Showing posts with label family time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family time. Show all posts

Friday, January 2, 2015

Keep calm, it's my Birthday!


                  

    


                       

      

                                





I turned 31 over the weekend.  Where does the time go?!  This year I opened for a low key bday.  After Christmas and New Years I was a little burnt out.  

Saturday, on my birthday we went to my fave restaurant Thai in the sky!  It was a gorgeous day and the views there were amazing.  The food, as always, was delish.  I even ventured out of my comfort zone and ordered food that I usually don't.  It was a tad bit too spicy , but it was yummy.  I had to eat in small bites and drink water constantly. Hahaha after lunch we went to the Ashibina shopping center to look for my birthday gift.  M, mentions constantly that I'm a hard person to shop for, so he just let me pick out my own gift.  It was a total mad house there.  The parking lot was so full that we had to park at an adjacent lot and be shuttled to the shopping center.  The few days after New Years is equivalent to the day after Thanksgiving shopping.  There were sales all over the place and stores offer lucky bags.  You buy the bag and you can't look what's inside, it's a blind bag so to speak.  These are pretty fun and lots of the time the customers are pretty happy with what they got.  They sell them until they sell out.  Unfortunately the stores I went do did not have any.  We did go 3 days after new year, it's best to go on New Year's Day.  So I'll remember that next year. For my bday gift I found these Tory Burch flats that I've been trying to order online but they didn't have my size.  So I left a happy girl!  After shopping we headed to a goodbye dinner for a friend that is PCSing.  My friends got me a birthday cake!  It was a good day!

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Staycation

Summer is well underway here.  A/C is on full blast and kids are out of school.  Now, I love traveling as much as the next person.  Especially going to a new country.  But, we aren't millionaires and I'm a SAHM.  We are fortune to travel off island, 1 or 2 times a year.  So we plan lots of stuff to do locally.  I mean, we aren't going to live here forever , so we gotta take advantage and see the sights.

One thing that we have done a lot of are staycations.  We not only have done them here, but we've done them in places back in the states.  When we were in WA, we would get a hotel room in downtown Seattle for the weekend and roam the city.  When we were in VA, we would get a hotel room in Northern VA and roam the city.  In CA, we would get a hotel room on the beach and roam the beach.  You get the idea.  But vacations don't always have to be to to new exotic places.  Plus, staycations are quick, fun, and cheap.

Luckily, we live on a beautiful tropical island, with an abundance of awesome hotels.  We booked a weekend at The Rizaan hotel.  Its literally 20 minutes away!  Not far at all.  We got together with 8 other families and planned a weekend there.  The hotel was awesome!  Right on the beach, indoor pool, outside pool, slides, restaurants, huge breakfast buffet included and the hotel room was reasonably priced.  We spent two days there, and we had a blast.  I swear, the kids became fish.  They didn't want to leave the pools or the beach.  Even though it was 20 minutes away from our house, I felt like I was on vacation somewhere else.  It was very easy to get into that vacation mind set.

Notable mentions:

Breakfast buffet::
When I booked our hotel our buffet was included.  I always love when this is included because breakfast is usually the only meal that I know for sure we will eat when we go on vacation. Throughout the day if we are sightseeing, beaching, pooling, we forget about time and we usually consume snacks rather then meals.  This buffet was huge,lots of selection and pretty good food.  They had traditional Japanese and American breakfast options.  There were also lots of fruit and veggies.  The options changed daily, which is nice!  So we started our days with a good hearty meal to keep us going for our long days.

Rooms:
The basic rooms, which is what we booked, was actually not too bad.  Especially in Japan!  We've been to a few Japanese hotels and most of the time the rooms are pretty tiny. Our room was small, but good enough.  We had 2 beds, a pull out bed, couch, coffee table, and mini fridge.  I was really surprised with the room.  I was thinking it would be tiny.  But it was a good enough size to fit all 4 of us comfortably.

Pools:
The hotel had 2 pools, one inside and one outside.  Both had areas for smaller children and water slides.  The outside pool did have a waterfall.  The kids loved going under it.  It was nice that there was the option of inside and outside.  Sometimes outside it was way too hot, Oki summers can be pretty brutal.  The kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves at both pools.

