spectacular!)

Monday we headed up to shipwreck beach. This is a cool beach with, yes, three or four wooden skeleton of boats. This is where we have become quite addicted to sea glass. You know you are addicted to Sea Glass hunting when your two year old can't say his brother's name, but can say sea glass! This beach is on the southeast part of Mutsu bay, which is on the northern tip of mainland (or would it be mainisland) Japan, inside the hatchet looking part.

It was a blast of a weekend!

Dad Is Great...He feeds Us Chocolate Cake!

2009-06-19T21:55:00.002+09:00

My friend Sara made this beautiful German Chocolate Cake for her husband. I want Em to make it for me for Fathers-Day. The deal is to praise her and her website and then I get the recipe. Her website looks awesome with some awesome looking food. Go there and partake of the elegant delicacies. I thought I'd explain what she does, but the website is the place to find that. But I will say that Sara rocks. She's been my friend since high school when my dad would take me to her house to watch BYU football games with her Dad. Love ya Sara!

NOW WHERE'S MY CAKE! (recipe)

Not So Idle Threat

2009-06-01T06:19:00.003+09:00

Two weeks ago I bought Em a ticket on United.com. Then yesterday I saw that they have some new deals on their international flights. So I checked the EXACT same ticket again and saw that it was about $50 dollars cheaper. I remembered seeing somewhere that they would refund the difference if a cheaper fare was found! I was happy to get $50 back! So I called them. The first Indian customer service member, though nice, was not helpful claiming it was a different ticket class, L vs M. He was vague as to what the difference was on that mumbo jumbo. Then after rechecking and seeing it was indeed the same ticket class (L as in Lima) I called back and tried again. They said they could refund the difference but there would be an administration fee of $150 dollars!!!!! What a crock. It turns out that (add sarcasm here) in my haste to buy the ticket, I didn't go to their website and search down 11 levels into their customer service links to find the clause stating this fee.

So the bottom line: If you happen to find a cheaper price by $301+ dollars it may be your lucky day because you could get at least $1 back from lovely United!

I even had them get me their supervisor on the line who kindly guided me through the tangled website, but who would not help me with any refund. Lame-O's. Anyway I told him I was going to blog about the poor United policies and so here you are Jaba from Customer Web Support. Enjoy your flight!

*Note from Em: You'd think in the crappy economy businesses would be bending over backwards to keep their customers content. Wouldn't it be better to give a $50 refund and in doing so earn a loyal life-time customer because of great customer service? When are big businesses like United going to quit being STUPID and start making their customers HAPPY!?!?!?!?!

Best of Hawaii!

2009-05-29T20:51:00.009+09:00

Best Beach: Pounders Beach. (The waves bounced off the rocks and sent a cool sideways wave to catch with the Boogie Board.)Best Pediatric Dentists: Us (Clockwise from left: Me, Steve, Chad, Dr. Kane (our director), Laura, Dr. Baens(faculty)) Best Food: Coconut Shrimp from Sugar Mill Shrimp Shack.

Best Dessert: Chocolate Souffle' from Roy's (To die for).Best Burger: Guacamole Burger from Cheeseburger in Paradise!

Best Restaurant: Yard House in Waikiki (Kinda like a pub version of Cheesecake factory. Awesome Enchilada Stack.)Best Class at Conference: There was a conference?

Best Wildlife: Mr. Turtle (yes it was a boy, they have longer tails)Best Sound: The LOUD pounding surf outside our window each night!

Best Ride: The Red Convertible Mustang (Not good for loading in eight pieces of luggage.)

Best Drive: The Tantalus Loop above Honolulu. The guide book said it is best done in a convertible and we happened to be driving one so we went!Best Quote: "Where's the Turtle?" (Said next to the crowd of people standing at the red rope surrounding the giant sea turtle on the beach.)Best Fruit: Pineapple + Pineapple + Pineapple + Pineapple = Canker Sores X 6/Owwwwe (and the fresh Mango and Guava and Papaya and Sugar Cane and Coconut, all from the fruit stand on the side of the road. They also had yummy fried bananas.)

