Baby Shower Success!

This last Saturday I hosted a baby shower for my friend Susan!!! She's having a baby girl and I was so excited to throw the shower for her!!! It was my ultimate mission to get the house (at least the downstairs) unpacked, decorated and ready to go! I was able to do all of that in 5 days. I was pretty darn proud of myself (and Joe, he helped a lot too).

We had a great turnout with lots of yummy food, fun games and amazing presents for Baby Fink! I think Susan enjoyed herself and had a good time. I was happy to see how happy she was!

The Mommy-To-Be, Susan!

Presents and yummy food!

The yummy cake Julie made for Susan!

Guessing how many squares it would take to go around Susan's tummy.

Yes, we played the "Guess what type of chocolate is melted in the diaper" game. :)

We're still working on unpacking and finishing the rooms upstairs. When everything is done, I'll be sure to post pictures. We absolutely love the new house. It has more space, better layout and much more "modern" looking which is nice!!! I'm enjoying my time off from not working, but will soon start the job hunt when I'm ready to again. Hope everyone is enjoying themselves and I'll be sure to post soon with more pictures!

We're Moving!

Alright everyone, we might not be blogging for a bit because we'll be busy with the move!!! The packers come tomorrow and they'll pack everything up and bring it straight over to the new house (it's just a few minutes up the road!). I am hoping to get the house set-up by the weekend because I'm throwing a baby shower for my friend Susan on Saturday!!! I should be able to since I'm not working anymore (YAY!). I left my horrid job and Friday was my last day! Anyway, I have lots to blog about, but as I said, we will be busy, busy, busy unpacking and setting everything up (we were only in our house for 6 months!). We're excited for the newly rennovated house because it's much nicer, more modern and has more space, but the whole process is one big drag. At least Joe will be around to help! They said he could take a few days off this week, so I'm very relieved (especially since I am not feeling well at all). We'll be sure to post new pics of the house as soon as we can! Talk to everyone soon!

Birthday Fun!

Well as many of you know, I wasn't quite sure how my birthday plans were going to turn out this week due to the typhoon! We were in TCORR3 status which mean a we could have very strong winds (over 50 mph) within 48-hours. This immediately puts all the pilots on standby incase they need to evac the planes. Luckily, Joe didn't have to evac and I was able to spend my actual birthday with him! We originally had planned to go to dinner, but the winds were pretty strong and it was raining pretty hard so we just decided to stay in and have cake and just hangout.

Joe definitely spoiled me this year! I think he was trying to make-up for not being there for my birthday last year (he was in Altus, OK for training). He bought me a beautiful ring from Tiffany's and a few other things along with not one, but three really sweet birthday cards! He out did himself this year! Oh and he bought me a yummy ice-cream cake from Baskin Robins! My favorite!

My friend Susan was sweet enough to plan a big birthday dinner for me and Christian (another good friend of ours in the squadron). We ended up having about 24 people show up and we had a great time!! We went to the Barrel Restaurant which has such yummy food! It was super busy so it took quite some time to get our food out, but it was fun to catch-up with everyone and just hang-out! The only problem with that restaurant is they don't do separate checks... so as you can imagine with 24 people, we had quite the bill! Complicated but with over $400 worth of Yen collected in hand, we settled the bill and moved the party over to a local bar near the Seawall. It ended up being a relaxing night, having some drinks while chatting with friends. I'm not sure if it's working full-time or just getting older, but staying out "late" is more like 12am and then I'm completley exhausted!!! Back in college the nights were only starting at that time!!!

But all in all, I had a great birthday and am so thankful for all the great friends we have made here!!! It makes it a lot easier being so far away from family and friends back in the states!!

For some reason, I can't rotate the picture. But I woke up to a blue bag for my birthday surprise!

He did a good job!!!

Sweet cards!!!

My yummy ice-cream cake!

My friend Susan treated me to a pedicure at CoCok's!!!

Me and Audrey!!! She just found out she'll be having a boy! Congrats!!!

Group shot of friends celebrating mine and Christian's birthday!!! Thanks everyone!!!

Birthday drinks at Narai!

