Day 41: Thursday, 6/30

Thursday was a good day. Thought I'd start out with that lest you think my homesickness and irritation with the U.S. Embassies has gotten the best of me. While still afflicted with both, I want to highlight some of the great things we're experiencing here in the Marshalls.

Day 40: Wednesday, 6/29

Happy 3-month Birthday to Grace! She's blissfully unaware of her big day but we sure know it. She's getting so big – people are making comments all the time about her buddha belly. Emi jokes that it's just like dad's :) Not sure how much she weighs now but it's got to be at least 14 pounds. She has discovered her fists and frequently tries shoving them all the way in her mouth. There's no awareness of individual fingers yet but grabbing has become a favorite pastime... blankets, shirts, any exposed parental skin, oh, and dad's whiskers... somehow, she gets those too!

Day 39: Tuesday, 6/28

I was going to have banana pancakes in honor of Stacy and Oliver's trip home but since we'd planned a visit with Emi and the girls for lunch at 11:00, I decided to go light so I'd have room for lunch. Well, they finally had bacon so my plan was abandoned and I ate my fill.

Day 38: Monday, 6/27

A great big YAY goes to the Simmons! We confirmed with DHL this morning that their package has arrived on island and would be delivered to the U.S. Embassy at some point between 1:00-5:00 pm today. She then called the Embassy to give them her cell phone number so they could reach her more directly and they confirmed that they will be calling her this afternoon to come pick up the visa. If I'm this excited for them to be heading home, I can only imagine how thrilled I'll be when it's our turn.

Day 37: Sunday, 6/26

Thump, thump, thump... it's 3:30 am and the folks next to us are really enjoying their MTV. The folks on the other side of them are not and keep banging on their shared wall or maybe it's the the door. Guess who I side with... I would add to the “hey, shut up” banging if Grace weren't so peacefully asleep. Guess I'll get up and, uh, check my online bill pay? Fun.

Days 34, 35 & 36: Thursday, Friday & Saturday, 6/23-25

Wow – a stretch of nearly 3 days without posting... I'm slacking. Or, maybe island time is truly setting into my bones. Let's see if we can recap the last three days without putting y'all to sleep.

Days 32 & 33: Tuesday & Wednesday, 6/21 & 22

I seem to be making a habit of posting 2 days at a time. It's not so much that we're too busy to spend ½ hour on the computer – I just don't have much interest in doing so every day. Sorry!

Days 30 & 31: Sunday & Monday, 6/19 & 20

Okay... so all the times that you experienced RMI families told me that the time will fly by, I thought you were crazy. Well, here it is 31 days in and I find myself really, really glad I've been posting something about each day. Those of you who know me well know that my memory is... uh, what was I saying? Anyway, without this record of our time here, I'm afraid I would forget many of the wonderful experiences we've had. So, to the experienced families – You were right. I was wrong.

That said, I think my clock is winding down an the next week is going to be really, really long. More about that later...

Days 28 & 29: Friday & Saturday, 6/17 & 18

We didn't have any plans for Friday with the exception of lunch with Emi. We both looked forward to the visit since we haven't seen as much of Emi as we'd hoped. There's been a pretty complete lack of communication with the CAA since the 20 minutes we saw Donna on Tuesday and as far as I know, Maddy still isn't back to work. We arranged it through Bubu when she drove us home last Tuesday and confirmed 1:00 when we saw her at breakfast this morning. I asked if she was coming as well but she said that it would just be Emi. While we were excited about the visit there's still some apprehension since we'll have no translator. I guess I figure it's better to sit around staring, smiling and trying to make ourselves understood than to not have the visits. The best part is watching Emi interact with Grace – it's clear she's not taking any time with her for granted as she knows that we could be leaving in as little as a week.

Day 27: Thursday, 6/16

So you'd think that jet lag would hit me more at the beginning of our trip or after we returned home... well, it's going on 4:00 am here and I've been up since 2:00. What's up with that?

Day 26: Wednesday, 6/15

After a bit of a slow start today, we met Stacy and Oliver for breakfast downstairs and were off to run a couple of errands. Jeff had some word to do so he stayed in the hotel with Grace with hopes that she'd have a more hands-off morning. From what I understand when I got back, that wasn't really the case. She wasn't fussy or crying... just wanted to chat and look at dad's goofy face. Not much work got done but he didn't look like he minded when I got back to the room.

Day 25: Tuesday, 6/14

Today started out great and ended even better! Grace slept almost a full 8 hours going down around 8:30 and getting up around 4:00 am. It's still not hard to get up with her since it's around 1:00 pm back home – the hard part is going back to sleep. I stayed up for another couple hours getting the past two day's posts finished and uploaded and responding to a few pieces of email.

