Skiing & Moving Update!

Last weekend Mike and I went skiing on the Sandia Mountains. It was amazing! We had no idea how close the ski resort was to us (only 30 minutes!) or how big it was going to be! It cost about $100 for the two of us to buy half-day passes as well as rentals but come on, that's a great deal! There were probably 30 trails with PLENTY of snow on them. It was kind of eerie at some parts because there were times when Mike and I had the entire trail to ourselves. Here are two videos that we took with our new flip video mino.

In other news, we got new information for when we will be moving to Japan. Originally, we were told that we would be there by the end of Feb. That would have meant that Mike would have completed the N model training in the middle of Jan and then sent off to survival school right after. However, Mike's training at Kirtland has been relatively slow which pushed his completion date til mid Feb, moving survival school mid march, and moving the big move to mid April! That's a mouthful of mmms huh? To sum it all up, we SHOULD be in Japan by the middle of April. 

Anyway, since September, we have both grown accustomed to the idea of living in Japan but still had our worries and anxiety. We knew it would be hard on our family (and us as well) being so far away. We weren't too excited about the idea of having one tv channel and constantly buying phone cards to make long distance calls. We worried about what we would do with our cars (since we have to sell them both) and the possibility of collecting lots of transformers since we only had American appliances. These weren't things that we talked about often, just little moments of concern when we thought about regarding the upcoming move. 

All that changed last Friday when we got a soft little knock on our door. Quick back story, I made a cheap little sign that said "The Quinn's" on the front of our hotel room door. I had to make our hotel room a little homey alright? 

Anyway, we got a knock on our door from Mike's boss who lives out in Japan as well! (He was there on a business trip.) He saw our sign on the door and knew that "The Quinn's" would be PSCing there soon and wanted to see if we had any questions. Of course, Mike was extremely polite and somewhat nervous meeting him for the first time. Me being bold and friendly, I went right in with the questions and found out some pretty neat stuff. He told us all about the houses and what our home will be like. He talked about the free flights that are offered stateside and around the Pacific on a weekly basis. He knew about all of the schools where I will hopefully get a job and about the local community outside of base. Some really exciting things that he told us was that we would be issued an AMERICAN telephone number! That's right, that means no long distance calls on either end! So when we call you or you call us, it will be like using your cell phone! We will also get 50 US channels on the tv. I don't know what they will be but let me tell you, I would be sad to miss out on The Food Network, TLC, and HGTV. Mike would miss his sports...so this news is great for us! Also, he said that buying cars over there are really inexpensive. If you wanted to buy a top of the line car (used of course) we'd pay at most $3000 for it although most people spend around $500 for a car over there. And lastly, he talked about how the base and work environment will become our family. We are SO excited to move there now...make some friends, get settled, go on vacations. We are done living in the hotel room and are so ready for our "new beginning" which seems to be the common theme in our marriage.