School Adventures

Alex's first grade class went on a field trip to Okinawa Land and Pete chaperoned. They began the trip by walking through this fairly long cave, or at least it had to be long because Alex too over 100 pictures of the thing! They were able to go through the snake museum, watch a mongoose and a habu race each other, watch a cobra as it was provoked and it's head flared out. Sounds like the perfect field trip... for the boys that is! Below is a picture of Alex with his classmates holding an albino python.

Alex loves that his best friend, Jacob is in his class. (Below). He was so excited when Jacob got to come back home with Alex after the field trip and have a sleepover.

Lalee's sleepover @ the School: Space Night

All the fourth graders at Stearling Heights were invited to sleep over at the school for space night. Yep- SLEEPOVER! She was looking forward to this for weeks. The night began around 5 with all kinds of activities like 'moon walking',

flight simulations, star gazing, astronaut food eating, airplane making, and even rocket making and launching which Pete went to the school to help out with. (Yes, two school activities in one day. Pete said, "I think I've spent more time helping at the school today then I have ever spent at the school helping out- combined!")

As expected, they didn't get much sleep due to creaky old school, noises, ghost stories and giggly girls. I went to the school in the morning to help out with breakfast. They all looked so tired but happy. She said her favorite part was when Dad helped with the rockets.

The proposal

10 years ago when Pete and I were getting married we did without a lot of things, including a proposal. Not that I didn't really, really want one. It just didn't happen. It's been something that I have teased Pete about through the years.

We celebrated our 10th anniversary this year. We don't usually celebrate except on our actual anniversary on Feb. 29th, so every 4 years (married me on Leap-year). Pete mentioned shortly after returning home from the states that he had a babysitter for our anniversary, an event that was over a week away, I was shocked, he had obviously put a lot of thought into the night.
That morning we woke up early (5ish) to a shake the house, buckle the windows and knock pictures off the wall earthquake. Of course all the kids were up for good and I quickly developed a migraine which lasted two hours and left me drained. I got up and started cleaning, afterall I had a babysitter coming over that night, and within the hour had yet another migraine... argh. We cleaned all afternoon so by the time the babysitter showed up, I was exhausted, still nauseous and not wanting to do any celebrating whatsoever (translation.... being pretty witchy) Poor Pete! I knew he was really wanting to go when I begged him to reschedule and he refused, I actually started to wonder what was up.

We had dinner at Poco a Poco. This Indian restaurant which has individual rooms divided by sheer curtains, candle light, lots of ferns, very atmospheric




Loved the restaurant, food was good, but the restaurant was fun. Romantic, we talked and laughed. It was so peaceful and amazing to be out without the kids, talking just about us, no kid talk for the night. After leaving, Pete asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to go and find one of those photo booths, like the ones we used to cram ourselves into as teens, and take some pictures. Little did I know, I was playing right into his plans. We were close to American Village which has a huge Ferris wheel. I mean huge. this thing is quite a bit taller than the any of the buildings next to it. It goes really slow, it takes about 15 minutes to go all the way around just once. As we are walking around looking for a photo booth I turn to Pete and say, "Hey, wanna ride the Ferris wheel?" I was actually kind of surprised when he didn't protest at all, got this huge smile on his face and started pulling me down the street towards the Ferris wheel.

So we get on the Ferris wheel and we're looking at the island, it was about 9, the sun sets at 6 so it was all the way dark. The view was incredible, There aren't many high points at Okinawa and we were in this Ferris wheel that towers about everything, lights sparkling, you can see all the buildings and people below. There are parts of Okinawa that kind of look like the Vegas strip at night, all lite up. The Village is one of them, so it was a great show of lights and activity. Pete moves to the other side of the bench and I glanced over at him and did a double take. He was down on one knee, a ring box in hand and he asked me to marry him saying something like "I know it's 10 years late but I wanted you to have a story ... " I'll spare you the details of the rest of it but it was charming, it was totally unexpected and left me speechless. 10 years late or not, it was perfect. And the fact he still wanted to propose, after my mood all day, made it even better!

February all in one post

It's been a really long time since I posted. Mainly because I am so far behind I keep on waiting for a good period of time so I can catch up and then I get even more behind. So, stopping procrastination.

We had a great time time on our trip. We were finally able to leave on Wednesday afternoon. We took a C-5. We spent some time in Hawaii on the way. Christina took us around the island. We loved the HUGE waves there and seeing the island through Christina's help.


Through a small miracle of listening to promptings we took a smaller, slower plane to Reno instead of into Travis which was very good as the plane to Travis ended up not taking passengers. The planes were loud and somewhat cold but it was a great adventure, Alex even got to go up into the cockpit to watch the pilots during take-off.

Sandi and Dan came down to Reno and picked us up. The kids all thought we were going to Main land Japan until they saw Sandi. It was kind of sad because Becca said, "Mom, I left most of my stuff in Okinawa, will they mail it to us." When I told her we were going back home she started bowling. We drove a van back to Utah. From the time we left Oki until we got to Bear River was 53 hours. We were so tired. We also managed to get some pretty nasty colds but I guess that's pretty common when going from one climate and elevation to one so different. Alex was fascinated and obsessed with the snow. Weird as he's always liked the snow in the past, but now loved it. Cara and Jason were awesome with going outside a lot with the kids. He spent as much time as possible outside.

We were able to spend time with our friends as well. We caught up until early hours of the morning in Smiths bakery, laughed at the rivalary during the superbowl, had girl time doing stupid stuff, and celebrated the new changes and accomplishments in life.

