Thanksgiving on the Go

Thanksgiving came with another 96 (i.e. a four day weekend) for Spencer, and we were excited to venture up to cabins at Oura Wan beach on a base in the northern part of the island. There were about 10 cabins, all set on a big hill overlooking the water. There were a total of 6 families in the group we went with, so we had a majority of the cabins up there. We got a late start heading out on Wednesday night as Spencer got home from work and I didn't have a thing packed. (How unlike me... ha!) I was actually patting myself on the back for successfully making a grocery run- to a Japanese grocery store no less, since the commissary's whipping cream had been cleaned out- and making 4 dozen rolls in preparation for Thanksgiving dinner. All baking had to be done before hand since only one of the cabins had an oven, and that was reserved for the turkey. As we were finally driving out the gate, Sydney said she had to go potty. So we flipped around and headed back home, took her to the potty (she refused to go), and picked up a few things we'd forgotten. I put a diaper on her since we didn't want to stop again. Then we were finally off! Both kids fell asleep on the 40 minute ride there, which unfortunately made Sydney wide awake when we arrived around her bed time. I think she finally conked out around 10 pm.

The holiday festivities started early Thursday morning. We enjoyed a coed game of flag football while our kids ran around and played. My pregnant friend Melissa was kind enough to watch Shawn for me during our game, which pretty much ended when he got hungry and I had to quit. Afterwards we did "Family Olympics." As Sydney had no interest in participating (except for the marshmallow eating contest, she was all over that), Spencer and I had to represent. Actually, Spencer had to do like 4x the work since I was holding Shawn :) Needless to say, it was the first time I had done a bear crawl or wheel barrow in a looooong time. I was sore for days!

After games, we headed back to get cleaned up and do some last minute meal prep.

Mmmmmmm.

I just have to mention that I made fruit salad (the white stuff in the orange bowl), which my family calls "yum yum salad." Spencer refused to call it that since he thinks it's the dumbest name ever, telling me that he would only call it that if people said, "Yum, yum," when they ate it. Our friend Aaron was standing nearby when Spencer set the bowl on the table, and when he saw it he said, "Ooh, yum." We both totally started laughing. Apparently the name was right on- take that Spencer! (As a side note, he now referrs to it as "walkie talkie salad" because of this comedy bit about things that have stupid names.)

The kids colored pictures while the adults were setting up for the meal.

Sydney was very focused during this activity.

The kids ate outside on the porch and adults were inside. Before taking a picture of the kid tables, Spencer asked, "Who's excited for Thanksgiving?"

"We are!"

The gang, minus the Palmers, who were tending to sick kids.

Spencer & Shawn.

Melissa was a real go-getter and brought things for the kids to make edible tepees and cupcake turkeys.

Most kids were way into using the candies to decorate their treats,

but Sydney just dug right in.

View of Oura Wan beach from the Shisa cabin.

Friday was pretty low key, with lots of outdoor activities to enjoy the warm sun and cool breeze.

We had packed our swimsuits just in case, but the water was too chilly for us to swim. We just decided to go down to look for sea shells instead.

Sydney found the best ones, and had fun digging around.

Shawn slept in his stroller while Sydney and I scoured the beach.

Spencer took on the role of photographer and took pictures of the beach.

Later that afternoon, we drove to check out some of the free stuff around the aquarium. As usual, the scenery was beautiful!

Some of our friends' kids wore their swimsuits and played in the fountains. We thought they were total maniacs because it was freezing! We were only cold because I neglected to bring our jackets.

Huddling together to keep warm.

Sydney wanted me to hold her quite a bit because she was cold. I felt bad that I didn't dress her more appropriately, so we went into a gift shop to see if we could buy her a jacket or sweatshirt. The only warm thing we found was a blanket, but she said she didn't want it.

After laughing at the crazies in the fountains (who had quite a crowd of Japanese girls taking pictures of them), we walked through an outdoor museum of a traditional Okinawan village, then through the botanical gardens.

After we got to this hut (it was the first thing we saw in the Okinawan village), the camera died :)

We checked out of our cabin on Saturday, and since Syd was bummed about not getting to swim in the ocean, we determined to go to the heated outdoor pool on base before driving home. Sydney got in with Spencer while I fed Shawn. The clouds were rolling in and it was getting windy, so she lasted about 10 minutes. After drying off with Spencer, she said she still wanted to get back in with me. So I got in (the water was supposedly 82 degrees, but still felt cold!), and then she said she didn't want to get in anymore. Haha, little stinker. Overall we had a great time, and can't believe Christmas is just around the corner!

Happy Birthday Sydney!

Just before finally crawling into bed around 3:30am Friday morning, Spencer got Sydney's binky out of her bed and I replaced it with a present from the "binky fairy." We woke up at about 4:30am to Sydney crying. Spencer went in to help her, and she was crying because she couldn't find her bink. I went in and told her the binky fairy came and showed her the present sitting on her night stand. She opened it and was really excited about her new blanket and teddy bear, and went right back to sleep. Phew!

