Northern Okinawa, Day 2

We spent our second day in our beloved Okuma. It was really sad to go to this beautiful place for the last time. We had lunch at one of Spencer's favorite restaurants near the resort. It has some special kind of pork mixed with veggies. He's always more adventurous when it comes to food. If I don't know what I'm ordering, I stick with the "safe" items (i.e. curry or taco rice) on Japanese menus.

Spencer with our little Okinawan baby, who will sadly have no memory of her awesome birth place.

 The kids could, who usually never want to be in pictures, suddenly wanted to jump in a photo with Daddy and Kate.

Then a kind Okinawan man offered to take a family picture for us, so I handed over my camera.

What happened next was so typical of Okinawa: he and his wife were admiring our little Kate, and somehow that led to a baby handoff and ended up with his wife taking pictures of him with our baby. If this happened in the US I would have died, but in Japan it just isn't that unusual or creepy.

Back at the resort, we rented a buggy and took the kids for a spin. We had a favorite hill that we liked to go down really fast. The kids always love putting their hands up like they're on a roller coaster.

Although it was too chilly for our baby girl to swim, I wanted to get a picture of her "in" the ocean. I just barely put her little toes in the water. She was fine with it until...

a wave came in. Then she screamed her little head off. Apparently it was a bit to cold for her!

We walked down the beach over to a little hut where our kids like to play. Shawn had somehow gotten ahold of Kate's sunhat and was being a ham.

It was getting windy and I tried to keep my baby girl warm with my cardigan!

Then we headed back to our room, and Spencer and the kids played ball while I took pictures. 

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 :)