Best Woman: EMBest Drink: Pina Colada

Best Shaved Ice: Anything with Sweetened Condensed Milk from Matsumotos!Best View: Atop Diamond Head. Nice job Em for making it up there!!!!!Prettiest Flower: Plumeria. It smells sooo good.Best Looking Girls: Laura Melissa Em and Diane. (What lucky men we are!)Most Romantic Moment: Our walk at sunset.

The Truth About Em

2009-05-27T20:19:00.005+09:00

Why did I marry Em you may wonder? Well it is obvious so you may not have such a ridiculous question. Was her great ability to find the best bargains? Or was it the great way she does awesome accents? Maybe because she has a great vocabulary. Her looks? (well duh! but that's not where we are going.) Or perhaps it is her great love of literature.

NOPE

...It is because (careful it may get sappy) she is a great nurturer. Yes one who nurtures. I observed her during our long 2 month courtship and even longer 2.5 month engagement as she played, cared for, loved, helped, etc her nieces and nephews. She was great and I knew she would be a great mother.

CASE IN POINT

We were both riding the monorail back to the Haneda Airport in Tokyo after walking around the imperial gardens like zombies, exhausted after our flight from Honolulu. Sitting across from us was a cute little Japanese boy. After riding for a little while he began to fall asleep, head bob and all.
His mother next to him didn't do anything! This really bothered Em and she began stirring. I expected her to come up with some Japanese phrase to tell the Mom to put an arm around the poor little tyke and give him a little comfort and love. (Incidentally there was another kid behind us and he began falling asleep too). I too could barely restrain myself from reaching out and putting the ladies arm around the poor kid or putting my own around him. Its a good thing we didn't do anything because as we arrived at the Airport stop, we saw a different lady come over and wake up child number 2 and then pick up boy number 1. She also had a third child in a stroller. (Sorry innocent Lady on train who was incorrectly judged, just make sure you do take good care of your own kids...if you have kids...if you feel that's the right thing for you...!) So Em had me hop up and help get the little girl in the stroller off the train for her. Then Em helped push the stroller. The girl didn't like Em so she let the mom push and Em carried the sleeping boy while I helped the older boy drag a small suitcase. Em said the whole exhausting jaunt into Tokyo was worth it to get to hold the sweet little guy. I think she REALLY missed our kids!!! She is the greatest mom with the biggest heart for her kids!

*Oddly enough it was a Japanese couple who took that picture of us at the top. =)
*Sorry Google Reader people who got the accidentally published version of this blog. It was some weird keyboard shortcut error.

Hirosaki Sakura Matsuri (Cherry Blossom Festival)

2009-05-05T20:52:00.007+09:00

These are my favorite of the 300 Pictures we took last Tuesday. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was! Every where I turned was another perfect shot for a picture. We had a great time, especially since we had our good friends with us.

The cherry blossoms begin blossoming in southern Japan in late March/April and ends up by us in late April early May. One of the most famous festivals is in Hirosaki, about 2 hours west from Misawa.

Here's a little wiki info for you:

The cherry blossom also known as Sakura (Japanese kanji : 桜 or 櫻; hiragana: さくら) in Japanese. In English, the word "sakura" is equivalent to the Japanese flowering cherry. In China the cherry blossom symbolizes feminine beauty, the feminine principle, or love in the language of herbs. In Japan cherry blossoms also symbolize clouds due to their nature of blooming en masse, besides being an enduring metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life, an aspect of Japanese cultural tradition that is often associated with Buddhistic influence. The transience of the blossoms, the extreme beauty and quick death, has often been associated with mortality; for this reason, cherry blossoms are richly symbolic, and have been utilized often in Japanese art, manga, anime, and film, as well as at musical performances for ambient effect.

Which picture is your fav?*Thank you Wikipedia!

Private Hours

2009-04-29T22:08:00.000+09:00

Saturday Afternoon was filled with private hours. What is a private hour(PH) you might ask? Well, I too was ignorant of these facts until meeting Emily. A PH is when you take a child and got do something with them without others with you. You might deduce that it lasts for an hour, but you would be wrong and after 8.65 years you still would not understand why it is refered to as an hour if it lasts 3 hours! Well, that confusion aside I took both M and S on private hours Saturday.

