Being apart ain't easy on this love affair

As of today, November 26, Blake has been away from home on temporary assignments for 101 days of this calendar year. He's had short trips to Okinawa and Sasebo, both in Japan. Another short trip took him to Guam, and I was able to join him for the weekend after, which was really nice. His longest assignment was for a few months to South Korea, so we essentially lived in separate countries for some time. I was able to take three different trips to visit him while he was there, which was a great blessing and I've come to really enjoy and know Seoul more than I ever planned to, even after two trips there last year.

We tend not to broadcast that he's away during those times. I live in a secure place (a foreign military base is a well guarded gated community), but we still don't like to make a big deal of my being alone. Our ward and command and families know, so that we can both receive support, and we generally don't keep it a secret from anyone else if it comes up, but who we tell what information to is related to both Operational Security (OPSEC) and Personal Security (PERSEC). Even I don't get to know everything every time for those reasons.

It's fortunate that Blake's job isn't so secretive that I can't know anything. I know of families whose military member just disappears sometimes to do their jobs and know one knows where they are or when they will return and certainly not what they are doing. I know of marriages that have ended because of it. Comparatively, I know quite a lot about Blake's comings and goings and we can prepare for our separations.

For most of his time away so far, we've been able to talk regularly, usually daily, at least via text messages if not via phone or video chat. We can orchestrate playing games together online and or simultaneous viewings of streaming movies or tv shows. During one night while he was in Korea, we even went to the movie theaters on our respective bases and saw the same movie and had the same dinner (thank you chain restaurants). so it was almost as good as an in person date, just with less hand holding. We keep up with our family scripture study schedule and keep each other as informed as OPSEC will allow about what we're up to each day, just as we would if he were home, so that we can stay involved in each other's lives.

Genesis 31:49 - I commissioned this from an Etsy seller who makes custom dog tags. When he realized what it was for and that we were a Navy family, he included two chains and thanked us for our service. Blake wears his with his regular dog tags.

I believe in some ways I was prepared for this - I lived alone for more than three years before we got married, so I am very comfortable doing so when the Navy requires it. I'm independent and self-sufficient, possibly to a fault, so I know I can handle things while he is away.

That's not to say it isn't hard sometimes. It definitely is. We miss each other like crazy. But we make it work and the times we are together are that much sweeter.

For assignments that require him to work on a ship, he wears a silicone ring, so I wear his titanium one.

Today, Blake left for what could be his longest assignment to date. It's an incredible learning opportunity, for both us really, and one we've been aware of for over a year. Even when it wasn't an entirely sure thing, we've prepared and readied ourselves to be apart for awhile. We're going to miss to each other, as we always do, but we know this what we need to do right now. Our command, families, ward, and friends are all very supportive and this is going to be worth it.

A gift from Blake to me

This is what we signed up for when we joined the Navy. Blake is the one who wears the uniform, but we're both in this together. We didn't know the full extent of it, but we're learning and looking forward to wherever this adventure takes us!

Drink to the foam

There are a lot of Navy traditions. And I do mean a lot. I found this list just now, but it's certainly not exhaustive. I've learned about a few of them in the past three years of being a Navy wife, and I know I have more to learn. Some have changed over time, as the world has modernized, more women have joined the service, or any number of other reasons. For example, there is a ceremony for crossing the line - when the ship you're on crosses the Equator. Those who have never crossed the line before transition from pollywogs to shellbacks during this event, which was once much more embarrassing and grueling than it is now.

One we've participated in a few times has completely changed from its historical connotations. This tradition, called a "wetting down", occurs when someone promotes. Originally, when someone receives a new stripe or insignia, it would be super obvious because it would be very clean and bright compared to the rest of the uniform. In order to blend it in, they'd wet it down with sea water and dirty it up so it wasn't so obvious they were only recently promoted.

Now, a wetting down more simply refers to a social event where the newly promoted treats the rest of the officers in the command to drinks or something. We don't drink, so for Blake's wetting down for his last promotion, we treated the command to a movie and concessions at the theater on base, and had a great time!

