August

We're half way through August, I can't believe it! I am currently suffering from "toomuchtodoitis" and can't seem to find a cure for it. I would say it will slow down when school starts but I remember saying that I could't wait for summer so that life would slow down... hmmm. Anyway, I will post later about Alyssa's birthday but right now I want to remember summer time here, since returning from our trip.

It's been extra rainy but we've still managed to get out to the pool and beach a lot. We took our new friends the Palmers snorkeling and it kept pouring rain and then stopping, pouring again, stopping. The conditions were terrible but they still managed to fall in love with snorkeling and we can't wait to take them on a good day! Hayden is terrified of sea life, like jellyfish, and won't come in the water at all. But they are doing swim lessons right now and making some great improvements. Danica was afraid to even put her face in the water at the start one week ago and today I watched her let go of the wall, put her face in and swim to her teacher all by herself! I can't wait to go to the pool with her tomorrow to see if she will swim to me! Dani and Alyssa are the only kids in her class, it's nice to get private lessons!

Tom is busy training for a marathon at the end of October. He plans to run it in under 4 hours and is working really hard on his training. I am skipping the marathon this year for a number of reasons (one being the ineveitable ferry ride that left me puking last time I ran it) and instead have switched my focus to biking. Tom and I are signed up for the Tour de Okinawa, a 117 miles bike ride around the northern end of the island with a million hills. I have a lot of work to do to be able to keep up on the ride so I am running less and biking more.

Here is just a collection of pictures from the last few weeks!

I was cleaning the back room and then discovered this little guy... I must have disturbed his slumber. Can you tell how huge it is? It's bigger than the binding on the photo album. It's called a wolf spider, they bite but it's not poisonous any more than a regular spider bite, it just hurts more because it's so big. Tom chased down, through the play room before we finally smashed it. I see them outside when I weed or clean the patio but in the house...ugh...I've been needing to clean that room again and for some reason just don't want to...

Danica and her best friend Maeko at the splash pad at one of the beaches.
Tom and I went out to a Korean BBQ on the last Parent's Day out. You pick your food and cook it on the grill at your table. The pineapple was my favorite!
Some new families moved in so we took them to Jusco, the Japanese mall to look around and then to eat at the food court. This way the kids could get McDonalds and the adults could try some Japanese food. There is also a huge arcade that the kids enjoyed.
We took the new families to a park with a large cement slide. It was great but when I got home I realized Hayden had worn a hole in his pants from sliding so much!!

Alyssa can't get enough watermelon. Luckily, it's been on sale lately so I've been buying it. Last year we couldn't get a watermelon for less than $20, it's much better this year!
One rainy day we went to Wago Family Land. It's like Chuck E. Cheese on steroids. The girls loved this room that is just full of balloons blown around by fans. Hayden was playing a video game where the object was to use this huge samurai sword to cut fish. Awesome!

Tom and I attended the annual Dental Ball, instead of formal wear they did a Hollywood theme. Everyone dressed up like their favorite characters. Tom went as Chuck and I was his super spy girlfriend Sarah Walker. Sadly, hardly anyone had seen the show. It's not even broadcast over here. We just told them all they were missing out!
My best friend Joy is finally back!!! Her house was part of a power outage so I had the kids over to watch a movie in the a/c. It was fun to see them reunited after 5 months of her being back in the states while her husband is deployed.
Well that's all for today. Soon I'll write about Alyssa's birthday!!

Our Trip to the States

I think it’s a good sign that I haven’t had time to blog for last two months. It means I have been having way too much fun! Just to keep the memories alive I want to try write everything down but that would be impossible, I’m still having too much fun to take the time to do that! So here are some random ramblings about all we’ve been up to. It started back in June, we flew out on the 23rd. We had a layover in Tokyo where we were literally running through the airport because our flight had arrived late, then flew the 9 hours to Seattle and due to the magic of time zones we arrived at exactly the same time that we left Okinawa, Wednesday at 9am. The kids were awesome on the flights. We made the three hour drive to Tom’s parents house and I got out and enjoyed just laying down on the nice grass that was not infested with insects and enjoyed the warm sun with no humidity. Blissful. The trip started off great and continued to be great the entire time. We visited with family, did TONS of shopping in one day, went to the Portland temple and then left to spend a week at a condo with most of Tom’s family. Hayden was in cousin heaven the entire time.
The condo was at Mayfield Lake and it was great. Too cold to really enjoy the water although a few of us brave souls enjoyed some good waterskiing and wake boarding. (Just Tom and I and our nephew Isaac to be exact.) The kids all went tubing fully dressed with tennis shoes and jackets because they were cold but had such a blast. I can’t believe we didn’t take any pictures of it! We enjoyed lots of game time, hanging out, running, horseshoes, water balloon volleyball and even a polar bear swim! It was freezing but fun!


