Roller Slide'n

I finally got "the call" from the Youth Center on Kadena telling me there was a spot for Sydney in a gymnastics class! I put her on the waiting list in January, and they told me I'd probably get a call in February. Since I didn't hear anything for a long time, I called at the end of March to make sure she was actually still on the list. They told me she was, so we kept waiting. On our way over to pay for her first month of gymnastics (she starts June 6), we went to another roller slide park. We even bought these plastic butt protector things last time we were at the hardware store, so we were prepared! These slides make your bum vibrate a lot, so people will usually bring a piece of cardboard or the plastic seat things to make it a little more comfortable.

I've heard that this roller slide is the longest one on the island. 

 Sydney LOVES going up stairs. She walked up all the stairs going up the hill, then went up all four levels of stairs in the observation tower too (with Spencer of course).

 I sat Shawn on the ropes so I could be at the ready with the camera when they came down. He kept trying to reach through the holes to get that grass.

 Spencer & Sydney going down the slide.

The curvy parts of the slide were pretty slow, but when it started going downhill they were flying! I was impressed Spencer didn't land on his bum at the bottom. Once they were done, we all headed back up the steps together to check out the view.

When it was my turn to go down, I opted to go solo. I didn't dare risk having Shawn on my lap for this one!

 Me slightly freaking out when picking up major speed.

We also got to take a walk along some trails and play in a little park that had a rocking weiner dog. The sun was out in full force, we were all pretty sweaty.

Is The Sun Eating the Moon?

Spencer got ten paternity days when Shawn was born, but he only used five of them before going back to work. Well, they run out if you don't use them within a certain period of time, so he took the remaining five days off last week so we could have some good ol' family fun. We started off his week of vacation by waking up at 6am on Monday morning to watch the annular eclipse!

 Cannon & I checking things out on "the hill."

 See all those kids on that building? They're middle schoolers, and they got special permission from their parents to miss a few classes so they could watch the eclipse too. This picture makes it look like the school's in American Village, but it's really on our base.

It was kind of blinding to watch at first, and then some clouds rolled in. We thought that would ruin the show, but it actually blocked the sun just enough that we could look at it easily. Spencer took about a billion pictures, and these were my favorites:

 

When I was growing up, my dad always quoted Phil Hartman's SNL character Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, who's closing argument in every courtroom involved cutting him a break because he was a caveman.  His favorite episode was when Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer said, "And when I see an eclipse I think to myself, 'Is the sun eating the moon?' I don't know, I'm just a caveman and that's the way I think." So naturally that's what came to mind while we watched this eclipse. I shared that with my neighbors- they'd never seen it, so I think they thought I was a little crazy :)

Sydney woke up about a half hour into the show, and strategically held her blanket to shield her eyes. She thought it was super cool to be playing outside in her pj's.

Bike Ride

From May 10-12, Spencer and 8 of his friends took on a three day bike ride around Okinawa. It was quite the feat as he's only gotten into road biking fairly recently, but he survived! On the first day they went around the southern part of the island, spending the night in Oura Wan. Day two was spent going up and down the hills of the northern part of the island, and they rested at Okuma. 

 We joined several other families up there to greet the riders and help transport gear home the next day. We enjoyed a nice evening at the beach. Shawn got his first taste of sand and thought it was so good that he went back for seconds. Sydney was in heaven playing in the water and sand with her friends Mia and Bella.

  

Spencer was glad he did the bike ride, although he doesn't feel any hurry to get back on it any time soon!

Kodomo No Hi

Until this year, I was only familiar with Cinco de Mayo festivites on May 5. Little did I know, May 5 is also a holiday in Japan known as Kodomo No Hi, or Children's Day. Part of the festivities include Dragon Boat races at the port in Naha, and since we knew several people who were in the races, we decided to head down and check them out.

Because of a work commitment Spencer had earlier that day, we actually missed all of our friends' races. But we made it in time to see one last race, the men's finals.

  Waiting for the race to start.

These are the only three dragon boats on the whole island, so all of the teams had to practice on the docks at various beaches. Then they got one practice with the actual boats a week before the race.

The yellow boat won!

We had more Japanese ladies admire Sydney's hair :) I'm so glad she just laughs and says, "Why do they always just touch my hair?" instead of being freaked out.

