Josh has officially received orders to Misawa, Japan. He was informed about an open mental health position in November so we have known but today it is finally official on paperwork. There was a lot of leg work and red tape that needed to be done for us to receive the orders. Josh attended Combat Arms Training, a requirement since this is an overseas position. He learned weapons safety, weapons handling, and cleaned the weapons. He shot 7 meter, 15 meter, and 25 meter targets and missed Expert Marksman rank by one shot.
Our family needed to be screened by the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP). Due to Nora's speech (she is in therapy to help her say the "K" and "G" sound) and IEP (Individual Education Plan), we are now enrolled in EFMP. This means that every time Josh gets a new assignment, the assignment base needs to have the services in place to help her. This made us a little nervous in that Misawa is a small base. Luckily, the school on base employs a speech therapist so we are good to go.
The other thing we have been working on while awaiting orders is obtaining our passports. I love to travel so since we going to another continent, passports are a must. The government will issue me and the kids a no fee passport but that only allows us to travel to and from Misawa. We wanted more options. We applied for the blue passports in January but we should have applied for the no fee passports first. It has not always been clear what we should do when and who Josh should be meeting with first. So far, Josh and the kids have their blue passports and the applications are in for our no fee ones. Hopefully we will all have them by the time we are to board the plane.
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Bear got a new Kimono for Christmas.
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Another cool thing about this assignment to Japan is that my dad served his LDS Mission in the area of Japan that the base is located. In 1972-1974 his mission was called Japan East. When we were in Utah for Christmas, I read and copied his mission journals. I have had the distinct impression that I should try to seek out some of the people he served. He passed away in 1983 so any connections that I have to my father are precious. I discovered from his journals that he had Thanksgiving Dinner on Misawa base in 1972. I miss him terribly when I think how excited he would be to teach me Japanese and tell me all about the people and culture. I know that he would have traveled to see us. We probably would not have been able to get rid of him! I hope that I can sense his presence in Japan.
We have a lot of work ahead of us as we look at preparing for the move. We will need to divide our house into the things that we are selling, the things we are taking to Japan, and the things that we will leave state side. I am working on learning Japanese phrases as I get ready for the day in the morning. The kids will sometimes join me and Bear is getting pretty good at it. The kids and I often say phrases to each other but we tend to forget what they mean. Things will start coming together now that we actually are officially going to Misawa.
