A few pictures...

WHEW!  Uploading these was a labor of LOVE!  :)

Our house is the unit on the left in this photo:

After diving one day...

Stroll on the ocean side of the island one afternoon:

Now you all have proof that we're alive!

I tried to upload some underwater shots but am getting an error... will see if hubby can help when he gets home. :)

SOLD!

Signed, settled and SOLD!  

We are officially, NOT homeowners as of 4am today! (our time)

To curb the curious minds, we put the house on the market on the 20th of June and had a ratified, full price contract on the 28th.  We only had two different families look at the house during those 8 days and it was the first family who made the offer.  They came back four times before submitting their offer - you can imagine we were on pins and needles!

So, although a move overseas could have been difficult and daunting, this transition to Kwajalein has been pretty seamless!  For that we're very grateful and we're thoroughly enjoying our time on the island so far!

Please come visit!  

Test photo

This photo, compressed from 3.3MB to 594KB took 12.37 minutes to upload.  

Please understand that until we get a faster internet connection, I won't be uploading too many pictures!  :-( 

Taken at a going-away potluck had for us by our Sunday meeting elders.  We have a little better tan now.  :)

Compliments of the hubby

Every time I read something that Peter has drafted, I think that HE should be writing this blog!  You all would certainly be more entertained than I keep you. :)

Anyhow - he wrote quite a novel to our family updating them on our life here on Kwaj.  I just HAD to copy and paste the excerpt below where he describes the two boat dives we went on yesterday.  It had me in stitches!  Here you are:

"...Today (or yesterday - since I won't likely get this completed tonight), we went diving again.  This time from a boat, so our first stop was the Prinz Eugen followed by a dive on the ocean side wall of South Kwajalein.  Awesome dives in both places - and for the paranoid out there - yes, we saw numerous sharks on both dives.  The ones on the ocean side actually made me a bit nervous (whitetip reef sharks) since one was more interested in what we were doing than I thought he should be.  More on that later, though.

First, the Prinz Eugen.  Possibly a 10 minute boat ride (depending on your captain) from Kwajalein on the west side of the atoll (lagoon side) lies the Prinz Eugen (pronounced something like "ouy-gen" with a soft "g"), upside down with its screws in the air and its bow sitting at about 110' of water.  We had five divers on our boat, so Marissa, myself, and another diver were in the water waiting for our final two to get in before we went subsurface.  Our other diver in the water (who had his head under the water watching fish below us) informed us we had a shark below us.  Like ducks, we were immediately "bottoms-up" and watching a cute little whitetip wander by below us (between 2'-3' in length).  Nice, great start to the dive. 

At the edge of the Prinz Eugen, we dropped down to 30' and followed the hull down to around 107'.  At that point, we crossed under the bow to the other side of the ship.  Being polite, Marissa and I were taking up the tail of the dive while the other divers crossed under (the superstructure of the bow boat created a natural swim-thru that looks pretty cool in photographs).  As the other divers passed under, Marissa tugs my arm and points to a lovely specimen of blacktip reef shark (about 5' in length) roughly 20' from us.  He watched us for a moment and then turned his more pleasant side towards us and headed away.  SWEET!  And they had told us we would be unlikely to see any sharks on this dive!  The rest of the dive was very relaxing with a HUGE puffer fish and some torpedoes - along with several other pretty underwater things.

Dive two.  South Kwajalein wall - ocean side...  It's interesting.  Inside the lagoon, things are pretty protected and the critters that live there are pretty used to people being around.  On the ocean side, things are a bit more wild and we are encouraged to use more caution as a rule.  The wall?  B E A U T I F U L.  Tons of fish, tons (literally) of coral, great visibility and life everywhere.  I can't begin to list all that we saw (including a turtle), but I'll add some details to what I know you all have been waiting for - sharks...  Yes, more of them.  I was at the front of our dive posse and we were pretty shallow ~55' and moving pretty slow since there was so much to look at, when I noticed four whitetip reef sharks circling very fast in a tight circle in front of us.  They were quite a bit larger than the ones we had seen previously (between 4' and 5') and I was remembering their tight, fast circles from a few evenings back at the marlin based feeding frenzy.  Hmmmm, going to put the brakes on a little and let the others know...  Nobody was paying attention to my gestures (okay, frantic underwater waving - my specialty).  About that time, one of the sharks peeled off and headed up the reef.  Another one dropped out of the circle and headed towards me.  Straight towards me...  Marissa had the camera and I started wishing I had it to stick out in front of me as a bite offering - anything better than my hand...  I quit my imitation of a seal flapping his flipper in the water at the other seals and tried to look as uninteresting as possible.  No dice - still heading right at me...  Did I mention he was headed right at me?  25'... 20'...  I readied my hand on my safe-second (backup regulator) to give him a blast of O2 to the snoozle before he was within nipping distance.  I want to take a moment to mention that never once did I think he wanted to eat me.  I was pretty sure he was curious and possibly a little threatened by this strange sounding creature with the saucer-sized eyes.  What I was worried about was the many times I've seen our cat be "curious" about something and then give it a little bite just to see how it responds.  Not wanting to satisfy this shark's curiosity was primary on my agenda.  15' now... and he swerved away towards the ocean side.  Good, take a breath, you earned it...  Oops, he's coming back.  Still directly at me.  I tried to look tough.  He didn't seem to care.  I'm also trying to keep an eye on the other two that are now almost to my rear as I had rotated to keep my front towards my interested friend.  Marissa and our other divers now seem to have taken notice of my distraction.  20' again...  15'...  crap.  10'...  and he swerved again.  This time up the reef and he kept going.  Fine with me.  Marissa is hovering behind me now.  Heh, heh - finally got her attention!  :)  With two sharks still in front of us, I started edging off the wall and up onto the reef with my wife to my rear.  About that time, a pharmacist from FL who had a video camera came charging up on the unsuspecting sharks and they scattered.  It was kind of funny to see them flee from him.  Must have been camera shy...

