One of the things I like about Sean’s school, is that there is more than just reading and writing. There is growing. Two weeks ago, his school planted potatos in their garden at school. Then this past weekend, the family day was a trip to dig potatos. To be honest, it was a real pain, but I’m sure we’ll do it again next year. We had to drive over to the other side of the island. Fortunately I was able to find more directions than was provided by the school. We arrived 15 minutes before the assembly time, which ended up being an hour before we actually went to dig potatos. There was a go cart and remote control car race track at the parking lot where we were waiting, so that helped entertain the kids.

After some speeches, songs and dances, we drove off to the field (it was close enough that people could have walked/hiked). Into the field and another speech/instructions, during which it began to rain. So everyone ran back to their cars to wait. After about 15 min. it was back to the field. The school had trowels to dig with if you didn’t bring your own, and then it was in to dig.

We collected a bag of potatos, then everyone had to dump their potatoes in a big pile, which the farmer sorted through, removing damaged or buggy potatoes, then you filled up your bag again from the clean pile. We got a mix of potatoes, none of which we know how to cook! Of course, the kids don’t eat potatoes here….
The weather has been rotten since that day. There is a frontal boundary stuck over Okinawa and hardly moving, it’s just streaming rain up and over us.

So last Sunday, to kind of celebrate Jeff’s birthday, since he isn’t here, we went to where? You guessed it, the aquarium. We started off with the nets, which gave some great photo ops

along with some daring races

And a visit to a shisa

Then into the aquarium to the favorite stop

It was a rapid trip through the aquarium since Catie decided she was hungry. I was smart and packed a bento lunch for her which allowed her to eat enough to get a purple icecream cone!

Just after we started lunch it began to rain. We decided to head back into the aquarium and with perfect Japanese manners, they were handing out umbrellas. So we each grabbed one and headed back out the the outdoor venues. We visited the turtles, watched the dolphin show under our umbrellas (I had to separate Sean and Catie since they kept arguing when their umbrellas would bump, and them bump and poke the people sitting next to them). Last but not least we stopped by the manatees. It’s kind of ironic that they have manatees from Mexico here, but don’t have their own endangered species and cousin of the manatee, the dugong on display.

And here are some other pictures- chalk is very fun when mixed with water-

Halloween was busy again this year. We started off with the party at Sean’s school, which seemed like it would never end. They paraded every single child in front of the class for pictures, then played games for each class,

had unbreakable pinantas for each class (notice that it’s down to 2 moms with sticks and they finally resort to tearing them apart…)

It was a tough morning for Catie because they didn’t have activities for her size, so she was in tears because Sean got candy and she didn’t. Several children offered her some of their candy, so that helped for a little while.

Here’s a picture of Sean that afternoon, he wanted me to get a picture of Kitten lying next to him. Notice the peace sign. Many of the Japanese do that for photos.

And finally there was trick or treating Halloween night.

Sean quickly disappeared with some other kids from our building. I saw them down the road and was yelling for Sean, but they all kept going. He showed up an hour later with them. His bag was so full of candy that the handles broke. I took Catie to a few trick or treating stops, then we returned home to pass out candy. Sean and Catie made able assistants and fought over who got to hold the bowl and pass out candy. Catie was better at it, she commented if they didn’t say trick or treat, put the candy in the bag and said ‘ happy halloween’ often with a wave if there wasn’t another person waiting for candy. Sean would put the candy in the bag without saying a word.

In an hour and a half of passing out candy, we went through 27 bags of it. I had had a bad dream earlier in the week of running out of candy when I heard that the base would be open for the full 2 hours for Japanese nationals to trick or treat. When I went to stock up at the commisary here, they were already out. Fortunately another commisary still had a pretty good stock.

Sean's school was invited to participate at a kindergarten festival yesterday. Sean's school was one of three to play in the opening Eisa dances. Sean is up on the stage in the back corner, so the second from the left.

Well, we survived another Sports Day with Sean’s school, just barely. Sean had a great time, his class did an awesome eisa set

Catie got to do a little race, here she is lined up at the starting line, I couldn’t take pictures and yell at her to run though…

Sean was in a relay race

There was a gymnastics routine, that’s the best I can describe it,

he was very excited that he was paired with his friend Evenie and got to lift her legs up onto his shoulders.
And here’s more

And the highlight-that’s Sean balancing up on top

This last performance was Sean’s least favorite, and if you look at that blurred face of the girl down the line, she wasn’t to happy either. It was a series of songs from the Sound of Music. The accompaniment by the snare drums made it sound like a rifle range though.

There was also a huge tug of war for all the parents, and a fun race with the parents and Sean’s class, that a parent and student were paired up in a set of rubber tubes, and had to run under a net, get out of the tubes, go through a ladder (or over) , run to a tray of candy in rice flour, that you had to get a piece out with your teeth, and then run to the finish. Catie ran along behind us, and broke into tears when we couldn’t do it again (she wanted more candy). Unfortunately, the tears didn’t really stop after that, and continued through the final dance that I was supposed to do with Sean. Unfortunately, this alway seems to be the case and I can see that Sean get’s disapointed when Catie interferes with what’s supposed to be individual parent/child time for him. I just never know which functions will have that at the end… But overall, it was a pretty good time, the weather was perfect, not too hot with a nice breeze, and Catie and Sean held up until almost the end.

