Blumenkrantz Family: August 2006

9th letter
Man it is HOT. We hit 96 degrees last Thursday – with the nasty humidity here need I remind you; talk about feeling like Houston!! *JENNI – I know how you feel about the weather there – you really can feel the sweat dripping down your back and it’s so disgusting and you can’t do anything about it! (Except we could escape it there, with our apartment always set at like 65 degrees!) I can’t believe I didn’t complain more about it than I did, when I was there. Our arms were always glistening – GROSS.* But it is time to complain more about it here. Our bathroom always has a “damp” smell to it. The back of our toilet is always condensating (not really a word) and dripping onto the floor. Our towels have to be replaced almost every day because they never dry!! Everything in the house kind of feels “moist” sometimes. And don’t buy a lot of boxes of cereal at one time because they won’t stay good! Blah blah blah. But I think I always just feel hotter than everyone else. I don’t know – must have something to do with this mysterious huge lump that I have on my front side. Never feel like doing a lot of physical stuff cuz sometimes it’s just so suffocating. Sucks to have to carry a fan with you wherever you go in the house (because in case you all don’t remember – WE DON’T HAVE A/C).
Once September hits it’s gonna feel like this baby thing is so close. I can’t believe it sometimes. Most of the time I just don’t feel ready! The feeling changes every day. Today I feel excited. I guess I’m always excited, just some days more than others, and some days it’s accompanied by other feelings as well! But I’m excited too about getting back to feeling normal. Although people have told me how they feel after having a baby and it doesn’t always sound normal! No, but, like my stomach. I feel sick a lot, but I know it also goes hand in hand with this heat. I am glad that the baby is coming in October (the 12th) after all the heat is gone. You think I’d want to have him now so that I don’t feel as hot, but it seems like it would be so hot if you always had this little warm body that you’re holding! I had a bunch of weird baby dreams last night, but I had a girl. I’ll be 33 wks tomorrow. I have been pretty consistent with the whole gaining a pound a week, for the last 6 weeks! I’ve gained 13 pounds since before I was pregnant, but if you count the 7 that I lost at the beginning of the pregnancy then it’s 20. But yeah, let’s face it; I was pretty chubby before I got pregnant so I was hoping to gain as little as possible because I already had all the baby could need!! So I have a lot to lose after the baby is born! The girl I lived with while Bryan was at tech school, her baby is just over 3 mos old, and she’s already lost 54 pounds!! (Jessica I hope you don’t mind me sharing that!) I have been having some painful “tightenings” of my lower stomach, which yesterday the doctor said were contractions. She said to be careful not to get dehydrated because that will bring them on and I’m just too early to be having the baby quite yet! It is really crazy that I could have the baby in 3 weeks and it really would be ok. Especially in 4 weeks, then it really would be considered ok and not that big of a deal! That’s so soon!!!
I pulled another retardo yesterday. I was opening the door of the pantry to throw something away and put my foot right in the way of the opening door – so when I yanked open the door I ripped off my toenail. Eeesh it hurt. Then I didn’t realize it was bleeding so I had to clean blood off the carpet too. Yuck. What a dummy!
Bryan finished his summer semester last Monday. He got 2 A’s and 2 A-‘s. In one of his classes he needed 385.4 points to get an A, and he got 385. !!!! Sheesh. So now the Fall semester starts tomorrow. His last 4 classes – YAY!! Advanced Aerodynamics, High Altitude Navigation Management, his last English, and his class for his research paper that he has to write for his Bachelor’s. I am also taking 2 classes and I’m not excited. The books are over $100 each, and we didn’t get our usual pell grants this year cuz we made too much money last year! Dang.