Another tradition we participate in somewhat regularly, including tonight, is the Hail and Farewell, to celebrate both newcomers to a wardroom and those leaving. A Navy wardroom is basically a social club of the officers in a command. On a ship, it's a specific room. Off a ship, in a command like ours, its more theoretical. Of course, because this is the Navy, there is a lot more to it, but wardroom events are opportunities for the officers to socialize with each other, but also for senior officers to get to know and even mentor junior officers. Spouses are frequently guests of the wardroom, and I enjoy the chance to get to know Blake's colleagues and their spouses.

Our first Hail and Farewell was our own when we first arrived in Japan. The CO introduces the newcomer and their family (if applicable), usually in a generally lighthearted kind of way. For those we farewell, the CO talks a bit about their accomplishments over the past tour and wishes them well on future endeavors. It's been a few months since the last event, so we had a number of people to celebrate tonight for the Region Legal Service Office (RLSO), which Blake is the process of transferring back into from the DSO.

Tonight, at a bar on base, was a good time - I got to meet Blake's new CO and XO, who both seem like good people, and chatted with some other friends I hadn't seen for a bit. I did burn the roof of my mouth a little on some waffle fries, but I'll live.

We have a really good and supportive command and JAG community, even with changes in personnel every few months. Not every command is this great, so I know we've lucked out to have such a positive experience for a first tour. Some of the people we are meeting now will likely be people we run into in the fleet for the rest of Blake's career and I think that will be a good thing!

Forgot to take a photo at the event, so we are are on the train home!

Rise Up

Blake's job as a first tour JAG has been to rotate between the four main branches of military law to learn about their functions and start figuring out what he likes best and what he is suited for. He started in prosecution, then legal assistance, the operational law/command services, and finally spent the last several months in defense. It was actually a bit more complicated than all that with some of his temporary assignments, but that's the basic gist of it.

Defense is actually a different command than the rest of it, for obvious conflict of interest reasons. You can't have the same chain of command working on opposite sides of the same case. So in May, he checked out of the Region Legal Service Office and checked into the Defense Service Office. Within the next two weeks, he will check out of the DSO and back into the RLSO for his next assignment.

As such, the DSO had two farewell events in his honor this week. The first was an informal dinner with fellow officers (spouses were invited, but I was the only in attendance) at a local izakaya, a type of Japanese bar where you can get a private room and order small dishes for everyone to share to accompany your beverages of choice. He received a certificate that was lighthearted in nature to commemorate his time at DSO and we enjoyed the casual social time.

The final event was his formal farewell from his command during an all hands meeting, in uniform, at the office. Here, his commanding officer read a letter detailing his accomplishments over the last five months and praised him in front of the entire command. Normally, he would have also received a plaque, but the engraver is apparently down and he will just have to get that eventually.

I cried some happy, proud tears. He really has done great work and learned a lot, which will certainly serve him well in his career to come! This life isn't easy, but he is doing it well!

Whose broad stripes and bright stars

Late yesterday afternoon, I was walking into base on my way to Sound of Music when I heard a sound familiar to anyone who has spent time on a military base - evening colors. At the moment of sunset every evening, the bugle sounds the “Attention” signal and the national ensign is lowered as the national anthem is played, following which the bugle plays the “Carry On” signal. Everyone who hears it, including those in cars, is expected to stop and stand (or sit in the car) at attention for the duration. In the absence of a live band, which is the case on our base, “Retreat” is played instead of the national anthem. (For morning colors, at 0800, “To the Colors” is traditionally played instead of the anthem when there is no band, but our base does play the national anthem regardless.)

I don't get to hear this every day. I'm usually inside or not even on base at sunset - they don't play it in our housing detachment. But when I do hear it, I definitely stop, turn in the direction where I think they're lowering the flag, and stand at attention. I'm actually quite fond of this tradition, even if it slows me down to wherever I'm heading.

Yesterday, however, was a little different. Instead of entering base through my usual route (Womble Gate), I had entered through main gate, as I had an errand to run on that side. So when colors started and I instinctively turned to face the direction the flag, I found myself looking directly at the flagpole on Command Hill (base headquarters) and watching the flag (actually three flags - admiral's flag, Japanese flag, and American flag - lowered in that order) being lowered. Up until this point, I'd always just kind of guessed there was a flag there, but there were a bunch of buildings in the way. They also lower the flags at the hospital and on any ships in port.

