Family Fun Night

During the summer, every Wednesday night is Family Fun Night at Ocean Breeze restaurant on Camp Foster. We decided to check it out this past week, and it was a buffet dinner with kid friendly options (pizza, chicken nuggets, corn, rice), prize drawings, and a clown that made balloon animals. There had been a scheduled power outage the day we went, so we knew it was scheduled to start an hour later than usual. Unfortunately when we got there, we found out we would have to wait outside for a extra half hour because they still didn't have all of the food ready. Luckily the clown was out there to entertain the kids (and adults!) by wowing us with his balloon creations.

Sydney was terrified of him and refused to ask him to make her a butterfly- she wanted me to ask for her. By the time it was our turn to make a request, they had opened the doors for dinner and we were starving, so we went in.

He later came around to our table, so I requested the butterfly. While he was making it, Sydney insisted she didn't want it. I knew she was just a little scared, so I told her he was making it for me. Then she was really excited when I gave it to her... silly kid.

After dinner she kept looking around the restaurant and asking, "Where's the lady that made my butterfly?" Guess that bright orange hair made him look a little girly. He later came around again and made Spencer a sailboat.

Spencer & Sydney showing off their balloons by one of the shisa dogs outside Ocean Breeze.

It was a fun night, two days later Sydney is still having fun playing with that butterfly.

Keeping my Sense of Humor at 39 Weeks

This past Monday we planned to meet Spencer for lunch at a place that's right across from the medical clinic where he "works" (Note: We've been here for 6 weeks and he still hasn't done any real dentistry yet. He has been waiting for the past week for one more person to sign off on his credentials. Apparently making him actually earn the money they are paying him is not a priority). Anyway, it had been raining pretty hard on and off in the morning, but it had died down when Syd and I were getting in the van. Just as we pulled into the gate on base, a torrential downpour started. I parked and ran around to the other side of the van to get Sydney out, and didn't bother opening my umbrella. I had a rain jacket on but I couldn't zip it up because of my belly, so my pants and stomach were SOAKED by the time I got into the back of the van to unbuckle Sydney.

The benches in the van are set up so that the benches face each other, and her car seat is on the back bench so she can face the front. Just after I hopped in to unbuckle her, the door slid shut. It just so happens that one of the quirks of our van is that you can't open the sliding door from the inside. I just started laughing because I knew we only had two options to get out: 1.) Call Spencer and have him run way out of his way through the rain to open the door for us, or 2.) climb over the first bench with my 39 week pregnant self to get out one of the front doors. I opted for option 2, and I was laughing the whole time just thinking about how ridiculous I must have looked. The spot we parked in was pretty far from the restaurant entrance, so even though at that point we both had raincoats and I had the umbrella open, we got sooooo soaked. The whole ordeal made for a pretty funny conversation during lunch.

I had a Dr. appointment this morning (Friday) to see how I'm progressing. Things are moving slowly, but I'm just excited that there's been some progress since last week. I'm tentatively scheduled to be induced on August 10 (they won't induce before 41 weeks), which sounds like an awfully long time to wait. Please bless I go into labor on my own sometime next week, preferably after our household good shipment is delivered on August 2.

Okinawan Adventures

Since we only have a few more weeks until this baby comes, I feel like I want to squeeze in as much fun stuff as we can before we have to worry about feedings and carting around 2 kids. So far, we've gone to Torii beach and Kadena pool. This week, the Churaumi Aquarium and Pineapple Park were at the top of our list.

Churaumi Aquarium is the 2nd largest aquarium in the world, so I had pretty high hopes going in.

We couldn't get enough of that beautiful view.

The water seemed to get even more beautiful as we got closer to it!

The display started off small, with fish like Dorie.

Then there was a bigger tank with some ginormous fish. Spencer liked the one with the funky nose, and I liked the one with the massive lips and crazy eyes.

This huge tank was the main event, complete with sharks, tuna, whales (at least that's what we think they were), lots of schools of fish, and the biggest stingrays I've ever seen.

We were pretty mesmerized.

Since it was so crowded inside, it kind of felt like there wasn't any air conditioning. Then we went outside to see some other stuff, and it was brutally hot. There were drink machines just outside the exit. My little red faced Sydney requested an apple juice, and she sucked it down in like 3.5 seconds.

Outside, we got to see these giant sea turtles.

Then we got to go downstairs to get a closer look of them in their tank. Don't we look sweaty?

Cutie pie. I love that she's finally starting to smile for pictures.

After the sea turtles, we walked over to a covered area (thank goodness!) to watch a dolphin show.

That was definitely my favorite part!

Getting ready to head out. Sydney is usually very independent and refuses to hold our hands, but when it's really crowded we pretty much make her. I think it's so cute to see her and Spencer holding hands.

After the aquarium, we were starving! Instead of just eating at one of the aquarium restaurants, we decided to find something on our way to Pineapple Park. We pulled up to a place that had a full parking lot and figured that was a good sign.

I think it's kind of fun eating at places where we have to take off our shoes :)

Since we were so far away from any US bases, there was zero English in the place. Luckily, one of the servers spoke enough English to tell us what the general menu options were (pork, beef, etc.). Then another lady found a menu with pictures on it so we cold just point. We were thinking they probably thought we were idiots walking in there without knowing any Japanese.

Spencer thought the rooms with tatami mats were pretty cool. There was a family sitting in there when we got there, and all of the kids came to the door and were staring at us for a good 10 minutes. Not sure if it was because of all of us, or just Sydney and her blonde hair.

Silly goose, being a cheeser for the camera.

Our food came, and it ended up being very good. Spencer wasn't skeptical, but I'm not nearly as adventurous as he is.

Even Sydney liked her Okinawan rice!

