{Roller slides and Produce}

I had a FUN ADVENTURE THIS MORNING....

I went with a couple of my friends this morning off base to a japanese fresh produce market. It was fun. They had so many things i have never really seen before. They had samples of certain foods laying out. One was these tiny little FISH the size of my pinky finger. They had toothpicks in them already so you can pick it up to try it. Tanner saw it and wanted to try it. I was cringing that he actually wanted to try it. But i said "go for it. do you like it?" He really liked it. Then he handed me ONE and asked me to try it. Oh dear!!! But i am in a new place and i told myself i would really try to dive into this new culture, so i made myself try it. First of all, i don't like fish. The only fish i will eat is tilapia. AND trying these teenie little fish was an awful thought. I tried the tail end of one of em. It was't terrible, but it did taste like fish. eewww. The japanese like to put those on top of their salads and use them like we use croutons for our salads. Anyway, they also had little raw pieces of fish that were cut up. Gross. Didn't try that. Here is what we did buy at the market....

Dragonfruit
Tangerines....i have never seen green tangerines. These look like lemons to me. So it will be fun to try these. My friend said they are sooooo good.
And this little dessert? I still am not exactly sure WHAT it is. It's squooshy. It looked yummy and felt squishy so tanner wanted it. My friend said its made of rice flour??? I have no doubt it is. It has a gummy texture and tastes just like rice. It's interesting. Apparently the mangos here are amazing. AND expensive. 4 of them cost 30 bucks. They are shipped here from some other tropical island around here and are organic. So that makes it expensive.
A few days ago we went to one of the roller slides that i have been hearing so much about. There is no slide like this in the states. It has rollers on it, so you have to sit on something, such as cardboard or a sled to go down it. OTHERWISE your bum will be on FIRE from all the friction. It is long and fun.

You have to climb 100 steps to get to the top. That wasn't fun, especially when you are carrying jaydon. :) It's a good workout though. They sell these plastic trays here that you can buy to use for going on these slides. I think it would work a lot better and faster than cardboard. At the very end the slide has a good drop, so you go pretty fast. BUT before that you have to kind of push yourself a long. Gavin and jaydon loved it. Tanner not so much. We are excited to try a different slide....one where you don't have to push yourself along. They have them all over the place here.
Labor day weekend is coming up. Shane gets off friday and monday. Monday b/c its a holiday, but friday b/c it's family day. They do that when there is a holiday on monday ....they give them friday's off as well. Sooooo nice. I am so excited for this weekend b/c of course we are going to explore more. :)

{Island after Island}

Yesterday we decided we were going to go snorkeling today(saturday). We headed to White Beach, only to find out when we got there that nobody is allowed to swim because of all the jellyfish. It was a really pretty area. There is a picture amongst all these of White Beach. So, we were going to head to Gushikawa Beach, which wasn't too far from White Beach. On our way we saw a sign for a few different Islands and we decided to go there instead. We went to Henza Island, Miyagi Island, and Ikei Island. They were all very small and right next to each other. These islands were really hilly/mountainous. It was a pretty drive. The boys didn't like the drive, but i loved it. :) We stopped at Ikei Beach. It was beautiful. Here are some pictures from our time at Ikei Beach....
The waves were pretty rough on this beach. Gavin and Tanner loved it because when the wave came in they would let it push them up and then when the wave pulled back they would let it pull them back. Basically, they rode the waves back and forth the whole time. I wish we had a boogie board b/c that would have been so fun. At first Jaydon liked it, but when a big wave came in it freaked him out. After that he would run from the waves, just like in the picture above.
Above is a hermit crab. They are all over the beaches. They are so cute.
Above is Ikei Beach. Beautiful.
Toward the end of our time there the waves started getting higher and higher. High tide was coming in i guess. Suddenly, a huge wave came and got all our stuff wet. We weren't expecting that one.
Below is a picture of White Beach...
White Beach...
Below is a picture of us going across a long stretch of bridge to get to Henza, Miyagi, and Ikei Islands. As you can see it is low tide. Isn't this beautiful?!
We have been informed that we have a typhoon on the way. It should hit here sometime around Tuesday or Wednesday, the time we are supposed to move into our new home. :) Winds are expected to get up to 135 mph. Crazy. I will have to take pictures and hopefully i can post a video recording of it.