M has been doing really well with his behavior chart at school lately so I took him to see "Inkheart" at the base theater. (We get most of the same movies but about 1 or 2 months later.) I even let him invite one of his best friends along. (Again, how can it be a PH if someone else is there too? Just go with it is the motto of this relationship!) It was a good movie and both of them enjoyed it.

Then S needed some alone time too, so I took him on a few errands with me (including to purchase a crate of apples from the "Apple Lady," a little produce store off-base. (btw-Japan apples are the BOMB and better than any apples heretofore tasted!) Then we ended by going to the Weasel's Den, the Airplane Hanger turned Kids play place on base. He had a great time climbing around throwing his paper airplane (made by mom) from all different heights. It was a blast doing some fun things with the older boys.

Unfortunaly, G got jealous and wanted to have a PH of his own in the ER on Sunday evening! He fell and hit a coffee table at our friends house just as we were finishing our cheesecake. IT was however fun to sit in the waiting room with him. Really it was! He was being so cute. I brought a few of his trains and he was have a fun time with them. Then he started to get a tired and I think he was saying he wanted mom. So I went over and sat by him and he put his head on me for about 4 seconds and then got up and went over to where I was sitting and brought me his trains, took my novel and went back and thumbed through my book while he expected me to play trains. It was quite commical. Then I got out a board book for him which he looked through and then traded for my book again and so that I could look at his book. Again, cute and funny. He didn't like it when I had to wash his wound in the sink and then hold his laceration together while the ER Doc super glued it. But he's all better now and he got his private hour with me, which was actually Private and took 1 hour. Go figure!

(actually occured/written in March, but didn't publish at the right time...Sorry)

Dental Answers

2009-04-28T20:40:00.002+09:00

Here are some answers to some of your questions.

Baby Teeth vs Yellow Adult Teeth

I have always told people it is because the adult tooth has more dentin than the baby tooth. Dentin is yellow and thus shows through the translucent enamel as yellow. It could also be a combination of that and the orientation of the enamel refracting light differently since the enamel is oriented differently in the two types of teeth. Anyway, it is normal and fine and dandy. White teeth are not normal.

Baby Tooth Spacing

In the baby teeth it is good to have spacing. It they are touching then he will most likely need braces or have crowded/crooked teeth. It does depend at how much space/lack thereof there is. IF there is extra space they should be fine. If there is no extra space/all touching then braces are a maybe. If they are already crowded/crooked then braces a definite.

As far as cleaning them: brush twice a day and floss. All the pediatric dentists here on base recommend to use the Reach Access Flosser. It's design makes it really easy to use on kids.
Floss: Before or After?

It doesn't really matter if you floss before or after brushing. If I had to pick I'd go with before, this way the brush carries away the stuff you've flossed off your teeth. The main thing is to floss!

If I missed anyone's questions let me know and I'll add them. Sorry for the delay, I was away on sabbatical.

Time Line

2009-04-27T20:16:00.000+09:00

So here is the photographic time line of the past few days. Friday was a beautiful day and then Saturday was really cold and windy. Sunday morning turned very rainy, then I looked out the window Sunday afternoon and saw big snowflakes coming down. Wow! April Showers...how about April Snow Flurries!

ThursdayFriday
SundayAnd here is a bonus shot at the Misawa Shinto Shrine. I've been waiting all winter to go get a shot of this but kept putting it off..til April!

Weather

2009-04-26T14:35:00.001+09:00

Today is April 26th and IT IS SNOWING!!!!!!

oh..and we had an earthquake last night!

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2009fwat.php

YES we are fine, thank you for your concern...again.

-Funnyily. We had recently watched an episode of Life, where there was an earthquake in LA and the Main guy, Cruz, was wondering why in an earthquake does everyone ask, "Did you feel that?"
Then last night, the first thing I said to Em was "Do you feel that?"

Well, have a nice day!

MCP Actions

2009-04-23T22:57:00.002+09:00

I am entering this photo in the MCP Actions/Color Inc. Win a Gallery Wrap Canvas Photo Contest at http://mcpactions.com/blog. I certify that I took this photo and give both parties permission to use this photograph on their blogs/sites.