The wedding went off without any problems and everyone got a long which is amazing! Pete and Joey did a great job decorating Mike's car. Lalee, Becca and kamlyn were inseperable. They loved dancing and playing



We were so lucky and happy that we were able to see so much of our family. We really appreciate everyone making such an effort to see us and spend time with you guys. We love you so much.

Getting home had each adventures. We had bought tickets from SLC to Seattle from Delta. We got to the airport only to learn that Delta does not show us on their flight and will not do anything for us either (I did find the email confirmation when we got home). Fortunately, we Southwest was able to help us, if fact they actually gave us two comp tickets. We definitely had some guardian angles looking over us. There were only a very few people get onto the plane in Seattle, in fact we literally got the last seats.
The week after getting home was crazy as we were all still pretty sick (we spent the bulk of time in Utah with some nasty colds) and catching up on homework, work and sleep. Jetlag between here and there isn't pretty! Pete surprised me by getting a babysitter the last weekend in Feb. to celebrate our anniversary, Read the post about that for more details.

He made it really special. It's been a great, interesting 10 years. Wonder what the next 10 will bring. We spent last weekend out and about with Flat Stanley. He (Flat Stanley) got all tuckered out and is on his way back to Tyler ;)


We've spent quite a bit of time at the dentist lately. The picture of Lalee below is of her getting ready to get her braces. She hasn't sucked her thumb in 7 weeks HURRAY! and should be getting her braces on at the end of March.

Our family date for last week was riding in the Ferris Wheel and getting ice cream in American Village. This week was group dates. Us girls went to a craft fair and the girls made small snake-skin purses. Doing a project/ receiving instructions is always much more entertaining when you speak a completely different language and have to rely upon gesters and a small group of words and nods. It makes you realize just how basic a lot of human nature is, you'd be amazed with what you can communicate without words. We also rented little ponys and popped some pop-corn, the perfect girls date. I'm not sure what Pete and Alex decided to do ;)

And finally, I've been spending most of my time lately doing homework, walking along the seawall (below) and playing with the kids. It's a pretty relaxed and happy time of life. Love you all. Nae

Cherry Blossoms

Cherry Blossoms are a big thing here. And honestly, it is very beautiful on our little island during this time of year. There are so many flowers and shrubs in bloom, tons of different colors and vegetation.

Today we drove up to Nago and spent a couple of hours walking around a park that is really in bloom. Of course there was a lot of climbing (and some sliding) involved. Even some trekking along some of the more secluded trails.

I'm not sure were Alex was while taking these pictures. Oh well. Below is Lalee ringing a bell which we found at the top of a hill. I wish I could tell you why the bell was there but I have no idea!

Okinawa is a very odd mixture of jammed-packed concrete buildings, so many buildings all touching and built right on top of each other all the way to the street with grass and yards being an oddity. Most buildings around town have stores on the bottom floor and then several floors of apartment buildings above. The apartment building typically have balconys with clothes lines to dry clothes. In addition, most of these buildings also have billboards, advertisments, or ads on them. It is definately a site to see when you first get here and makes it look perhaps a bit run down and uncared for although that's typically pretty far from the truth. When there isn't a a constant towering wall of buildings, you have a real tropical jungle. There isn't a middle ground. Either its major city, or major foliage. But usually flowers everywhere. I love the balance of it all. I think it's perfect. Oh, and there is (of course) the third type of scenery, my personal favorite, the ocean. That all said, I loved this view. I thought it captured all three aspects of Okinawa all in one shot: the foliage, the cities and the ocean.

Pictures from our day-to-day life.

This is long overdue and I'll apologize to those who have asked for it, I'm finally getting around to posting pictures of our daily life. Pictures of the house, and what not. I just realized as I was going to upload that I don't have any pics of the outside so a video will have to do.

When the video starts you are standing by my front doorway looking out. We are F. There are 12 families living in the houses you see in the video. Definitely not our dream home but with the military, there's not a whole lot of (read any) choices in the matter. It may not be fancy but as you can see, all concrete so secure. After you walk in the door you go down the hallway:

And then into the TV/living/family/dinning room.


From there you go around into the kitchen.

Upstairs are our bedrooms.

Becca wanted flowers, fairies, and butterflies. I didn't do so well on the fairies but she didn't seem to mind. She loved the green and purple combination.

Our bedroom in is just white, green, and wood. i have a couple of Japanese sayings and pics of us through the years on the walls you can't see. Still working on curtains but its coming. And the walls have tree branches with leaves and small blooms. You can't really see them will in the pic.

I'm not sure what happened to the pic of Alex's walls. They are painting with rolling hills and blue sky. I also has a 'Tree' for his curtains. This dragon hangs from his ceiling. At one point I had made this wicked awesome bunkbed cover that was a castle. Sadly, it didn't last too long against Alex and his friends. Maybe I'll make a more sturdy one someday... I didn't post more pictures of Lalee's room as I posted a bunch back in Sept.

Pics of the vehicles we are currently driving:


I also thought I'd throw in a couple of pictures of places that we go on a daily or weekly basis.

The BX/Commissary and food court. Don't let the size impress you too much, there is a LOT of poorly used space. It is a super nice building though. Also, a picture of our church building.

This is the fruit market I buy our fruit from.

This is the kids in front of their school. There are actually lots of palm trees lining all the sidewalks and road leading up to it but I didn't think to include them. It looks different without them.

This is a side view of the kids school. As you can see, outside hallways for lots of the school. I didn't make it to take a picture of Pete's work yet, I'll post one when I get there. So there you have it, the sites we surround ourselves the most with!