Goodbye Grandma and Grandpa

We said goodbye to our house guests this weekend and they headed back to the states. We did quite a bit of Okinawa touring while they were here, it was a lot of fun. Here we are at the airport saying goodbye.

Matthew waves a final goodbye before the long journey back! He was sad to see them go. He told us he was going to go on the next plane to follow them. Thanks for coming mom and dad (and grandma and grandpa). It was fun having you in Okinawa!

Toguchi Beach

We spent a little time at Toguchi Beach this morning.
It's a short drive (or a long swim) from our house.

The first thing we had to do was go down the slides.

Here we are on the roller slide
Matthew's ready to go...

Me and Anna
You can see our neighborhood across the water in the background.

Scott and Mattthew

and Grandpa!

And the super fast cement slide.

It was so fun!

Matthew and Grandma on the swings

Looking at some of the caves that look out towards our house!

Matthew fell down after trying to follow Grandpa out into the water.
Poor guy!

Here they are doing some exploring

And some more exploring on the beach

Matthew had fun collecting some big rocks and was sad to leave them behind.

Anna really wanted to get in the water so Grandma helped her out.
It was nice and warm...and a lot more relaxing than being out Black Friday shopping...such a perfect day. We did go to the BX later and this happened.

Happy Thanksgiving

We made a full Thanksgiving dinner in our small Japanese kitchen this year. Last year we went to a friends house for dinner, so we didn't even attempt anything like a turkey in our small oven. We have a Japanese oven/microwave/toaster combo that is the size of a microwave and never seems to cook anything on the oven feature properly. To compensate, we bought a small stand alone oven from the BX, but its not big enough for a 9x13 pan to fit in it, so we have to make half batches of everything. It's not terrible, but not quite as good for things like cooking turkeys. So, this year we got a 5 lb turkey breast instead of the whole turkey and it actually cooked pretty well in there. We had to let the turkey go a little longer than normal for it to get to the right temperature. But it all worked out.

Here's the turkey breast just before being carved.

Here's Matthew checking out the rolls.
Matthew and Anna each ran away with one before dinner even started. Sneaky!

Here we are sitting down to our feast.
Scott made rolls and his famous baked beans. All very tasty!

Here's some of our food:

turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green beans, cranberry compote and the baked beans. Finding the orange sweet potatoes for the sweet potato casserole was an adventure. They have lots of sweet potatoes here, but I don't often see the orange ones. But I did find some this year. Hooray!!

Anna and Matthew had a sampler platter of food items. I think the rolls were the hands down favorite...that and the marshmallows off the top of the sweet potatoes.

Anna was a bit more adventurous with trying her food.
She had little tastes of most of the things on her plate.

Matthew was his usual picky self and decided he was done after poking at things for a while. Then he came back to the table as the Thanksgiving pirate.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Hiji Falls

We hiked Hiji Falls this weekend. It's a little hike that goes to a waterfall up on the northern part of the island. The hike is only about 1.5 km one way (I think) and has a pretty well established path, but there were a lot of stairs. And when Matthew needed a carry up those stairs, I started to feel a bit tired. Also I forgot my real shoes, so I was wearing cheapo flip flops the whole time, but I ony slipped once. I was glad, however, that we weren't hiking it in August or something. Then I would definitely have needed lots of rests along the way. Here we are towards the beginning of our hike...before we got too warm for our hats. The lens on my camera was a little dirty or fogged up, so most of these pictures are a little fuzzy. Sorry about that.

At the start...
I think this was a small dam or something. It looked very nice and water came out of a perfect looking tunnel/whole in the wall. Scott says this is what it would look like if Disney built dams.

Along the suspension bridge.
It was an amazing view from the top, but the bridge did sway a little bit as we crossed it.

Part way through. Notice we've dispensed with our hats...well, except for Anna, but between you and me, she wasn't working as hard as the rest of us. Just saying.

She did get pretty tired out though, and slept in Scott's arms most of the time.

And here are the falls. They are a lot more impressive in person.

Mom and Dad Guptill with Matthew
Matthew was quite the little hiker and walked a lot of the way. On the way back to the car he kept asking to be carried though. And as soon as we got in the car he fell asleep. Grandma and Grandpa helped us with the kids along the way. Also Grandpa fished a sippy cup out from under the walkway with a stick when some little person dropped it.

We were all tired and sweaty by the end, but it was worth it.

Okuma

We went to Okuma for the weekend - a military recreation place on the northern part of the island. It rained for some of the weekend, so we didn't get to enjoy the water as much as we would have liked, but we did have some moments of sun. Here are the kids playing in the sand.

Anna was having more fun in the water than Matthew was.
Here she is trekking up the beach all by herself (her preferred method of doing things).

She had to stop and go back part way through because she fell and got sand on her hands and needed to wash them off.

Daddy helped her come back up the beach later...to join Matthew in the sand. Matthew tried the water out a little bit, but then decided he'd rather not get so wet, and wanted to drive his dump truck through the sand instead.

A few more pictures...

After getting cleaned up...Anna and Matthew had fun running around the mini golf course.

And here's Anna getting a kiss from Daddy while clutching a precious rock she found.
Even with the iffy weather, we still had a great time up north.

Churaumi Aquarium

We went to the aquarium in Nago this weekend. We've been there a few times, but its always fun to visit. We had to reenact a photo from our first trip. See our other trips to the aquarium here and here. After so many trips, I finally learned how to pronounce the name of the aquarium. It's "Choo-rah-oo-mee"

Matthew and Anna touched some of the critters in the touch pool. Anna jumped right in, so to speak, but Matthew took a little while to warm up to the idea. Here he is giving it a try.

Anna told us about all the fish she was seeing.

The kids in front of one of the tanks.

Matthew had a lot more fun experiencing the aquarium this time.

Here's Matthew in the big shark jaws!

Anna checks them out too.

Towards the end of the trip, people were getting a little worn out.

We also went to the Nago Pineapple Park.
Here's the driverless pineapple carts we ride on to tour the pineapple plantation.

We weren't supposed to take pictures a lot of the places at the pineapple park, but I think this one was ok. The trip was fun...although I think I had way too many samples of pineapple cakes and cookies.