We went to dinner on Sunday at Liz and Justin’s house, with a bunch of others. I’m glad those dinners happen often here – it’s really fun. Liz was telling us how after she had the baby she would keep waking up at night and kick Justin with both of her feet telling him that he was on the baby and to get off of him! This is really weird considering not once did they have Sam sleep in bed with them! Funny. On Saturday we went to one of the couples’ baby’s 1-yr-old birthday party at the base beach. We have a while before we hit that mark!! We went and saw “Nacho Libre” – wow that movie is dumb, but funny – but something I think I would only be interested in seeing once.
On Thursday Bryan starts what’s called the Exercise. They have to wear like their chem. suits around and stuff and have to work 12-hr days for a week, and have to work the weekend too. It’s to prepare them for being deployed and stuff I guess. Interesting. I don’t know what he’s going to do for 12 hours! When we got here in May they were just barely finishing one up, so this is Bryan’s first one.
Well, we will be submitting Bryan’s officer packet in December. We hope he will have the officer test taken before the baby comes, and his upgrade-training tests completed by the first of November. And he’ll need to start talking to his Commander to start building a relationship there because he’ll need a letter of recommendation from them. This is a big deal and will be a lot of work, and a lot of paying attention to detail so that this packet is perfect. The packets are accepted from the 6th to the 20th of December and the board meets January 23rd. And around February 23rd we find out who they selected. Crazy. I feel confident in Bryan and his achievements thus far in his life. I think if everything is submitted correctly and it’s all well-done and well-said and everything has been included, then they would be crazy not to take him. Sure he’s lacking experience in the Air Force seeing as he hasn’t been in very long, but if that was really something they looked down on, then they wouldn’t have made a requirement that one has to be in a year enlisted before applying for a commission; they would have made it 2 or 3 yrs if that was the case. Plus, over all others who are coming in from ROTC and just applying for Officer Training School straight from the civilian world, Bryan already knows what the Air Force is like, he has already shown a willingness to be a part of it even though his main goal is to fly, he has already proven himself in that aspect – that he can handle being here. He has already proven that he can handle a lot of things at once without copping out – 3 of his school semesters were while he was in the Air Force-while he was studying and will soon excel on the officer test, while he was completing his training. He has proven that he is motivated – putting himself through school - and not just through any school program, but a flight program that involves extremely high costs. Not only that but he was almost always working at the same time, yet still will end with a 3.7 GPA – starting college for the first time in 2004, and completing it in 2006. They are looking for leaders? – Bryan has always been in student government, always been a leader in school – he served a 2-year mission voluntarily – he was an Honor Graduate in Basic Training - he was a red rope in Tech School, the highest student leadership one can attain there: where you are first selected from many applications to be a green rope student leader, then from among the green ropes several are later selected to be yellow ropes and to take on more responsibility, then just a couple are selected by the Military Training Leader to become a red rope and lead them all. What more could Bryan really show this board? They wouldn’t have to be worried if he could handle the Air Force, they wouldn’t have to worry that he couldn’t handle the program (seeing as he flew 260 hours in just over a year and completed all the training with awesome grades!); they wouldn’t have to worry that he wasn’t well-rounded or not a good leader. It all just makes sense to us; we just hope it makes sense to them. We figure with all that he has going for him, if he’s not selected, then we’ll submit another packet when they take them again end of next May, and we’ll keep submitting and keep submitting, and if he’s not selected, then it must not be meant to be. And that will be disappointing but okay, and we will finish our 4 yrs or so and go into the airlines! But, I feel good about this - things have gone so right for us thus far in the Air Force, so we must be meant to be here, and I think that he will be selected in February if we are well prepared.