Flagpole at Ikego

It was a touching sight, and one I can now think of any other time I'm caught outside during colors, wherever I am. It's really interesting to be living on a military base, especially this one. The Yokosuka base was a Japanese base for close to a hundred years before the United States took it over, so there is history all over and a long tradition of service to Japan and, now, the United States. Commodore Matthew Perry first arrived in Yokosuka in 1853 when it was just a small fishing village, which initiated the opening of Japan to the West. The command to invade Pearl Harbor was broadcast from what we now call Weather Hill. Yokosuka was vital to the United States during the Korean and Vietnam wars. And that's just the start of it. I love living here and learning about it, and colors is the perfect time to reflect on that.

US Naval Hospital Yokosuka

It's a beautiful life, oh oh oh oh

Adventuring is really great in Japan. There is so much that is new for us to see and do and experience, and we should. But, we also live here, and sometimes that means we have to spend some time doing the business of life.

Our household goods shipment should be coming next week, so we decided that today was the day we'd finally bite the bullet on some rugs we had been eyeing on base. After a morning spent at home, sweeping, putting things away, cleaning the kitchen, FaceTime with my brother, his wife, and their menagerie (a dog and two bearded dragons), we set off to main base for an afternoon of errands.

We did stop for sushi first at a kaiten zushi, literally "rotation sushi", which is a sushi go round or conveyor belt sushi. As mentioned in my food post, this is where sushi comes around on a conveyor belt and you pick what you want as it goes by and then pay by the plate. Certain colors of plates cost different amounts, and we had a guide at our counter of both price and types of sushi. I also was able to ask for water in Japanese. "Sumimasen! Mizu kudasai."

I felt pretty good about that, and really enjoyed the cold water since the texture of the sushi I'd just tried (the squid above) and I didn't get along for a moment. Ultimately, we like the other kaiten zushi place we went to more, because price and variety of non-sushi foods are better, but this was pretty good.
















Then it was on to base! We have been told that we have one of the better, more comprehensive bases, with so much to do on base, lots of different Navy Exchange stores all over to cover a wide variety of needs, and so many other services to support the military and their families. You can actually spend all of your time on base with how much there is there, but why?

Still, today was a day we needed to. For fun, we did go look at the USS Reagan, the aircraft carrier stationed here, since it returned just before Thanksgiving. We also stopped by the USO, to ask about a particular service they provide. Then it was shopping time! With the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales, it went better than we thought it might, but we probably also picked up a few things we weren't expecting. We managed to find new shoes (two pair for me, one for Blake, since I needed new walking shoes and Chuck Taylors were on sale), new socks (didn't need them but I guess a three pack came free with women's shoes, and it felt like she just kept tossing some in our bag, so okay), gym shorts, Christmas lights, personal care products (body wash and the like), groceries, the aforementioned rugs (four of them!), and a dresser. It was busy day. The rugs and dresser will get delivered, but everything else we carried on the train home.

We'd worked up an appetite, so we stopped at the Taco Bell for burritos. We also have a McDonald's, Chili's, Popeye's, Manchu Wok, Sbarro, A&W, Starbucks, and a few galleys and other eateries. We'll try not to eat at these places often, but they're convenient and today it was close. We were planning to go see a movie, but the line to get in was long and we were tired, so we checked our mail and headed home.

So even though we live in Japan and have lots of Japanese fun, today had a distinctly more American flavor to it. And that's okay too! Not everyone living abroad with the military or foreign service or any other reason has these amenities, but we do and we're grateful for them. 

Oh give me a home

If you are assigned to the Navy base in Yokosuka, you must live on base, provided there is housing available based on your rank, family size, and pet owner status. If nothing matches, then you have to live off base. Either way, the Navy pays for your housing, which is a really nice perk.

We watched just about all of the videos on YouTube about our base, including the housing options, but there was just no way of knowing what we would ultimately end up with until we went to the housing office and found out what was available to us on that particular day. That, for us, was our second Monday in Japan. 

Of course, we had preferences, and we discussed what we might do if we were given options. In the end, our option was a three bedroom first floor apartment in the housing detachment and move in within a few days or forfeit our housing benefit and pay out of pocket to live off base and spend the next week or more house hunting. 

3br tower unit in Yokosuka

Well, that was a no brainer. So, on Thursday of that week, without having seen the place beforehand, we moved into the Ikego housing detachment, about 6 miles/10 kilometers from main base. Originally, we had not wanted Ikego at all during all the hypotheticals we discussed before our housing brief, because of its distance from main with far more amenities and where Blake would need to go to work each day, especially since we wanted to remain car free. Instead, we were surprised by how quickly we fell in love with our new home and neighborhood!

