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!

My dad's visit

I hate blogger. It uploaded the pictures out of order. I'm sure that's somehow my fault but whatever.

So, my dad came to visit almost two months ago now...sad. It's okay though because I was so grateful that he was able to make it. Someone's really gotta love you to make the journey over here.



We took him to Shuri Castle on one of the days. We had never been there either and it's on my Oki bucket list so it was a two birds, one stone sort of thing. It's not the original castle. It's been rebuilt numerous times but that's okay. It's still pretty cool.



It's a really big piece of land, with lots of hills and stairs to get to the main part of the castle. I regret that we didn't get dressed up and have our picture taken in front of the torii gate but I'm sure it won't be too hard to go back. It was just so humid that day I didn't want to put on any extra clothing.

I don't really have much to say about it to be honest. It's cool to see but nothing really sticks out in my mind.

Here's a randomly placed (thanks blogger!) picture. Grandpa and Thomas bonded over cars. It's a guy thing.

We also went to the Fukushen Gardens again. I love it there. It's so pretty. I was surprised by how much more was open in the summer as opposed to the winter. Much more to see in the warmer months!


This waterfall wasn't working the last time we were here. It's so fun. You can walk in front of it and then behind the water and up to the top. Thomas loved it so much he did it three times in a row. It's so cute to see him get all excited about going on adventures.

This picture is at Shuri Castle. It looks very Jurassic park I think.

Another place we went was to the zoo and wonder museum. I'm pretty sure T would stay in the museum for an entire day without complaint.

This thing was pretty cool. The pipes spit out images of symbols that you fish for and when you catch it the symbol turns into a bug or a car or whatever. I don't really know how it all works.

This sign was at the zoo. Soil....right.

This bird was stalking the giraffes food. The giraffe kept giving him the side eye, it was pretty funny.

Oh hey, we're back in the wonder museum in the huge kaleidoscopes. Thanks for the randomness blogger!


Another day trip now, we're at the aquarium. It never gets old.

This was the first time we caught the dolphin show. It was awesome! In my "home" zoo they don't do all the cool jumps and tricks with the dolphins because it's mean apparently. I was excited to see how high these ones could get! It was also pretty festive to hear the J-pop they play during the show.



I really wish I had blogged about this earlier so that I could have more detailed memories. It goes so fast that when their visits are over it feels like they just got there.

Oh, one more thing, my Dad was totally game to get the fish pedicure. He's braver than my mom. Woohoo!

My birthday weekend.

So I've just spent way too long trying to figure out what beast we ran into on Memorial Day weekend. I still don't know what it was. I really hope it wasn't the giant asian hornet. Do not google that, it's scary.

We were heading up to Okuma for just one night of camping after Typhoon Songda stole the rest of my birthday weekend, when a HUGE bee type creature landed on our windshield. This thing was terrifyingly large. So my immediate reaction was to reach over and turn on the wipers.

That was stupid.

I thought I saw it fly into the back window, but I looked and looked and didn't see anything so we just kept going.

Once we got to the cabin and we unloaded everything and made the bed we hadn't seen it anywhere and just assumed it was my imagination that saw it flying into the car. We spent the whole day outside. Swimming at the beach, taking walks and playing with rocks and sticks and sand. We ended the night with smores and after a particularly spirited tantrum decided it was bedtime for Thomas.

So there we are laying down in the dark. I was using a flashlight to read a magazine when all of a sudden that huge bee comes crawling out from in between the mattress and the wall. It was right in the middle of where my flashlight was shining so I don't know if the light was what attracted it or what. It just kept crawling, like no big deal, I'm just a gimongous bug.

So I shoved my child out of bed and screamed for Josh. Literally. I screamed. This is embarrassing as I've always been a DIY kind of girl when bugs show up. I have no aversion to grabbing a shoe and killing things. It seems that bravery is going out the window as we keep moving farther south and the bugs just keep getting bigger.

Josh took a long time to answer as he was outside laughing at my screech, but he did finally come in and kill it.

Needless to say it took a long time for me to calm down enough to sleep. I kept hearing noises that I was sure was another huge bee even though we looked in, around and under the bed for more and found none. We're pretty sure it was the same bug and it had somehow flown into the pile of bedding in the backseat and was just hiding.

Of course at one point I heard a really loud noise and decided to move the curtain only to find a lizard crunching on some very crunchy beetle it had found. At that point I figured the lizard would just eat everything in the room and eventually crashed out.


I think I'll stick to winter camping from now on. There weren't any bugs in January.

Back to blogging

Screw this whole new blog thing. I wish I could get the posts I deleted back but I can't. Live and learn.

I got an anonymous comment today from someone who is coming to Okinawa. I'll admit that pretty much made my night. I know that I devoured blogs from people in Oki before we came here. It gave me some sense of control to learn what I could ahead of time. I wish I could remember what questions I had before we got here so I could talk about those answers but most of that time is lost in my fuzzy brain. I was too stressed at the time to remember any specifics.

My initial reaction to our orders here was to cry. I basically threw a toddler level tantrum and if I recall correctly I changed my Facebook status to "Fuck Japan". Yeah, I'm classy. Funny how things change, I'm so grateful I was given this chance.

We've got Americafest coming up for the fourth. I'm SO excited. We're going to let T stay up late enough for the fireworks this year. I think he'll love it. After that we're going to go stay in a cabin on White Beach to celebrate our first Japanniversary.

I'll have to go through our pictures and try to catch up on here when I have some more time. At the moment I've got the prettiest green yarn calling my name...

Old post

I rolled out of bed this morning rather bleary eyed. I had forgotten to use my eye drops the night before. The combination of the rain and our love of blackout curtains made for a very dark house. I managed to stumble through the mega blocks minefield Thomas had refused to clean up the night before (and I'm sure as hell not going to do it) to get to the bathroom.

That's when I heard a creepy childlike voice say "I'm hiiiiding! Heeheehee"

Rational is my middle name so I was immediately creeped out. Obviously it was a serial killer using a child's toy to lure me into my gruesome impending death. I could tell it was coming from the guest room so I grabbed Thomas' Cubs bat and peeked into the room.

"I'm hiiiiiiding! Heeheehee"

I flung the closet doors open like I was a CIA agent sweeping a house. I looked under the bed (from the opposite side of the room of course.)

"I'm hiiiiiding! Heeheehee"

Then I went to the curtains and flung them to the side where I saw it. A little duck peeping out of a toy egg Thomas got for Easter. He had been left on the balcony and the rain must have really messed with his wiring.

Yep. I got owned by a plastic Easter toy.

I'm starting over

I've decided I don't feel comfortable with this blog being open to just anyone so I'm going to start over with an invite only blog. Please send me your email address if you'd like to be invited to the new blog. You can leave it as a comment or email it to me at angelisagemini@hotmail.com