Daddy Did My Hair!

Bella is very funny about her hair. She will let us put barrettes in but then she will take them out immediately. She doesn't like to keep anything in her hair. Well, this morning she went and got a ponytail holder and said she wanted to wear it. So, I put it in her hair thinking that she would pull it right out. She wanted to see, so I held her up to see in the mirror and told her how pretty she looked and amazingly, she left it in! I was so shocked! Well, when Daddy came home for lunch she went and got more ponytail holders and wanted them in her hair too. I told her that she didn't need any more, she was already wearing 2. But she wanted more. So, she went to daddy and had daddy do her hair. An hour later her hair still looks exactly the same! She is so funny! Hahaha!

Samuel.....

Sam is getting so big! I just can't believe it. I thought I'd give a little update on him since I did one on Bella. Though I guess I kind of already did with the school entry....but oh well! We got some cute pictures of him and I want to post them on here. He still loves school! He loves to tell stories about his "brothers" (different super heroes, superman, flash, batman...pretty much all of them). As you can see, he is still really into super heroes! He is making friends at school and church and really enjoying both. We are so proud of him! Every day he comes home and is actually excited to do his homework! I hope that he stays that way as he get older! Well, here are some cute pictures of him.

Rain....and Typhoons....I guess they kinda go together...

Well, it's raining, again. The funny thing is that it only seems to rain when I have to leave to take Sam to school and when I have to leave to pick him up from school. In between those times, not a drop of rain. Yesterday Juanpablo had to run to get the car for us because it was raining so hard. And of course, by the time he got to the front of the building with the car the rain had all but stopped. It keeps happening that way. Poor Juanpablo, he gets soaked and then the rain stops. It's almost like the rain has it out for him and him alone. hahaha. Just kidding of course. But it is kinda weird. The typhoon that was supposed to hit us earlier this week ended up changing course and so it missed us and all we got was a little bit of rain. Well, it went well past us and then decided that it did want to hit Okinawa after all! Can you believe it! It went up and then it turned around and is heading for us again! That is where all this rain that we are getting is coming from. But, thankfully, they think that it will only be a tropical storm when it hits us, and not the category 4 typhoon it was when it was supposed to hit us the first time. For those of you who don't know what a typhoon is exactly I'll explain. I didn't know either because it just sounded like a hurricane to me from what everyone was telling me. So, I looked it up. A typhoon is a hurricane. It just depends on what side of the International Date Line you are on. On this side it is called a typhoon, on the other side, where you guys are, it is called a hurricane. Once we learned that we weren't so scared. We knew what to expect. We have been through hurricanes when we lived in North Carolina. And Juanpablo was in Miami during hurricane Andrew and I don't know how many others. It also helps that our building is made out of concrete! It makes us feel much more protected! Happily, we only have 2 more months of typhoon season and then we shouldn't have to worry until next May! The funny thing is that with all this rain you would imagine that the exchange (like a military department store) would have rain gear, rain coats, ponchos, something. All they have are umbrellas. I couldn't find a single kids umbrella or rain coat. And everything they have here is super expensive as the exchanges are geared more towards the higher paid officers than the lower paid enlisted guys and gals. You'd think here, where we don't really have a lot of options, they would be more reasonable...but no, they aren't. Today Bella and I are gonna go to the Air Force base and see if they have rain gear for kids. If we can't find anything then we are gonna have to go off base and hope for the best. I'll probably wait for Juanpablo to get home though, he has been learning Japanese from a lady that works in the same building as him. He's getting pretty good! So, I'll let him do all the talking! Raining again now. Rain, Rain go away....

Bella....

I just can't believe how big Arabella is getting! Her new thing is that she loves carrying her purse! Juanpablo let her pick it out and she just loves to carry stuff around in it. She takes it with her whenever we go out, even to take Sam to school! She is just getting so big, and she is just such a girlie girl! She loves having her hair brushed and wearing dresses. She also loves jewelry, especially bracelets! She is just so cute! Here are some recent pictures of her.

Twilight...and Mel...

I don't think there is anyone that hasn't at least heard of the Twilight Series. I just up and decided to read it after having heard a few months before that it was really good. I bought the first book and devoured it in less than a day. I couldn't wait to get the next two. I sped through those almost as quickly and was going crazy waiting for the fourth to come out. I even got them as book on cd! I'm listening to Twilight again, while I clean and things like that. I just don't understand those people that say that it's bad writing. I really enjoyed all four of the books. I wasn't disappointed by Breaking Dawn at all, as a lot of people apparently were. And I'm so sad that Midnight Sun has been put on hold. I'm hoping that Stephenie Meyer changes her mind. I read what she had put up on her website and it's so good! Not only do we get to learn more about Edward, but we get to learn about the other characters as well! I'm sad that someone chose to violate her trust and we all have to pay for it. Sorry to be going on and on about this, I know if you are looking at this then you were most likely wondering what's going on with the kids and us, but this entry is more about me I guess! I am excited that the movie is going to be coming out in November instead of December! Although the movies seem to come here about a week late. So, if anyone sees it, don't tell me about it til a week later! I plan to go as soon as it's here at any of the base theatres. I will travel if I have to...hahaha, it's like 15 minutes to the farthest base! For those Twilight fans out there, what do you think of the guy playing Edward? I'm kinda disappointed. I don't think he makes a very good Edward. He's just not that good looking to me and Edward is supposed to be amazing. I like the guy that Stephenie Meyer picked, he is beautiful, to bad he's 25 now. I don't think he could pull off 17. But he would have been perfect! I am trying to like the Harry Potter guy as Edward. Sorry about the rambling...I do have an excuse though. I screwed up my back in November and never really got it fixed. I was nursing and so the medicines they could give me were limited. Bella has had to stop nursing, it was only before bed so it wasn't that big a deal. They put me on Valium at night (it makes me a little loopy in the mornings too!) and Ultram during the day when I don't have to do anything. They both completely knock me out cold! I spent all of Saturday, except for about 2 hours, in bed. It does seem to be working so I'm happy about that! Hopefully I'll be cured for now! It's always something that could pop up again at any time. But if I can get rid of the pain then I can exercise more easily and strengthen my abs and legs and then according to the doctor I shouldn't have as many problems with my back. That would be so nice!

