Skipping Ahead

We did visit the Japanese Naval Underground Headquarters this weekend, and I’ll probably come back to that but it feels too somber for tonight, so I’m skipping over that for now and giving you some of our beach pictures from today instead.

First, this one for Holly and Drew: it’s the Toyota Noah!

We got out to White Beach this afternoon, a new beach for us.  We arrived at low tide and you could wade (ankle deep for Jake and I) out to these mini-islands to explore!

We found funky sea anemones,

spiny sea urchins,

spectacular seashells (this one was at least six inches long but, unfortunately for me, it was occupied),

lots of crabs,

tide pools full of . . .

electric blue fish,

  and a couple of pretty cool caves.  We also met a Filipina lady who was collecting seaweed for her dinner and got a quick lesson in how to choose the tastiest bunches!

Check out the fabulous new swimsuit I found—I was pretty excited about it!

They even had a small park for Logan to play at!  (The beach is on a Navy base on the Pacific side of the island, and has a camping area and cabins to rent as well.)

He played so hard, he completely konked out on the ride home.

And that was our day in a nutshell, or, more appropriately, in a seashell!  Hope yours was equally good.

Going More Places

A portion of the playground at Comprehensive Park.  I meant to find out when the water slides would be open, but we got too busy playing and I forgot to check.

Logan is capable and confident; these playground elements are a good eight feet off the ground and not exactly designed for toddlers!

(As I look back at that I realize it makes me look like a bad mom—he’s not even technically two yet and look what I’m letting him do!—but obviously I was right behind him the whole time and, just as obviously, he really was doing a great job with it all.)

Something a bit more tame . . .  We also had a grand time watching the fish, turtles, and ducks swimming in the pond.  In Logan-speak, ducks (actually, all birds) say “ka-wa, ka-wa” and water is “la-oo”.

Jake’s homemade hammock hangs nicely between the concrete clothesline posts in the backyard.  It’s one of my favorite new spots.

Another day (Friday, maybe?), we took the new neighbors to Kurashiki Dam with us.  The boys are Connor, 4, and Vincent, 2.  They get along fabulously with Logan, and their mom, Crystal, and I have hit it off as well.

The boys react to a plane flying over.  Logan is saying “zoom”!

Logan, my intrepid explorer, shows them the way to the waterfall.  (That’s Crystal in the back with the hat.)

I’m going to stop there--we did some historical sight-seeing on Saturday, so that’ll be coming up next.  Until then, have a good one!

Going Places

Another rainy day, another trip to the Wonder Museum. 

The little boards are for pushing the pegs back in from the front side.  Apparently that’s a lot more fun than doing it the way you are supposed to.

Hey Mom, look what I made!

Roar!                                       (How do you spell an elephant noise?)

Yumm, giraffe puppet!

It’s the swirly-ball-thing.  Another of Logan’s favorites.

“Eggs” is one of Logan’s new words.  I was pretty excited that he made the connection between what’s in the carton in our fridge and these giant ones.

This caught my eye for the first time.  I’m actually quite pleased that the room is there, even if they could really use a new sign.

Peek-a-boo belly.                        This is 24 weeks.

See, Logan and I are both eligible to take the elevator now!

That’s all for now, but we’ve been busy so more will be coming soon!  Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend.

Dunked

Jake has already posted his reflections on getting baptized and particularly, why it took him this long to do it.  His experience is best left in his own words, so in case you don’t already know, his blog is at http://jhwilde.xanga.com/  I’m just giving you the picture version.  (By the way, this is the Sunday at the beach that I mentioned in the last post.)

On the left is Pastor Rick, center Jake (obviously), and on the right is Glenn--the church administrator/coordinator/general go-to guy.  The baptisms took place at Araha Beach; that’s the one with the pirate ship park, if you remember.

   Hold your nose, here it comes!

  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit . . . (splash)

  Now it’s official . . . he’s wet :)

Logan was great until he saw Jake go under, then he flipped out!

Congrats to Jake.  I’m proud of you; love you hun!

Rain and Shine

Hey all!  My final paper for class was due on Wednesday which is why I didn’t get some of these pictures up earlier.  Last weekend it RAINED!!!  Seriously I have never seen rain that hard last that long—it was both impressive and a little annoying!  But it finally dried up early in the week and gave us a couple of nice, sunny days this weekend.  Now that the rain has stopped, it definitely feels like summer here; it is hot and humid!  Hence, you can count on seeing a lot of beach pictures for a while.  I plan on keeping my pregnant belly submerged in the ocean as much as possible this summer :)

Back to last weekend though . . .

We couldn’t keep Logan cooped up all weekend, so Jake put him in swim trunks and a rain jacket and sent him outside to play in the flooded driveway.  Logan loved it!

The drainage ditch on the edge of the neighborhood, which normally has a creek perhaps six inches to a foot deep, was at least six feet high and overflowed its banks.

Of course, with all that rain we spent a lot of time inside, playing in Mom’s boots,

playing in boxes,

and reading books.

When the weather finally did clear up, we were able to get out to a park with our good friends Carol and Daniel.  This is the best shot I was able to get of the boys together.

Saturday at Tropical Beach.  Okay, so I don’t exactly look pregnant, but I certainly don’t look like my normal self.  The contrast between the tan shoulders and legs and the pale belly is pretty fabulous though, don’t you think?

Logan spent some time just relaxing in the sand.

We were back at the beach on Sunday, but that turned out to be something special and merits its own entry—coming very soon!  Until then, g’night all!

Fun new stuff

We are up to two cars again.  We decided we would need another one when the new baby came—too hard to coordinate transportation around multiple nap schedules—and, although we could have waited several more months, a SSgt in Jake’s office was PCS’ing and had this one for sale at the right price.  Voila, new car for us!

  
New clothes and footie pajamas from Aunt Sarah (G)—thanks!

New bakery find—yumm!  We got all this for only 1050 yen (about 11 dollars)!  There are certain things I am REALLY going to miss about Oki when it’s time to leave, and good bakeries and pastry shops are right at the top of that list.

New cooking skills.  Logan is helping Jake make lasagna.  :)

On a side note, the lasagna was for a church function.  Every six months or so, the church organizes get-togethers at people’s houses.  They try to match you up with other families that they think you may not know or not know well.  With two services and so many people in and out through the military, it’s a fantastic way to build community in the church and it’s just a lot of fun.  So anyways, we hosted one of the gatherings this time and one of the other ladies at our house was visibly pregnant; so of course we got talking about that and I made a comment about how practically everyone I know is pregnant right now.  Then, looking towards the other couple that was over, I kind of motioned and paused, not wanting to make an insensitive joke, when they spoke up and, lo and behold, she is pregnant too!  It’s getting to be utterly absurd; I swear EVERYONE is pregnant right now! 

  Speaking of pregnancy, we had our ultrasound today.  This one is just as wiggly as Logan was; the ultrasound tech tried to get a nice profile shot but had no luck.  Here the baby’s head is on the left, looking straight into the camera, appearing rather alien.  The various small balls/circles below are mostly just umbilical coils, but there’s a hand and a knee in there if you can make them out.

  Here are baby’s hands and forearms (on the left again), along with one foot visible on the bottom right (next to an odd bubble that I assume is more umbilical cord). 

In the category of tiring, old news: it’s STILL raining.  Apparently the last two months of rain were unusual and we are only just now entering the real rainy season!  I’m not sure how much more of this we can take.  Hopefully Hawaii, DC, NY and NC are saving up some sunshine for us!