So much better than the kitchen I had in my hobbit hole before I got married!

The leaves are starting to change now, and it's gorgeous!

There are sufficient American amenities in Ikego, a former Japanese ammunition depot,  to survive - a mini-mart, post office, gym (which we just tried out for the first time this morning and liked!), elementary school and child care centers (not that we will need either yet, but good to know), restaurant, pizza that delivers, Fleet and Family Support Center, salon (somewhere. . .), self-help center (where to go if you need to borrow tools you don't have), athletic fields, skate park, and swimming pool all within a 5-10 minute walk. The group exercise classes are in the multipurpose room of our building, so a 30 second walk away. We definitely like the dog park, and are looking forward to checking out the campgrounds and hiking trails that are just outside the gate.

Master bath

My favorite thing is there is a train station and base gate within 5-7 minutes from our door! If we lived on main base, it would easily take 20-30 minutes to get from our home to get off base and then to one of the two train stations there. Instead of being within walking distance to a busy shopping district and a few malls, we are walking distance to smaller stores and a beach! Yes, the commute to work for Blake everyday and for me to main base whenever is a little longer than we hoped, but not bad. For now, Blake takes the free shuttle in the morning and the train back in the evening, which gets him home an hour earlier than the shuttle home. 

Spare bedroom

Master bedroom, with its own balcony - thinking of turning it into a yoga space in the spring

We have quadrupled our closet space, gained a bedroom, and added about 300-500 square feet from what we had in DC. We even have two patios! Do I know what we're going to do with all this spare space? Nope! But we will figure it out, and it's okay if some of it remains empty for awhile. We did already purchase a brand new sofa that no one else has ever owned, which I feel is a very important step to adulthood. I also look forward to many baths in the rather sizable tub! Blake already found some aromatic epsom salts, because I had a nasty cold the whole week of moving in. Nothing quite kills your enthusiasm for finally moving into a new home like being sick for the first few days, but I got better and now I'm excited!

All the white on white is a little sterile for my taste, but I'm going to enjoy my semi-retirement by decorating. We've already got our eyes on a couple of rugs at the home store on main base, unless Malcolm carpets the floor with all his shedding first, though we have also already purchased a new broom and our Swiffer and mop came with our express shipment last week. If this place is going to be ours for three full years, I definitely want it to feel like home. Amazingly, just unpacking a few more things in our express shipment of unaccompanied baggage last Friday moved that home feeling up a few notches immediately! So far, the main bathroom is the most "finished" room, mostly because we're still waiting on the bulk of our household goods, but I'm sure this place will come together soon!

There's no place I'd rather be

Bright and early Monday morning, our first full day in Japan, we reported for the Area Orientation Brief class, or AOB. It's 8 hours a day for a full 5 days of information to, well, orient you with the area!

On one hand, it's a very useful class. It's good to know about all the resources available to sailors and their families, the dos and don'ts on and off base, and more. 

On the other hand, it's a LOT of information at once. Death by Powerpoint is a real thing, y'all, especially when it's your first day/week and you're wildly overwhelmed by the newness of everything, not just all the information being given to you. For some who have lived on or near robust military bases before, some of it's not new information, but it was pretty much all new to me and I did my best to keep up. Fortunately, there are a lot of handouts, it's not uncommon to take pictures of slides when needed, and Blake was there with me. I may not have retained a lot of the information immediately, but I've since referred back to things or heard something again and been able to process it that time. 

The biggest lesson I got out of it was that we have a lot of resources on this base to support the sailors and families, as well as a lot of things to do on and off base. There's always help to be found and if you're bored around here, it is your own fault.

After that first day, jet lag was hitting me hard. Our sponsor picked us up and offered to show us a little around base, which I agreed to, and he dropped us off at the cell phone store. By this point, I had the foggiest brain I can ever remember having and I was barely functioning. Somehow, we still managed to get new Japanese phones and even an iPad, because they were on a crazy good deal of a promotion. It's all a little pricier than our plans in the States, but not bad.

