3/27/07 - 20th Letter

20th letter
Tues. 3/27/07

Holy crap! I know it’s been awhile but I’ve been busy! I barely have time to do this but I wanted to get a letter out. I’m a little stressed because I’m a little worried that I’m not going to get everything done in time before the end of the semester. And we have 2 good friends leaving next week! Sunday we are heading to Tokyo by bullet train! So we will have to say goodbye to them a little earlier, and are missing the last big get together with everyone on Sunday!! That part is a bummer but we are excited to meet Bryan’s parents down there. We will be there until Friday, the 6th. Then they will come back up here with us, and leave on the 14th. Bryan is pretty excited because he has scheduled work off for the entire time. He is looking forward to his vacation. We are excited about being able to see his parents again after 10 months. It will be fun, but I will have to do homework while they are here!
So much has happened since I last wrote. We actually just went down to Tokyo (Yokota Air Base) from the 8th-10th. We rented a van from Outdoor Rec and drove! Bryan needed to take his TBAS test (Test of Basic Aviation Skills) for part of his officer package for pilot. So yes, we drove halfway across Japan and spent a decent amount of money just so he could take it since they don’t have it here!! It was an interesting drive – not bad – and Brock did really well. I think it took just over 9 hours to get there and we stayed at the hotel on base. Bryan took the test the next afternoon and then we drove to a military-sponsored hotel located in more downtown Tokyo. It took us an hour and a half to get there…because Tokyo is HUGE! Someone was just telling me that Tokyo is 800 square miles! We took the subway to TGI Friday’s – much anticipated – and it was expensive and disappointing. And I was so excited to have good American-restaurant food again… Snap. Then the next morning we checked out and drove back. So we didn’t have time to really do anything – but the purpose of the trip was the test – and we knew we were coming back down again to meet his parents. The driving was uneventful except for a few turn-around-we-missed-our-exit-‘s.
We also did the ’10-DAY MASTER CLEANSE’-!!! Typically known as the lemonade diet. HOLY CRUD – honestly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I can’t believe we did it! We almost gave up a few times. For those of you that don’t know, it consists of drinking an herbal laxative tea at night, downing 32 oz. of salt water first thing in the morning, and drinking a nasty fresh-squeezed lemon juice, organic grade b pure maple syrup, water, and cayenne pepper mixture all day. I hated every bit and every part of it and was just plain hungry the whole time! I can’t believe we went without food for 10 days. Amazing. I had to plug my nose to drink the salt water (and try not to throw up), plug my nose to drink the day mixture, and plug my nose to drink the tea. Even the smell of the maple syrup and herbal tea made me sick. Bryan didn’t mind the day mixture – he thought it tasted like lemonade (hence the name). He easily handled the tea, too. Anyway, man I was glad when it was over!! I lost 10 pounds and he lost 8. I ordered enough supplies for 20 days for both of us – but we could not do more than the minimum of 10 (a friend here did it for 30 days!). So I was bummed by the money spent on the unused stuff, but I just found out we have a friend who wants to do it and is going to buy it all off me! YAY.
SO, Brock is/was 6 MONTHS OLD today! That’s a big one. We also had his 6-mo appt today. And guess how much he weighed….first, let me remind you that at his 4-mo he was 17 lbs 14 oz. He is now 20 lbs 14 oz. He is 27.5 inches long. Those are both in the 90th percentile. His head is 17.5 in and that’s in the 75th percentile – which is surprising cuz his head looks HUMONGOUS next to the other little kids’. So this kid continues on that upper level growth curve. He is basically in 9-mo-old clothes. He really might be too small for his carrier, but I wanted to wait just a little bit longer before we got a rear-facing car seat. But it’s pretty heavy to carry him around in that carrier! Plus they don’t have the car seat we wanted here right now. The continuous joys of being secluded in a foreign country. So he sits up but gets too excited so he falls to the side or backwards. He loves sitting up though and I looked all over for a playmat that he tried, that was actually like sitting in an inner tube with things hanging overhead. He LOVED that thing – wish they would’ve let me have it… He finally started rolling over consistently a week ago – but he goes from back to belly, and only a few times has gone from belly to back. He also only rolls to his left…weird. I think it was about 3 wks ago that we finally started him on rice cereal. Yeah I started him a little later cuz of this thing on Dr. Phil where pediatricians said it was now recommended to wait until 6 mos instead of starting them on the cereal at 4-6 mos…but I could tell he was ready so we started him. Bryan was really excited to do it. I also kept track a few days really