Northern Okinawa, Day 1

A few weeks before we moved, we went up to the northern part of the island to go do some of our favorite stuff up there one last time. But before heading out, we ran by Evans Clinic to snap a few pictures with Miss Uehara so Spencer could use them in a "goodbye" gift for her.

Our first stop was the Butterfly Garden. There were lots of cheesy spots for photo-ops, so we took advantage :)

Butterfly fairy Sydney

Butterfly fairy Shawn

There was basically one giant greenhouse-y structure with primarily one kind of butterfly flying around. But tons of them would land on a single flower, so we got to see lots of them in pretty good detail.

Apparently they are attracted to the color red, so there were red hats you could wear to attract the butterflies. Shawn looked super cute in his Elmer Fudd hat, and even got some butterflies to land on him!

I looked significantly less cute in that hat, and right after I took it off a butterfly came and landed on my head!

We walked out to an overlook and admired the ocean view.

Then it was on to the dolphin show at Ocean Expo park. We'd been inside the aquarium enough times that we didn't feel like it was worth paying for again, but the awesomely free dolphin show is always a crowd pleaser with the kids.

It's even better when we get ice cream after :)

We walked around some paths we'd never taken before and found this pretty little waterfall.

On the way back to the car, we walked past the fountain and let the kids play in it. They were in heaven! Too bad it was just an overcast day, I'm sure it would have been even more fun if it was hot and sunny. They didn't seem to care though.

As usual, Kate was chill in her carseat while Syd and Shawn ran around.

My soaked kids, posing in front of the Koinobiri at Ocean Expo Park.

I only let the kids play in the fountain because I knew we had a change of clothes for them in the car. Syd was very modest about changing in the van and not letting anyone see her. Spencer was getting Shawn's clothes out of the suitcase in the back of the van, and when he turned around Shawn had pulled his pants down and was peeing on the sidewalk. Since he was already exposed, he just got changed out in the open. Silly boy.

Kiddos

The bigger kids gravitate to Kate, especially Sydney. Kate was chillin' in her Bumpo in the kitchen, and Syd and Shawn came in to play with her. 

We strategically held onto some toys for the kids that we didn't want to make it into our next house. Even with minimal stuff, our house still got pretty messy! Guess the mess had no where to hide. The kids were desperate for entertainment, and Shawn was frequently entertained by walking about in other people's shoes.

Photo bomb!

We had lots of play time with the Perrins, frequently going over to their house since they had toys :) Cameron and Colton were came over to our place and were surprised to see all our fun stuff was gone! 

Kate and Sawyer, born just over 3 month apart.

Celebrating Easter

The Saturday before Easter, we joined the Perrins at the 25m heated pool on Camp Foster. Although all of our kids were shivering, they loved being able to play in the water with their dads. Kathy and I hung out under a pavilion and chatted while keeping watch over the babes.

Sydney was so independent in the water, I loved seeing her go to town with her floaties on.

Still a major Daddy's boy, Shawn had a ball jumping to Spencer, and even tolerated getting dunked a few times.

After we got home and cleaned up, we colored Easter eggs. My kids absolutely loved it, the eggs were all colored in no time. Everyone got an equal number of eggs, and Shawn was done with his in about half the time Sydney took to decorate hers.

Even Spencer was getting into it, busting out his computer so he could made an accurate depiction of a Superman logo.

On Sunday after church, we attempted (in vain) to get a decent picture of our kids in their new Easter clothes. Sydney refused to be in a picture, so we attempted to get one of Shawn and Kate. The sun was right in their eyes, they couldn't even look at the camera :) 

The kids participated in our little neighborhood's annual Easter egg hunt. These kids were certainly eager to find some candy! Sydney took off on her own pretty quickly, but Shawn stayed close to his Dad.

After all the eggs were found, Spencer and I didn't see Sydney. We suspected she found a secluded spot to go to town on her treats and went to search for her. We were right! Except this year we found her before she started eating all her candy.

The Hurst's hosted Easter dinner, and as usual, we had a great time with all of our friends. The next morning I woke up to feed Kate and felt like I was gonna puke, but I held it together. Then before I got back in bed, I went into the bathroom and threw up. Spencer woke up feeling a little queazy, but went to work anyway- work that day was a history tour of the island. I spent most of the day curled up in a ball on the couch feeling achy and gross, letting my kids watch who knows how many movies. Then I got a text from Stacey saying almost everyone who ate Easter dinner had thrown up at least once. We all had food poisoning! Luckily our kids didn't get it, but Spencer and I felt awful for the rest of the day. He'd spent the last part of the tour laying on a bench in the tour bus, then came home and crashed on the couch. We all felt much better the next day; it made for a memorable Easter dinner :)

Moving Day

We decided to pack our early in hopes of getting our stuff by the time we got to Maryland. When Spencer scheduled the move, both our big shipment and unaccompanied baggage were slated to arrive at our new place on June 9.

The "Aridatos" (or "Arigatos," which is what Shawn calls Japanese people) had their supplies out and were ready to go at 8am on moving day. Despite staying up incredibly late doing prep work, we weren't quite prepared. I was in full on panic mode trying to shove stuff into Kate's room, our designated "do not pack" area.

The sad view of 6234 C Camp Lester.

Kate's room.

Sydney and Shawn's room.

The dining and family rooms.

Those Aridatos were fast! They were driving away with our sealed crates just after 1pm. Thankfully this little cutie had no problems napping while they worked (no easy feat with those guys noisily taping up boxes).

Before packing out, I wasn't emotionally quite ready to leave Okinawa, but seeing and living in a mostly empty house definitely helped me feel more ready to move on! The stuff for our express shipment was packed the next day, and that one didn't go quite as well. They packed up a bunch of stuff that we wanted to keep for our last few weeks there (e.g. spices, other junk we wanted to throw out), so we had to go out and buy a few things. We had to wait a few days before getting temporary furniture, so we slept on mats we borrowed from the Perrins.

I was so excited to get our borrowed couch, chairs, and mattresses. We put the double bed in the kids room for them to share, and it was the loudest mattress ever. It creaked so loudly every time anyone moved an inch. In our bedroom, we pushed two twins together to make a fake king bed. I was on Syd's former mattress, which was perfectly comfortable, but the new one they gave us was terrible. We could feel the springs poking out of it. Spencer slept in it, and I insisted that we trade every few nights, but he was nice and let me sleep on the comfortable one every night- for 5 weeks! Poor guy. Thankfully we had really nice friends who let us borrow stuff. The Donahue's gave us a quilt and a TV, plus an Apple TV so we could still use Netflix. They were life savers!