What we've been up to

I've barely blogged lately. Okinawa just doesn't feel so new and fresh anymore that I'm excited to write about it. Thomas is always good for an adventure though and we have been keeping him busy.



He is loving Halloween this year. He talks about "scady ghosts" all day. He loves spidey's and bats and gets very excited while talking about trick or treating and getting candy. He was pretending to be a ghost in his Dad's hoodie.


This picture is two milestones for my boy. One, he's forward facing....breaks my heart. The other is that this was his last day with his binkie. He barely even whined for it too so we think he was ready to move on from it.


We've gone to the beach a lot lately. I think it's because I know winter will be here before I know it and we want to hang out by the ocean as much as we can when it's warm.


We've been trying to do more "school" type activities with T. Just keeping it fun and casual and focusing on things he wants to learn about. He loves letters, especially W. He also much prefers painting to coloring.

He's been loving his dinosaur book he got for his birthday and really likes the poster that came with it.

These next few pictures are of him telling me all about the different things we could carve into our pumpkin. He carries around the book of them like it's a storybook.


These are all out of order. I don't like blogger for this reason. Anyway, this is more of the school type activities we've been doing. He really liked the prewriting practice and cheered when he got the trick or treaters to the haunted house. I hold his hand for the first few ones and then I let him go on his own.

Josh teaches him things too, like how to use the rubber grip for jars to open the fridge.

And feed himself grapes.

He built this whole track almost by himself. He needed a little help at the end to connect the loop but he was so close to doing it alone.

All of these pictures really hit home that he's not a baby anymore. We're having so much fun with him!

Dinner at Kinpa Ginpa

Josh reminded me that he has duty this weekend so we decided to go out exploring tonight. We've suddenly realized that we've already been here a year and we need to get cracking on our bucket list.

So we headed out to Kinpa Ginpa which is an izakaya, sort of like tapas. I'm probably spelling that wrong. Anyway, you're supposed to stick around for awhile and drink and be merry and order food sporadically and share with friends. We just went for dinner and no drinks. Though one of these days I'm going to have a gin fizz, just because I've never had one and it sounds festive.




Thomas was very happy to jump from stone to stone.


It's tatami seating but they have holes in the floor for your feet. It's the best of both worlds, because I love taking my shoes off but hate sitting indian style.

I loved the little corner we sat in. Thomas could look outside at the flowers and cars and he was pretty contained but there was still room for him to play.



I took this picture because it cracked me up to see Goat sashimi (chewy), like thanks for the warning! We did not order the raw goat, lol. We did get the squid ink yakisoba though!


This pictures isn't so great but there's an explanation on there about Jew's ear that they put in the ramen. It's flavorless but healthy apparently. We liked it.


Squid ink yakisoba. Not bad, not good. There were tentacles hiding under the seaweed and it was kind of greasy.

Teriyaki chicken. Always good.

Garlic and onion pork ramen. We LOVED this one!

When we were ready to leave they got our shoes off the shoe rack and lined them up for us. I thought that was really nice, although a little gross.

Here's a random picture of my Thomas.

And my newest kokeshi doll. I love her.

ETWS

We drive past a huge store called ETWS all the time and today I decided to finally go in. It's AWESOME! The most random grouping of items you never knew you needed!




These are the few things I actually bought. I can't resist bath bombs/fizzies/oil/soaks. I was also pretty excited about peppermint pez, but there wasn't anything in it. That was disappointing. I'll give it to Thomas. He loves having places to hide his little treasures.


I only took a few pictures because it was crowded and I just feel like a douche taking pictures in stores. The Hello Kitty cookware had me really tempted!


Do you see the price on that candle??? That's over $40 with the exchange rate right now. Insult to injury is that we get Yankee candles on base at a discount. They're being screwed.

There were other delightful items that I would have bought if I had any real reason to. For example, a tiny shopping cart complete with child seat (only about the size of your hand), bongs, and other drug accessories, toys, a pair of breasts that talk about breast issues when you walk by, watches, kitchen items, bath items, crafts and stationery things. There was also a costume shop, prank store and an adult corner. I was a fan of the ice cube trays. They had asteroid (the game), vampire fangs, human teeth, spaceships and all manner of animals.


I'm totally going back for Christmas shopping.

Typhoon Muifa

If you look outside my windows right now you probably wouldn't even know there was such a long lasting typhoon the past few days. I took before pictures but they don't look much different now that I took after ones.

Then I went on facebook and found that not everyone was so lucky. I'm feeling very glad that we have a garage and aren't in a flood prone area.