The trip was awesome and we had so much fun relaxing with family it was hard to leave. But on July 3rd we flew down to Utah to spend the 4th of July holidays with my family.
As we flew into Salt Lake Danica looked out the windows and kept saying “It’s so beautiful mommy!” Oh, my home sweet home. My grandma lives in California but had flown in to stay with mom so we could see her during our visit, it was great!
We spent the weekend seeing my brother and his family, my other grandma, cousins and tons of relatives along with great fireworks and a parade. During the parade Danica was so funny every time she would see a float go by with a pageant winner like Miss Provo she would run out and wave and smile. At one point she turned to us and said “It’s a dream come true!” It was princess heaven. Later, Tom and I drove around Provo reminiscing about where we first met, lived as newly weds and where we had Hayden while my parents took the kids fishing. The rest of our time in Utah was packed with so much summertime fun. As you read this list you’re going to think “they seriously did all that in a week?” We went 4-wheeling up in the mountains and loved it. We got together with the Debaltzo’s, Tom’s cousins that we lived near in Cleveland and hardly recognized because the kids seemed so much older! Wednesday, we went to Seven Peaks water park and couldn’t get enough of the lazy river and tube slides. Thursday, we went downtown and visited Temple Square (a first for the kids),
then my parents met us and we went to the children’s museum while the boys went to the planetarium. Then we met up with some of our great friends from our first few years of marriage in Provo. It was so fun to see them and see how things have changed since adding so many kids! The next day we headed off to Lagoon and had way too much fun. Grandma took the kids on all the spinning rides that make me sick and we all got soaked on the river ride!


Saturday was a special day, my little sister went through the temple for the first time. It was fantastic to see her there and to see her surrounded by so many people that love her the way I do! We went out to lunch with her and enjoyed our favorite, Red Robin! That night we went to visit my grandma again and then spent some time with some friends of Tom’s from his mission. They have 5 boys, Hayden was in heaven!
Sunday evening we drove up to Park City and checked into the luxurious Marriott vacation resort, compliments of my sister who works for Marriott. We spent the next two days swimming, alpine sliding, outlet shopping and playing games. It was blissful. Tom and I even went on a date. On the way home on Tuesday we stopped off and watched the ski jumpers practicing. Once home we scrambled out to do the last bit of shopping possible in the U.S. for another year and tried to cram it all in our suitcases (thank you mom and dad for loaning us an extra one!). Then before we could leave the U.S. we had to go to Cafe Rio. YUM!
Wednesday morning we woke up at 5am and started the long journey home. We flew up to Seattle, had a long layover in which we got to see my friend Cori, and then boarded the plane to Tokyo. The kids were great on the 11 hour flight, our layover in Tokyo was grueling because we were exhausted but everyone was good and there were no major delays. We passed out on the next plane and woke up 3 hours later in Okinawa. I was pleasantly surprised that the humidity didn’t knock me down. I guess I was expecting it. Our friends had left our van at the airport so we simply loaded it up and drove home.
Now here we are. We’ve been home for almost a month, I started this blog two weeks ago and can’t seem to find the time to get it done. Now we need to go to bed but at least I got this much accomplished! Next time you can hear about the summer fun in Oki!! Thanks again to everyone who made our trip to the states so fantastic and absolutely worth every single cent, of which there were a lot!!!

Home Again

We just returned from a FANTASTIC trip back to the states. It was perfect, so much fun seeing family, shopping and playing hard, non stop. The kids did great on the long flights and are finally over the jet lag after days of waking up at 3am. I can't wait to post pictures and relive all the fun we had. However, I have been sick the last few days with a fever and sore throat leaving me all achy and tired so I am way behind on the unpacking, cleaning and such. The updated post will have to wait, hopefully not for long, but at least until I get some laundry done. I hope your summer is going well and that the cicadas are not nearly so loud at your house at they are at mine!

Here Comes Summer!

Wow, has it really been an entire month since I last posted? I would say that it has flown by but I have also done so much that it seems to have lasted forever! I hate doing this timeline style but it’s the quickest way I can think of to remember what we’ve been up to. So here goes:

In the middle of May we started the beginning of our sad season to say “see you later” to many of our friends. Many members of our Okinawa family are moving and I just try not to think about life in Oki with out them. We had a big “see you later BBQ” with Randy and Melanie Ball before they left. They were so stressed with flying out the next morning that I don’t know if they remember it but we had a great time.

Hayden finished the soccer season, much of it was cancelled due to the crazy amount of rain we’ve had this season but he still had a good time. Danica finished preschool. She has loved her teacher and class and it’s been a great experience for her. They did a little program on her last day where they were singing and she started out happy and smiling and part way through the song she realized how many people were watching her and just ended up crying and nervous... it was just “so Danica.” Here she is with her two teachers, one American one Japanese. She learned a lot of great things in her culture class and sings a cute little Japanese song.



We’ve had a lot of fun exploring Japan and participated in a lot of cultural exchange activities with local members of our church. They took us around and showed us the true Okinawa side of things. We really enjoyed it and learned a lot! These black snakes are really expensive and you buy them to make things like snake soup. The kids were thoroughly disgusted and fascinated by the pigs heads and crazy fish. Alyssa was terrified the lobster were going to crawl out and get her! Danica developed a little "crush" on a boy named Levi, he's the son of the woman who was the district camp director so they spent a lot of time together while were we getting camp things planned. She hadn't seen him in a while and was so happy to spend the day with him!