Over Labor Day weekend we are going with six other families and staying in a big condo/cabin with seven bedrooms under one roof on Okuma Beach. It's a government resort. It sounds like tons of fun. Pictures to come soon.

Araha Beach and Churaumi Aquarium and then some...}

Beautiful view up by the aquarium. It took us about 1 hour and 30 minutes to get there.
Grass Ninja's are out everyday. They wear these hats and they completely cover their entire body except for their eyes. You can't see it, but he has on a mask and towel over his face. Even off base when they are working on the lawn they do the same thing. That would be so hot.This is what our drive was like on the way to the aquarium. We drove on 58 the drive up and it was along the coast the whole drive. It was beautiful. I took so many pictures from inside the car. I later realized that i took so many pictures that look the same. I just couldn't help myself. Every clearing, every opening was like a new scenery. I couldn't take it in enough. And when shane keeps saying "wow, that's beautiful"....you know it's beautiful. He doesn't respond like that to many places.
Here we are at the aquarium. We are at the top just walking in and we had a beautiful view. The colors aren't showing in this picture b/c of the glaring light, but man, it was beautiful. I could sit and stare at it all day.
They had this play area at the aquarium. These nets went on forever and ever. It was huge.
This aquarium we went to is the second largest aquarium in the world. You just can't get an idea of how large it is unless you are there. You can somewhat imagine it when you see peoples heads at the bottom of the aquarium. This is a whale shark. They had a few whale shark, LARGE and small sting ray's, tons of schools of fish. It was amazing.

Here was a little pool area of sea cucumbers and starfish that they allowed you to touch and hold. Sea cucumbers are so so so soft. The starfish were all really cool. We saw lots of really cool sea life while we were here. There are fish and plants that glow in the dark. There are these really cool fish that are just like lightning bugs. They have a certain spot on there body that flashes on and off just like a lightning bug. It was really really cool.
This was another view we had while at the aquarium.
We went to araha beach. I think that was the name of it. And we ran into this play area. It was a large ship turned into a play area. Gavin was riding on the zip line. It was a long zip line! The playgrounds for kids here completely beat american playgrounds. i will show you some pictures of more playgrounds soon.
Araha Beach. Do you see the boxed off area where everyone is swimming? There are nets underneath the water to keep out jelly fish. They have signs up in this area telling you not to swim outside of the netted area because there are lots of jellyfish in that area right now.
We thought this was a funny sign... dung. haha! and the picture with it!
Do you see this little japanese man? He is carrying a little cart behind him. He just went fishing and caught a few things... This beach was beautiful. My pictures don't do any of the scenery justice. The buildings here might be old and not fancy like back in america, BUT they are so clean here. Everything is so clean. It's nice. And the streets....you will not find a pothole or run over any bumps on the roads here. The roads are perfect.

The Weather:

When we left to go to the aquarium it was rainy and misty outside. On our drive up to the aquarium the sun came back out. When the sun beats on you in the middle of the day with this humidity, it feels really gross. It's hot, but then your whole body feels wet. You just sweat from every single place on your body. The rain is interesting here. The next few days shows storms in the forecast. The sun shines and the sky is blue, but these dark storm clouds that move fast and are really low will quickly come through. It will pour rain for a minute, and then the sky is blue and sunny again. It's not cloudy with no break in the clouds. It can be storming with the sun shining bright. You can see it raining off in the distance, but it's perfectly sunny where you are. The clouds are funny here. But i like it b/c it's not just cloudy. It can be cloudy, but it's so scaattered that you will always see blue sky's with it. :)

Openings:

There are so many perks to this place. One of them is the OPENINGS they have. People will go all over the countries and bring back household furniture and items and sell them to us! They bring stuff from germany, thailand, phillippines, china, vietnam, etc. Once a month they have an opening. The other day they had the China Opening, which means they had a new shipment of china items. You will find things at these openings that you can find from pottery barn and pier 1 import for at least half the price if not more than what you would get from those companies. They have BEAUTIFUL furniture....GREAT home decor pieces. I loved it!!! I wanted to buy soooooooo many things, but obviously i couldn't. I bought a few things. The money that they make by selling these items to us they give to charity. It's neat. Also, my friend told me that you can get furniture here for a lot cheaper than in the states, which is something i didn't know. There is a man here that sells ashley furniture. My friends wanted a bedroom set and they called the states to see how much this set would be. and they found out that to get the same set here was 1500 dollars cheaper than the same set in the states. crazy, huh?!?! I told shane and he was like "let's go get some bunk beds NOW!!" haha! Anyway, i think we might come back to the states in three years with a whole house set up. That would be nice. and to get it all for half the cost or more is so awesome.