After lunch, we enjoyed the rest of the scenic drive to Pineapple Park.

I wasn't supposed to take pictures in this area, but I wanted to get a picture of the pineapple carts we got to ride in. You can't really see the cart very well behind Spencer, but at least my family looks cute.

The cars drove themselves, which we thought was pretty cool since they weren't connected to the ground in any way. The recorded tour was a Japanese lady speaking English, so I didn't really pick up a ton of the stuff she was teaching us about pineapple.

I spent more of the tour taking pictures of all the pineapples we drove past. These ones were so tiny!

Then there was this other kind growing in the ground.

After our tour, we walked through a building displaying different sea shells and corals (weird, because that had nothing to do with pineapple), and then went through this tunnel to the much anticipated sampling of all things pineapple. While we turned down the pineapple wines, we got to try some juices, cakes, cookies, pie, candies covered with pineapple chocolate, and actual fresh cut pineapple. Spencer also tried some pickled pineapple and said it was completely disgusting :)

Now that we can cross those two things off our lists, I think we'll try to hit up some castle ruins next weekend... unless we have a baby before then! No contractions yet though, so I think we'll have time for some more adventures.

37 Weeks

I have been so bad at taking the belly profile pictures for this pregnancy, but here's one of me at 37 weeks. Only a few more weeks to go- and a lot of decorating to do! I've finished painting the baby's room and our living/dining room, but our household goods shipment with all of our furniture and decor in it isn't scheduled to get into port until July 25. Then it's supposed to be in customs for about a week, which means we should get it around August 2 (just so happens to be my due date).

A Visitor

Sydney is getting very creative in her pretend play, and her new favorite thing to play is "church." It involves taking a bunch of toys to the stairs, sitting down on the bottom step, using a quite voice (she's always telling me to "be so quiet"), and her standing up on occasion to lead a song. It's pretty cute, and somehow she is WAY more quiet when we play church than she is during actual church.

Unrelated (but cute) picture of Sydney eating a cookie on the counter.

While we were playing church this evening, she decided I needed my cell phone, which was on the kitchen counter. As she was walking in to get it, she pointed to the wall and said, "Mommy, what's that?" I looked over and saw this little guy on our wall:

A baby gecko.

I would usually put "critter removal" under Spencer's job description, but since he wasn't home I had to take care of it myself. I just put a little jar over him, then gently moved it down the wall until he jumped inside so I could put on the lid. He did escape once (they're pretty good little jumpers!), but I was able to catch him. Then we took him outside and showed him off to the neighbor kids before letting him go.

After doing all that I thought, "Maybe I should've just let him stay and eat all the ants on the floor." We are being infested, I'm calling entomology tomorrow so we can get our house sprayed again.

Fourth of July

Our Fourth of July festivities were pretty low key. We had planned to go to the fireworks on Kadena Air Force base on the 2nd, but missed them because our friends invited us to dinner but kept pushing back the time when we would meet. Luckily, we still saw some random fireworks go off over the water (the restaurant we went to was right on the sea wall) while we ate. Sydney was really excited about that, and I was happy that she didn't have to be disappointed by not seeing any that night.

On the actual Fourth, Spencer got up early and went to play football with the some guys from church. From the time that we moved in on Friday to Sunday night, I think about 90% of our neighbors had come over to introduce themselves and make sure we knew about the annual Fourth of July BBQ everyone was getting together for, so I spent Sydney's nap making chocolate chip cookies and cutting watermelon.

The view from our front door.

This is a terrible picture, but here are some of our neighbors. We definitely made the right choice living on Camp Lester- everyone has been so friendly and welcoming.

We invited our friend Cameron to join us. He and Spencer went to dental school together, and since he had just flown in to Okinawa a few days before, he had no car and basically didn't know anyone. We had fun hanging out with someone we knew!

Sydney was being silly and wanted me to take a picture of this lovely ponytail she made.

When we put Sydney to bed that night, we looked out her bedroom window and saw more fireworks going off over the water. Looking at them from afar was perfect, as she is quite scared of loud noises these days.

Happy Anniversary!

On June 25, we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. Funny how that number seems so small, but is somehow big at the same time. When I woke up that morning (still in our temporary lodging at the Hamagawa Inn), I walked into the main living space to get a bowl of cereal. Spencer and Sydney were already awake and had already eaten. I picked up one of the bowls by the sink, only to find a little silver box under it. When I opened it up, this is what I found:

They are aquamarine, my birthstone.

Somehow in the time that we were "trapped" in Ohio, my little stinker husband snuck away and bought these for me! So pretty.

Then later that afternoon Sydney took a nap and Spencer went into our room to lay down too. I started getting a little tired, so I went to lay down by Spencer. When I moved the blanket to get under it, I found another silver box with this in it:

I felt pretty darn spoiled (and a little foolish that in all the craziness in late May and most of June, I bought him nothing). There's a Modern Family episode where the prologue shows Phil and Claire exchanging gifts the morning of their anniversary, and it made us laugh so hard because it was totally us. Spencer is definitely Phil (awesome gift giver), and I'm 100% Claire (kind of terrible at it).

We celebrated with dinner at the Macaroni Grill on Camp Foster. Sydney's kid's meal was half the price of Spencer's meal, and it was essentially the same thing. But hey, at least our menus were in English and we had fun coloring on the table :)

After dinner we went to a textiles store that I saw an advertisement for and thought it looked cool. It turned out to be right next to Araha beach, so after shopping we took a little walk by the water.

We passed Blue Seal ice cream on our way home and decided to stop and try it out. Sydney wanted a shake, and there was only one size. We laughed at how ginormous it was, but she thoroughly enjoyed it (with some help from Daddy).