Dark, dark, dark!

I am amazed how dark it gets so early here. When we landed at O'Hare it took us so long to go through all the motions anyway that I didn't really notice when it got dark.

The second day I went to Great Lakes Naval Station to check in for my temporary duty while I do my final admin for leaving the Navy. After doing my business on base, I visited the Navy Exchange at probably 4:30 or so. When I came back out at 5:00, all was dark. I called my father on my cell and asked him who turned out the lights! On Guam it never got dark earlier than 6:00, and that only in the wintertime. I drove to my sister's home through the darkest night - so many cars on the road, so many cars, period! All of them dirty and covered with salt.

My kids are constantly amazed at the darkness too. When we lived on Guam we did dinner around 6:00 and had them in bed during the 7:00 hour. They almost never were out after dark. In fact, that was a special treat when they were out after dark because they could see the moon and the stars very clearly. Now it's dark even when we just go to my sister's house for dinner. They don't get how early it really is.

We're still adjusting to the major time zone shift after arriving on the mainland two days ago. My oldest slept all night last night and was the only one of the family to do so. My wife and I were wide awake at 1 AM (that's 5 PM on Guam). Both the boy and girl twin woke up during that hour, and we were fine with that because we couldn't fall asleep anyway. The girl walked into our room looking for mommy just a few minutes after she convinced the boy to go to sleep, bribing him with a cup of water (his favorite nighttime treat).

I can see how seasonal affective disorder can affect people!

No Winter Clothes

Part of our long term strategy for getting ready to return to the mainland has been getting our wardrobes ready. We haven’t worn anything approaching winter clothing since October 2007. My wife and I still have several pairs of jeans in bags under our beds, along with sweaters and sweatshirts – even snow boots. Melissa experienced one winter when she was less than a year old, so chances are she doesn’t remember it. The twins have never been anyplace where the temperature was less than 70.

I’m not looking forward to having the troupe put on coats, mittens, hats and boots before we can go anywhere. Right now when we need to leave the house, I yell out that it’s time to get shoes on and our girls get them on all by themselves. Only our boy still needs help getting shoes on, mostly because he wears actual shoes with socks and not sandals.

And yet this process is still a struggle.

The three year old girl debates with herself or us what pair of shoes she will wear (flipflops or tennis). The twin girl takes her sandals on and off throughout the day, so she spends time wandering through the house trying to find where she last left them. And the twin boy gets distracted so easily that someone has to force him to sit down and put his shoes on.

In the meantime, we asked the grandparents to go shopping for us at a rummage sale for children’s clothes in Colorado. While the girls can do the hand-me-down game, our oldest doesn’t have any winter clothes to hand down. The twin girl is older now than our oldest girl was when we arrived on Guam. Each child has to get a brand new wardrobe. We ended up getting over $1000 worth of children’s clothing for only $200 from the rummage sale in Denver. These clothes are being sent to Illinois to meet up with us as soon as we get off the plane.

Winter once again

I fear returning to a Midwestern winter. I’ve become very soft over the past three years, living on a tropical island. Haven't checked a weather report once. The local TV news doesn’t even have a weather segment because the forecast is always the same – high of 87, low of 77, 60% chance of showers. I think during the dry season the chance of showers decreases to 20%. Every morning I get up, grab the next pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and I’m in business.

Three years ago in February 2007 we were enjoying our last day at my parents' home in Illinois. Around lunchtime the day before we were to begin our journey to Guam, a blizzard rolled on through the area. We were booked on Continental and we had to hit a single flight, leaving from Houston at 9AM the following day. If we didn’t make that flight, we would wait another 24 hours to catch the right sequence of flights to Guam. We had to take off from O’Hare Airport in Chicago at the ridiculously early hour of 5:45 AM to get to Houston on time, and my parents’ home was 2.5 hours away from O’Hare.

We called Continental and got them to change our flight to the last one leaving O’Hare for Houston the night before. We set off for O’Hare as soon as possible in our little rental car and ended up taking over four hours to get there. Our plane did leave later than expected, but we were in Houston the night before our big flight to Guam, where there was absolutely no snow.

Despite leaving for Guam only 12 hours later than our arrival in Houston, Continental would not let us check our bags back in for the flight. We had spent several weeks visiting friends in the cold Midwest after packing up our household goods, so my wife and daughter and I were all carrying two sets of clothes, one for winter and another for the tropics. We had 12 bags and a stroller. I was very disappointed.

We stayed overnight at the hotel attached to the Houston Airport, into which I wheeled our 12 bags and a stroller, and we all slept soundly on the king bed. The next morning, I wheeled the 12 bags and stroller through the airport again where I checked them. We endured two 8 hour flights, taking a two hour break to deplane and be inconvenienced at Honolulu. We arrived on Guam February 15, 2007. With the exception of a few business trips and vacations, we’ve been here ever since.

Seeing as how we arrive back at Chicago in mid-December, one of my most fervent wishes is that we don’t arrive into the same blizzard that we left from. It’s much more pleasant to go from winter to tropics; not looking forward to the other way around.