Kate's Blessing

We originally planned to bless Kate on Feb. 23, but had to postpone because our kids were taking turns running fevers. Thankfully, everyone was healthy on our backup date, March 9. 

Me (with my new-ish brown hair) and my sweet babe.

Love her little Alfalfa stick up hair.

She has been showing us her precious smile for several weeks now, and we can't get enough of it!

I mean, is there anything more adorable than a baby's smile, with those sweet little coos and gurgles that usually follow?

We were so grateful to have so many of our close friends there with us. Since our family is so far away, it's amazing to have awesome friends that can be part of these special events with us. Spencer invited Justin Heaton, Adam Hurst, Shane Jenks, Seth Perrins, Brenton Yates and Jake Camp to be in the circle, along with Branch Presidency members Preston Jones and Brian Bailey. I was so excited that our awesome neighbors, the Donahue's, were able to be there too.

Stacey was sweet enough to take notes of the blessing for me. Kate was told that she was lucky to be born into a home where she was loved and wanted. She was blessed to:

• have a healthy body and a sharp mind.
• know where to turn for peace in the trials specific to her generation.
• be worthy to make covenants in the temple.
• come to know Heavenly Father's will through prayer.

She was also counseled to follow the example of her righteous mother- something I'm trying to live up to! At my PPI with President Jones later that day, he told me that during the blessing he felt like he wanted to open his eyes for just a second. When he looked at Kate, he said her eyes were just so focused on Spencer like she was listening intently to the things he was saying. She certainly brings an air of peace and calm to our home, and has been such a content baby thus far. We are so grateful for her!

Sand Dollar Beach

As we get closer to our PCS date (What?!? Just over 2 months left!), I feel the need to check stuff off my "must do in Okinawa" bucket list. One of those things was going to Sand Dollar Beach. I brought our camera to document our fun adventure, only to find that it didn't have a memory card in it, so I was limited to the capacity on the camera's internal memory- which was only 4 pictures! Lame! 

I had high hopes of finding tons of sand dollars, but this was the closest I got to a good one:

Almost perfect, aside from the small hole and the mass of plant life on the other side.

While I was a little disappointed, we still had fun scouring the beach and finding shells. Sydney was picking up every. single. thing. that caught her eye.

Another item on the bucket list was driving on Melody Road, which was just a few minutes away from the beach. The road had grooves of varying widths etched into it so that it played a Japanese love song when we drove over 40 km/hr over it. A clever way to show Japanese pride and ensure that people drive the speed limit?

This treble clef shows the starting point of the song.

We drove over it 4 or 5 times (sometimes pulling a James Bond and going over it backwards on the wrong side of the street)- it was pretty cool! While Spencer, Syd, and I enjoyed picking out the tune, Shawn did this the entire time:

Somehow he was still enthralled with it and kept asking, "Where the music road go?" and got kind of ticked when we said we were done driving on it. He talked about the "music road" for several days afterward too :)

A New Park

Spring in Okinawa starts near the end of January. Winter and early Spring are the best times to go to parks in Okinawa; summer is WAAAAYYYY too hot to be outside in a non-water related activity. On a nice spring day, we found a new park on our way home from a birthday party. I'd driven past the signs for it about a hundred times, but we were feeling adventurous and decided to actually follow them. I'm so glad we did!

From the road where we parked, we could see two playgrounds and this funky net tree.

Then when we walked closer, we realized that hill leading down to the net tree was a giant concrete slide! It didn't look too intimidating from the side, but from the top it looked really steep. Steep enough that Spencer and I were both too scared to go down it!

While I hung out with Kate, Spencer and the kids walked down some stairs to give the net tree a try.

Sydney quickly got stuck and needed Spencer to rescue her; Shawn shortly followed suit, losing a shoe about 2 seconds into his climb.

After ditching the tree, they climbed up the ladder by the slide.

See how steep it is??

Sydney loved it.

