Views..

I'm loving my views today. :) Fuji and the hawks are coming really close to the house. Not sure what they were going after on the street, but it brought them right in front of us! On the other side of the glass, I've been having a blast photographing my tulips. They are starting to bloom - instead of just my yellow one now, I also have a purple one and an orange one.. :D

Bonsai

not the best picture, but oh well.

pruning the tree I ruined. (yay me)!

Apparently, you give us one bonsai tree, and we go a little nuts with it. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a plum bonsai tree. The blossoms are almost identical to sakura, but they are much darker. That tree bloomed for a few days, and then, I apparently made a cardinal mistake and misted the blossoms. It stopped blooming, and we'd been trying to figure it out ever since.

It's like a bonsai's bonsai - it's SO small.

And what's a person to do except go buy more bonsai trees right? So now we have three in the house. You know, the two bedroom, small Japanese house we live in with three bonsai trees and a few tulips because, well, they are my favorite flower.

You wouldn't expect me NOT to take a picture of it...

Wish us some luck as we try to keep these things alive. Tim's better at this than I am, but then, he leaves for months at a time - I don't know if these trees will be alive when he gets home from the next deployment.. LOL

2 minute update

Just a few minutes here. Sorry I haven't talked about Enoshima Aquarium yet, I promise that'll be coming.. Maybe not for this last trip, but overall, we'll be going more often, so expect posts about what it's like. :)

Tim went back to work today - vacation is officially over. I think I could cry. LOL He has duty one of the days this weekend, so we won't get much of a weekend - boo to that. We had a great leave period though, so I can't complain too much. I just wish he was still here this morning! Especially since the wind was awful last night, and I had a really rough time sleeping.

Kadie's back in school. She's happy this time around, but still hates her reading class and begs to be let out of it pretty much daily. :(

Molly is potty training. Really potty training. She is wearing big girl undies during the day. So far today, no accidents, but then, she is only two, and I'm sure we'll have at least one today!

That's about it here! My two minutes on here are up, and now I need to go give a spoiled toddler some more attention!

It's Fish Time!

The big tank. SO reminded me of the Aquarium of the Pacific!

We went to Enoshima aquarium today. We had an absolute blast. I'm REALLY tired and my back hurts from sitting here editing and posting pictures all evening, so I'll write more tomorrow. However, I did want to get a couple of pictures up!

Molly and her first love. :)

Kadie was quite the photographer today

not the best picture of us, but I love the fish behind us. :)

A look at Palau... (Tim)

The plan from square one has been for both Sarah and I to contribute our experiences and such, which I haven't done so far. So here goes nuthin'....

Republic of PALAU

              Where is Palau? Palau is a chain of islands South East from the Philippines. I'm not going to lie, I had to look it up on Google Earth and I've been there. The picture above is probably my favorite from the trip.

              A few short days in Palau are more than enough to experience most of the adventures one can have on a small island. Snorkelling, kayaking, swimming, (insert other aquatic activities here), it's all part of the relaxing and esthetically pleasing feel of Palau... unfortunately, there's not much more than that (at least, from my experience).

Building relations via COMREL (Community Relations) projects 

We do a lot of little things in other countries to show that we are good sports, and I had the opportunity to take part in one of these projects. Our mission: paint the administration building for the local high school. Yeah, I know... I've always said I'm a over-paid janitor! Here are the pics...

Of course all big projects will eventually lead to a big lunch. Luckily we had an army representative who had been on the island for some time before we arrived and he had the inside scoop on a home made barbeque business a half mile or so down the road in a picnic area. On certain days of the week she starts cooking up lunch and people flock in. We were told she doesn't have a closing time, she just goes until she sells out... and she always does.



Another note about Palau:  Stray dogs litter the island. Lucky for this pooch, some of the group had been
willing to give up what they couldn't finish.

Walking along the main road, we found a few things of interest....

Creepy, huh?














This was some sort of shrine... I don't know how it relates exactly but its also along the main road.

Houses down below the main road. Some of the houses we saw were pretty nice by our standards, while others had the island shack feel.

Probably the most original item on our venture down the main road... Its a memorial and a reminder of the toll drunk driving can take on a small community. I don't know how much attention locals pay to it on a daily basis, but it caught our eye.









Just a shot of the "bar" where you first land on shore.














Another favorite pic from the "trip"










Okay, one last favorite... needless to say, this had been the best picture trip I've had.










Until next time!



/Tim/

Happy New Year!

So I meant to come here a couple days ago and post a blog about all that's happened in 2010. It was an amazing year for our family - complete with amazing trips to Disneyland, moving, flights to Japan, and places around this amazing country. Saying tearful goodbyes and making new friends. It was an adventure to say the least, and 2010 treated us really well. We're hoping that 2011 is even better even though I'm not really sure how it could get any better than it's already been. :)

That being said, here's an update on us. Tim's on leave.. YAY!!! It's not long (actually, under a week..), but we're enjoying what we do have. Or well, I keep reminding myself WHY he took such a short leave. :P In the meantime, we had a great Christmas and a laid back New Year.

We started to try to venture into Kamakura today, but Kadie didn't have her passmo card with her, so we ended up coming back here. In the meantime, we had lunch at Johnathan's which is a chain here. It was OK - not my fave by far, but it wasn't bad either. The girls ate some new things, so that's ALWAYS good! Kadie's plate had some rolls on it - she actually ate one. I was pretty shocked. LOL Molly had some curry, but didn't eat much of it (not that shocking). I just had a ramen bowl and Tim had some beef with eggs and rice.

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe holiday season this year. I realized this morning that it was going to be the first year EVER that we didn't watch the Rose Parade. Kind of weird right? LOL :) Oh well!!!! I'm honestly just happy that we are all healthy here. Tomorrow, we should be heading to the Enoshima aquarium (even though Kadie's supposed to be in school). I'm really excited to go as we've wanted to go there for a while, so I think it'll be a fun trip!