Halloween!

Well, it was a fun halloween! The kids had a blast. We went around the base and trick or treated. Bella walked for a good amount of time but then she got tired and was just done with trick or treating. She wouldn't go to any more houses. So then she got to ride on Daddy's shoulders or in his arms. Then she was happy and let Sam keep going. Arabella was Tinkerbell, that's probably not a surpise to anyone who has seen her room...there's Tink and her fairy friends all over Bella's room! Samuel has a ton of costumes and couldn't decide who he wanted to be. We just figured that he would pick one of the many costumes that he already had. Then about 4 days ago he decided that he just had to be Ben 10! So, we had to figure out something because we didn't have time for anything to be mailed here. So, I got a white shirt and sewed the black on the front and then used a fabric pen to do the neck and arms, I just didn't have time to do everything. Then we had to find some green pants, luckily we found some at the base thrift store that were perfect! Except that they were size 8, so we just stuck a belt on him and they actually weren't that long with the shoes on and so it worked out. I was surprised that so many of the kids that we passed by knew that Sam was Ben 10. I didn't realize how popular it was. One girl even knew that Sam was Ben 10 from behind! They had so much fun and now Sam is handing out candy when trick or treaters come to the door and he is having just as much fun, if not more, giving the candy away then he did getting his own! He is so cute! Here are some pictures.

Our Pretty little Tinkerbell!

Ben 10 becoming one of the monsters he changes into.

Tinkerbell Trick or Treating

Ben 10 getting ready to change. (that's what Sam told me was happening when I took the picture)

My husband is awesome!

He has the most amazing ideas! He's just so creative. We all get so excited when family home evening comes around and dad is in charge of the games! We know that it won't be some board game or hide and go seek, not that there's anything wrong with those, that's what I think of. No, daddy figures out some crazy fun thing that we have to do and he puts so much work into it! Since we've come to Japan we have been trying to be better about having Family Home Evening every week. We have been doing pretty good, I don't think we've missed a week! We have it split into four sections, lesson, games, snack and conducting, since there are four of us. So, Juanpablo has only had games twice. I'm gonna post pictures of those 2 times so you can see. One day a couple of months ago I asked Sam what he would want to do if he could do anything in the world, he could win all the toys he's ever wanted, go to space on a rocket ship, anything. Without even pausing for a minute he said that he would want to be on American Gladiators! I was a bit surprised by that, since he could have anything in the world. But that's just Sam. Well, the first time that Juanpablo had games for family home evening he, all by himself because he wouldn't even tell me what he was doing, set up American Gladiators in our apartment! We have a door that shuts off the living room from the bedrooms so he shut the door and wouldn't let any of us in while he set up. This is what we did....

Sam got to do most of what they do on the show, at least a home version of what they do on the show and some stuff that they don't. He started out having to go through a maze under the table then had to run as fast as he could through a tunnel. He had to throw balls into the laundry basket while avoiding being hit by balls that the gladiator(dad) was throwing at him.

He had to force his way through 2 big gladiators to get to his next challenge.

He had to do the joust with a gladiator (that would be me) and then battle the 2 gladiators again and finally break through the final barrier, like they do on the show, but not into a pool!
Even Bella got to do it, though she was a more careful about it than Sam!

We had so much fun! And when it was done Sam was so excited he wanted to do it again. After doing some of it again he told me, "Daddy made my dream come true!" It was so cool!

Then this past week he had games again. Again he didn't let me in on the secret of what he had planned. Some of Sams toys (batman, spiderman and superman) were kidnapped!

And we had to follow the clues to find them. It was fun.

Juanpablo made up all the clues and hid them all over the house.

Sam would get more and more excited every time that he found a new clue.

We had to get some help from daddy on some of the clues because we couldn't figure them out, but we had so much fun! And of course we rescued the superheros!

Bella had fun running around with us and trying to help. It was so cute!

It was just a really creative and fun game. I can't wait to see what he will come up with the next time he has games! I'm sure it will be amazing!

Kids are funny...

We were at the 100 yen store (it's the Japanese version of the dollar store, but it's way better than any dollar store in the states!) on Sat. and we found these masks. Sam loves to play superhero so he just had to have one. There were 4 types in different colors. Sam, of course, chose green, his favorite color. A little while later Sam and Juanpablo found me and they had gotten the other 3 colors of masks too. They decided it would be fun for each of us to have a mask. Sam said I should have blue since it's my favorite color and so that left Juanpablo with red or yellow, he chose red so Bella got yellow. When we got home we took this picture.

It's kinda funny that it's got numbers on the top, so we decided to get in numerical order for the picture. Surprisingly Bella kept the mask on and let us take the picture.

Then today we were sitting around and Sam was telling me that it was time for him to take a rest, he has to do that everyday at kindergarten and I guess he just felt it was necessary today. He got some paper and wrote stop stop rest and showed me then he wrote M D A (for mommy, daddy and Arabella) He said that those were the people who shouldn't bother him while he was resting because and I quote "you don't wanna get any of this"...he then proceded to show me some of his Karate moves. He's never taken a karate lesson so it was just a bunch of kicks and stuff, but oh my goodness! He made me laugh so hard! He looked at me like I was crazy or something because he didn't see anything funny about what he had said or did. He is just such a cool kid! I don't know where he comes up with some of the stuff that he does, but you can't be upset or sad around him. It's a great quality that he has! Sometimes I just stand it awe listening to him. If you haven't heard one of his stories then you're really missing out! I'll have to have him tell me a story to post on here. Then you'll see what I mean. He's awesome! Can you tell I love this little guy? But then again how could you not love this face?!