Flea Market

My friend Lydia and I had been talking for quite some time about selling our stuff at the local Flea Market! It comes to the Marine base the first weekend of each month. We got there fairly early (it was first come first serve for spaces). We set up our lot at 11am and the market was open until 2am! It was good weather, which was good but bad. Good in the sense a TON of people came! Bad in the sense it was so miserably hot (they said it felt like 108 degrees) and poor Lydia got really burned (even though she applied sunscreen several times!).

I wasn't quite sure what to expect... I figured maybe I'd make like $50 (hoping I'd at least make back the $15 I paid for my spot). It was great! When they opened the gates at 12:00 and let in all the Japanese people, it was crazy!!! They came in SWARMS (literally) and I wasn't quite prepared for how hectic it got! Thankfully Joe was there with me and he could keep an eye on everything/everyone and help me with the sales.

The day was a success, I made almost $200! Talk about fast cash! It was nice to get rid of clothes I don't wear anymore or don't fit me. I think all the yummy Okinawan food is catching up to me because I've gained a significant amount of weight and a lot of my clothes don't fit me anymore. :( But it's okay because I think I still look healthy, but I do need to make more time to work-out!

Anyway, here are pictures of us enduring the hot and humid day in the sun at the Flea Market!

Lydia and her friend setting up their lot!!! Only a few minutes out in the sun and we were already hot and sweaty.

Joe and I ready to sell, sell, sell!

Thank goodness Joe's trunk popped up and provided both a seat and shade... although it was still unbearably hot!

Dog days of summer

Well, we finally got to take the pups back to the beach! Unfortunatley, the tides were high that day and the pups were a little too scared to go in because of the big waves! We took them to Toguchi Beach, one we'd heard from friends that was great to take dogs to. We're not sure of we took them to the right beach or place because when we got there all we saw were signs that said no dogs! We felt a little better once we saw other Japanese people with dogs. Here are some pictures of their day! They really liked it and were so tired from being so excited (and from the HEAT!) they slept ALL day when we got back!

CoCo's!

I know I've mentioned CoCo's before, but Joe and I love it so much, it deserves it's own blog entry! Now, don't get CoCo's Curry House confused with my other beloved CoCok's where I get my pedicures done!

CoCo's was one of the first restaurants we heard about when we got to the island. We heard it was a favorite among American's and we were to try it out immediately! It is obviously a popular spot for Americans... almost everytime we go it's ALL Americans... maybe one or two Japanese peoples. I'll be honest, the first time I went and saw the pictures on the menu, I was not impressed. The first time we went we went with some other friends and we talked about how in America food is all about how it tastes AND looks. Visually, the meals I suppose don't seem that appealing... brown curry, some meat and a bunch of white rice. Well, looks can be deceiving because let me tell you, the food is amazing!!! The service is great too!! The first time we went, we didn't know that you're supposed to push a little electronic bell on the table for the servers to come to your table to take your order. We just sat and sat and sat there! Now we practically don't even need to look at the menus and order immediately!

There are tons of different options you can do to your curry. You choose your spice level starting at mild, regular then on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the hottest). I'm a baby and can't really handle spicy food and I get mild. Joe switches it up sometimes getting anywhere from a level 3-6. Some of our friends love to get level 10 and it's funny to watch them literally sweat throughout their meal! You can add all sorts of different toppings and of course you can't go to CoCo's without getting their delicious nan bread! I'm not sure what makes it so good, but it's so soft and yummy! I always order their mango milk lassie, which is so good! Probably the only milk I really enjoy drinking. Joe said on his last trip to Hawaii he saw a CoCo's Curry House! I'm excited to hear it's made it to the states! I think every state should have CoCo's!

Here's a picture of our typical meal:

Did I mention we go here... at LEAST once a week? :)

Solar Eclipse!

They'd been talking about the eclipse for quite some time now, so everyone was pretty excited to see it today! They predicted it to happen between 9am-12pm and I think it got the darkest around 10:30ish. It was pretty neat, it did get pretty dark, but most people thought it just looked like it was going to storm outside (there was a lot of cloud coverage today). Joe showed me how to see how much of the sun was covered by poking a pinhole in a piece of cardboard and shining the hole onto a white piece of paper. It reflected how much of the sun was visible! Pretty neat! Here's a picture from the internet. Asia and India were able to experience the most of the eclipse. Apparently the next one isn't going to be until 2023 so I'm kinda excited that I got to experience it today!