March

March was another really awesome month. We started it with another Okuma camping trip.

Awesome full moon.

Rich challenged each kid to walk around our tent in the dark by themselves twice. Maya and Eva did it!

We had planned on staying another night but it started raining which made for a really peaceful night and morning.

Packing up the tent in the rain wasn't so peaceful though, haha! It's all part of the adventure.
Some friends invited me to go to lunch in a treehouse and it was awesome! Getting there was half the fun. I'll tell you what, following google in Okinawa takes you on some serious adventures and down some trail like roads. Here's a little example of a typical google led drive in Oki.

Once we arrived we ordered our taco rice and headed up to our tree house. Eva was loving the little slide.

They used a pulley system to get our food up to us.

Our beautiful view.

After lunch we explored a little and checked out some of the other tree houses.

We did a lot of our usual fun stuff including lots of vending machine drinks...

Cocock's with friends for our cute toe nails...

Park days...

Hachiren Ramen!

School projects

 Kiddie Disco with our Okinawan friends! It was their first time and they absolutely loved it.

And of course, our Baker Sunday Selfie's
 

We've had so many adventures and there is always so much to do in Okinawa that it's hard to say what my absolute favorite things are but I can say that without a doubt, Mari Car was one of my absolute favorite things we've done on island. It was SO MUCH FUN!

Such an awesome and memorable end to a great month!

March ~Arabella's Baptism~

March was a really special month. Arabella chose to be baptized and it was made extra special because she got to share it with her best church friend, Erica. She proved to be an incredible little missionary! Erica's dad was hesitant to let her be baptized but Arabella took it upon herself to talk to him and ask him if they could be baptized together. He said yes! She was also sure to invite her neighborhood friends to her baptism and one of them came! 

We had a little photo shoot of Arabella and Erica.

So many friends came to support these girls. It was such a special day! This was the little display table I did for them. I gave each girl one of the shisa so that they could always remember their baptism day and the covenants that they made. I told them that I hope they will call each other years down the road and check on and encourage each other to keep those covenants.

So proud of Arabella! 

 

February

Where has the time gone?!?! Keeping up with life and this blog has felt completely impossible but I guess that just means we are really living, right? When I think of all of the posts I need to write I get overwhelmed. We have done and seen so many incredible things since my last post including traveling to Thailand, Cambodia and back to Korea! Rich and the kids have had so many incredible accomplishments that I've failed to post because I felt like I needed to write about our trips first. I'm changing my ways and I'm going to allow myself to make 'everyday life' posts before life passes me by and the memories fade.

December and January were filled with trips and recovering from trips so I will start in February. We started the month with a day off of school and warm enough weather for our first beach day! We went to Maeda Flats.

We followed our perfect beach day with our favorite Family Mart snacks.

February also marked the beginning of the blooming of the cherry blossoms in Okinawa. We don't have very many sakura in Okinawa but the few that we do have sure are beautiful!

Aidan and Maya tested for their 2nd stripe on their green belt and did such a great job.

We took advantage of the cool weather and spent a weekend camping at Okuma. It was so nice! Cool enough to camp but warm enough to enjoy the beach too. We are going to miss our happy place!

 

Okuma has the most beautifully breathtaking sunsets. Pictures just don't do it justice.

Woke up to Arabella being the best big sister.

We had been looking forward to going whale watching for a really long time and it was finally time for it to happen! We got up early on a crisp morning and boarded the boat along with 3 other families. 

We rode out over lots of waves for about an hour in search of the whales. This was the last picture I took on that day.

 Were whales spotted? Yes, they were! Did I see them? No, no I didn't. The moment the boat stopped I started puking. I puked and puked over and over again for the entire 2 1/2 hours we were out looking for whales. I was joined by Rich, Arabella, Eva and over half of the other passengers. It was the most horrible experience ever! Whale watching was NOT a success for us.

We had a month filled with a lot of our usual happenings like our Baker Sunday Selfie's

  pizza~ice cream~movie night
 
 Hashiren Ramen

 And trips to the banana stand.
 

Then, there are always those exciting moments like getting to hold a snake at church...

 Aidan making the Honor Roll!

 Oh, and of course there's that time when I though Eva had snuck out of the house so my neighborhood friends helped me canvas the neighborhood and encouraged me to stay calm when I wanted to call security forces. Knowing it wasn't like Eva to just take off like that, they encouraged me to check my house one more time. I found her asleep in the tiny area between the washer/dryer and the closet doors. She added a few greys to my growing collection.

What a great month we enjoyed!