Sydney requested a Pinkalicious birthday party with a cat cake, so we woke up early this morning to sneak in some last minute preparations (i.e. things we were too tired to do last night) before her friends arrived. As Shawn was ready to eat about 30 minutes into the party, I had to rely heavily on Spencer to pull this off. Thank goodness he took the day off- he was a champion! I was also grateful to have our sweet neighbors Louise and Ann Marie there to help entertain Shawn and help with the kids.

The girls started off by making pink bracelets.

Emmy

Audra

Taylor

Jasmin

Mia & Bella

Then they headed outside for a scavenger hunt to find a treasure box filled with star wands that look like the one Pinkalicious has in the book.

Next they ate pink treats while I read Pinkalicious. I spent a decent amount of time last night making pink treats, but it turned out that the store bought frosted animal crackers were the clear favorite. Then they decorated pre-frosted "pink" cupcakes (I use quotations as they were actually orange since we added red food coloring to a yellow cake mix... oops!). I knew this activity would be messy, but I didn't anticipate just how messy it would get.

While Sydney opened presents and I fed Shawn, Louise swept about a billion pink sprinkles off of our floor. Then we all gathered around the cake and sang Happy Birthday.

Again, I baked and frosted this cake after we got home from the Marine Ball the night before, so it was pretty late when I was finally getting it finished. Just as I was getting ready to clean out my dark pink frosting bag, I realized I had actually written "Happy Birthay Sydney." Blast. Thankfully I was able to scrape off the "ay" and fix it.

Happy Birthday Sydney!

Did it all by herself this year :)

At her request, we served the cake with green ice cream. My kind of girl.

Shawn, wearing size 6 month pants! Chunk!!

After the party, Syd opened a few more presents from Grandparents. With all of her presents, she amassed a large amount of art supplies, books, and Play-doh... lots to keep us busy!

Several weeks ago, Sydney asked if we could ride the ferris wheel in American Village. We can see it from our house and drive by it pretty frequently. We told her we could ride it on her birthday, so off we went!

It went pretty slowly, taking about 15 minutes to go around once. Spencer's not a fan of heights, and even I got a little nervous at how windy it was at the top.

After our ride, we headed over to Camp Foster to try to get into the free Sesame Street Live show, but learned when we got there that it was actually on Kadena! We thought for sure we would be too late as traffic into Kadena was terrible. We considered just forgetting about the whole thing, but eventually decided it was still worth a shot. We pulled in about 20 minutes before the show, and thankfully the line outside didn't look too long. Spencer dropped me off to stand in line while he found parking, and when I got there I asked the people in front of me if we needed tickets for the show. They said yes, but just then one of the volunteers was walking by and asked me if I needed tickets. I said yes and he said, "How many?" Next thing I knew I had 3 tickets in my hand. I was so excited it worked out!

Sydney informed me that she did not like the purple guy.

The show was cute and they sang some fun songs, but highlight of the whole thing was definitely the cool Elmo spinners they passed out before the show.

Afterwards we went out for some udon and tempura, then came back home to play outside for a bit before watching Tangled.

During the movie Syd opened a few presents from me and Spencer (I probably should have just saved some of them for Christmas gifts), then it was off to bed. What a crazy and fun-filled day! I was relieved that Syd didn't even cry about not having her bink when she went to bed, although she did ask about it several times. Just as I suspected, she would not take a nap yesterday. And somehow with no nap, she still comes into our room at like 6:30 am every morning. What's up with that?

Marine Ball

On Thursday night, Spencer and I attended one of many Marine Balls taking place this month to commemorate the 236th birthday of the Marine Corp. There was a bit of drama in our preparations. The attire for Spencer's Dental Corp was dress whites, so he got his uniform dry cleaned and bought all his extra pins and such to show he's a Lieutenant instead of an Ensign. Well, he called me after a meeting he had on Wednesday, and when I said, "How's you're day going?" his response was, "Terrible. I just found out they changed the uniform for the ball tomorrow to dress blues." He was given the rest of the day off to run around to get his uniform ready- he had to beg a tailor (and give a heavy tip!) to do a rush job to sew an extra strip on his sleeves, had to pay for an express dry cleaning, and had to run around to buy the medals and pins he needed. What a pain! Thankfully he was able to get it all taken care of.

Our sweet neighbor Jess watched our kids for us (we watched theirs last week when they went to the Navy ball). This was our first date since Shawn was born.

The ceremony was full of tradition- standing for colors and the National Anthem, playing of the Marine Hymn, bringing in the ginormous cake, the first piece of cake being passed from the oldest to the youngest Marine in the room.

The 3rd Dental Battalion.

It was neat to be part of this event, and fun to get to know people from Spencer's work a little better. We stuck around to dance to a few songs- I basically forced him to the dance floor when Don't Stop Believing Came On, and made him stay for Moves Like Jagger (I can't get enough of Maroon 5 lately). Then we headed home for a LONG night of birthday party preparations. We were up until 3am!