So now that I’ve gone on and on about how awesome I think my husband is and how qualified I think he is, I suppose I can move on to other things. Can you tell this is a big deal to us! A goal he’s had all his life – is coming very soon!
He was assigned to AEF (I think it stands for Air Expeditionary Force?) 5, which their time to be on-call to be deployed is January-April. They say everyone is being deployed these days, but his supervisors don’t think they’ll be going anywhere. BUT, the thing is, since we are submitting that officer packet in December, even if his whole shop went, he wouldn’t, because his status will be changed so that he can’t get any assignments while waiting to hear back from the board.
So last week Bryan had Thursday off. They each got to choose a day off because they were so not busy. He’s worked a lot of 4-day weeks! But I guess they also did that because of the exercise starting this week and the long hours they were gonna have.
Okay so I’m gonna send this and then I’ll send off an email with a bunch of pictures – for real this time. I know I said that last week. I forgot to take the camera with me on Sunday to take pictures of off base after church and around the base on our way home, so we’ll have to send that next time. But we have a few pictures of moi and my huge belly (hope they’re not too graphic for you), from a few weeks ago and before. And I just took a bunch of pictures of our place for you to see. You’ll see the front of our place – we are the bottom right unit, and also the view from the building’s front door. Our car is the gray SUV (4-runner/Surf). And then you’ll see what it looks like when you walk into the building and the hallway in between the units – the doors that you see are the doors to our storage units, and the doors to the apartments are on the sides. You’ll see what it looks like when we look out our back sliding doors at our backyard and a little further. And then in the baby’s room we still haven’t put up trim below the stripes that we painted, and our suitcases are in the closet until they finish the other storage units that they’re building for everybody outside. We still need to put up our curtains above our sliding doors and I’m still working on Bryan to get curtains for the 2 kitchen windows, and we have yet to buy some for the baby room. And you can see our hotel-like ones in our bedroom (we just got those last week and they help keep that early-morning light out, and the heat!). We still need to order some pictures to put above our bed so it’s not so empty up there. And as you can see we only sleep with sheets (and Bryan has a little blanket) cuz it’s too hot (in case you didn’t notice the fans everywhere in the pictures). And I just don’t know what to put above our kitchen table on that wall, and can you see the highchair we have set up in there?! (We put it together so that when everyone came to our place for dinner one of the kids could use it. Plus we put our leaf in our table for that and just left it in). And then when I’m in the maroon shirt that’s when we took a walk down to the base beach, although you probably can’t tell since it’s almost dark. And Bryan took some pictures for when we went to the real beach (the ocean) a few weekends ago. And the ones when I’m in the green shirt were when we were still in the hotel. And the ones of us together and of a lot of side shots of me in the tan shirt with stripes, were at the beginning of August, and Bryan pulled the butt of my pants way out and thought it was hilarious cuz they’re HUGE pants. And then the one of my bare belly that really shows you how MASSIVE it is, that maybe I shouldn’t have sent, was just last week. Maybe I’ll send the frontal view as well, but that really is scary. It shows that nasty line you get down the middle of your belly. And by the way, my belly button is pretty much nonexistent now even though I normally have an unusually deep belly button. So those pictures were taken after I had gone on a walk with another pregnant girl near here. Ok, I think I got them all covered. A little glimpse into our life. They’re not the best quality – cuz we don’t have our camera on the highest setting, but after we get these ones developed when it’s full, we’ll switch it!
Hope you enjoyed my journal entry this week (that’s pretty much what it is!) – I know it’s long!
Love, Julie, Bryan, Brock Blumenkrantz