Lots of japanese people stare at us. They are amazed by blonde hair. So, it can feel a little awkward when we go to a place off base and they all just STARE !!!!

{Our First Sunday in Okinawa, tattoos, swimming, and a water spout.}

The post under this one has pictures for you to view if that's what you are searching for by getting on here! :)

Our First Sunday here...

Sorry, another post. :) I had to mention about our experience in our new ward...oops...I mean, Branch. We went in, to what used to be a convenience store, now turned into a church. :) It's a two story building. It was sooooooo weird sitting down for Sacrament meeting with sooooo little people there. Our ward in Wichita Falls was LARGE. It was big enough that they could have split it into two wards. To go from that to what we went to on sunday was a shocker. It will be quite an adjustment. There were probably about 12 other families. So weird. In Relief Society there were only about a total of 12 women. Sunday school was interesting. There aren't many people in there at all. There were lots of silent moments. The teacher would ask someone to read a certain verse and it took about 20 seconds before someone would raise their hand to do it. I raised my hand three times to read because i didn't like the silent moments. And if i were the teacher i really wouldn't like it. :) Now is the waiting game to see, not just WHAT calling we will each get, BUT HOW MANY callings we will get. I have become friends pretty quickly with the relief society president. She is very sweet and nice. She told me she has had three callings at one time....and she has had NUMEROUS different callings. So, it will be interesting to see where they put shane and I. :) haha! The only bad thing is that we might have been infected with hand, foot mouth illness. One child had it in nursery the sunday before we got there. No other child showed symptoms of having it. They disinfected everything in that room. So, we felt like he could go in. After church, the relief society president told me that one of the parent's put their child into nursery who has a fever and sore throat. She said those are the first signs of the illness. Why in the world that parent brought their child to church with a fever, i KNOW NOT. I don't get some people. Anyway!! I am hoping it wasn't that. Wishful thinking, huh?!!? :)

Tattoos

I practice writing hiragana. I am trying to teach myself how to speak japanese. It will be a slow process, no doubt. The boys really like the japanese characters. So, they picked out two characters from the hiragana chart that they really liked and had me "tattoo" it on their back. I drew it on dark and thick so it looked legit. They loved it. I put them to bed and gavin didn't want to lay on his back b/c he didn't want it to get rubbed off.

Swimming

There are two large pools here on base, along with a splash area at each pool. They are free. Right now we are close enough to walk. I took the boys to the pool today, where we stayed for almost three hours. They REALLY love swimming. We are signing them up for fall swim lessons in a few days. This will be their second swim lesson of the month. Today gavin was able to touch the bottom in the shallow end, but tanner isn't tall enough, so he couldn't. So i really had to hold tanner and jaydon a lot. Tanner would hold onto the side and swim back and forth , from me to the wall. Jaydon, with no floaty device, would jump into the pool to me. He has absolutely NO FEAR of the water. He just thinks there will always be someone there when he jumps in. So many times he would jump in when i wasn't ready or looking. I noticed him flying through the air into the water out of the corner of my eye. I had to quickly grab him. He goes in head under and everything. He loves it to death. He probably drinks a gallon of water everytime we swim. He is just crazy....he is so different than his other brothers at this age. I am glad he loves the water so much, but man he makes me nervous. I have no doubt that he would jump in the water if nobody was paying attention or watching. That freaks me out. SOOOO, he will be doing his second swim lesson this summer. We need to get him swimming so i don't have to feel so scared. Until then, my eye is ON HIM when we get around water. They have slides at the pool as well. The boys can't wait for daddy to come to the pool so that they can go down the slide. I can't catch them at the bottom when its just me and those three boys. We will all drown. :)

Cool sightings...

I looked out the window today when we were all sitting around talking. AND i spotted a water spout way off in the distance!!!!! it was so cool to see when for real!!!! I took pictures of it. I wish i could have seen it closer to actually see it spinning. It was really really cool.

Run..

