Lucy

It would appear we have another spunky one on our hands. Our sweet Lucy was in the car one day around nap time. After pulling into the driveway I glanced back to see if she had fallen asleep. Her eyes were still open. So I got out and opened her door to get her out. As I opened the door her eyes were closed. I couldn't believe she would fall asleep in 2 seconds. So I start kissing all over her face to see what she will do. She gets a tiny little smirk, but keeps her eyes closed like she is asleep. I stepped back and all the sudden she pops her eyes open and throws her arms out like she was saying, "Gotchya!" It was hilarious! I couldn't believe at just over a year she is already playing tricks. We sure love this girl and are so glad she is in our family.

Better Late Than Never

Okay, here is the last 6 months at a glance...

The beach in October. We all loved it (except apparently for Lucy)

Toy Story for Halloween

Charity's soccer ceremony

Princess Party for the girls

Hawaii with my parents, Adam and Dave & April

Matching Christmas dresses

Ice Cream with Aidia

Jeep fun for all the kids

Lucy's first birthday cake

Happy 3rd birthday my sweet Celeste!

Nom, nom, nom

Masquerade ball

New Years Eve Clue party

Cooking with Mommy

Mustache Boy

Hiking at Okuma

Family camping trip at Okuma

Dutch Oven German Pancakes. Yum!

The past 6 months here in Okinawa have been great. Lots to keep us busy and having fun. And hopefully I will be able to keep up with the blog more to share our adventures with you!

Life as Usual

Nothing too new to report. We're still just getting in the swing of things, taking the kids to school and soccer, Hyrum going to meetings, me trying to keep the house clean, kids fed and happy and life stable at home. I became very well acquainted with our weedwacker while we spent three hours together yesterday. (We have a HUGE yard! And the riding lawn mower can't get too close to the house or trees or swingsets among other fixtures, so the weedwacker gets lots of use getting those and doing the edging around the sidewalks.)

Hyrum and I have been doing a lot of talking and reading about being the healthiest we can with what we eat. I admit, I have been reading vegan and raw websites, holistic websites, and just general good eating websites. I don't feel like I will ever be 100% of any of these, but I like reading all different points of views, then meshing together the things that sound right and feel right for my body. So as part of all of this, Hyrum and I have been enjoying green smoothies most mornings for breakfast. Get all your fruits and veggies for the day in one shot! So I shared some of mine with Lucy the other day and she got the cutest smoothie mustache. I asked Hyrum to hold her so I could get a picture of it, and this is the result:

I thought it was hilarious! She definitely has her daddy's ears. :) I know, cheesy. But it just fit.

Hyrum had a friend from his residency who was here doing some training for a week, so we got to see him which was fun. We took him to American Village where they have a lot of shops, restaurants, a beach and lots of fun thigns for the kids. While there we proceeded to try and stuff our whole family into a tiny two person, Japanese size photo booth for some photo ops. It was tight, but we had fun and the pictures are always fun to have. I love how they traced our eyes with black in the first photo. A Japanese version of a glamour shot I guess. :)

So that is all that is happening with us. Still enjoying gorgeous warm weather and watching our babies grow.

Finally Settling Down...Maybe

It feels like things are finally settling down and getting into a routine. With Samuel and Charity in school and Hyrum at work, it is just me, Celeste and Lucy at home which has taken some adjusting. I must admit, the first week I was a lazy bum and vegged out at home all day. I gave myself that week and refused to feel guilty about it. :) After all, it was the first time I've really been able to do that since we started the moving process. So it has been months with hardly any down time! (And I really need my down time.)

With the light right there, thoughts of down time and schedules and having Hyrum's work hours only being generally about 7:15 until 5:00, things were looking good. And then of course, as life does, it threw us a curve ball. Hyrum was called to be the second counselor in the branch presidency. You know, I honestly thought, "Second counselor. No big deal! It won't really complicate anything or make life much different." And then that first Sunday came. He was called up to sit on the stand much to the chagrin of my beautiful children who were in tears. Keeping 4 children happy, quite and reverent for an hour and 15 minutes each week was hard enough with two adults doing the herding. But I had done it with three by myself a lot when Hyrum had to go on different educational assignments in residency, or when he was on call. And that wasn't too bad. But having daddy up there on the stand where they can see him and not be with him? Another story all together. And now there are 4 instead of three. It definitely wore me out. Luckily we are blessed to live by the new branch president and his family, and they have a teenage daughter who was kind enough to come sit with me and try to help. But I must admit, by the end of that meeting I felt spent. I was a little emotional, tired, and not very happy. This bad mood unfortunately continued with me, which is why I think Heavenly Father led me to read Mosiah 24:15 which says,

"And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord."