On our way back to the boat - on top of the reef wall, we had another small whitetip reef shark cruise by in front of us.  Like the first one we had seen that day, he seemed to have a destination in mind and hurried on his way.  Like people, I prefer sharks who are dedicated to their own business and too busy to mess with mine..."

The curious case of the Can Opener

Mom thought some of these stories should be documented… so here I am, fingertip to keyboard, attempting my best at providing you all with a laugh, or maybe at least a smirk to begin your day (at my expense!). 

Last week, one day I casually mentioned to my dear husband that I'd make tuna melts for supper.  See, it's interesting trying to come up with meals our here, at least right now since I am working out of a very limited pantry.  Needless to day, tuna melts require VERY few ingredients, and very few prep tools/utensils, so I was golden.  Or so I thought. 

15 minutes pre-Peter's scheduled close of work day I started prepping things for supper.  Plates, check.  Forks, check.  Tuna, check.  Bread, check.  Cheese, check.  Baking pan, check.  Envision all of these pieces laid out of my counter, ready to viola!, cook right up into delicious tuna melts.  Except for one tiny, yet HUGE detail.  The can opener.  That one detail didn't have a check.  So, being the master(ess?) of improv these days, I tried everything (I thought) that I had on hand.  A knife…  nope, just bent the tip.  A bottle opener… nope, didn't budge.  So, I bit my pride and knocked on the neighbors door to ask to borrow theirs.  I had forgotten they are PCS'ing (permanent change of station - to Alaska!) and they had already shipped all of their belongings out the door.  No can opener.  Jeff (said neighbor) started knocking on other doors asking for a can opener, and he quickly found an obliging friend who lent their hand crank can opener to our household.  Thanks Jeff, much obliged.

Now, fast forward twenty minutes. Peter is home, tuna melts are melting, and I am telling him the funny tale of how dinner actually will make it on the table that night.  He says, but we DO have a can opener!  No, no, no I reply - I've searched every cupboard and drawer - there is no can opener.  He points to the counter top.  There, sitting in plain view is a 12" high, Black and Decker electric can opener!  What?!  I hadn't seen an electric can opener in at least 5 years, let alone used one in maybe 10 years??  Mom had one, but it always sat in the back of the cupboard, and we always used the hand-crank unit!  I had completely forgotten that's what they looked like.  Duh.

To make the story just a tad bit more humorous, the neighbor that I borrower the hand-crank can opener from is the manager of the unit that is in charge of supplying the "hospitality kits" for those of us who are waiting for our things to arrive still.  The next day her dear help stopped by our house with (another!) electric can opener!  So now I have two.  I feel like the Annie Oakley of can openers… I can double-fist 'em now.  :)

So, if you need any cans opened, send them my way and I'll get them done in record time!

Baking Improv

I'm quickly learning to be the master of improvisation.  :)  Our pack-out that we sent from Virginia may not join us for 2-4 months.  That being said, we're living quite sparsely on a VERY limited "hospitality package" the army gave us to make it through these first few months before our stuff arrives.  Think bed sheets, towels, plates, cups, knives, forks, spoons and a set of pots and pans. 

Bread is one of the items on the island that is quite pricey to buy at the store.  Thus, I decided to bake some of my own on Saturday.  Brilliant, no?  Yes!  However, I didn't have a mixer, a mixing bowl, a whisk, measuring cups or measuring spoons.  Even I was surprised that the bread actually tasted good!!  I found a recipe online, guesstimated all my measurements (using one of our drinking glasses, and a dinner spoon) and mixed the dough in a stove-top pot with a fork. 

