An Okinawan Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!  We have plenty to be thankful for this year.  Our health, our friends and families, two precious babies on the way, and the opportunity we have been blessed with.

I cannot even believe we have been in Okinawa for a month already!  It has flown by, which I hope is not indicative of our whole tour here.  Needless to say, we are enjoying everything and I don't want it to be over too quickly.  What a wonderful, eye-opening experience it has been thus far.  Just tonight, I took Rosie out to potty and there were over a dozen fruit bats swirling overhead.  Normally I would have freaked out and worried that Rosie was about to be dinner - because they're as big as she is - but I read up and know that, as their name attests, they pretty much eat fruit.  They aren't aggressive.  Except maybe toward one another because I hear some pretty pissed-off sounding screeches sometimes.  Usually it's when one tries to land in a tree, because apparently they aren't good at landing and just "crash" into the tree, disturbing the others.  I think it's one of those moments when God got a little distracted.  Really, would he intend to make an animal  that could fly but not land?  Sort of like when he got distracted and forgot to give me a good singing voice...

Just in time for our one-month anniversary of living here, today was Thanksgiving.  So we celebrated, of course, with turkey and all the trimmings.  I cooked the meal and my trophy-husband cleaned the whole kitchen while I napped after stuffing myself so full that the babies couldn't even move.  Here's me having some turkey on our back patio:

Yep, I'm in a tank top and shorts :)  And those are chopsticks.  Don't be silly, of course it was just for the picture.  How could I eat sweet potato casserole wth chopsticks!?  Maybe that's why Japanese are thin...Anyway, it was a beautiful day and we spent nearly all of it outside, watching Adam jump in his bouncer (Thanks, Griffins!!).

On another note:  Last weekend we took a short drive up to Cape Zanpa to check out the lighthouse and beach.  The cape is amazing, with breathtaking views, but dangerous-looking rocky cliffs and crashing waves.  In case you aren't smart enough to take your cues from the thunderous waves, they warn you:

 

You can climb the umpteen-hundred stairs to the top of the lighthouse for 200 yen, but we opted not to on this visit.  I'm sure it's an amazing opportunity for non-pregnant-with-twins women and not-three-years-old boys.  Here are a couple of Adam & Rex (the dinosaur from Toy Story) in front of the lighthouse and then all of us:

On the way to the parking lot, we saw this sign:

Adam thought it was obviously a sign for a car wash.  Alan figured it was probably a sign warning us of robbers and not to leave valuables in the car.  He's probably right, but then why does the car have water droplets coming off of it?  Well, he says the car is "sweating" because it knows the robber is nearby.  If that's really what it means, then these are some funny people.  We really need to learn kanji.

We also took a picnic lunch and found a nice little beach to enjoy it on: 

Seriously, it was our own private beach.  I mean, there was the random snorkeler, but really nobody was there.  Some locals would come, fully-clothed in fall/winter garb (even though it was 80 degrees) and wander for a few minutes, then leave.  We aren't sure why, but they could have been frightened:

*26 weeks*

Whether we offended the locals or not, we collected shells and stuck our toes in the East China Sea and had a great day.  This is our happy little boy at the sight of yet another piece of brown sea glass or regular-looking rock: 

Memories were made, no doubt.  But I would like to leave you with one that I will likely never forget.  As we were leaving, I had to pee (of course) so I stopped at the bathrooms.  Here's what I had to use:

 

With an extra 30 pounds, mostly right on my belly, the goal is to squat and pee into this.  Imagine that, would ya'?