Oh, so, Juanpablo is in the field this week. It's gonna be weird being just me and the kiddos til Saturday. Our final shipment should be coming in right after he gets back. I'm glad about that! We've been sleeping on air mattresses this whole time! I miss my bed! We have like no furniture except for a dinning room table and a chairs and a couch which the government lent to us. We can keep them until the end of our tour here in Okinawa if we want. I don't know if we will end up doing that or not. We'll just have to see if we find anything that we like. We also found out that when we leave Okinawa we get all of our weight allowance! That's annoying! When we came here we could only bring 2 shipments, one of 1,000 lbs and one of 2,500 lbs. And that was it. It seems like a lot, but just our kitchen stuff, some of the kids toys, clothes and linens was 1,300 lbs! We were over! I'm scared to see how much the other is going to weigh when it gets here! But, you can see that it's not alot! We left a bunch of stuff in storage that we would have gotten rid of if we had known that we could have the full 9,000 lbs when we left here! We thought that we would have to get rid of all our stuff that we got here before we left. So, we hadn't planned on buying furniture or anything. Now we find out that we will have plenty of weight and didn't have to worry. It's really annoying. They should let people know that when they get overseas orders! So, if any of you that are in the military or may be someday, if you go overseas get rid of everything and buy cool new stuff when you get there and then take it back with you!

This is getting pretty long huh! Oh, good news. Juanpablo and I have both gotten callings! We are happy about that. I was sustained and set apart yesterday as the Relief Society Secretary. I'm excited about it cuz I've never really worked in the Relief Society before. It's always been the Primary for me, oh and once in Young Women (that was an awesome calling!). Juanpablo was called to be the Teachers Advisor. It will be his first time working with the Young Men and I'm sure he will be amazing with the boys! He is really looking forward to it. O.k. I better stop now or I will keep prattling on and on.

Shuri Castle....

Well, I guess we haven't really gotten to tour Shuri Castle. We went on Monday while Juanpablo was off for the weekend. We looked online and couldn't find anything saying if we had to pay to go in. So, we didn't bring any yen with us....that was a rookie mistake that we won't be making again! Unlike in the U.S., they don't have ATM machines near the big tourist attractions. So, we didn't get to go in, we walked to a nearby (we were told it was a 10 min. drive and we walked) ATM but it was at a Japanese bank and was all in Japanese! No one at the bank spoke English so we went to another one that was a little farther away and that one was the same thing! So, we walked back and just checked out the outside stuff. There was lots of cool stuff to see there and we had fun exploring Okinawa while we were looking for the ATM!

Big Day!

Kindergarten! Can you believe my little baby boy is in kindergarten? Yesterday we went to an orientation type thing where he got to see the class and find his little cubby/locker type thing and his place at his table. He had a lot of fun. Then this morning we got up bright and early and got to eat breakfast as a family before Juanpablo left for work and Bella and I walked Sam to school! It was nice to be able to do that. I, of course, couldn't eat anything. It made me sick just to look at the food. I was so sad that my baby was going off to school! I mean don't get me wrong, I'm glad that he's so excited about going and that he really likes his teacher....but I'm gonna miss having him here with me all day! At least it's not really the whole day! He goes to school from 7:25 a.m. til 1:40 p.m. I'm gonna have to rearange Bella's nap schedule though! She usually goes down around 1 and sleeps for like 2 hours! I am looking forward to spending some alone time with Bella. When Sam was her age he had me all to himself and so I'm glad that now Bella will get that too. So far she doesn't know what to think about Sam not being here. When we left the school after dropping him off she kept pointing to the school and saying "go, go" She wanted to stay with him like we had yesterday. She wasn't too happy about us leaving him behind! She's really tired now too, I imagine it won't be too hard to change her nap to earlier, I think she'd nap now if I let her! Well, here are some pictures of Sam at the orientation and then Sam with his backpack on a ready to leave for school this morning.

This is Sam's cubby/locker thing

This is Sam's table, he sits inbetween 2 girls.
This is Sam's teacher. He is sitting on the letter R, that is his place on the carpet.


My big guy! Ready for his first full day of school!

He did great when we dropped him off. He found his cubby/locker and put away his stuff and then went and sat down on the carpet with all the other kids. He didn't even look back at me. I'm so proud of him! Only 6 more hours and then I can go get him! I'll bet he had a great time! I'm proud of me too, I didn't cry, it wasn't easy, but I was holding Bella and so that made it a little easier. At least I've got a couple of years before she goes off to school, but I bet that's gonna pass pretty quickly!