Go figure, I move to a foreign country and life is essentially the same.

I don't know why I thought our lives would be so interesting once we moved but I was wrong. Domesticity is the same no matter what continent you set up shop in. That being said...here's my ramblings for this week in my life.

I'm dealing with the ever present mommy guilt lately. I can't decide if T's shyness is my fault for not socializing him properly, or if it's some big karmic joke to get back at me for my shy childhood. Or maybe I got the shy kid because fate knew I could empathize???

So anyway, I looked into preschools for about 2 days and realized that I'm not okay with it, at least not yet, which is good since he can't go until the fall....that whole September birthday thing. We also ran all over Kadena to find info on a toddler gymnastics class that only has classes during naptime so that's out. Then we headed to a trial class at Alligator Steps which is a generic Gymboree. It could have been really fun. The whole having a toddler scale me like he's got a tiger chasing him and my arms have the magical anti-tiger force field kinda sucked. I never thought I would have to clarify that I'm not a jungle gym.

Thankfully the lapsit program at the library went a little better. He looked the leader in the eye (!) and took a tambourine and returned it...all on his own. This should not be monumental but it is. So I think we'll stick with lapsit and ease him into the whole group activity thing, move on to Alligator steps and see how he does. I just don't want to dump him in preschool and say "Good luck.....with that." I think it makes sense, especially since preschool is really just a test to see if he would be happier in traditional school or homeschooling.

I also joined the book club at the library. I like books.

Other than that we haven't done much that's exciting. Well actually Josh and I filled out these "emotional needs questionnares" which was really awesome. It's like a report card on your spouse ability. It's hard for me to get Josh to tell me what he needs more or less of from me but I guess being able to write it and rate it on scale works for him.


Sorry for no pictures. I'll remedy that later.

Castle Ruins, and my toes.

We had planned on a New Years visit to a shrine this year but that didn't happen due to the unexpected camping trip. We figured a trip to some castle ruins would be equally cultural.

We picked Nakagusuku because it's supposed to be one of castles that has held up the best and it's close to home too.

I guess the story is that Gosamaru (I might be spelling that wrong), well he was big fan of King Sho, so he built this fortress for his main man.

It didn't last because Gosamaru wasn't so bright and he let an enemy into the castle because they were carrying a King Sho banner. So he killed himself.

I swear, every single place we go, I go home and read about it and it's always about someone killing themselves. WW2 took some good chunks out of the place as well, but it's still pretty awesome.

This picture was to demonstrate that toddlers weren't meant to walk on castle walls. Talk about narrow! That was terrifying.

He was very excited to be up so high. He pointed to everything as per usual. I wish it had been sunny, you could see the Pacific on one side and the East China Sea on the other. So cool.

They were doing some digging and reconstruction while we were there. I love their constructions signs, he's bowing to say he's sorry for the noise, or at least that's what we think.



I love Japanese construction equipment. I just assumed it was always yellow, but it isn't. Here it can be purple or blue or green, whatever you want.


There were a lot of sacred places, little altars to deities, basically things I don't understand and don't want to piss off.

That building behind my men is an abandoned hotel project. The man that was building it had been warned that it was sacred ground but he didn't care and when some workers died mysterious deaths !he couldn't get anyone else to work on it. The castle had signs up, saying they weren't responsible for anything that happened to you if you got off their property!

I think T's favorite part was this bug we saw on the way out. We thought it was an earthworm. It doesn't like fun dip no matter how happy T was to share it. Josh touched it and it flipped all over like a snake or something, and it kept lifting it's head up...so I don't think it was a worm.

That really weirds me out. I hate that I don't know what the bugs are here. How can I keep my kid safe from them other than to just avoid all of them, with a toddler boy.....yea right.

Warning...toe picture ahead





I finally made it to Cocok's nail salon. I enjoyed my ocean view, my free ice tea, an awesome massage and some fun toe art. It makes me want to stop clipping them so short. I can't wait to take my mom there next month. She'll love it. They offer wine and popcorn too, it's like it was made for her.

Happy New Year at Okuma

My original NYE plan was cheap champagne and a mini Glee marathon but Josh's co-worker Martin called and asked if we wanted to go to Okuma and that's where we very happily ended up. Okuma is a recreation spot set up by the Air Force on the island and I couldn't wait to test it out. We loved the beach cabins at Lejeune so we had high hopes. We weren't let down.



The cabins are $30-ish a night and pretty bare bones, just beds, a mini fridge and a microwave. I'm pretty sure we all ended up peeing behind the cabin at some point. It's creepy to have to walk to the bathroom late at night! But hey, it's not camping if you aren't roughing it a little bit right? We had heat and bug free space to sleep, that's good enough. We weren't so lucky with the weather. There was a huge cold front, crazy gusting winds and the random rain that we always have. I felt pretty bad for the families that were actually camping that night, you know, like in tents? The tent area is right on the beach too so they didn't even have many trees to cut the wind.

Luckily Josh is pretty good at keeping a fire going. My counting down to midnight margaritas helped as well.

I felt like a bad mom though. Thomas should have been wearing a coat, but we had to improvise with layers, my scarf, and Molly's extra gloves. My baby is man enough to rock pink gloves.

Speaking of Molly, she is the Martin's daughter and completely adorable. I'm pretty sure she thinks she's T's mom.

She helped him keep his hood up. "Put your hood up boy, I help you."

She also held his hand and led him all over the place. He got a little sick of it by the end of the trip, and in true mama's boy fashion just shook his hand out and ran to me so I could pick him up. I love him.

They had a party going on, where we got horns and cranium accessories. There was food and drinks, hula dancers and flame dancers. Thomas was thrilled about popcorn and bouncy houses.

There was also a bar/club for the rowdier guests. I thought they did a really good job of catering to every different kind of celebrator. The kids made it to 11 before it got ridiculous. I was pretty proud. So we hightailed it back to the cabins, put the kiddies to bed and hung out by the fire waiting for the fireworks.

It was a pretty sad display to be honest, but I just didn't care. I was happy.

Plus the finale was full of the gold sparkly ones that I love.

The next day we ventured into the other things around Okuma. There is a ton to do in the summer, but we certainly weren't bored for staying out of the water. Thomas loved the playground, especially the tetherball.

I loved walking on the beach waiting for the sun to peek through the clouds.


We also went on a little hike to the lookout point.


Thomas decided to become a mama monster at this point, because you know, the hills weren't steep enough I needed to carry around 30 pounds of leaning toddler.

The view was worth it.

We didn't last long, the winds were crazy up there and the kids weren't so steady on their feet so back down we went.

We checked out the maze, hunted stray golf balls, and took walks. We checked out both the North and South beaches, someday I'm going to watch the sunrise at one and set at the other. We also played putt putt. Thomas was in heaven. He couldn't believe we were all going to play with balls and sticks, lol. We cooked out and made smores and really just had a great time being together and unplugged.

The sun didn't really come out until our last morning there. That's alright, at least I didn't need my sunglasses all weekend, which was great, since I forgot them.

This is just random on the way home. They were taking orders outside like they do at Portillos. They dress a lot nicer to work at McD's here huh?