The Hackworths

And I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. A brief recap in photos…

We went on vacation to Tokyo:

We went to a Hiroshima Carps baseball game:

I cooked without burning the house down (and it was good!):

I visited a Buddhist priest with a friend:

We gave up brushing our hair for the summer:

We watched fireworks:

We (and when I say we, I mean Justin) Sumo’ed with the neighbors:

We (this time when I say we, I mean I) harassed the dog:

Fun things we’ve done without photographic evidence include lots of movies at the theater, lots of playing outside, and lots of flower planting. I’ll actually take photos of that when my solar lights get here. Can’t let the opportunity to catch the flowers still alive pass me by.

Things still left to do this month…

1. Meet Nikki and her gang when they move out here to be close to me. (Okay, really the military is moving them out here, but whatever…)
2. My mom comes for a visit! Yay!
3. Celebrate Lauren’s 8th Birthday
4. Lots of sightseeing with mom

My bad.  Again.  Moving on.

So, here in the land of Iwakuni we have limited American shopping options.  And when I say limited, I mean we have The Exchange.  The Exchange hates me.  I want some tiki torches, so of course, there are none at The Exchange.  I proceed to my default second option, Target.com.  It can never be as good as stepping in to a brick and mortar Target and getting smacked in the face by the smell of popcorn and seeing all of that shiny, pretty red, but you take what you can get.

So, I find some tiki torches online.  I like them.  I put them in my virtual shopping cart.  I go to check out, but no.  There will be no shipping of the tiki torches to APO/FPO addresses.  WHAT?!  So, frantically, I check Amazon, Lowe’s, and Home Depot only to be shot down again and again.

I thought about taking my neighbors’, but it’s an awfully small base and I’m sure I’d get caught.  I could ask The Exchange if they’ll be getting any more tiki torches this summer, but I’d have to talk to 95 people before one of them would finally give me the wrong answer, so I’m stuck checking in every few days to see if some miracle has occurred and they actually have something people want to buy.  Besides Roxy purses, because they usually have an awesome collection of those.  Until I see them anyway…