I went for a run this morning. It had been awhile b/c of the move and everything that's been happening. It is hot in the mornings. There is no escaping the humidity. So, you just sweat a lot. I went up this hill by some housing and as soon as i reached the top i had a beautiful view of the crystal blue ocean. It was so beautiful. I was in heaven at that moment. And i was thinking to myself, what i still continue to think almost every hour.... "i can't believe i am really here!" It all doesn't feel real. It's so surreal. I truly love it here.

The Mud Factory...

The boys and I met up with my friend and her kids at the Mud Factory. It's a room where you can buy a BIG bag of ceramic clay. You make what you want. You leave it there to let it dry for about 2 weeks and then they fire it for you. Then you can go and paint it. It's really awesome. Such a cool activity to do...not only for your kids, but you can do it as well. And they have pottery wheels for adults. I would so love to make some ceramic piece. I remember taking a ceramics class in highschool and i loved it. I am amazed as i keep finding out all the things there are to do here. It's truly awesome.

{Our First Adventure to the Beach}

We have some friends here that we knew at case western reserve. They live on Camp Lester. We went and popped in the other night. This is the view from their home. They get to see the sun set over the ocean every night! lucky! Can you see the ocean out there?Driving down 58 on our way back home from Torri Beach.
Japanese advertisements...
You get the picture...

Finding hermit crabs. They were all over the beach. I think we had more fun playing with the hermit crabs than we did swimming in the ocean. :) If you look closely, in some of these pictures you can see seashells all over the ground. The sand is covered in seashells. They are everywhere! Piles and piles of seashells. We have already started collecting cool ones. :)
Torri Beach is owned by the army. And right down there is a water slide park, along with cabins. they also have kayaks. We can go here anytime and stay on the cabins on the beach for a little getaway. Fun, huh?




You will find these drink machines on every single block. Sometimes there are two on each block. They have tea and coffee drinks in them, along with water and some juices. Japanese will get one and drink it immediately and then throw it away. You won't see them walking with their drinks like americans do.
Driving down 58 on the way to Torri Beach...
Here is a picture of the view we have on base on our way out of the gates. If you look carefully you can see mountains off in the distance which are some more islands . :)

{A few pictures}

Well, i hope you can enjoy these pictures. I didn't post them big like i usually do. I am working on a MAC and i just don't know how to use one good enough. :) So, all these pictures are backwards. I should have posted them starting from the bottom, up. You get the picture though. These are the only pictures i have for now. It might be a little while before i get some good pics up.

Here is our new $4,500.00 van that we just brought home a couple hours ago. Not too shabby, huh?! :)
Here is our new housing unit we just picked out today. It's like a townhouse. It actually provides more room than i was expecting. And they are newly renovated, so i was pretty happy with the way they looked on the inside. They are cute. :) They gave us two options to pick from. We chose this one because it had 1/2 extra bathroom and an extra room for a dining area. It has a few nice closets for storage. Everything is new. The other one only had two bathrooms and no dining area. And this one was in better shape and more update than the other one as well. We are excited to move in. :) They have a hardware store here, where they provide light bulbs, paints, etc.....stuff like at home depot...that we can use all for free. And it's only free to those who live on base. We are so glad to be living on base this time around. Plus shane will only have about a 3 minute drive or less to work. Gavin's school will be about 1-2 minute drive. Freakin cool man. :)
Here is Gavin's new school. It's a really nice school. They have a very large new playground area. Gavin loved it. School meet and greet is next week. We didn't have a van today so we decided to just walk around to find the school and our housing options. Bad idea. We walked and after awhile we realized we were going the wrong way. We found the housing, but then the neighborhood was huge, which took up quite a bit more time. Then the walk back. We were out walking around for about 3 hours in the heat. We weren't planning on that happening. We are all burnt and crispy.
Gavin and the boys received haircuts today. It had been months since they had a cut. It was long. Gavin really wanted a mohawk. We obliged. But only for about 5 minutes. Then it came off. :)
Here he is before the haircut, whining(surprising) because he doesn't want us to cut it.
Hanging out on their bed in TLF.
The next few pictures were taken of our flight coming into okinawa. They are not good pictures. I had a horrible glare and lots of light foggy clouds in the way.



When we were in seattle i bought myself and shane each a mini cupcake from pinkabella cupcakes while the kids played in the kids fun area.
At the seattle airport waiting for them to announce that we are boarding. This was the first day.


Mt. Rainier. Isn't it beautiful. We are moving to seattle one day.