Give me a holiday weekend and I'll give you a home and a pot roast...

Spoiler alert for the spouse: If you are reading this, you may want to stop. There are photos of our home and you have said you want to be surprised. You have been fairly warned.

The good news is that our stuff ("household goods" in military-speak) arrived on Friday. I got the email Thursday afternoon that I had an appointment at 8:30a.m. the next morning for delivery, but I had to confirm within three hours of receipt of the e-mail. I called within 8 minutes.

Friday morning, the movers arrived 10 minutes early, but I was ready. The first thing was the removal of the borrowed doctor's-office-like furniture. I was grateful for the fact the base has a Lending Locker of items to borrow until your household good shipment arrives, but I was equally as glad when they left my apartment. Here is what the calm before the storm of boxes looked like:

Living room

Dining room

Office

Boys' room. Note the green tape on the wall where I pointed out what furniture went where.

Master bedroom

Boxes and boxes of stuff from our 4-bedroom home in Pensacola came to our 1,100-square-foot apartment in Iwakuni... less the few hundred pounds that are still in storage in Pensacola. The good news is that it would, in fact, fit in our apartment and storage cage, with some optimal organizational skills, which, I do, in fact, have. The bad news, for me anyway, is that my husband is still "deployed" (military-speak for not at home for an extended period of time. Frankly, I don't think getting sent back to a California hotel should be called a deployment, but I have learned to stop trying to be logical when it comes to the decisions of the Marine Corps). Rodney will not be home for another 19 days, so the unpacking and arranging the furniture fell on my shoulders, with the help of six Japanese movers. Fortunately, I have been officially labeled "overweight and strong" (more on this in the next post) so, I am capable of leveraging my heft and using my strength for said arranging.

The movers were very helpful and kind, unwrapping furniture, household necessities, like vases and lamps, and scraproom/office items and putting them where I pointed. The leader of the crew, Nakano-san, had a very good sense of humor and found infinite amusement in the number of items that went in the room labeled "office." Yes, that dresser, bookshelf, desk and kitchen table go in the office. Yes, that pile of paper goes in to the office, too. Yes, that Rubbermaid container labeled "ribbon" goes in there. Yes, the antique brass spittoon goes in the office. About one in every five or six items was sent to the office, and I suppose that the items were quite random to a non-scrapbooker's mind. It got to the point where, laughing, he held something random up, like a window with only one of four glass panes remaining, and said "Office?" He was only wrong once. And if you see what the room looks like now, you might be able to understand the amusement. This is the one room in the apartment I have not yet touched:

Office/scraproom from doorway

Office/scraproom from the closet

So, somewhere in the midst of me checking off numbered labels and pointing, Nakano-san says, "You have a lot of stuff." I replied, "My husband agrees with you." He grinned and delivered the rolling tote to the office.

So the office/scraproom is what I have not done. As for the rest of the apartment, I feel the need to brag. Just a little bit, I promise. I am very satisfied with my level of accomplishment with regard to unpacking and, as I mentioned before, the spouse is not here to hear the bragging and give me the proper enthusiasm required in response for such effort. So, this is my blog, you're choosing to read it, so feel free to skip over the next few paragraphs if listening to bragging is not your thing, Trust me, I understand, I am not fond of braggarts, either. Those of you who are still with me, here is what I DID accomplish since the movers left at 3 p.m. Friday:

The first room I tackled was the boys' room, so they would be happy, busy and  non-whiny while I focused on the remainder of the house. Their TV, DVD?VCR and Xbox 360 are hooked up and working. You can see how busy they have been. And what they consider to be a "made" bed.

The dining room, as seen from the kitchen breakfast bar.

The dining room as seen from the living room.

My collection of Princess House Cottage Tulip crystal is in the hutch. Windexed and sparkling, I might add.

The living room as seen from the kitchen. I am waiting for the spouse to get home to help my drill holes in the wall to hang things. The walls are concrete, so mere nails will not suffice. I would also like to add that the TV is hooked up to the cable, the DVD/VCR and Wii are also in working order.

The master bedroom as seen from the door.

The master bathroom

The boys' bathroom

And, like the title of the blog post promised, Sunday night I made a pot roast for dinner:

And, feeling guilty that we hadn't left the house expect to eat supper Friday and Saturday nights, I took the kids in to downtown for a trip to the Fuji Grand department store Monday afternoon. The draw for the kids is that there is a huge arcade that takes up half of a floor. The bonus for me is that the other half of the sixth floor is a 100-yen store with lots of crafty stuff. But what the kids don't realize about their "special fun trip" is fine with me. Will also requested a "real Japanese" lunch, so on the top (7th) floor of the Fuji Grand is a food court. Yes, there is a McDonald's, but that is a crutch, which is what I told Xan when he asked for McNuggets. Instead, we ate at the "Green Oasis" restaurant located to the right of McDonald's:

Like many restaurants in Japan, the dishes available are on display, with the basic ingredients and price. Unfortunately, these were all in Japanese, so I don't really know what we ate if it wasn't immediately identifiable.

Our waitress spoke decent English and I know that Will's meal was chicken. But we all tried a little bit of each others' meal. I tried one of the lunch specials advertised.

The meal Xan chose was rice and a boiled egg with a slightly spicy brown sauce that I wasn't a big fan of.  There was a salad with a tangy dressing I liked and a cup of warm something that reminded me of egg nog.

Will's meal had the same sauce and featured breaded chicken and rice.

My meal was onion soup, rice, a fried shrimp, salad with tangy dressing and  fried meat with an interesting sauce I liked. I believe the meat was thinly sliced pork, but I could be wrong.

If you can read Japanese, here is what we ate. Please leave a comment and let me know what it was. ;)

 And, last but not least for this post, I found this Janglish on a product at the daiso and just had to share:

So, who knew scissors needed a porch? And, from the diagram, this could also double as something Magic Mike would wear to his next show...