I posted some of the pictures - the rest can be viewed by clicking on this link: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.7rnxnjag&x=0&y=p3pnq8&localeid=en_US and then clicking on the picture to start the slideshow.
I explained these in the letter, but I added a few others of a Buddhist temple and a Samurai house and cemetary that we saw on tours when we first got here. And of us when Bryan's mom did us a favor and got us an ultrasound before we left the states. And a few of the fireworks (coming out of the water) at the Lake Towada festival we went to in July. And um, when I made waffles for dinner and I was on my last batch and just wanted to use the rest of the batter and made a mess!

8th letter
Mon. 8/14/06

It’s me again. We are enjoying our new place and all has been put away. We just need to put up some curtains and go to the store to find others for the bedrooms and kitchen. And we just need a few more pictures. We also found a decent baby swing on the curb (once a week people put their big things on the curb for the garbage peeps to pick up in the morning). Up here in the North Area that happens on Tuesday nights and there are a lot of people who make quite a habit out of driving around and checking out the goods on the curbs to see if there’s anything they want. Our friends from the plane picked up quite a nice entertainment center!
Last night we had 4 couples over for dinner. We invited 7 but 3 of them couldn’t come. They all have one kid except for one of the couples. They all kept commenting on how comfortable our couches were and grumbling how cruddy theirs were. --And mom, they thought it pretty amazing the scrapbooks I have that you put together for me as I was growing up. And then I told them how you did that for each of your 6 kids!-- But when everyone around you has their kid you definitely feel like you should have one too! But of course that will be solved in 2 months! I think the other couple who don’t have a kid, nor are they pregnant, definitely feel out of place sometimes.
Bryan spoke in church yesterday too, on the 1st Article of Faith. He did a great job. He is amazing how he handles all the things he needs to do – he makes it seem like he barely has anything to do, and so never seems to be stressed out. He was complaining yesterday how there is one kid in his class who just won’t keep his mouth shut – he was frustrated that he had to stop the class completely to deal with this kid. We talked about ways he could handle it and he’s going to do like a game board where as a group they earn points to work towards the ultimate goal of a party, but along the way can earn treats for some of the Sundays too. So that way there will be some peer pressure on the kid to keep quiet. The mom of one of the kids in his class told me that her kid said he really liked Bryan.
Saturday night we were getting ready to go to bed and I was reading to Bryan and felt fine and the next second I had to stop because I had to go to the bathroom to throw up! Very weird. It’s so disgusting and I thought I was done with that!! I can’t believe how much my feet have hurt during this pregnancy though. Honestly, who could think that feet could hurt so much so often! Bryan has been really nice to rub them for me on the nights where it’s really bad; otherwise they still hurt when I get up in the morning!
2 Saturdays ago we went to the beach in Hachinohe, about 45 min from here, where you’re safer from the riptides. It was cool and really pretty. I’ll attach some pictures of it. We followed Bryan’s supervisor’s family (once again) and they brought with them the new guy in test cell, Nate.
On Friday I went to a luncheon with 6 other girls at Tiffany’s house and that was really fun. Girls are so funny away from their husbands! I made peanut butter candy kiss cookies and dang were they good!! Although I had to substitute a Hershey’s bar for the candy kisses because all we had in the commissary was dark chocolate or peanut butter kisses – no milk chocolate! Sheesh, you just can’t go to the store and get what you need here sometimes! Last night Tiffany told us that Friday night they were in their living room and a black man walked right into their house - - - wearing nothing but a wife beater!!! Tiffany said they all just stared for a second in shock, then she covered her eyes, and finally the silence was broken by Josh (her husband) telling him, “You’re in the wrong house dude.” The guy was obviously very drunk and he stumbled out; apparently another one of their neighbor’s “friends.” They said she has a lot of them. Later Josh walked out of his front door, and stepped in remains the guy had left behind on their front porch, in his bare feet – GROSS.
So I’ll be 32 wks on Wednesday. Our branch president, who is also one of the 2 pediatricians here on base, told me as long as I have the baby after 2 more weeks they won’t have to ship me out of here. They don’t handle those kinds of high-risk deliveries here. I’m humongous and I’ll have to attach some of those pictures too. I’m not exactly looking forward to the next 2 months because those have obviously got to be the worst belly-size-wise. October 12th is rapidly approaching and sometimes I think, I’m just not ready!! But I haven’t been feeling well a lot of the mornings, and I feel very drained a lot of the time. I’ll be excited when the bump is out of my belly and in my hands, and I can bend forward again!
Going back to how awesome Bryan’s job is – he was sent home last Wednesday after only being there a half hour because there was nothing to do! I guess they haven’t had an engine for 2 weeks! Bryan said he overheard his supervisor talking to another guy in test cell about who they would get rid of if asked to shorten the crew in test cell. And the guy said, “Blue (what they call Bryan), because he is the new guy.” And his supervisor said that that would be a mistake. So that’s good! Apparently he thinks highly of Bryan! Good to know.
The ankle/shin that I fell on 2 months ago still has not healed! Hopefully after I have the baby it will go back to normal.
Anyway, I think I’m done now. I’ll attach some pictures, but we keep forgetting to take pictures of the base and of around the base – we keep forgetting to take the camera with us in the car when we’re just running errands. So we’ll do that this week and I’ll attach them in the next letter! But we are very happy and doing well! Just can’t wait for this humidity/heat to leave us – it really wouldn’t be bad at all if we could just escape it once we went in our house!-BECAUSE WE HAVE NO AIR CONDITIONING HERE!! When we say we want winter to come people say we won’t be saying that when we have to shovel every single morning!
Well thanks to those of you who email us updates on yourselves as well – it’s good to hear from you! Hope everyone is good and we’ll talk to you later.
JULIE AND BRYAN AND MAYBE-SOONER-THAN-LATER BROCK BLUMENKRANTZ

Blumenkrantz Family

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

8/22/06 - 9th Letter

Pregnant belly pics

Our home in Misawa, Japan (on the base)

...more of our home...

...more of our home...

...and finally, more of our home

Just another humid night

Monday, August 14, 2006

8/14/06 - 8th Letter

Our New 4-member Family

Kaprie's Blessing Day

About Us

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