Thursday, March 12, 2009

Another One Grows Up

This young man signed up for his Military ID today!

Photobucket

Photobucket

He was all smiles when we went back on base and he had an ID to pull out for the guard. In an aside, I'd been told sponsor's SSN are no longer put on IDs.....but they had HIS "on file" and left Mike's on there. They said it's "phasing in". I could SWEAR that I talked to other moms from HERE whose dh's SSN are NOT on their children's ID cards....I must keep looking into this. Though I'm quite sure this responsible young man will never lose his ID. ::snort::

While at the office we made our appointment to go in for Military Passports. We plan to also get tourist passports because I'm DREAMING of an Asian Cruise...stopping off at all the countries in the area.....Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong... I'll worry about planning THAT later. It will only happen if we are able to live very frugally and save our COLA for exploring the area rather than paying rent and utilities. ::snort::

The lady there said to put ALL the children who are under 23 and full-time college students on Mike's orders....according to her they'll get one trip a year to see us. That means that Krista will need to come over our very first year....and the others will be able to space things out....though we'll need to save for Bre to come. Sadly, there are no longer Rotater (Space A) flights from Misawa.

Choosing Joy!
©2009 D.R.G.

10 comments:

Kim said...

As long as we are here, your kids have a futon to crash on before taking the bullet train up to Misawa!

Linda said...

I don't know how you'll manage to do any school between now and when you leave. It seems like there's SO much to do. Probably the fact that I don't have a military bone in my body makes it seem more overwhelming!

DeEtta @ Courageous Joy said...

Linda - I'm really not doing much for the move yet....we're double timing it in school. I need to carve out time to really begin going through things. I started with books tonight but then couldn't decide if they should go on PaperBackSwap (who will mail to an APO box), Homeschool freebie table, garage sale....so I left the stacks and moved on to a new job. LOL I plan to start doing some weeding out and fixing up this weekend.

DeEtta @ Courageous Joy said...

Kim - I'll remember that....because when the older kids fly in I bet they'll be flying to Tokyo. They are well used to crashing on the floor.

Cynthia said...

How nice that most of the kids will each be able to come one time. With how great your family is with gifts to each other and stuff, it wouldn't surprise me if everyone pitches in to help Bre get there at some point...

Renee said...

De'Etta,
IF your travels through Asia are while you are assigned to Japan you do not need tourist passports. You may use the passport the AF pays for as long as it's in conjunction with your assignment.
for instance we used our govt paid passports (which look no different on the outside from tourist passports) to travel WHILE we were living in Germany... but now it would be improper for us to use them for personal travel since we're assigned to the US

DeEtta @ Courageous Joy said...

Renee - we were told differently yesterday. We were told if it was ON ORDERS we could use the military passport....but if we wanted to explore Asian countries while we were stationed in Japan we were advised that we'd have to get civilian tourist passports. We'll ask again and if we get the same answer - we'll be safe and get the tourist passports. Five of us have them already. LOL

Renee said...

I asked dh and he said he read and read the regs during our overseas assignments but he also said that the AF does things "differently". The issue he foresees is when you try to reenter Japan and your tourist passport doesn't have the proper documentation for entering, so then you'll need your govt paid passport... so he thinks you'd be safer if you carried both.

and here info about the IDS and SSNS
he removal of SSNs will occur in three phases:

Phase One: To begin by end of calendar year 2008
Dependent SSNs will be removed
Sponsor SSNs will remain visible
Cards Affected - DD Forms 1173 and 1173-1

Phase Two: To begin by end of calendar year 2009
All printed SSNs will be removed
Geneva Conventions cards will retain the last four digits of the SSN
Cards Affected – All DoD ID cards

Phase Three: To begin during calendar year 2012
SSNs embedded in barcodes will be removed
Cards Affected – All DoD ID cards

Wild Homeschool Family said...

Congrats on your id Nolan!

What fun you all will have exploring Asia, I hope you get to visit many places!

Anonymous said...

Nolan & Sis:

Congrats Nolan on just one more step to becoming a fine young man.

Congrats Sis in your resolve. Just one step at a time. Anyway you have heard that before.

Goodness, the knee doctor sure has Dad doing a lot of stuff and having a lot of appointments. Don't think what happened during his last hip operation will happen again if it is this group of doctors who operate. Thank God!

Praying for you all during this time.

l/p Mom T.