Is it really almost February?

We've had a lot of fun this week.
Do you think this gum will make me glamorous?

Here are some more of our preschool activities we've been doing. He really liked the lacing card!


He was pretty excited about the hammer too, but it faded a lot faster than I thought it would.

Water beads on the other hand are standing the test of time. He's asked for them multiple times over the past few days.

This weekend all of the cherry blossom festivals were going on but they're like an hour away and the crowds are bananas and we wanted to avoid that so we went to Kakazu Ridge instead. It's a battlesite and that's very depressing and makes me feel like a douche. It was beautiful though.


The sakura aren't in full bloom just yet. We want to go back next week to see a sea of pink!

The views were incredible. It was perfect weather and we could see almost to our house!



Here is one of the monuments at Kakazu.


If you click on these they should be big enough to read about the battle.



There were also two playgrounds there, complete with cement slides.

I went to take a picture of some hibiscus for my dad and found this spider. He's pretty cool isn't he?

Gotta stop for juice!





Right down the road there were two more parks so we went there too. 4 playgrounds by noon....Thomas was exhausted.

We weren't done though. It was just so nice out we couldn't go home so we went to the sunflower festival.

It was muddy and chock full of bees and random statues, but it was pretty and free!


I've still been crocheting almost everyday. It makes me happy. Here's my latest creation.

It's been awhile

I haven't posted here in forever. I miss blogging though so maybe I'll actually get back into it. Here's a little what we did today post.

We've spent more than six months going through the process of getting T evaluated for speech therapy and it's still dragging on so I figured I may as well just jump in and start preschool at home. We are still very seriously considering homeschooling so it's a fun way to sort of test it out. We're keeping it casual and fun, because he is only 3 after all!






This week we're learning about caterpillars and working on the number 3. He loves this little magnet game above.



We also made a Very Hungry Caterpillar. I didn't take a picture of the finished product but it's pretty cute!

This is his C is for Caterpillar coloring page. He doesn't really color anything though, he just makes lots of circles. Whatever floats his boat!

This is our little school area. We move the little marker from day to day on the calendar and we check out the weather as well. He loves the weather cards and always tells us when it's raining or windy or whatever. That shelf is where we keep our books of the week. He was very excited to see bug books on that shelf this week.


It's been really fun to see what sort of things he likes to do and what books he likes. He much prefers books with real pictures as opposed to cartoons and he has a deep love of anything that involves dry erase markers. He gets out the eraser and says "I clean?" It's adorable. I'm a little biased.

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.