Bat Passing

Here in the 44th Bat squadron, a party is hosted by a fellow bat every 44 days. The theme this time was 'Heaven and Hell'. We decided to be Hells Angels. It was a night of fun and way too many shot luge's. Here are some pics

Bella's new friend/brother

So Our neighbors, Jamie and Mike, got a new dog named Maximus. He is the cutest little guy with a big personality. Bella is teaching him all her tricks and being a great big sister. We babysat him for about a week while his parents went back to the states. Here are some pics of our week!

Our little get away

Rick and I decided we needed a weekend to ourselves. We decided to go to an Island called Yoron. It was about a 2 and 1/2 hour ferry ride from Okinawa. When we arrived we were very surprised by the size of the 'ferry'. As we stepped on, we showed our tickets to the man standing at the door. He directed us to a large room filled with Tatomi mats and blankets. The mats were lined up all around the room and there were tons of Japanese people sound asleep. Your option on the ferry ride was to lay down and go to sleep, sit in a small crowded room with no A/C or sit on the top of the boat on the floor. I choose the sleeping room because my stomach and boat ride did not like each other. Rick on the other hand, choose the top of the boat and of course he met some friends.

Once we arrived on the island, we were overwhelmed by it's simplicity and beauty. The water was this perfect aqua marine color and the resort was so white and crisp. We hung out on the beach all day and soaked up some rays. We then headed to our room and were very suprised by the size of our bed- and yes I did fall off in the middle of the night and Rick didn't even wake up.

The next day we decided to rent a scooter and make our way around the island. The island is only 12 miles long so we stopped many times throughout the day to check out all the neat snorkeling spots. We stopped for lunch at this cute little bar. We were the only customers there that day and probably for last month or so. The man was amazed by our digital camera when we asked him to take a picture of us, he couldn't believe that he could see us on the screen.

On our last day, we rented bikes and rode around some more to make sure we didn't miss anything when we were zipping along at 30km on our scooter the day before. Then it was time to head back to Okinawa. We had a wonderful time and can't wait for our next adventure!!!

Picture taken at Guam during an exercise


Rick just got home from his first deployment. He went to Guam for 11 days and worked his butt off. He was going on 5 hours of sleep per night and flying almost everyday. He got his call sign while he was there. From now and forever he will be known as "Ripper" Giampietri in the fighter pilot community. He says there are many stories leading up the reason for the name but all seem pretty vague, I'm pretty sure he is leaving something out of each story:)

Blaire came to vist for my birthday and stayed for about two weeks. We had such a fun time together. It was really nice being able to show her the life that I know live. Life on the island is a lot different than in the states. The Okinawans are very nice people. For the most part, they are very accommodating to Americans and accept us into their country( not really like they have a choice though.) No one is in a big rush to be somewhere, if you turn your blinker on while driving, more than likely the person in the next lane will slow down, maybe even stop to make sure that your are able to merge over. Between my classes and clients, my life has quickly switched to full speed. I absolutely love training people! I'm lucky to have a good group of clients who always keep my days interesting. You know how the say peoples hairdressers usually know more about their clients than their best friend, well the same goes for personal trainers. I start a boot camp and Extreme Fitness Challenge in September that I'm totally looking forward to. It is going to increase my workload significantly but someones got to bring home the bacon:)

We have a weekend of rain ahead of us due to tropical storm about 400 miles from us. It is going to be a great weekend of just hanging out and relaxing.