Spring Time

2009-04-23T22:33:00.006+09:00

Here is a little taste of Japan as Spring emerges. Cherry Blossoms are a big deal hear and they are beautiful. We are going to a Cherry Blossom Festival next week. I took these this evening on the way to Max's piano lesson. The view is of the center of base, where we have a huge traffic circle. The water towers in the background is where we live. (The flag polls usually have an American and a Japanese flag flying together, but for some reason, the day I decide to get my camera back out, they were not up!)

PT-That's for Me

2009-03-29T21:55:00.005+09:00

PT stands for Physical Training. The Air Force is real big on being "FIT TO FIGHT." Each year we have to take a physical fitness test (PFT). Historically the testing has been done by one's own squadron (for me the dental clinic is the squadron). Recently the AF has turned the testing over to the HAWC (Health and Wellness Center). This should be a good thing since it becomes more standardized as well as eliminates any favoritism, i.e. letting your friend get away with a pansy push-up rather than a manly one. The only down side to this is there are LOTS of people failing their tests. What is the big deal? It majorly affects one's ability to increase in rank, especially for the enlisted. Also if you keep failing you will be kicked out of the Air Force. Hmmm?

Well what does the PFT consist of? Well, the score is determined by height, waist circumference, 1.5 mile run, # push-ups in 1 minute, and #of sit-ups in 1 minute. Most of the points come from the run. (We even get offered a day off if we get a 100%!) (I'll never get that day off =() Why do I bother blogging about this? I'm not sure since no one will read it! But I have 2 reasons: #1 to give you all another glimpse into the AF and #2 Because I just took a practice PFT on Friday. I actually did really well. I felt great during my run and I attribute it to my increase in healthy eating, since I haven't been running a lot lately. Thanks Merrill! I was able to sustain a faster pace longer without feeling as fatigued. It was very nice. Maybe if I keep it up I will get that day off!

BTW read the previous posts cause it looks like no one read them!

Reenlist

2009-03-17T10:56:00.000+09:00

I got to do my first real act as an officer the other day. My dental tech (Air Force for Dental Assistant) was reenlisting and I got to administer the oath of enlistment to her. It was kinda cool actually.
Here is the oath:

I______do solemnly swear That I will support and defend The constitution of the United States Against all enemies, foreign and domestic; That I will bear true faith An allegiance to the same; An that I will obey the orders Of the President of the United States And the orders of the officers appointed over me According to the regulations And the Uniform Code of Military Justice, So help me God.

I'm Awake!

2009-03-11T17:42:00.004+09:00

It is only 5:42 pm at home, but it is 3:43 am in Dallas. Unfortunately, I am in Dallas! No I don't need a good night/afternoon rest before crushing the Oral Board Exam for Pediatric Dentistry. Of course not. Well, gotta go toss and turn. Or maybe I'll go down the hall and see if Matt is awake yet!

Notes From Primary

2009-03-01T13:51:00.003+09:00

Here are a few of the notes I took during primary (these are 5-6 year olds):

-God told Joseph to take his family to Egypt because King Herald would kill Jesus.

-One girl (C) had a stuffed animal named Zola ad she was sick and then got the priesthood.

-E said, "I didn't laugh cause I love the scriptures."

-And as we talked about things to eat and drink. N said It means no drags (accompanied by a sweeping motion with her fingers). I asked "What does that mean?" N replied "It means no smoking."

-Me: Jesus Made everything.
Child L: He even made "Bob the Builder" the movie!

National Children's Dental Health Month

2009-02-28T21:42:00.000+09:00

My popular demand I have decided to offer some free dental advice for your kids. Here are some of the common questions I get from parents.When should my child first see the dentist?

The recommended time is within 6 months of the first tooth erupting or by 1 year old.
Why so early?

So we can keep you from making any early mistakes. J/K Too make sure the parents know how to care for the teeth, diet habits, catch any problems early, basically to educate the parents and to acclimate the children to the happy world of dentistry. (Imagine how much easier it would be to fix a cavity on a 3 year old who knows you and has already been to the office 3 or 4 times for happy things, rather than have to do a filling at the first visit. Much easier.)
When should I start flossing my child's teeth?