I was not being cheerful, so that has been my goal this week. No matter how crabby I am feeling, I must try my best to fight it off with cheerfulness. Easier said then done, but I am certainly trying and I feel Heavenly Father is already helping me. Hyrum will be gone at meetings a lot more now, and he will have confidences he can't share with me, rightly so, but I will be cheerful and supportive.

Hyrum in front of his new digs. (AKA work)

As far as the kids go, Charity and Samuel continue to love school and Celeste hates to see them go every morning. Charity and Samuel are both also loving doing soccer and Celeste can't wait until she'd big enough to play too. Lucy sat up by herself from a crawling position for the first time Tuesday which was very fun. And sad. I can't believe she is getting so big so fast! Ahhh! Make it stop! I love the baby stage and hate to see it go.

Sweet baby doll getting into the sitting position all by herself.

I have no idea what happened here, but found the picture on the camera and thought it was pretty funny. This is apparently what happens when it's just Hyrum and the kids.

Random Okinawa fact: Every car I have been in has a beeping sound on the inside when you are backing up. It seems a little funny to me, I mean, I know I am backing up. But every car I have been in here does that.

Japanese word of the week: Arigato. I don't know if that's how you spell it, but that's how it sounds, and it means thank you. A good word to know! (You kind of roll the r)

To end, I wanted to share an article I read from a friends facebook the other day. I thought it was really inspirational, and even though I had to edit some of the language, it was really profound to me. Enjoy!

Waking Up Full of Awesome

August 3rd, 2011 | Author: melissa

There was a time when you were five years old,

and you woke up full of awesome.

You knew you were awesome.

You loved yourself.

You thought you were beautiful,

even with missing teeth and messy hair and mismatched socks inside your grubby sneakers.

You loved your body, and the things it could do.

You thought you were strong.

You knew you were smart.

Do you still have it?

The awesome.

Did someone take it from you?

Did you let them?

Did you hand it over, because someone told you weren’t beautiful enough, thin enough, smart enough, good enough?

Why the heck would you listen to them?

Did you consider they might be full of poo?

Wouldn’t that be nuts, to tell my little girl below that in another five or ten years she might hate herself because she doesn’t look like a starving and Photoshopped fashion model?

Or even more bizarre, that she should be sexy over smart, beautiful over bold?

Are you freaking kidding me?

Look at her. She is full of awesome.

You were, once. Maybe you still are. Maybe you are in the process of getting it back.

All I know is that if you aren’t waking up feeling like this about yourself, you are really missing out.

Amelia says Good Morning.

Tokashiki Island, School and Onigiri

The fun just continues! Hyrum had a four day weekend last weekend for Labor day, so we went with three other families to Tokashiki Island which is one of the Kerama islands. It was a blast! Although it did start off a bit rocky. We had to drive about an hour to get to the ferry which would take us. Hyrum went to fill up the car before we took off, and after filling up the car wouldn't start. Someone there had jumper cables and started the car up again, but you could feel that it was struggling. We are about 40 minutes into the drive to our ferry when the car just dies. In the middle of a busy road. During rush hour. Hyrum had bought a new battery in case that was the problem, so we install it real quick. The car still won't start, so we're worried it's an alternator problem. After 7 Japanese men helping push the car out of the road, waiting 2 hours for a tow truck and a few ice cream cones later, some friends came and picked us up to drop us off at the port. Unfortunately the seas were ROUGH. Samuel ended up throwing up, and I spent the entire time in the back of the boat out in fresh air on the verge of puking. We made it though, and it was a wonderful trip! The weather was perfect, the small log cabin us and another of the families were in (7 kids 6 and under. Whew!) was cute and the company was great. There were two identical cabins next to each other so all four families got to hang out. We visited gorgeous beaches every day, snorkeling with gorgeous fish, amazing coral reefs and even some sea turtles. I seriously felt like I was in a huge aquarium. Charity even did amazing snorkeling. I don't think she will ever let us go out without her! One night we did a shrimp broil with yummy grilled veggies, shrimp, scallops, grilled onigiri and other odds and ends. And of course it all ended with s'mores. We had such a great time! We are very grateful to be living on a tropical island surrounded by other amazing tropical islands. :) (If you're wondering about our car, the garage it was towed to started it up and said there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. I'm praying every time I am in the car now that it won't just die again. Ahhh!)

