{Our Exciting Weekend}

Friday

On Friday we found out we are being stationed at Kadena AFB in Okinawa, Japan!! I cannot tell you how excited i am! I am extremely excited! If you look at the map you can see that Okinawa is it's own island to the south of mainland Japan. It's the Hawaii of Japan(that's the way people describe it). Okinawa rarely gets below 60 degrees and the summer's are very hot and humid...BUT if you know me, i prefer being HOT over COLD. I could do without snow the rest of my life. SO, this place is perfect...for me anyway. We were hoping for Germany. We were excited to see so many places over their in Europe. The only downside to going to Germany is how cloudy it can get there, which did make me nervous b/c i get depressed in cloudy conditions. I am pretty sure i have that seasonal disorder. So, although i won't get to see Europe(yet) i really don't mind b/c i will have sun and great weather and BEAUTIFUL beaches. :) I read that they have some of the best white sand beaches in the world and also some of the world's best scuba diving spots. We are going to become little fish over there. You can guarantee that my boys are going to be in swim lessons all summer. One other thing i am excited about is learning the language. I told myself i would learn the language of the country we get sent to. AND that i am going to do. AND i can't wait to eat real Japanese food and learn how to make it. YUM!!! I want to dive into the culture of this place. :) Eeeeee, i can't wait! :) We head over in August. The flight over there will not be fun. I have heard that the flight is anywhere from 16 hours to 24 hours. So, it's somewhere in there. But it's worth it. I haven't heard one bad thing about Okinawa. Everyone who has been has loved it. I am excited for this new adventure for our family. And i am excited that our boys get to see other places in this world. I am also excited b/c my brother lives in South Korea. He LOVES it there and loves the people. Hopefully we get a change to go to South Korea. Anyway, we will get to see more of him and he will be spending Christmas with us! He is so excited about that and so are we!! :)

So, these are some pictures i found online. Some of these are copyright(oops)...but you can see where i got them from ...dreamstime.com...so you can go to the actual source of these pictures. Take a look at what we are going to....

Saturday

On saturday we woke up and headed to Sea World. We decided there probably isn't a better time b/c shane was free for the weekend. These pictures are all in the wrong order. This is how our day went....We enjoyed time at Sea World. The boys were amazed at all the shows and they loved seeing the Sharks. They spent some time watching all the sharks swim around. They also enjoyed the water ride there. Tanner was nervous about it, but when it was all done he really enjoyed it and would have gone again. Gavin wasn't too sure about how he felt about it after it was done. He didn't want to ride it again though. :)

After Sea World we headed to CHEESECAKE FACTORY. We haven't eaten there since Cleveland and we love it there. AND it sure tasted soooooooo good! Man i love that place. After that we headed back to the hotel and let the boys swim. Then we went and got some COLDSTONE ice cream. We don't have coldstone here. We have a maggie moo's which is VERY similar, but not the same. :) Then we headed back to our hotel and went to sleep!

Jaydon with his Mac N Cheese....he is showing me how dirty he is. Dirty is all he knows how to be. :)

Tanner IS in this picture, you just can't see him b/c he is on the other side of Shane...

We saw a few LARGE caterpillars crawling around on the ground. Tanner thought they were pretty cool.

Here they are at the aquarium watching the sharks...

Sleepy baby...

Shamu just had a baby recently. It was so cute....

Jaydon wouldn't sit on the horse....even with me hugging him while on the horse. He sat down, but then wrapped both his arms around my neck and squeezed. He wouldn't let go, so we decided to go sit on a bench....

This was a FUN play area for the kids. They had tunnels to climb through and things to climb. They also had a FUN splash area, and i would have had them wear their swimsuits if i knew it was there.

We also headed over to the River Walk that night. BUT there was the BIG FIESTA going on and it was sooo crowded, so we decided not to get out. We did drive around and see a bit of it and we saw the river canal. It is a pretty area. I really enjoyed our ride to San Antonio. It's a beautiful ride. TONS of trees and LOTS of hills. I never would have guessed that. BUT there were lots and lots of hills. It's a beautiful area...especially around Austin. We could definitely live there.

And one really nice thing about Texas, that we have never seen anywhere else is the drivers. Our drive down to San Antonio consisted a lot of just two lane roads. Our lane and the on-coming lane. So, naturally, we were going faster than most of the drivers. ;) So, instead of us having to find a good time to pass those cars without getting HIT, they would continue driving, BUT pull over into the emergency lane and slow down slightly so that we could pass without getting into the on-coming lane. Everyone did it! It was sooooooo nice!

Sunday

Sunday we woke up and got ready for church and headed to Kerrville, which was an hour west of san antonio. Kerrville is where Shane's cousin, Greg, lives with his beautiful wife and wonderful FIVE boys. We spent about 7 hours with them. They BBQ'd the BEST hamburger i have ever eaten! I am going to be making those more often now. Man, they were GOOD! Our boys LOVED hanging out with their boys. They were in Heaven. And when it was time to get they threw a fit, of course. :) What is any fun-time without a good fit to go with it? You can see in this picture that Gavin is trying to stay mad about the fact that we are leaving, but can't help but have a half smile in there with it. haha!

Alek Dax and Gavin were buddies. They liked going outside and throwing balls everywhere. I call Alek Dax that instead of just Alek b/c his family is split between the two names. A few of them like Alek better so they call him Alek and a few like Dax better so they call him Dax. It's so funny! :) Honestly, i like both names so i would just call him Alek Dax all the time if it were me. :)

The weekend went way too fast. BUT we really had lots of fun, made good memories and are glad we did it.