Pumpkins....

Today Sam was instructed to wear an orange shirt, if he had one, by his teacher. He got to be a pumpkin! The whole class was so cute! They were all pumpkins and Bella and I got there a little early to pick up Sam and so we got to see the kids come out all holding onto a brown "vine" and they were singing "we're pumpkins on a vine, we're pumpkins on a vine." It was so cute! I'm happy that we got there early and got to see it. Isn't kindergarten great! I just wish that I had my camera! Sam had to take everything off before we left because it's raining here...again. But when we got home we put it back on him and took some pictures.

Isn't he so cute!

And of course then Arabella wanted to be a pumpkin too!

Aren't they just the cutest pumpkins you've ever seen!

Tagged by Andrea....

O.K. So my cousin tagged me! Now what you have to do is go to your fourth photo file and find your fourth photo. And post it! So here is the photo....

Bella at the Flight Line Festival that we went to shortly after arriving here in Japan. It was a fun day and Bella didn't want to get out of the cockpit! She was sitting in a helicopter, one that looks exactly like Blackout from the Transformers movie (according to Juanpablo, the helicopters all look pretty much the same to me!). This picture has already been posted on this blog, it was one of the first ones, but it's the fourth photo from the fourth photo file, so here it is! I'm glad it wasn't some embarrassing picture of me with my hair all a mess or something horrible like that!

I tag Tom, Rachelle and Stephanie!! Sorry guys, you are the only ones I know that have blogs that haven't already been tagged!

Finally....

I finally did it! I watched the Dark Crystal last night. Not alone of course! My wonderful husband was nice enough to watch it with me. I'm happy to say that I had no nightmares and that the movie no longer scares me! Yeah! Although I do completely understand why I was so terrified of it when I was little! The part where the Chamberlain is attacked by all the other bad guys and stripped and kicked out, that part was really disturbing. And the "lady" Aughra, the keeper of secrets that helps Jen, she still freaks me out! She is scary! And she's a good guy! It's crazy! But, at least no nightmares and I even slept with the lights off! Juanpablo didn't laugh at me. He thought that the movie was very dark. I'm glad to be done with that fear! I can't believe that I was afraid of that movie for like 20+ years! I don't remember how old I was when I saw it so I don't know exactly how long it's been. But I fear it no more! Yeah!

So, another Finally....the new trailer for the Twilight movie came out... I'm afraid that I'm going to be really disappointed with the movie. I really like the book and so I kinda wish that I'd seen the movie first instead of reading the book first. Then I could like the movie without comparing it to the book. From the new trailer it looks like they changed some important things from the way it was in the book. I understand that they can't do it exactly to the book. Can you imagine! One of my favorite movies is the BBC version from 1995 of Pride and Prejudice. It is the version of that movie that stuck to the book, mostly. It is 5 hours long! And that book is like 1/4 the length of Twilight! So, I'm trying to be positive and not look at the movie and base it on the book. I'm trying to think of it as a movie that looks good that I want to see and not the book that I want to see on film. Does that make sense? I don't know....I'm trying to keep an open mind! Still not loving that guy they have playing Edward, but I'm trying to like him more in the role. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I'll have to not compare him to the Edward in my head! Remember, we get the movie here about a week after you lucky people in the states! So, don't tell me anything about it!

Shuri Castle...again....

This time we made sure to bring plenty of yen! It was so much better when we got to see it all! It is just amazing! It's one of the most beautiful places that we've gone to here in Okinawa. We spent almost 3 hours exploring the castle and the surrounding area that is part of the park. We did a lot of walking yesterday! Even Bella walked most of the time. The park is pretty large and if you go to all the places then it takes about an hour and a half. We got these books when we first arrived and then as we went around exploring there are stamping stations and we had to locate the places on the map and put the stamp. Sam really got into it. He said that we were looking for clues (the stamping stations) and he got so excited whenever we found one! We also got to see some traditional Okinawan dances. They have the dancing 3 times a day and we were lucky enough to be there during one of the times. It was amazing! They move so slowly! There was one lady that really looked like a doll! She didn't even look like it was a person up there on the stage, it looked like a doll up there. Her dance was one of the slowest, so maybe that helped to make her seem more like a doll. It was really beautiful!
Arabella had a lot of fun, everyone kept smiling and calling her cute. (Juanpablo had learned how to say cute in Japanese so we knew what people were saying) Bella even got some free stuff just for being so cute! We were at a shop they have outside of the castle park and Bella was walking around and looking at the hats they had with flowers on them. They lady that owned the shop kept smiling and calling Bella cute and then she gave Bella a flower and put it in her hair. And amazingly Bella kept it in her hair! Then she gave Bella some cookies too. Bella was loving it! It was really cute.

Sam, Bella, Juanpablo and I had a really good time! Sam and Bella both fell asleep shortly after we got back to the car. They had walked alot and it was a hot and humid day. I don't think there's been a single day that wasn't hot and humid since we got here! It was a very good, fun day!