Back in the Lodge, we took care of Malcolm and got dinner at the Chili's next door. There's not a huge variety of American food on base, but it covers a lot of the major fast/convenient cuisines. Pet-friendly rooms here only have a microwave, so we ate a fair amount of frozen dinners and peanut butter sandwiches for a little while. The Lodge did provide breakfast every morning. We had been given a welcome basket from Blake's ward room, so did have some other snacks and goodies to supplement.

Tuesday was more classes about on base resources and the like, but Wednesday started our cultural indoctrination classes. We started learning about the Japanese language, culture, food, money, and so on. Much at this point was a review for me, having taken Japanese several years back, but the review was very much appreciated. 

Thursday, we finally got off base and went on our first field trip! The instructors escorted us to one of the two train stations that are close to main base (two different lines), helped us purchase train cards, and then we rode the train to Kamakura. It's an adorable little town that was once the de facto capital of Japan during the Kamakura period. It's a fairly popular day trip tourist location for visitors to Tokyo.  

First, we set free to find lunch. We'd been given a little instruction on dining in Japan, so we felt somewhat prepared. After some wandering (including discovering a children only restaurant!), we found a yakiniku place that ended up being delicious. Yakiniku is where you grill your own meat at your table, and we loved it. This particular place had traditional Japanese tables where you remove your shoes and sit on the floor, but we were seated on the Western side of things. A very successful first dining experience in our new country.

Then, we regrouped and were taken on a little walking tour that led us to the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine, the most important in Kamakura. We were shown around the grounds and had various aspects explained to us, which I appreciated. It's a beautiful shrine and I love learning about other religions. (It's a shame I so frequently fell asleep during my world religions class at BYU, but it was at 8am and in the dark and I refer you to my earlier comments about Powerpoints.)

Walking through a torii gate on your way into a shrine is believed to purify your soul.

As a final test, we were on our own to make our way back to base. This gave us time to stop and get ice cream - purple sweet potato for me and white peach and soda swirl for Blake. Of the three flavors, white peach was my favorite. We've also found white peach Fanta since then, and it's very good. It was a really lovely first off base excursion! 

A cast member had given me some fish pastries as a thank you, which I didn't understand as a choice. Apparently fresh cooked fish pastries, filled with various things, are a very tasty street food in Japan! My friend had just found them at a Korean bakery and didn't realize the significance either! We tried custard and caramel.

The warm October weather definitely called for ice cream. 

Kamakura!

It's easy when you're big in Japan

One of the reasons we were drawn to military service was the potential for living in a variety of places. International would be particularly interesting, but since we'd already both left our home states years earlier, we were game for living anywhere.

First Tour JAGs in the Navy are generally assigned to one of twelve duty stations around the world, with offices large enough to support six month rotations in the four main offices of Navy law for a total of two years. We were asked to put together a dream sheet, a list of those twelve stations in prioritized order of where we would like to live.

Some people research their options and take a lot of time considering it all. We did things a lot more quickly. Two of the locations were international, so those were immediately at the top of our list. If not now, when? I'd already lived and traveled abroad, and Blake had been to Mexico for 45 minutes once, so of course we wanted to see what the wide world held for us. Number one for us was Naples, Italy, at Blake's request. Number two was Japan.

The remaining ten were in the United States. We put locations in Washington and California closer to the top, since they'd be close to family. The four options in Florida and some other places I've since forgotten went in no particular order in the middle, and staying in DC became number eleven, above living north of Chicago because that just sounded way too cold.

This was around January 2016. We knew we wouldn't hear until summer, and we figured that no matter where we ended up, we would make it work. If we hated it, we would only be there for two years.

On the afternoon of May 10th, we were sitting on the couch watching Once I Was a Beehive (delightful, by the way). I had taken a couple days off work to enjoy having Blake home after five weeks away. Blake got a phone call, so we paused the film. It sounded like his detailer was asking questions about how ODS went, so I hopped online to kill time.

Soon, Blake started saying "okay" several times and then grabbed my phone and typed "japan" in the middle of whatever URL was on the page. I silently freaked out until he was off the phone. I had taken Japanese in high school and fallen a little bit in love with the language and culture, so it was technically the top of my list.

Apparently, his detailer, after asking about ODS, had started telling him, apologetically, why we would not be going to Italy this time. There were no billets available, etcetera and so forth, and Blake realized that they wouldn't have gone on so much about our second choice if we weren't going to our second! As soon as his suspicions were confirmed, he told me!