Now please don't feel sorry for us, or send a care package with these items.  I could quite easily run down to the store to buy them, but I KNOW they will come eventually when our pack-out arrives and I don't want to have two of everything on that day! 

So until then, I will continue to improvise, and hopefully continue to be surprised at the edibility of my science projects!  :)

The most important detail!

We DO have a guest bedroom!!  

However, we're limited to 90 days of guests on the island per year, so book your trip soon.  We're down to 88 days already.  :) 

We made it!

 Hi readers!  

Happy 400th post to the UsBrowns + Dozer blog!

We are finally a family of three again!  Dozer and I made it on-island yesterday (Tuesday for us, Monday for most of you).  The trip WAS eventful, but we both made it in one piece, so for that I'm glad.  :)  Mom put it well on her blog - I'll just quote her here:  

"Ris should probably write a book, or at least a chapter on the ins and outs of traveling with a pet - it's been a roller coaster, and she carried more papers to get Doze into KW than she had for herself. Between so-called tranquilizers that had him bouncing off the walls (seriously) and then vomiting, to airlines that made you buy smaller pet carriers (from them of course), to airlines that made you get larger pet carriers, Doze is seriously loved but was probably yowling his head off from hunger by the time they landed. Not much different than flying with a 2 year old, except you can't put a 2 yr old in cargo."

A few of my first thoughts/impressions of the island:

1.  Are we going to land in the water?!  We were so close it seemed like the landing gear could have drug in the ocean before we touched down on land!  However, somehow the pilot managed to land and get the plane stopped before we fell into the other side of the ocean.  :)

2.  Will Dozer ever forgive me for what he had to go through for the past two days?  I think this is pretty well answered, as he's contently sleeping at the end of our bed, tail and feet twitching from his happy (hopefully) little kitty dreams.  :)

3.  Friendly folks - most everyone that you pedal past on the roads flashes a smile and a quiet hello. 

4.  Random downpours!  Just as I expected.  Peter came home for lunch yesterday and while he was here it went from beautiful and sunny, to a quick deluge to beautiful and sunny again in the span of about 15 minutes.

5.  Heavy humidity; caused by #4.  When you go outside from being in an air-conditioned room, your sunglasses immediately fog over. :)  However, it's nothing a quick swipe of your t-shirt can't fix!

6.  Love Peter's commute!  He bikes to work and it takes about 1.5 minutes.  :)  This also means he gets to come home for lunch everyday!  Woohoo!

7.  We have a clean, simple house with central A/C.  Laminate floors and wicker furniture.  TONS of storage.  I think the kitchen has more storage than our house in Virginia!  HUGE windows, although no window coverings yet, so I tacked up blankets.  :)  Tacky, yes.  They're functional though!

8.  Ants are a part of life.  Haven't seen a cockroach here yet, although I'm sure I will soon enough!  :)  

9.  We bought two new vehicles yesterday!  Put them on the credit card and will pay them off at the end of the month.  Hah!  Can you do that?  Here's a link to a picture of mine.  It's absolutely awesome, and totally functional!  Look at the basket on the back!  Perfect for groceries.  

10.  Speaking of groceries.  We're about two blocks from SurfWay (local grocery store) and one block from the PX.  Between the two, I don't think we'll starve.  :)  Funny story though - SurfWay delivers your groceries to you, since most bikes don't have enough space to haul everything home.  However, after filling my cart and checking out yesterday, I had to carry my loot home (on foot as we didn't have our "cars" yet) because I couldn't remember our address for them to deliver to!  Duh.

Another note - this blog is likely to become more wordy, and less pictury.  (I know that's not a word, but it fits here).  We are functioning on a dial-up internet connection so uploading pictures takes a LONG time.  However, I will try my hardest to post photos every now and then.  

Also, dialing out (for us) is quite spendy.  However, we can receive incoming calls for free.  That being said, my old cell number is set to forward to us here, so if you feel like chatting, feel free to call!  It shouldn't cost you any differently than if you called us in the states.  If the line is busy, we're probably on the internet!  :)  

Enough for now.  I must get up and around so I can take care of some paperwork before hubby comes home for lunch.  :)

Hubby made it to Kwajalein!

Safe n' sound! 

8 days!

We had our house listed for 8 days and we received a contract that was ratified on Wednesday night!  

I really want to be the glass is half-full type, but there's this part of me that can't help but think about all the contingencies that have to be satisfied before it's official.  :)  The inspection is scheduled for tomorrow, and for now, settlement is scheduled for the 27th of this month... 

Yahoo!