Memories:
I know this sounds cheesy, I dont care!!!  We made lots of memories that weekend.  I loved seeing the huge smiles from my kids.  I loved seeing M relaxed and enjoying himself.  It was so much fun going with all our friends. I honestly was afraid when we were planning it, I thought it was going to be a mad house.  In the end, it was the more the merrier.  We kicked off summer with a bang!  I'm so excited for all the fun stuff this summer has to come!








Saturday, December 28, 2013

Jensen Cookie Bash

 One of my fave things to do around the holidays is decorating cookies.  It's not just Christmas season, I love to decorate cookies any holiday!  New Years, Valentine's day, St. Patricks day... You name a holiday I will bake and decorate cookies.  They aren't the nest cookies! lol but I have fun doing them with the kids.  So I've always wanted to do a cookie decorating party,  I find that Christmas is one of the best times to have one.

Last year I actually had a precursor to this cookie decorating extravaganza.  We had a big potluck for Christmas with our Oki fam and for dessert I brought cookies and decorating stuff.  It was nuts, we had about 15-20 kids {we have a big Oki fam} and no real adult supervision but myself .  The other adults were there but they were occupied with real dessert.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself!  I could tell the kids were loving it.  That's when I decided that we would do the real deal next Christmas .

Fast forward to Dec 2013.  This time we had a party at our house.  I baked about 60 cookies and bought all the fixins to make a mean Christmas cookie.  We had a bunch of kids and my table wasn't big enough for them to decorate all at the same time, so we did shifts.   It was super fun.  I know the kids were having a blast.  All the parents looked worried about sugar overdose! lol  The lil kids mainly were just eating all the decor.  Haha. The kids decorated 2 cookies each.  I did cutout sugar cookies of gingerbread men, snowmen, Santas, snowflakes, and just plain round cookies.  The kids were able to choose the shape of cookie.  Luckily we had enough of each shape and none of the kids were sad they didn't get a certain one.    I made all the kids wrap up their creations and take them home.  They didn't need anymore sugar.  So final verdict,  we will keep this as a family tradition.  It was so much fun and I love seeing the creative side of the kids.  I think next year I will add a hot cocoa bar :)






Thursday, December 26, 2013

'Twas the Night before Christmas...

Another Christmas down.  Our third one in Oki.  I'm not sure what it was about this year, but I felt a little off.  Christmas wasn't as Christmas as usual?! I just didn't feel so spirited I guess.  I really feel like it just crept up so fast!  Like...I just put up the tree and BAM it's time to open gifts!   Well, this year I added two more traditions to our Christmas season, 1. Elf on a shelf and 2. Jensen cookie bash (cookie decorating party).

Elf on a Shelf

Jensen Cookie Bash

Growing up, Christmas Eve was always the bigger festive day.  We always had our parties on Christmas Eve.  We would go to midnight mass, then open gifts when we got home.  Christmas Day, we would eat all day and play with our new toys.  For my family now it's sorta the same.  We have a party or big dinner on Christmas Eve, then we open gifts after.  On Christmas morning we open gifts from Santa and our stockings.  Essentially we celebrate Christmas in 2 days.  Lol 

Christmas was the usual Oki festivity.  Our Oki fam got together on Christmas eve and had a big potluck in one of the tower rec rooms.  We had a grand old time.  I love getting dressed up and eating to my hearts content. Good thing I wore an outfit that was forgiving if I ate a lil too much.  For our party, each parent brought a gift for their kids from "Santa".The gifts were handed out and the kids went nuts. Lol. Keeps em' occupied for the rest of the evening.  Then the adults do our white elephant.  Always a lot of fun! It's funny to watch grown women fight over gifts. Haha Well no real fighting went on, there were some dirty gift steals tho.  It's all fun and games.

