Our trip to the States

Well we are back home from our trip to California. Victor went out to San Diego for MCIWS, which is marine combat instructor of water survival. The kids and I decided to spaceA over there with him. We took a 17hr flight to Ontario California and stayed at my Dad and sisters house. My mom also flew out to their house to visit with us. It was a great trip. The kids loved seeing their grandparents and aunt Jessie. It rained almost the entire time we were there, including our day at Disneyland. The upside of pouring rain at Disneyland is that we walked right onto most of the rides. Our longest wait was only 15mins. We got to see Victor on the weekends when he would drive up to my Dad's house. The training was really hard but he made it to graduation. We were able to catch a flight to Hawaii from San Diego and then stayed the night in Hawaii and caught a flight back to Okinawa the next morning. It's really nice being back at home and not living out of suitcases. And thank goodness for the kids being back to their normal bedtime.

Kindergarden

I know it's a little late to be posting this, but I thought it should be in here. Zackarie started kindergarden this year! I LOVE it, hehe. He is really enjoying it, he actually is going back tommorrow from his holiday break and is excited to be going back. He has a japanese language/culture class once a week which I think is really cool. The school is pretty close to our house, so we all really enjoy walking to and from school with him. It's been great to get me awake and going in the morning. I am not a morning person at all. I absolutely love the "idea" of waking up early and studying my scriptures and enjoy the quiet of a new day. BUT the reality doesn't seem to live up to that for me.

Brand new year

Well, it's a new year and a new decade, so it's time for new resolutions and new habits. I am going to try and implement into my routine, the habit of posting a blog every week. I'm going to have it become a sunday activity for me. Hopefully this resolution sticks.

To start off I went through the whole process of Holiday pictures of the family, like I do every year. It's not the funnest of events to take family pictures with small children. I'm not sure if it gets any easier as they grow up, but I sure am hoping it does. So I researched different websites for one to print off holiday photo cards and finally dicided on winkflash (not a good choice) The coloring was a disappointment. Anyways, unfortunately the holidays became very busy for me this year and half the cards are still sitting here on my desk. Boo. So I thought I would post the card so all of the people whos cards are still sitting on my desk, could see them.

Childrens Day in Okinawa

My first blog in forever and I'm sure that you have all given up on even looking to see if I've posted anything. Well we are getting settled in here in Okinawa and the first really cool pictures I've taken were of Childrens day, which is May 5. It is part of Golden week which consists of many different festivals. On Childrens day many people fly carp wind socks on a pole in front of there home. The rainbow streamers, called fukinagashi, on the top represents tumultuous waters, the black carp, called a magoi, represents the father, the red carp called the higoi, represents the mother. Then any smaller carps below them represent the children. I wasnt able to get the kids carps yet, but we flew the rest at our house in honor of the holiday. The carp flages are proudly raised in hopes that boys and girls would emulate the carp's virtuous qualities of perseverance and strength.

I know I haven't been posting much on here, but the move to Japan has taken up all my spare time. I will update everything when we get settled over there, thanks for your patience.