Alyssa is completely adorable and I have fun taking her around everywhere with me. She's my little companion while Danica is at preschool. She is talking up a storm and loves to smile and ask me "you happy mommy?"

Tom got to DJ the youth dance last month and we had a lot of fun. Although it was pretty stressful trying to screen all the songs to make sure they were appropriate. I offered to host Hayden’s class for the end of year family picnic. It sounded easy enough, I would put together a few water games, throw out some chairs and blankets and have a good time. So I spent all week weeding and prepping the yard and getting it looking as nice as it can. Then of course the forecast was very rainy. At the last minute we rented some huge canopies for the yard and had quite a headache picking them up, setting them up and then taking them down...ugh...won’t do that again. But they saved the picnic. It’s warm even when it rains so the kids still rain around playing games, doing the slip ‘n’ slide and sprinklers while the parents stayed dry under the canopies! Hayden is done with school this Thursday and although he has loved his class this year he is dreaming of waking up and playing video games every day.... his dream life.



Over Memorial Weekend we watched our friends kids and so in return they watched our kids this past Friday night. Tom and I didn’t go anywhere but lived a life of “freedom.” We went out to dinner, did some shopping, and then went to karoke. We went to bed late and then woke up early and ran a 5K race and then went on a 20 mile bike ride before picking up the kids. It was nice!!! Saturday night we spent at the church at District Area Training. It was a long meeting but was good information.

We've enjoyed a lot of fun activities. Great beach days, park days and indoor play days. The girls play "mom and dad" all the time and I never know for sure whether to call them mom, dad or baby... I never know who I am supposed to be that day.

Now we are prepping for our big summer trip back to the states. We leave on June 23rd and will be there for three weeks. We can’t wait to see family and friends and to be in America, we miss it all!!!!

The Karamas

I feel like all I ever do here is complain about the weather. It’s either too hot or too rainy and I know it will only get worse as we head into spider season. It rained so much this weekend that ceiling started to leak...good times. However, the weekend before this I was reminded that this is just the price we pay to live in a tropical paradise. We went with some friends on a weekend excursion to the Karamas Islands. They are a little grouping of islands known for their scuba diving. They are just off the southern side of Okinawa, the opposite direction that we usually go when we travel to these little islands. It was quite the adventure!

It started with a high speed ferry ride on a stormy rainy ocean.The weather was terrible but our reservation was non-refundable so we went anyway. On the ferry all the passengers went down inside and it felt like being in an airplane. We were flying and hitting off the huge waves practically catching air. The kids were screaming with delight and excitement it was like a roller coaster. I was as sick as could be but managed to hold it in, Hayden and a few other kids were not so lucky and ended up throwing up. None the less, they all loved it. We got off the ferry and swam through the rain to get on a bus to the hotel. We were straining our necks to peer through the rain to check out the island. I could just see green everywhere!! Our hotel was a little resort right on the beach. We had a Japanese style room which means it was just a room with tatami mats on the floor and a small bathroom. In the closet there were futons, blankets and pillows that we threw out at bedtime.From the balcony of our room you could look down onto the beach.It was still pouring rain but it was warm so we quickly changed into our swimsuits and were just heading down the beach when they told us it had just closed for the night. So we changed and headed into the dining hall for dinner. Dinner was included in our stay and consisted of lots of Japanese cuisine. Hayden ate nothing but the rest of us enjoyed delicious food. The girls especially liked the chicken wrapped in seaweed. After dinner we put the kids to bed and played games at the table in the hall.

The next morning we took off for a drive around the island. We hiked up to a peek with a monument to remember the mass suicides that took place there. Back during the war many people marched up there and jumped off the cliff when they were invaded. We drove through rice patties and admired the Japanese scarecrow and all the cranes. It was beautiful.Then we raced back for breakfast at the hotel. Demonstrating true Japanese hospitality it appeared that the kitchen staff had tried to make food for our group of American children. The hotel was practically empty so our group with it’s 12 children was the dominant presence. The children were delighted to see that breakfast was chicken nuggets, french fries, scrambled eggs and pancakes along with a whole lot of Japanese cuisine like their traditional salad and pickled stuff. It was awesome, it was like they just tried to think of anything American and that’s what they made for us. We were touched and the kids got full!

After breakfast was the highlight of our trip- we finally hit the beach! The women took first shift and headed off to snorkel. It was the most amazing snorkeling I have ever done! Right off we saw a HUGE sea turtle just 4 feet below us and followed it for a while. The coral reefs were massive, covered in anenomes with clown fish and tons of sea life. So many colors and fish, it was fantastic. We saw two more huge sea turtles, surrounded by fish. Then just as we were heading back in we saw a large manta ray just swimming by. It was amazing! We spent the rest of the day on the beach, exploring a second beach and snorkeling there and just soaking up the sun. Yes, the sun came out on Saturday and it was beautiful. We had to catch the ferry again at 5:30. As we loaded on the bus at the hotel the entire staff came out and stood and waved good-bye and then bowed. This happened again as we left on the ferry, they stood on the port and waved. It was the perfect end to an amazing weekend. I can’t wait to go back!