Julie & Becca In Okinawa ~week 1~

We had the date marked on our calendar and it was all the kids could talk about as we counted down the days for Julie and Becca to come visit for 2 weeks. Finally, they made it!!!

 

First order of business was this…

Its such a long flight that their feet were swollen.

They came in at around 10pm, but jetlagged and all, they were ready to start the adventuring the very next day! We hit the road and headed up to Okuma. We planned on eating at the restaurant at the resort but they were closed between lunch and dinner time. It was funny because that day we were missing everything by 15-20 minutes. This is where the struggle to find food began for Julie and Becca, haha! They looked to us for guidance but everything is almost always in Japanese so their guess was just as good as ours. We all ended up with something good though.

Dessert

After lunch, as we were walking back to the car, Eva tripped on something and face planted. Scratched her little face up. She fell pretty hard and her nose was swollen, but thankfully she was ok and our vacation didn’t start with a visit to the ER.

We went back to the resort, checked in to our cabin and went to the beach. Our cabin was the second from the left.

Okuma is our favorite!

 

 

Then the rock skipping began and lasted a good while.

 

We just hung out and enjoyed the rest of the day. That night, Rich, Julie and I watched a movie. I just had to take a picture of these two. Made me laugh.

The next morning we started our day with a hike to Hiji Falls.

This was a rare sight, Eva holding Becca’s hand. The first time she held her hand she immediately noticed the calluses on Becca’s hands from crossfit. Every time she would go to hold her hand she would feel the calluses, look at them, and then run to hold Julie’s hand, haha!

We made it! Do you see the sign in the bottom left corner of our family picture that says “Keep Out”? Yeah, keep that in mind…

I think Rich thinks of “keep out” signs as more of an invitation, and apparently, Julie does too because these two jumped the rope to get a better picture.

Then, Rich shouted, “Someone’s coming!”, and Julie jumped up and slid right down the rock into the water! Hopefully this will serve as a lesson to my kids, not to break rules…doubt it.

We finished off our Hiji Falls hike, some of us dryer than others, and headed to the beach for the rest of the day.

Aunt Julie doing what she does best. Right from the beginning Eva would choose Julie over me. I thought it was sweet.

These guys did the banana boat.

We all went on a glass bottom boat ride.

We went to another beach in the resort and searched for sea glass. Julie ended up with quite the collection of sea glass, shells and unique rocks.

That night we roasted marshmallows and had s’mores.

It was chillier that I had planned for so I had to improvise.

Our transportation

This concluded our Okuma time. Rich left with the big kids early the next morning while the rest of us checked out.

Since we were already up north we went to the aquarium.

The lady said, “Say Shi-sa!” and we fell for it.

These guys were in there scrubbing the inside of the tank.

We zipped right through the aquarium and stopped to get some drinks and take silly pictures.

That night we went to Tenkaippin for some delish Ramen!

Maya is a very adventurous eater. She had clams.

After dinner we went to Blue Seal in American Village for some Okinawa ice cream.

Ok, so the rest of our local adventures will be in no particular order.

We stopped by the pharmacy so they could see where Rich works.

Rich took Julie and Becca to the Habu trail for a run.

He’s been doing tire runs to train for his run up Mt. Fuji in a couple of months.

So, Rich takes them to exercise and I take them to have the most amazing treat there is…Melon Pan Ice!

We went to the seawall for some Chicken & Waffles, yum!

 

Rich took them to Arashi’s for “The best fried rice ever!” according to Becca.

Yes, most of their visit revolved around food, ok! Not all of it though. We saw lots of sights. We went down to Naha to Shuri Castle.

This picture makes me laugh because Maya is pulling away from Aidan putting his hand on her back.

I was so bummed they were doing some maintenance on the front of the castle so we couldn’t get a picture of how beautiful it is. Here’s a picture from the internet.

We toured the inside.

Okinawa Coke

Then, went outside

Rich took Julie and Becca to Maeda point for some snorkeling.

This nice person took a picture of them and his finger.

In the blue cave

They survived!

Another Okinawa must…Cocoks!

The massage

Toes painted

Eva had her first Cocoks experience with her aunts.

She was so excited!

All done!

Somehow, I’m not exactly sure how, we packed all of this into less than a week. We also went to Ie Island for the Lily Festival, that is going to have to be its own post. We literally didn’t waste a minute, and had so much fun as we geared up for our week in Hong Kong!