After the party we headed home.  Mills stayed up the whole way because she wanted to open her gifts.  I couldn't believe it!  This year was fun, Nolan got in on the present opening.  Last year he was more interested in the wrapping paper and bows.  Mills , of course, is a pro at opening gifts.  Good thing I decided to just record the present opening, because she just ripped right through them all .  It was so awesome to watch their lil faces light up with joy when the opened their gifts.  I especially loved the squeals from Nolan! We didn't end up sleeping till 2 am that morning.  Too much excitement.  It was a great day.  Now the countdown is on for Christmas 2014 lol











Monday, November 11, 2013

Churaumi Aquarium & Pizza in the Sky

What a busy weekend we had!  I really had nothing planned for this weekend; there were baskets of laundry, messy rooms, and an unorganized kitchen calling my name. None of that got done! Usually I would freak out at that notion, but we had a good weekend exploring Okinawa.  Much of the time our weekends are spent doing the usual, so its nice to go out and do explore.

Saturday we went to the aquarium.  Third largest aquarium in the world after Dubai and Georgia.  We've been before, but this was the first time with Nolan.  It was a weekend day but it actually wasn't too packed.  My fave part is seeing the whale sharks.  The tank that they are in is gigantic!  It's just so unreal to see them so close and just swimming about.  The kids were mesmerized by them.  Their little faces just looked so curious.  It was so adorable.  In every single tank Mills looked for Nemo or Dori.  Haha  She successfully found Nemo 4 times.

For an early dinner we headed to Pizza in the Sky.  We have never been there before but heard great reviews.  Pizza in Japan is definitely different. Its delicious, but I know many people who don't really like it.  Anyways, we heard that the view is to die for, the pizza is delish, but the wait is a monster.  So we prepared ourselves for a long wait.  When we got there we got seated right away and after ordering our food it took about 5 min. Maybe we were lucky, maybe we came at the right time, either way this place got 5 starts from us.  We ordered a pepperoni pizza for the kids and a "mix" pizza for Morgan and I, oh and a salad.
 
All in all great and fun filled Saturday!







Sunday, July 14, 2013

Happy FIRST Birthday Nolan!!

Nolan’s FIRST  Birthday!

What a momentous occasion! I honestly can’t believe how fast that year went.  My baby isn’t so much a baby anymore.

We moved to an actual HOUSE! {more on that later} So we had Nolan’s first Birthday party at hour new house.  We’ve never been able to have  a party at any of the places we lived because it was always too small.  I’m so happy to finally be in a house that we can have parties at....LOVE IT!


Anyways we had our Oki fam over and it was great.   I was so happy we didn’t have to lug all our food and décor to some hall or park.  It is such a burden.  Having a party at the house was so much easier and less stress, if I forgot something luckily I was at my house! Haha The party was real simple.  Good food + good company= good party.  We had a great time.  We had a Toy Story theme party.  Nolan had a blast, especially during cake time.  














Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Saturday Night at the Movies



Movie: Argo

Rating: ***(out of 5)

Comments:   This movie was good.  It started off a little slow.  Then about the last hour it got really good. Super suspenseful at the end! It's crazy how this was a true story.  I can't even imagine being one of those embassy people trying to get out of a country that wants to keep you.  Apparently the allure of Hollywood can blind anyone.  Ben Affleck was awesome in this movie.  We waited until the kids were asleep to watch this.  I know Mills would not have any interest.  

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Okinawa Zoo


Had a short hiatus from updating.  Morgan took some time off work and we spent our days hanging out and doing activities with the kids.  I got lazy and didn’t do any updates while he was on leave, but I had so much to write about since we were doing stuff about every other day!

On to the Zoo...
The weather has been really excellent lately so we decided to spend the day at the zoo and kids museum.  I love going to the zoo.  I grew up in San Diego, and going to the zoo was a big deal.  It’s not called The World Famous San Diego Zoo for nothing!!  I mean they breed pandas there like it’s nobody’s business.  To see everything at the San Diego zoo would probably take 2 days, 3 if you have small children.  But not all zoos are created equal.   The zoo in Oki is pretty small.  To see it all would only take about a few hours.  It’s a nice short day trip, totally doable by myself if Morgan were gone on deployment.  A lot of the animal cages are small.  I know Amelia has a great time because you can get super close to the animals since their living enclosures are small.   The only bad thing was that we went in the middle of the day and most of the animals were sleeping.  It was kind of funny because Amelia kept yelling at them to wake up.  She had a great time.  Nolan slept for the most part.  It was a great afternoon.