After happy dancing around our apartment for a few minutes, we called our families and shared the news - Yokosuka, Japan! It would be a few more days before we realized it's pronounced Yo-ko-ska, long O, short A, skip the U. I may have taken Japanese, but it's been a long time, and I'm rusty. Now I have excuses to brush up again!

We celebrated that night by attending the Navy Appreciation game of the Washington Nationals. We were already planning to go and it seemed extra fitting after that phone call.

The move ultimately wouldn't be for five more months, but the wait has been worth it so far!

Anchors aweigh, my boys!

Sometime while we were dating in the summer of 2012, before he started law school, Blake and I were walking around the National Harbor and heard a military band playing in a gazebo near the water. I couldn't tell you which group it was specifically, I think Marines, but it was lovely. While we stopped and listened, Blake told me he was thinking of becoming a JAG, or member of the Judge Advocate General Corps. In other words, a military lawyer.

Immediately, this sounded like an interesting idea to me. I didn't know much about what it would entail, but I liked the idea of potentially moving all over the world. It wouldn't be the crazy, competitive hours of Big Law or working for table scraps as an ambulance chaser, or some other less appealing (to us) lawyer path. I encouraged him to continue thinking about it and pursue it if that's what he wanted. I was at a career crossroads anyway (*cough* unemployed *cough*), so why not?

A year later, with two semesters of law school and a summer internship on Capitol Hill under his belt, Blake started an internship with Coast Guard JAG headquarters. They liked him so much that he stayed on for a second semester (in a slightly different office down the hall) and ended up working there his entire second year of law school. And he loved it.

By this time, some JAG programs will accept student applications from lawyers in their second year of school, so thus began the official application process. He started a different internship with the TSA, so we also considered a variety of federal lawyer jobs during this time.

Seven applications to four branches of the military (everyone except Marines) and almost another year later, we got word that Navy wanted Blake, but he'd have to be on wait list. We found out just before he graduated, so it was nice to have something to tell our parents while they were visiting. We knew it almost definitely meant he would get off the wait list and get an official commission, we just didn't know when. We were willing to go with whichever branch of service picked us up first, because they all had pros and cons, but as a granddaughter of a Navy fighter pilot, I was always rooting a little harder for Navy.

So Blake took the summer to study for the Bar exam and then continued work on his Masters degree. He was in a joint Juris Doctorate/Masters of Public Policy program and while many classes during law school had counted for both, he still had two semesters left. So, while I kept working, he went back to school, applied to various jobs as interesting ones popped up, and we waited for the wait list.

In November 2015, we finally got the call! Once again, we didn't know exactly when it would happen, but the Navy officially wanted him. And soon.

During our whirlwind Baltimore>NYC>Richmond week in December, the call we got about Virginia Beach the next Monday was an invitation to officially receive his commission into the Navy and swear in as an Ensign.

And then we waited some more. Blake finished his last semester of his MPP a few weeks early (thanks American University for working with him!) and reported to Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island for five weeks for Officer Development School. It's kind of basic training light, but still a challenging and interesting month. I held down the fort in DC, and we missed each other a lot, but we talked as often as we could (usually at least a text a day, call every few days, and Skype once a week) and the time went by quickly.

They had flood training, because if the ship is going down, even the lawyers (and other officers) should be able to do more than push paperwork.

They stood in line a lot.

Like really a lot

The first weekend in May, my parents and his dad (sadly, his mom had to work), met me in Boston, and we all got to go to his graduation. I'm not complaining about the first time seeing my husband in uniform in person was in his dress whites.

Blake come home with me, I wrapped up my job (more on that later this month), and we enjoyed seven weeks off together - visiting family, working on our DC bucket list, and just relaxing. It was amazing.

Then at the beginning of August, Blake reported back to NAVSTA Newport for ten weeks of Naval Justice School, or military law school, and promote to Lieutenant Junior Grade. Once again, I stayed in DC, but this time he lived in a hotel instead of barracks and we got to video chat at least once a day. We also visited each other once each.

He graduated on October 14 in Rhode Island, flew back to DC that night, and we left for Japan on October 15.

Ultimately, it's been a combination of lots of waiting plus sudden bouts of craziness and do this now!, but it's worked out so far! I'm so proud of Blake and his hard work in making this dream come true!