Hello, and welcome to my blog! I’m so excited to finally have my website up and running and be able to introduce you to not only my brand new business, but also to my life and the crazy road I traveled which led me here.

I think it would probably be best to tell my story in intervals, beginning with how I met my husband and ended up living in Okinawa (for the second time). We have a kind of fairy-tale story actually, as we met in a place where the odds of meeting were really quite slim. Back in 2000, my husband Erik, who is a United States Marine, was stationed on Okinawa and I was living on a tiny island north of Okinawa. I was an English teacher at the time, working for the local Board of Education, and struggling to get through each day as apart from my then six year old daughter, there were no other English speakers on the island. So when my husband happened to be visiting the island one day with a couple of friends, one of whom was my predecessor, I was more than happy to engage him in conversation. He must have seen my enthusiasm as a come-on because he left the island that weekend with a plan to pursue me and succeed he did. Several years later, we are happily married, my oldest daughter is now my husband’s daughter (by adoption), and we have a younger daughter between us. Before we got married however, we did the whole distance-dating thing, a seemingly familiar practice amongst many military couples. Erik went back to the States after proposing to me, and I stayed behind on my tiny island determined to fulfill my job obligations and complete my minimum two year teaching contract. A year later we met each other in New Zealand (my home country), got married at a beautiful vineyard, then both flew back to Okinawa where my husband reported to his new unit and we started our life together. Well almost, my daughter and I had to go back to Yoron Island for a further six months but we joined my husband on Okinawa as soon as my contract ended. Thus began our first tour of duty on Okinawa. Join me tomorrow as I continue my story……