how much formula he was taking in…and he is not eating as much as his weight leads you to believe! He is, on average, actually under the range of ounces they say his age is eating. He has also started screaming for fun again. Oh, AND, he still likes being swaddled! He actually slept pretty decent for a week without it, but then we got a large micro fleece SwaddleMe in the mail and put him back in it; and now it seems like he’s sleeping better than ever! I don’t know what’s up with his hair either – it just sticks straight up! The front has finally started to lay down, as it gets longer. Someone asked me the other day if his hair was ‘staticky’ – I said no it’s always like that no matter what you do (except with a lot of gel)! He still slobbers like crazy, so if he’s sitting upright he needs a bib for sure. He really likes paper and gets pretty upset when you take it away from him! He likes to yank his pacifier out of his mouth to make a popping sound – same with his bottle – it’s pretty silly. Oh and speaking of, for awhile now, for the most part he’ll hold his bottle himself to eat. It makes it REALLY convenient when you’re out and about, especially when you’re eating, yourself! Anyway…he’s fun. And everyone seems to think he looks like Bryan.
I found out I am to be the next Enrichment Leader for church. SNAP. I had a feeling that was going to happen but I was hoping it wouldn’t. Even the Relief Society President told me that she would hate being that – and that it’s too much work! I am currently the food coordinator (yes I think they made that one up, but it actually was more work than I thought it was going to be!) as part of the enrichment committee (besides also being a primary teacher). Like 60% of the branch is moving out within the next couple months!!
Most of the pictures I’m attaching are a little old. The one of Brock in the saucer in a sleeper is from the 20th. The one of Bryan holding him where he’s in the green and white sleeper is from the 14th. Then pictures from Tokyo (views from the highway) and the TGI Fridays there from the 8th-10th. There’s a video from the 12th of Bryan playing with Brock on the changing table. Then a video from the 5th of Brock’s first experience eating from a spoon, and a few pictures of that as well. Then there’s pics from the 3rd where Bryan put a bunch of gel in his hair to keep it from sticking up, and he just ended up slicking it down. On March 1st he sleeps. There’s a video of him on the floor, half out of his green swaddler cuz it’s too short, from Feb. 24th. A video of him wrapped up in his bouncer from Feb. 23rd, and another one in the bouncer from Feb. 22nd. -And a goofy looking picture of him laying on the floor. So I guess I’ll load those 5 videos onto photobucket and send the link to them. For those of you who can handle receiving larger-sized emails I can actually send up to a 45-second video directly thru email but it’s a 10MB email. But you could open it up in your own media viewer and it would be better quality than photobucket.
Oh, by the way – Bryan got a 92 on the test that he went to Tokyo to take. It’s a simulator-like test on a computer with a joystick and pedals. The score takes into account how well he did on the test (TBAS), the amount of flight hours he has (255), and his pilot score on the AFOQT (96). We’ve been working on his officer package and it’s coming together nicely. We are getting towards the end. He has his interview on Friday. Then he’ll take the Letter of Recommendation that we wrote and has since been revised a bit by his supervisors, to the upper-level guy (group commander) to hopefully also agree to and sign his name to. Also a simple prerequisite physical to get done – and that would basically cover it – and we send this baby off the first available day – May 23rd!
So, DENNIS – sorry I missed your calls today. You are funny – it’s a voicemail system, not an answering machine…so I wouldn’t be able to hear you keep talking while you wait for me to pick up.
JENNI – sorry – I know, I was going to send a card with your package, and totally forgot until I already had the box completely wrapped and taped up!
We finally think we have our family pictures all picked out. Tomorrow I will have Tiffany resize them to all the different sizes needed to send them out to everyone. But they aren’t great or anything 'cuz we just aren't photogenic people (!)…so don’t expect much – Bryan and I can’t seem to look normal simultaneously. But we’ll probably mail out some to most of you, and I think I’ll send out an email with all of them. Then you can print off what you want, or none at all, whatever.
There are a few of you that I’m really behind on getting a letter back to – I’m sorry! Hopefully I can get those written before we leave on Sunday.
Well it’s almost 3am. I probably won’t be able to avoid these late nights until this semester is over – can’t wait.
See you later!!
Julie
Bryan
Brock

For all the pictures, here is the link to the slideshow:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2t7pqtrs.bttcv55g&x=0&y=-egrbfv&localeid=en_US
As usual, just click on the link, then click on the picture, and the slideshow starts.