We're in recovery stage right now, we still have to wait for storm watch to leave the house. Although there won't be anywhere to really go until all clear. I can't believe this storm lasted for so long! We learned a few lessons this time around, like tie up your curtains so they don't become sponges when the water comes in your sliding glass doors. When you buy typhoon food think in terms of meals instead of snacks and make sure you have a lot of entertainment on hand.

I'm a happy hooker

I've been glued to a crochet hook for the past few weeks. I learned how over a decade ago, (wow that feels weird to say!) but never really went past the most basic of stitches. I've discovered the fun of following a pattern and playing with colors.

I'm currently making a crazy colorful blanket. I can't decide if I hate it and think it's garish or if it just makes me smile in all it's rainbow goodness.


I've made things just for the fun of it.


And I think we'll be set for winter hats for awhile...

Thomas was not happy to model this one for me, lol. He's so cute, he was yelling for help. I have no idea who he thought would rescue him from his own mom and her crochet habit.

I think this minion will go to my Dad. It was a pain in the ass.

I've made scarves...

and more scarves...

There are even some scarves not pictured here!

Another blanket...

And an adorable owl hat.


It's been an addiction and one that I'm loving. It's even educational as Thomas and I have been talking about colors and counting stitches too!

Josh is back to work tomorrow after a 5 day weekend (courtesy of dental surgery). I'm sure going to miss him. I'll probably also be just a little bit happy to have our normal routine back.

There's a lot of fun coming up. The 10,000 Eisa parade along with a bunch of festivals and then comes September with it's bevy of birthdays. Life is good.

Weekend at White Beach

I wanted to do something fun to celebrate our Japanniversary so we booked a weekend in the cabins at White Beach. We've stayed at Marine Corp and Air Force recreation cabins before but this was our first Navy one. We plan to try the Army ones as well!


The cabins are basically up on a cliff. The view, does not suck. There are a lot of options of where to stay here. You can camp for real, like in a tent. They also have Rv campers and then the cabins, and some hotel type rooms.


We really liked our cabin. The only complaint is there's nowhere to really sit. The kitchen chairs aren't very comfy to sit in for very long and even I was too tall to sit on the bunk beds comfortably. On the plus side, it had a bathroom and a kitchenette. I'm a big fan of not walking through the woods at night to pee.


This little gecko was the only wildlife we found inside the cabin. I appreciate that. Getting here kind of sucked because we got really ridiculous directions. We took a much more direct way to get back. They also sent us on a bit of a goose chase to get our key. All of that annoyance melted away the next morning when I woke up and looked outside.

This is the view from our porch. Not too shabby at all. I spent all of T's nap just hanging in a rocking chair alone with my thoughts. It was perfect. The sun was warm but the porch kept me in the shade and there's a constant ocean breeze. There were butterflies flitting about and the birds were singing. There was this huge fishing boat out smack dab in the middle of the water and I just watched it and sat there with my thoughts. It was so peaceful.

The not so fun part about being up on a cliff is that it's a long way down. There were some serious staircases to contend with.

Luckily Josh found this creature along the way which distracted me from my paranoia of falling down these stairs.


Tombs...you just can't get away from 'em.

The beach was basically deserted in front of the cabins. Most people were on the other side. T took a bag I crocheted for him and filled it up with the biggest rocks he could carry. He's adorable. He grimaces and grunts like he's about to break his back carrying these rocks around.

Josh was busy finding crabs as usual. Thomas tends to keep his distance.

I hunted seaglass and actually found quite a bit. I helped T collect rocks too.

Right at the corner between the RV's and the cabins there are two playgrounds and some pavilions, "porch" swings, and benches. There was also volleyball nets and putt putt. You could rent boats or snorkel gear too.

Thomas was freaked out about this turtle. He kept trying to push it out of the water. He just felt awful that it was stuck. Too cute.


After T's nap it was low tide so we could walk out to the little islands and check out the tidepools. It's crazy how far out the tide goes.

We saw lots of blue fish, and other things like sea slugs and other disgusting creatures.

I just like the blue fish.


Thomas spotted a crab on his own, and he was so excited he clapped for himself.


When we got back from the tidepools, The Little Mermaid was on tv. Talk about perfect timing!

Next time we go we're not going to eat out at all. The restaurants there suck. I mean, they were really awful unless you just want fried crap which is pretty hard to screw up.

These next two pictures are the view from a pagoda at the highest point in the cabin area. It's beautiful up there.



I think this last picture looks fake, but I swear it's real. I took it this morning! We really do wish a lot of you were here with us!