It felt impossible to keep this girl out of the sand!!!

"How can I have s'more of something if I haven't had anything at all?"

Beach babe. You should see this girls tan line. Crazy!

Samuel had his first day of preschool the day after we got back from our trip. He has been so excited anticipating his turn to go to school, and he wasn't disappointed. He loves it! I asked him if I should do his hair before his first day of school (he usually conmplains when I forget to do his hair) and he responded "I need to be a stud muffin!" So I did his hair, and a stud muffin he was indeed. :)

Something you can find in any Japanese food stores here on Okinawa are onigiri, or rice balls or triangles. They are really yummy, and the kids liked the plain ones we had gotten for them. So I decided to try and make them myself. The ones I made were plain ones for the kids, and ones filled with salmon and wrapped in seaweed for Hyrum and myself. I really like the way they turned out and could have eaten them all! Yum!

Random Okinawa fact: They have special stickers new drivers and old drivers here put on their cars so everyone knows they are either new to driving or old, so you need to be careful around them. If you get in an accident with one of these people, it is very unlikely they will be blamed for anything, so count on it being your fault. I thought this was very interesting, but was a little annoyed the other day when an "old driver" cut me off and I felt like they felt as if they could do whatever they wanted because of their sticker. Maybe I was just having a grumpy day, but it didn't give me a lot of positive feelings for these stickers. :) So that's my random tidbit about driving in Okinawa. Stickers for the old and the new. Who would have thought?

Still Going Like Crazy!

I don't think things are ever going to slow down! I fear I have entered that stage in my life where my kids are getting a little bit older, so they have lots of activities going on, then adding that on top of just getting settled into a new place, and being in an amazing place where there are trips to be had every spare weekend, and I don't think we will slow down at all while we are here! I really love my down time and not going 100 miles an hour every day, but I have enjoyed all we've been doing here.

There is a drum festival they have here in Okinawa that is really pretty cool. There were soooo many people there, so it made me a bit nervous but we had fun. Charity's highlight of the evening was when we were waiting in line for the restroom and a Japanese girl behind us, probably in her early 20's, gave Charity all of her glowing/flashing things (2 swords, a star necklace, cat ear headband and even an inflatable guitar). I wish I had gotten a picture of it! And to end the whole night they do a huge firework show.

Lucy's reaction to the very LOUD fireworks.

Samuel started soccer with daddy for his coach! They had an awesome first practice, and Charity loved climbing the fun tree right next to the field and posing for pictures. :)

Samuel and Daddy leading the stretches

One of Hyrum's favorite things here is bookoo. It's Okinawa's version of craigslist, and Hyrum is on it a little too much. :) So the other day he saw on there an outdoor inflatable projection screen. So guess what we got. Yep, he bought that screen. We then invited a bunch of neighbors and friends from church to come enjoy an outdoor movie night. It was a blast! We played How to Train Your Dragon and had probably 50-60 people show up. The weather held out for us and was perfect. The second the movie was over, it started to rain, so cleanup happened really fast!

We had a bit of an incident the other day. Celeste was in our bathroom, and suddenly I hear this crash, then a huge gush of water. I run in to find brown toilet water spewing into the bathroom like it was a fire hydrant. I yelled for Hyrum to help me, and he came running. I frantically grabbed towels to keep the gross water from invading our entire house while Hyrum tried to find something to cover where the gushing water was coming out of the wall. This is where a tender mercy from Heavenly Father comes in. Remember the neighborhood movie night? The day before, we made flyers and personally delivered them to all the houses around us. As we handed them out we talked to our neighbors and got to know them a little bit. One of these neighbors, who didn't even come to the movie since they don't have any kids, told us he is a plumber. At the time we just thought, okay, that's cool. But that fateful Saturday morning, two days later, we were thanking our Heavenly Father for letting us meet our plumber neighbor. So I ran over to his house to recruit him for help. He was able to turn the water off, plug the broken pipe, and get us set up so we don't have water gushing into our house until housing can come fix it. So it turns out Celeste had knocked the lid to the tank off, which crashed into the hose going into the wall and completely broke it off. It sure made for an interesting Saturday!

Charity started first grade this week! Her teacher is a young looking lady named Ms. Cosper. Yesterday was Charity's first day, and she really seemed to like it. I can't believe she is already in first grade! Ahhhh!

Her awesome hairdo inspired by my cousin.