Good grief, I've fallen behind on my updating. I know it's been a couple of weeks now but I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing 4th of July! We spent our long weekend being extremely lazy. We watched fireworks from the beach, went snorkeling a couple of times (our underwater pictures didn't exactly turn out by the way...we'll try again), saw the Lieutenant Dan Band perform on Futenma, and finished the 3rd season of Parenthood. :)

Lieutenant Dan Band

Rainbow!

In other news, since then I've been keeping busy running around! I'm still loving going to the local markets for produce and flowers. I decided to help with VBS at Koza the first week of August so we've started having meetings to get ready for those kiddos. I'm involved in a couple of other ladies Bible studies throughout the week and feel really blessed to be growing new friendships. I've also been enjoying doing wifey stuff around the house. I finally found some curtains for our living room and am currently working on adding some cute fabric to give them a little more length. Wish me luck sewing straight lines. :) That's all for now! Love you guys!

Konnichiwa! Let me tell you about our awesome weekend. We had our first get-together at the house on Saturday evening. A small group of friends came over for taquitos and game night. It was a good time and we look forward to having people over again soon! Because of the change of command last Friday the guys had Monday off. We took advantage of it and headed up north to Nago. I really love it up there. We found the melody road, the hydrangea gardens, and visited Churaumi Aquarium for the first time. 

The melody road was super cool. When you go about 40 kilometers per hour the grooves in the road play a song. They say it's a song of love and hardship, of a man and woman longing to forget the war and be together forever. It's sort of hard to get a good video of it but if you turn the volume up, you can hear the music!

The hydrangea garden was pretty amazing. You're surrounded by flowers as you walk the narrow pathways that crisscross upward. 

The aquarium was fun. We always love watching whale sharks and the dolphin show was really entertaining.

Good morning from Yomitan! All is well here in Okinawa. The sun is shining and I'm looking forward to a beach date with the Cooper girls this afternoon. When we first arrived A showed me this great little "secret beach" that's kind of hidden away. A few days ago I decided to try and find it again... It's the one through all the fields and down a jungle-y path. I happened across two sunflower fields on the way there. Y'all, this place is beautiful. J and I went the next day to possibly do some snorkeling but the tide was too low. We walked the reefs instead and saw some cool little creatures. The last three pictures are from Maeda Point. We hadn't been there since our first week or so on Island and it was still just as breathtaking. We're pretty excited to take our snorkel gear next time. 

"The earth laughs in flowers." -Emerson

Last Sunday we became members of Koza Baptist Church! We're so thankful to have found a place to plug into and call home. This weekend we're hoping for good weather so we can make the trip up to Nago again. There are hydrangea fields in bloom and this awesome "melody road." I'll keep you posted!

Kyoto: Part 3

Here are the last of our Kyoto pictures! These are from our time in Nara. We took a train there and walked around their park with about 1,200 free roaming deer. Most of them were super friendly. We had fun feeding them. 

I can't tell you how thankful I am to be so close to so many amazing places. We can't wait to visit Thailand, Mongolia, Australia, etc. Speaking of amazing places... We bought snorkel gear yesterday and explored the ocean at Torii Beach for the first time. There were some really beautiful bright blue and yellow fish as well as sea cucumbers and urchins. We're hoping to find an underwater camera so we can share! 

Kyoto: Part 2

One of our very favorite parts of  the trip was our time in Arashiyama. We got there just in time to see the end of a cultural parade. We walked across the Togetsukyo Bridge and happened across a monkey park called Iwatayama. After a 10 minute hike up to the top of the hill, we saw an amazing view of the city and a whole bunch of monkeys roaming around. They had a shop where you could buy apple slices to feed them and were warned not to look them in the eye!

View from Iwatayama

Mama & baby

One of the many train stations we went to