Day 24: Monday, 6/13

I was pretty happy to know that we didn't have anything scheduled for Monday besides breakfast with Stacy at 9:00. We ate, Stacy went to her room with Oliver, and Jeff and I decided to camp out at the restaurant for a while. He went to grab his Mac and I had my book. We'd been there for a little while and who should walk in but Emi!

Day 23: Sunday, 6/12

Yay – Sunday! A second trip out to Enemanot on the Cramers' boat. It was just Jeff, Grace and me as Stacy and Oliver were staying back at the hotel and the Wilsons were (probably) landing in Columbus, OH. Last week we'd asked what we can do to help with food or gas but our offer was quickly dismissed – instead, Ken suggested we bring some beer next time. They have the same law here as in MN where you cannot sell/buy alcohol on Sunday so we'd picked up a couple 12-packs of Bud and Bud Light (ugh – but that's what they were drinking) and one of coke to go with the rum.

Day 22: Saturday, 6/11

It was a very exciting but long day. We were scheduled to got to Laura Beach with Emi, Destiny and Bertha around 11 or 1... Claudia would check the weather and then call us to let us know when. However, while we were at breakfast we received a text from the Wilsons that they were going home at 2:00!

Day 21: Friday, 6/10

We are planning to go to Laura Beach with Emi, her girls, and Claudia on Saturday and we needed supplies. I really hope we end up going – Claudia said we will check the weather report on Saturday morning and then decide. If it's supposed to rain, we may not go. I'm not sure how to interpret that as the report is always the same... high of 80-something, humid, with a chance of rain. So, since it's rainy season, there's a pretty good chance of it raining at some point. The sporadic rains didn't seem to bother anyone a couple weeks ago when we went but, for some reason, Claudia doesn't want to go if it's going to rain. Our backup is to have them here for lunch... yup, food again.

Days 19 & 20: Wednesday & Thursday, 6/8 & 6/9

The big event of the week is apparently the sushi buffet at our restaurant downstairs. We'd contacted Jamie (the wife of Andrew from the U.S. Embassy) through her blog and hoped to run into their family during lunch. The Wilsons and Simmons were going to join us so we went down early – at 11:00 – and held a table for 6 with a 2-top nearby in case we needed more room. We were stood up...

Day 18: Tuesday, 6/7

Well, what an exciting day... tongue firmly planted in cheek. We weren't sure if we were going to get a visit today from Emi or not so we didn't make any plans that would take us away from the hotel. Turns out we needn’t have worried as plan have now been put off until possibly Saturday. So, what did we do?

Day 17: Monday, 6/6

Monday was a day for running errands... got more formula, more diapers, more wipes, some stamps, more souvenirs, lots of information on the Marshall Islands, and even tried out a new place to eat.

Day 16: Sunday, 6/5

Sunday = Great Day!

I didn't think anything besides hearing we were on the next plane home could top finding the grocery store fully stocked... but I was wrong. We spent the day on Enemone (sp?) - an island owned by the Cramer family. It was the most home-like thing we've experienced while here and the best thing is, we've been invited back every Sunday until we leave. We are SO in!

Day 15: Saturday, 6/4

After two weeks we're settling into a nice little routine here. I suppose that's good for us but maybe not so good for blog posts. Grace is sleeps pretty well at night and off and on all day. Jeff gets up early and plunks on the computer almost ever day (just like home, right?), and I putter around cleaning and organizing things. Big shocker, that...

Day 14: Friday, 6/3

Our second Friday here and this is going to be a really short post! We did nearly nothing all day... the biggest event so far was that they had the banana pancakes for breakfast. I will admit they were very good and do deserve proper mention in the blog.

Day 13: Thursday, 6/2

It's officially been 1 week since our appointment at the U.S. Embassy... but just under a week of waiting for the Visa. The slight difference has to do with our paperwork not being sent to Manilla until Saturday, 5/28 so we'll be counting our waiting weeks from then. They gave us a tracking number but we hadn't checked on it until last night – by Tuesday the documents were in Guam and by Wednesday they'd been received in Manilla. This is faster than I'd expected but we've also heard most of the wait happens while the case is waiting to be adjudicated and/or during the delivery on the way back. Basically, this tracking information tells us nothing about the speed with which Grace's Visa will arrive in Majuro but at least we know they received our paperwork.

Day 12: Wednesday, 6/1

Happy June 1^st everyone! I didn't realize the month had changed... another day closer to coming home. As you can tell, I'm missing MN a little bit. Jeff was nice and pulled out the first season of Modern Family for a little reminder of home. We hadn't gotten into the show until season two so it's like brand new episodes for me... and wouldn't you know it, the pilot was when Cameron and Mitchell fly back from Viet Nam after adopting Lily. It might have been a bad idea to be holding Grace and trying to get her to sleep while watching this show... my spontaneous laughing did not not settle her down. But dang, is that a funny show!