A Merry Little Christmas

Last Christmas might technically have been Logan’s first Christmas, but I think the Christmas Eve assembling qualifies this year as our first REALLY official Christmas as parents!

Good morning world and thanks everybody for my presents!

Cool trucks!  This is EXACTLY what I wanted!

Here, Daddy, let me help you with that . . . 

Pure joy when Daddy rolls out the tricycle!

Got wheels; I’m going places now!

Thanks everyone for your gifts and for remembering us this Christmas.  Even though we missed all of you, we had a very joyful holiday.  Hope you did too!

Christmas lights

Location and Logan both modified our Christmas traditions this year, but it hardly feels like Christmas to me without going to look at Christmas lights and thankfully there were several opportunities to do so on the island.  We went on the 23rd to the show at the Botanical Gardens, which was pretty impressive and lots of fun! 

(The photo of Christmas lights in the previous post, by the way, was taken right here in the neighborhood—that’s my “Eiffel Tower” in the background!) 

While we waited for the all-natural light show to be completed, we browsed the craft fair vendors and found ourselves some dinner.

Enter the tropical Christmas wonderland . . .

and enjoy some fairy magic.

There was a playground area all lit up, so Logan was able to run around and that made all of us happy.  And there were more than enough lights to put me in the proper Christmas mood.  If you are reading this and it’s still Christmas, merry Christmas!  If not, then happy new year!

Merry Christmas!

Rainy Day Fun

Earlier this week Logan and I went back to the Wonder Museum (when we went last time I’d forgotten my camera) for a rainy afternoon escape.  The museum is connected to the zoo, which we now have annual passes for, so it’s great, cheap fun!

The entrance and top floor have a number of optical illusion exhibits/activities.  I’m not sure which of us was more mesmerized by these spinning patterns and “changing” colors!

  This room, part of the second floor, was Logan’s favorite.  It was all about motion and physics—lots of balls and tracks!

Of course, Logan had just as much fun going to retrieve the balls himself as he did sliding them down the tracks.  Oh well, I suppose that counts as learning too!

This, in my mind, is one of the coolest things—you speak (Japanese) into the microphone and water comes out of the other end and the Japanese characters for what you just said appear in the pool.

Then you can take this little bucket, “pick up” one of the characters and it changes into a picture in the bucket!  The picture corresponds to the letter, like a-apple, b-bear.  Logan did a pretty good job of fishing for the letters.

The bottom floor has all the nifty technology exhibits, including that water speaker and this umm . . . motion tracking screen.  Apparently I really can kick my leg up fairly high over my head! 

I just realized that all the pictures of Logan are of the back of his head!  He’s obviously 1. getting pretty independent and 2. very absorbed by all the fun things at this museum.  I’ll do a better Logan-update soon.

On a side note, God has been speaking some pretty incredible things to me recently and I would greatly appreciate your prayers for discernment and courage to follow.

Christmastime is here . . .

It’s beginning to LOOK a lot like Christmas,
even if it doesn’t feel like it!

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree!

We found this little friend lending some extra sparkle to the star atop our tree.

Thanks Mom!  The nativity sets you gave us last year have all found wonderful new homes.

This cherubic mouse has always been one of my favorite Christmas decorations, and I have no idea why I like it so much.

There are some phenomenal neighborhood decorations, including what I call our “Eiffel Tower” of Christmas lights, but they don’t photograph well.  Hopefully I’ll catch the light just right one of these evenings so I can show you.

I’ll talk to most of you between then and now, but in case I don’t . . . MERRY CHRISTMAS!  Praise the Lord; Immanuel has come!

December in Okinawa

Chillin’ at the unit Christmas party.

Loving the balloons.

Thrilled by the fire truck.

Not so excited about Santa this year.

Seriously folks, this is what December looks like around here!

Feeling Woozy

This was a bit like the extreme sports version of a playground.

There were these spinny-things that were angled in such a way that your own body weight kept it spinning almost indefinitely.

The swings, which are actually something of a novelty around here.

This IS the toddler slide.

For big kids, you have this—a drop slide.  You don’t sit and push yourself down like a normal slide; you hang from a bar at the top of the slide and drop down onto it.  And this picture was taken at quite a distance; this thing is huge!  (No, I didn’t take Logan on it.)

But we did go down this roller slide several times.  It’s the best one we’ve found yet!

We had a blast! 

Miss you all; hope you are doing well.

Before & After

Ta-da!

In Progress

Hey there,

      I’ve got a couple things I’d like to share with you—the house decorated for Christmas and my new haircut—but both of these things are still works in progress.  (Yes, the haircut is still being worked on.  I didn’t like the way the salon cut it so I’ve been trimming it up myself.  I trim a little bit, wait a day, trim some more.  This way I make sure I don’t go overboard and so far, I’m quite pleased with my own results.)  In the meantime, I offer you these:

   Thanks for the puzzles Michelle! 

Back with more when the house and hair are complete!

Odds and Ends

This first set of pictures were actually taken last Sunday, a week ago—but I had already posted several times last week and had other things that needed to be done.  My apologies for the delay!  (Of course, if I hadn’t told you, you never would have known . . . ) 

This one pretty much explains itself, so I’m going to forego most of the commentary.  The place is called Cape Zanpa.

It’s only a short drive from the base, but it’s the first time we’d gotten out there.  Stopped at a farmer’s market on the way up and ate lunch at the cafe/bakery on the second floor of the market.  It was a nice little trip!

 

Logan with a neighbor-friend, Eric. 

Riding his car . . . backwards . . . under the table.

Based on the previous picture, I don’t think you’re quite ready buddy!

 

A more recent adventure found us at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum.  It was small but extremely well done; it also houses an art museum which we didn’t get to see this time around because Logan needed to run and explore.

“Boo”

And off he goes!

That’s all for now, folks!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Parks & Rides

Jake had Tues-Wed-Thurs off this week because of Veterans Day, but the ball was our big event for the week so we kept everything else pretty low-key and relaxing.  It was great family time and a chance to slow down from the normal pace of life and re-connect.

On our way down to Kokusai St last weekend, we passed a park on the side of the road that looked pretty cool.  When we tried to get back to it this week, we had a bit of trouble finding it, because—get this!—they gave different sections of two PARALLEL roads the SAME road number.  Eventually we did find our way though and even discovered an additional park in the process!

Park #1 (which, incidentally, was not the park we were looking for, but was the first one we found) had a pretty cool cement slide.

And an observation tower with a great view.

Park #2 (the one we were looking for) was bigger and had just about every playground amenity you can think of.  Actually, it’s one of the few Japanese parks I’ve seen with swings; they are not as popular here as slides are.

I try to teach Logan that life is an adventure and we should always make the best of things, and this whole bit with getting lost and finding a new park was a great example of that!  You never know what fun might be waiting for you around the corner!

Thursday we wanted to do something different, something we hadn’t done before; so we decided it was finally time to take a spin on the ferris wheel.

The views were (predictably) impressive.

And we discovered that Logan really doesn’t seem to be bothered by heights.  This was the only shot we managed to take of the three of us; Logan wouldn’t hold still long enough for a better one.

Inside, we let Logan run around the kiddie arcade for a bit.  He doesn’t know yet that the cars are supposed to do anything other than sit there, so it’s cheap entertainment.

A quick stop at the beach capped off the day’s activities.  Yes, the beach; yes, it's November; yes, we were all in shorts and t-shirts.  No, I don’t think we’ll see a white Christmas while we are here. 

As always, thanks for reading!  Miss you all and hope life is going well for you.  (Pssst . . . Don’t forget to wish Jake a happy birthday in a couple of days!)