Lalee and her camera

This is a video of Lalee trying to show everyone where she lives.

Becca's Birthday

Becca's birthday was on the last Monday before school started this year. Ms. Brenda made her cupcakes that she shared with all the neighbor kids and then mom and Lalee took her out for a surprise- pedicures!

This is Lalee before our pedicures trying to decide what she wanted her toes to look like. There are 100s and 100s of pictures / styles to choose from.

We all settled down for a little bit of pampering.
This is Becca after deciding she wanted rainbows and smiley faces :)

After 40 minutes of foot massage and care came the drying lamps.

Of course we had dinner, cake and ice cream and opened presents!

Randomness

As I was cleaning off memory cards I ran across a lot of fun pictures and videos from this past year that I haven't done anything with. I decided I'd try to post a couple random memories throughout the next week or two to share with you all. There are lots so I'm not sure how many (or how few if I don't have time) I'll post. It'll likely be just a mosh-posh of memories but maybe you'll smile. WARNING: the videos were created by the kids and they may induce confusion, dizziness. Also, parents can not be judged harshly for content of the video taken without their knowledge! Enjoy...
There are often little 'flee market' type places on the side of the road, especially up north where it's almost like miniature outdoor pawn shops. You find the most interesting things. Notice the larger-than-Pete sized monster in the background, the large handmade pots to the side, flowers, etc. It's always amusing to see what you can find and even more amusing coming up with reasons why the kids can not bring home a 7 foot monster!
This is Lalee on one of our fruit and veggie shopping trips. Because produce costs so much on base we typically shop for it off base at little mom-and-pop lean to like produce stands.
A picture of a boat in a pond. I shared it because you can see a lot of the local vegetation and the colors and style of the boat are very common things to see in ponds.

Meandering up North

After weeks of rainy weekends we finally had a beautiful Saturday! Not exactly knowing where we were headed, we got our swim suits on, loaded up on snacks and set off on some of the more narrow and curvy back roads of the east side of the island. As we drove further up into the not-very-populated Nago area we began to see some of the lingering destruction from the recent Typhoon which hit the top part of the island with Kadena only feeling the side effects. Seeing the Typhoons aftermath up north (even 2 weeks later) made us appreciate the protection of our concrete homes even more!Eventually (read 3 hours and about a dozen scuffles between the kids later) we found ourselves at Hedo point, the very top most north area of the island. Here the tempestuous waves of the Pacific Ocean and East China Sea dash against its cliffs, throwing spray high into the air (Should have taken a picture of the spraying waves ;)
During the campaign for reversion to Japan, people used to light bonfires at this cape. Lalee is standing beside marker commemorating the locals struggle to have Okinawa returned to Japan after being ruled for 27 years by America following WWII.

Of course we found ourselves at the beach. Becca and I took an afternoon nap floating on the lounge chair while Lalee and Alex snorkeled. Ahhh.... welcome back sunshine. Please stay awhile!

P.S. YES the water really truly is that clear and beautiful!