I know it’s been awhile for a post, and since sports day is tomorrow (ugh) I better post something now. The job was worse this week than the week before, so this will be the deal breaker week, if they can’t agree to make some changes I’ll have to quit. The extra paycheck is nice, but not worth the stress, frustration and anger it’s giving me. So here are some pictures from last week. Friday I let Sean play hookey from school and we went to Aviva’s house so she could show us all the pictures on her big screen tv. The kids had a great time playing there, basically being monkeys climbing all over the furniture and me, and playing in her daughters room. Then we went to dolphin park, which was right in her neighborhood. Sean and Catie loved it….There was a zip line

a roller slide that was just the right size

slides

a pedal power merry go round

and some interesting swings.

After the park, I took the kids to a neighborhood restaurant that had gotten rave reviews. Unfortunately, we got there after a table of four had order two plates of food each, so the food took a very long time to come. Sean begged me to promise that I’d never take him there again. Then it was back to the car, via a stop at the playground for icecream from the vending machine. So at least Aviva’s house and the park were a hit for the day.

That was the comment I got from Catie on Sunday. Sunday we did two special things. Sunday morning we went to the children’s museum inside the zoo. Of course they both had a good time…

They spent so much time in the museum, that they only had time for lunch, no petting zoo, before we had to head home for Catie’s nap.

That afternoon, after Catie’s nap, we headed up to Ishikawa for the annual island wide ShiShi-mae festival. Remember them, I’ve written about them before, how Sean and Catie are scared to death of them. Sean has decided that since they are only people in costumes, they aren’t scary. So after much discussion, Catie agreed that they are people in costumes and you don’t need to be scared of them. Well, I had my timing wrong, and we got there long before the festival started. I guess I was excited that we actually got to go this year. So we walked around the park, and the kids were very excited to find some somewhat friendly stray cats

then we moved along to the stadium where there was a baseball game going on. Sean was interested in the game for a few minutes as I explained what was going on, but Catie just had a grand time singing and dancing in the stands, as you can see…

We got to see the people and costumes as they were waiting for the festival to get underway

There were some really beautiful ShiShimae. The group with this one were amused how Sean and Catie each walked up to carefully touch this one. Then one of the teenage boys put the head on and jumped towards Catie and Sean. Sean was terrified and ran, and Catie shrieked and grabbed on to my leg!
Once the festival started, Sean repeatedly asked to go home because he was scared, but Catie was perfectly fine. She intermittently was dancing, trying to imitate some of the karate demonstrations,

and singing her own songs. Unfortunately, it was a school night, so we only got to stay for a few performances, but it really was a good time, and maybe next year there will be two parents to put children to bed, so we can stay a little later.

Life and the new job is really hectic and somewhat stressful right now, with no training regarding what I’m supposed to be doing. I was told to go back and look at the previous provider’s charts to see what to do. As you can guess, I am really thrilled with that kind of training. Hopefully I can find some better guidance to help with the training issue, and hopefully I will get better at making sure everyone has what they need for the day before we go out the door. Today, Catie was without her pink blankets at daycare, which meant no nap (she was talking to the blanket that Talonda tried to substitute, saying’You’re not pink blanket’ as she was trying to fall asleep) and I forgot Sean’s piano bag with his books for the second week in a row. I know it will get better, it’s just really hectic right now….

Okay, it’s official. I was awarded a contract and I start working next week. It’s funny, because I had been watching for jobs at the hospital for a year, and while there were often ones available, they were always full time. Once I started volunteering at the hospital, I had 2 job offers in one day, it was a matter of the departments knowing there were interested people, and then modifying the contracts for part time work. Of course, the contracting office had no incentive when I was calling previously asking about positions. They could probably fill more positions if the contracting office was more helpful.
I usually like to include a few pictures, but today I’m going to send you to someone elses blog to look at pictures. I think they came out pretty good. It seems that I am having problems putting a link in so you’ll have to copy and paste into your browser- http://aviva-photography.com/blog/ (actually click on the red words and you’ll get there!)

Here’s a sneek peek…

Cameras just love Catie, and she loves them. If you look closely at Sean’s forehead, you can see where his head met the headboard 2 days before this photo. It left a lump the size of an ostrich egg.

We had a really fun day today. It was a Japanese holiday, so Sean was off from school. We went to a beach that is new to us this morning to work on a project to send to Jeff. We’ll have pictures later this week or next, stay tuned. There was a playground there with a pretty fast cement slide that Sean fell in love with,

and a great beach to play on.
I love this picture

And best of all, we got to paddle our new kayak!!!! Yeah!! At low tide, it was all coral and tide pools, but we played there long enough that the tide was coming in, so we changed into swim suits, and set up the kayak and off we paddled. It was fairly breezy, but not to bad for paddling, we stayed in a small area that was protected by a reef, so there wasn’t any real surf to deal with, and there were quite a few surfers out beyond the reef. I don’t have any pictures of the kayak - water, children and cameras don’t mix to well but this is where we got it from- http://www.pakboats.com/kayak-models.htm we got the double down at the bottom of the page. Sean and Catie shared the front seat and I paddled from the back. Sean said that was the best part of the day. Here he is carrying the paddle back to the car for me, that orange hat is telling everyone to watch out!

Doesn’t that beach look great? You can see the waves in the distance breaking on the reef.