OAARS 5K Spay Day Fun Run/Walk

Yesterday we participated in our last OAARS walk of our tour!! The turn out was great and it was good to see all our friends and their furkids. The girls had a great time. McKenzie was a trooper and walked the entire route. Maggie on the other hand spent more time in the stroller than she did walking. It is funny what a few months can do to a dog. In December we did the same walk and Maggie managed to walk about 3/4 on her own. Maggie did manage to finish the race out of the stroller.


Cesario and Clay were right behind us with McKenzie and Zora.


We will always be thankful to OAARS for allowing us the opportunity to adopt Maggie.

The Hard Reef

When we were stationed here on the last go around we used to go to a bar called The Hard Reef. Needless to say that we'd not been back there since we got back to Okinawa in 2008. We ran into Lisa earlier today and she mentioned she'd be going. We were trying to think of something to do this evening besides just going to church and dinner. So after talking to Lisa we decided to join her. She said she would be picking up some pizzas from Pizza Hut to take the the workers there. We called Stephen as we knew Liz was gone to see if he wanted to join us and he agreed. So here is how the night went down!

We arrived at Lisa's around 800pm. We parked at her house and walked over as it is only a couple blocks. We walked in with pizzas in had which she gave two to the staff and we kept one for our eating pleasure.


We were sitting around enjoying ourselves reminiscing about the times we'd been there back in the day. There were a group of young Marines there, several that were really drunk. One made his way over and sat almost on Stephen's lap. He could barely speak and looked like his face had been burned to a crisp. He stayed a few minutes trying to communicate with Stephen and he finally got up and staggered away. The whole thing was so funny and we realized that he was "That Guy." The military has a campaign to bring awareness about excessive drinking.


Who is That Guy? That Guy is anyone who drinks too much alcohol and loses control with humiliating results. When you see him in action, and the consequences he faces, he’s a reminder to all of us: “Don’t be That Guy!” And let’s not forget… girls can be That Guy, too!

Dinner with Friends

There is nothing better to break up the weekday monotony like going to dinner with friends!! I had talked to Jaimel about getting together with Karen as we knew she would be leaving the island soon to relocate to Washington. Karen's husband Rich, our former ACS director, had always talked about this great place called Umizora. We recently discovered it when we went there for my birthday. We could think of no better place to go as we knew Karen loved this place, so did we and I wanted to take Jaimel and Reggie there. Dinner was fantastic as always and the company was even better. We'd planned to meet there at 600pm and figured we'd be there a few hours. Next thing I know I looked at my watch and it was 915pm. With all the eating, talking and laughing we had done the time had flown. We said our farewells to Karen but being military it is usually never goodbye but see you on the flip side. Although the evening was fabulous there was one important person missing and that was Rich!!!

ACS Crew & Tomoko

We have had many changes at work with people leaving and new people coming on. As well as people from Camp Zama coming down to help out in our time of need. The first new member is Bino.

Bino is going to be our information and referral guy!!


Cheryl Rendon is here from CZ helping out and Cynthia is our MFLC that is here on an 8 week rotation. Last but not least there is Tomoko who is not part of our ACS but is a good friend who is always looking for a good time.


We decided it would be fun to go to Poco a Poco for the all you can eat and drink plan. You are given 3 hours with a set menu of food and drinks that you can order from for 3,000 yen. We ate, laughed and enjoyed each others company. It is always fun to be around new people!!