I tried to get Syd to be in this picture with us, but she's slightly terrified of people in animal costumes. Shawn didn't seem to mind.

After the race, we walked around to see all of the tents and carnival rides. We told Sydney she could do one ride.

 She passed up the go carts (looked fun, but too loud for her taste) for this:

Spinning swings. These were right up her alley.

She was one happy girl!

Of course she requested another ride :)

The afternoon ended on kind of a bad note. We had gotten a stellar parking spot right near the fish market, only a short walk to the port. There were a billion Japanese cars lining the street where we parked, and when we got to our car at then end of the day, the only ones still there were all Americans with parking tickets on the windshield. Word on the street is that it will set us back about $175, and the worst part is... we were only 7 minutes past the posted parking time (which we obviously didn't see)! Oops.

Getting Ready for Bed

On one particular evening, our kiddos were being especially cute before bed time. Spencer decided to grab the camera to practice his photography skills.

These cuties sure do make us smile.

Ie Jima

Last Wednesday night, my neighbor Louise asked me if we wanted to venture up to Ie island the following day to go to the lily festival. She hadn't made it up there yet, and as her family is getting ready to move back to the states in a few weeks, this was going to be her last shot. I'm always up for an adventure, so of course we were in! Man it's nice to be a stay at home mom with no kids in school :)

The next morning we were off at 9am in hopes of catching the 11am ferry. We pulled in to the port only to find about 5 minutes later that it was the wrong one! So we packed the kids back in the car and followed a hand drawn map to the real Motobu port. Unfortunately, the map wasn't that great and the parking was kind of far away, so we hurriedly walked up to the ferry just as it started pulling away. Blast!

Sydney was wearing her favorite sparkly turquoise slip-on shoes, and her running to the ferry was making one of them fall apart. I could totally pull the top part of her shoe away from the sole and see her toes. So not only did we miss our ferry, but my daughter's shoes were falling apart. Great. We sat down and had lunch, then hopped on the next ferry and kept our fingers crossed that it wouldn't rain on us.

 So long Okinawa!

 Making our way to cloud covered Ie island.

Once we arrived at Ie's port, we had to get bus tickets to drive to the lilies. Louise and I felt a few raindrops as we stepped on the bus. Sydney thought the bus was super cool and asked about a billion questions on the 10 minute ride, including asking if every weed or flower she saw out the window was the lilies.

When we arrived, we stepped off the bus and the clouds parted! It was a small miracle, we couldn't even believe our good luck. The festival was right on the coast, the contrast of colors was really beautiful.

 

 Me and my cutie pies (one of which I had to bribe to smile in this picture).

A short walk to the bathrooms brought us to a path right near the water, and it was seriously so entertaining to watch the water crash up onto the rocks. I think I could have watched it all day.

Doesn't Shawn look happy to be in this picture with me?

 Emmy & Louise

 Syd & Emmy on a cool rock.

After the wave crashing show, we walked back over to the lilies. They were all so pretty.

As we kept walking, we went past a pavilion area where various dancers were performing.

 Giving Syd a lift so she can see.

Sydney is not a fan of loud sounds...

 so she watched them like this. She even does this when we flush the toilet, that girl has some very sensitive ears.

When we started making our way back to the bus area, we ran into our neighbors the Terpstra's! 

 Emmy, Louise, Sydney, Me, Shawn, & Ashley

The bus ride back was pretty crowded, so we had to pull down these little aisle chairs:

 I thought they were pretty clever.

We actually made a few stops to let people off and other people on, and people were so helpful in putting my chair away and then getting it back out for me. Pretty sure I said "Arigato gosai mas" ("Thank you very much") about a billion times, 'cause it's one of the only things I know how to say! Sydney was making the people next to her laugh quite a bit. Turns out they were trying to give her a wrapped piece of candy and she kept shaking her head "no." Then I told her what it was, and she was happy to say "yes."

Then we jumped back on the ferry and said goodbye to Ie...

and hello again to Oki:

I will never tire of seeing this water.

The weather ended up being incredible, we couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day! Another bonus was that Sydney's broken shoe actually held up for the whole day, but made it into the garbage can shortly after we walked in the door.