Now! Well, as soon as he has two teeth that are touching and the brush cannot go in between. I recommend the Reach Access Flosser. It's great! And yes you should floss them. And yes you should be brushing their teeth for them too, believe me you are only fooling yourself if you thing your kids are brushing adequately. (I'm sure some of them are but most are not.)
Fluoride?

Yes fluoride is safe and I support water fluoridation.

And one last question because I'm getting really angry with the dell tech support guy named Mithun! I hate talking to these people! (My blogging seems to keep being interrupted by my anger issues these days.)

Cavities is not as much based on how much candy/sugar/carbohydrates you/the child eats, rather on the frequency. Example, drinking a coke all at once is not too damaging to the tooth, but the same amount spread throughout the day will have a much more damaging effect on the teeth. So try to control and limit the amount of times the kids are snacking and drinking between meals and only let them/you drink water between meals.

Well, if you have any dental questions, let me have 'em!

Sammy oh Sammy

2009-02-26T20:24:00.006+09:00

I had a great blog planned:

It starts with how cute Sam was on Sunday. He wanted to wear some Khaki shorts and a vest with his blue shirt to church. We convinced him he would be too cold and for once he actually listened without a tantrum. Then at night he came to me with some clothes in hand asking if he could wear them as PJs. I assented without much investigation or thought. This is the result:

He looked so cute and silly. I hadn't realized he had a sweater vest in hand.

Then tonight M. was at piano and Sam had been good during dinner and helped me get the little boy into bed, so I took him down stairs to make JELLO pudding. IT was a fun activity together.

Then we ate it in the family room as a "picnic." A great evening with my boy!

BUT the post in my mind was a little ruined and turned out like this:

Sam wouldn't go to bed tonight and lost his "cuddle privilege" and fell a sleep SCREAMING/SHRIEKING while I held the door shut for 20 minutes! So I don't feel like blogging tonight.

Funniest Thing I've Read........since Em's last post

2009-02-22T20:48:00.002+09:00

Em just forwarded this to me from her Google Reader. My brother Dave and I, especially him, would make fun of these non-parable parables shared in sacrament meeting. (Especially him, did I say that already. He can be a little irreverent at times). This one had me loling.

A Parable

via My Religious Blog by Gatsby on 2/21/09

Do you like parables? I like parables. I don’t always remember all of the details of the story - which is fine because often when we hear parables in talks they are different each time anyway. As long as we remember the lessons being taught, which is really the point of the parable after all, isn’t it? So anyway today I thought I would share with you one of my favorite parables in case you want to print it out and share it in sacrament meeting:

One time there was a guy in the mountains. Or maybe it was a young man. Like an Indian kid or maybe it was a lady. Anyway, they were outside and in a rural setting. Maybe in a mountain or by a river. Or was it at a park in the city?

The point is she was outside and heard a little voice say “hello” and he looked around and saw lizard – or it could have been a snake. Or a rat. But either way, it had developed human speech and learned a rudimentary form of English. And it said “pick me up” and the Indian boy was like “no, you are a rattle snake. You will bite me if I pick you up” Or maybe it was a scorpion and the kid said, “you will sting me…” Or maybe it was an eradiated rock.

But the rat was like “no, I won’t. I am a nice scorpion, now give me a kiss and I will grant you three wishes” and the girl didn’t want to, but the lizard convinced her to eventually, so the man put it in his pocket and carried it down the rocky cliff and when he got to the bottom of the cave, she took the sharp toothed marsupial out of her knapsack and it immediately sunk its teeth into her fleshy calf muscles.

So the old lady looks down at the badger and says “you said you weren’t going to shoot me.” And the magic rock says “look Poindexter, you knew what I was when you picked me up” And the boy was like “well what about my three wishes?” and the rat said “nah. I changed my mind about that” and then it slithered off and left Brer Bear to bleed to death.

The moral of this story is that sometimes sin can feel good - in fact depending on what sin we are talking about, sometimes it can feel REALLY good. But in the end, you will go to hell if you are nice to the little jungle creatures.

