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!

Family Night. . . Cooking Challenge

Tonight for our family date we went to a Japanese market. Each team was give 700 yen. The goal was for each team to come up with a meal. There isn't much in the market that is American. You have some basics like your proteins and some of your veggies but practically everything else is foreign. As we have been here a year now (To the day-yikes, time flies!) we are recognizing a lot more of the basic foods and are able to follow picture directions a lot easier although honestly, 99% of the 'translation' is just guessing ;)

We all had 15 minutes. The boys spent 695 and bought:
The girls spent 691 and bought:
We all quickly got to work. I laughed when almost immediately you hear from Pete, " Oh good, (happy sigh) it's what I thought it was!" As he opened a package. Meanwhile us girls were trying to decipher these instructions:
Our beef curry and rice tasted really good although we all wish there had been a little more 'kick' to it. Pete and Alex made a smoothie with pineapple, calpis, and blueberries. Very yummy.
And of course... our desert. Blueberry Kit Kats.
Lots of fun and even more surprising that we didn't end up ordering Pizza when it was all done
(I had secretly planned on it;)

Just some more examples of great Japa-English

Reading Japanese English (or Japa-English as my fam calls it) almost always brings a smile. Below are pictures of three gift bags that we found in a convenience store last weekend. Kind of funny. "I watched the pretty cat which there was on the rook of the neighboring house today. I want to make friends with her. I keep is a secret from other friends. The reason is because I want to make friends with her first."

My puppy played too much and was tired and has slept. What kind of dream do you watch? Let's go for a drive together tomorrow.

The day when I was troubled all day. My pretty puppy, the place are not your rooms. Please, please come out! Are you no use with the soft cushions of this place?

Did I mention these were the ONLY choices of gift bags available? What occasion would you use these bags for?

In a tree... wasn't the plan but we had a great view!

Our weekend adventure took a couple of detours. Originally we had planned on going to Kokusai Dori street Sat night as there was an Eisa festival with 100s of Eisa daners, drummers and the typical Oki festivities. However its been rainy here lately. Really rainy and Sat morning was *gasp* actually sunny! We had to take advantage of it, especially because the sun was only supposed to be out in the morning. We got our swimming suits on and headed out. The plan was to find this park I'd driven past earlier that week and then hit the beach. An hour later and we hadn't found the park. For those of you who wonder why we couldn't find the park I had drive past just a couple days prior, the roads in Oki are rarely labeled. They have no pattern and rarely connect to other roads the way you think they will and they are typically narrow and easy to miss / confuse with other roads or even find again as many of them look like they could possibly be drive ways. Needless to say, we didn't find the park! Plan B... swimming. As we were in Naha, an area we aren't as familiar with the logical thing was to drive towards the ocean and find a beach. Which we did with a minor detour to look at motorcycles ;) Found a great beach, we were just about ready to swim when Pete noticed an island and a bridge leading to the island not far away and decided swimming there would be much better (The water was warmer or bluer, maybe?) So we set out again. Please refer to the above description of the Oki roads if you don't already know where this is going. That's right, an hourish later we were finally on this island which had a park (Yippee-sadly there was a baseball game going on so we weren't able to really play) but no decent swimming beaches, too corally. Back to plan A. Overall, it was nice to spend the morning together. Our adventures ended at the Naha Harbor Treehouse Restaurant. Not a real tree- just made to look like one.

Can you see us at the bottom of the picture? It was a cool building. I was sad they didn't do much with the inside of the building, they could have really made it look fabulous inside with lots of greenery. But it was fun. You took an elevator located at the back of the truck up to the restaurant.

Yep, mom. Posting pictures of food again ;) Pete's was Guydon or a bowl with veggies, meat and rice and was delicious. Lalee has Oyakodon which is a mount of seasoned rice topped with veggies and a curried chicken and covered with a sunny-side-up egg. Much better tasting then it looks ;)

Alex had a spam, tomato and goya pizza. Goya is an Okinawa veggie that looks a lot like a cucumber with lots and lots of bumps. It is considered on of their 'fountain of youth' foods. It has a very bitter taste to it. Alex like the pizza, after picking off a lot of the toppings ;) Next to it is a salad plate with the usual salad springs and a noodle salad that you commonly get with foods.
I made Beccas pic bigger as she got probably the most variety and ate the least! Her main dish was rice covered with egg. She also had fried shrimp, sausage and a mini hot dog, an assortment of fruit (Kiwi, passion fruit, mango and cherry) and potato chunks covered in a sauce that tasted like fry-sauce. This is their kids meal option, supposedly kid friendly. Not Becca's first choice!
During our 4 hour adventure we didn't do any of the things we set out to do (Eisa festival, swimming or find the park) but we did have a fun time and made memories. I guess that's what counts!