Syd eventually wanted to go down the slide, and asked me to go with her. I was still kind of scared, but I figured if my 5 year old was willing to do it, certainly I could muster up the courage to do it too! And lucky us, we survived (even if I did land on my bum in the sand at the bottom)! Spencer eventually went down too, but he took a little more coaxing :)

By the playground area for little kids, we all had fun playing on a teeter totter and taking turns pretending to surf on that platform in the middle of it.

Look at Spencer's form! He's a natural.

Kate was oblivious to our fun, but looked cute in her carseat. It was pretty windy outside, and I tried to keep her shielded from those gusts of air in her face.

Valentine's Day

I'm not great at making a big deal out of little holidays, but I put together some valentines for my kids. Sydney came home from school with tons of treats from her valentine exchange at school, but didn't want to share with Shawn. I was going to save their valentines for after dinner, but I felt bad that Shawn didn't have anything. So after lunch I told them I had something special for them- a treasure hunt to find their valentines! Of course when my kids hear the words "treasure hunt," they think they need to dress up like Jake and Izzy.

Sydney and Shawn with their first heart-wrapped clue.

 After following clues that led them all over the house, they found the treasure in the dryer!

Unfortunately, things like this sometimes backfire. Like when they inhale all their treats and ask for more, then whining when I tell them "no." Oh well...

Gooooooo Cougars!

The long awaited package from the BYU bookstore, which contained birthday presents for Spencer and Christmas presents for Shawn and Sydney, finally arrived in mid-February. I was especially excited for Shawn to open up his gift, not only because he loves throwing the football and playing tackle with his dad, but because we've been pretty successful at brainwashing him to love BYU. Granted, this "uniform" is about two sizes too big (it was the smallest they had), and the helmet fits on Spencer's head, but I think the fact that Shawn looked so adorable in it made it money well spent. 

Check out that smile!

"Down, set, hike!"

Driving Range

Every Wednesday night at Taiyo golf course is family night, offering a huge bucket of balls for free at the driving range. One evening we borrowed kid-sized clubs from a friend, and gave it a go! 

Shawn was especially excited to go golfing, and jumped right in. He's quite the little athlete.

Sydney was a much more timid at first, but with a little success and some encouragement she started having fun. By the end of the night, she was going on and on about how much fun it was to go golfing.

Check out that form- ha ha! Her stiff-armed swing cracked me up.

Kate was pretty content hanging out in her car seat.

Cherry Blossoms

In late January, we did our annual trip up north to see the cherry blossoms. The first year we were here, they weren't quite bloomed when we went to see them, and last year we saw them a little past their prime. This year we lucked out and they were perfect! We drove to Mt. Yaedake in the late afternoon, and the pink blooms were beautiful against the blue sky.

On our way over to the cherry blossom festival, the kids walked in a pack in front of us. It was so cute- you could tell they felt pretty cool leading the way.

Anderson, Jack, Sydney, Shawn, & Henry

Shawn amazed me with his confidence on the playground.

We were sad to see that all the pictures we took while driving up the mountain were a little blurry. Maybe it's because they were taken on the go. We opened up the sunroof in the back, and while I drove, Spencer stood up in the back (like in the movie "Big") to take pictures. Luckily, all the cars just kind of crept along as we admired the trees, but I always felt a little pressure to keep our pauses for pictures quick when we were in the front of the pack.

We pulled over to sneak this picture of Ie island at sunset.

We love getting to enjoy this kind of stuff with our awesome friends!

Sydney spent most of the ride putting on fake nails she got as a prize at the festival.

At some spots the blossoms formed a canopy over us. It was so pretty!

As it started getting dark while we drove down the mountain, these lanterns lit up.

Getting home was a little crazy. Traffic was really terrible, and what should have been an hour and 15 minute trip home turned into a 2.5 hour drive. We got stopped at a McDonald's drive through and ate in the car while we moved toward home at a snail's pace. Once the kids' bellies were full, they crashed and stayed asleep for the rest of the ride home. I can't help but feel a little sad knowing that this will be our last time getting to see the cherry blossoms here, but glad to know that we'll get to see some in the spring in D.C.