Also I think the boy’s last words were “it mattered to that one” because the poison had reached his brain and he had become delusional.

Prayer

2009-02-15T16:05:00.006+09:00

Yesterday, Sam got a scratch on his big toe from the sharp metal corner at the bottom of the screen door. It laid him up for a good 2 or 3 hours. Again this morning it produced some good screaming as he changed the band-aid.

After church today we were eating lunch and he said, "Jesus can fix my toe." (This was said with a I know it all inflexion in his voice.)

Em told him, "That's right. Do you want to say a prayer and ask him?"

"Yeah," he replied and added as he hurried away to his play area under the stairs, "I'll go somewhere where there is peace and quiet."

A minute later I heard him shouting Jesus' name a few times. Then he came back and muttered, "I called him but he didn't come."

Of course we then discussed how it all works and that He can answer our prayers in different ways then we expect, but it was quite adorable to witness the sweet faith of this child. Its nice to see that he is learning something at church. Thank you Brother and Sister Haltli!

Em's Only Birthday Wish

2009-02-08T21:15:00.004+09:00

I thought I would publicly announce that it is not easy being a Stay At Home Mother. (This is what she has been waiting to hear for 7 years and two months.) I tried it for the past week and a half and it turns out it is hard. I started out strong. I got the floor swept and mopped. Vacuumed the stairs and upstairs (down stairs had already been vacuumed after the poop terrorist attack). Had the kids on a good schedule, sent Max to school with a lunch everyday except the day they had whole wheat cheese pizza. Then I started running out of steam. Time slipped away more and more with out as much getting done. Motivation started to decline and my patience wained a bit. What I did learn, beyond it not being easy (However, Emily, I never did say it was, you just always think I think that!), is that it is very important and worth having my wonderful and beautiful wife staying with my kids. It takes a lot of self motivation and planning and it is easy to get into a depressed slump. They get gain so much from being with her. She is so filled with love for them and they get so much nurture therefrom. (I like that word)

Now I know many people are in many different circumstances and many people work for many different reasons (so no one get OFFENDED, OK!). Each day I walk past the Base's CDC, Child Development Center or daycare, 4 times. I often see the cute kids playing there after school or the workers taking the little babies/toddlers for walking in giant strollers or wagons and marvel at how sweet and cute the kiddies are. Then my heart sinks a bit when I see the parents drop them off early in the morning and pick them up late in the evening. I then am so thankful that we have been blessed to be able to have Em stay at home with our boys. She is the greatest SAHM ever and the best wife too!

Happy Birthday Sweetie!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*I'll still hold out that it is harder being a working SAHD. =)
**These are our good freinds Merrill and Janeen!

Its all about Packaging

2009-02-03T15:51:00.000+09:00

The Japanese take great pride in their packaging and the price demonstrates it. They have great presentation in the stores for their apples, grapes...everything. We saw this lovely cantaloupe yesterday! Max was totally hooked, but I didn't cave. It was 1980 Yen. At the current rate of 88Yen to the $ that's $22.50!!!

Sleedin'

2009-02-01T15:31:00.004+09:00

Stop me if I've posted this before...
The base has a really cool sledding hill. I guess its really a ski hill, but then it would be a lame ski hill. So I'll call it a really cool sledding hill. Its so much fun. Good pitch to the hill, great length for a long fast slide down the hill. Amazingly the boys haven't complained about walking up the hill, as I had expected, even when the hill was iced over and we kept slipping on the way up. The first time we went there I was pleasantly surprised to find they have the hill lite up at night. Yesterday we had the whole hill to ourselves. Sam is so funny, after being sprayed in the face by the powder a few times, he figured out if he laid down and tucked his face in he'd be fine. He looks like a little black ball flying down the hill, with no idea of where he is going.And of course there was the HC.

Keep Your Inner Groin Soft

2009-01-29T22:13:00.003+09:00

Yeah, exactly what I thought while doing a Yoga workout the other day. Inspired by my friend Merrill, I have recently decided to make Yoga part of my Weekly workout routine. Before you make fun of me jsut know that it a lot harder than you might think. I figure that it help me with flexability and such. I already have some lingering back pain and as a dentist it is only going to get worse.