Easter 2013

Happy Easter!  This post contains all of our various Easter activities.  Here the kids are at the Exchange getting their picture taken with the Easter bunny.  Reagan has had her picture taken with the bunny in Williamsburg for several years and likes the bunny there (My sister-in-law is plays the part of the bunny), but for whatever reason she had no desire to meet this bunny.  It could be her age, or the fact that she thought this one was "creepy" in her words...who knows.  The good parents we are made her do it anyway, because we needed someone to hold Brock :).

Brock wasn't scared, but pulled the same trick he did with Santa, and just wouldn't look at Dad for a picture.

One of our neighbors goes all out for Easter and invited the kids over for an egg hunt on Saturday.  They invited a few other families, and there were probably 15 kids participating.  Before it got started, the neighbor mentioned that there were over 1000 eggs, plus Golden eggs which had special prizes.  It was nuts, Reagan had to come back and dump her basket at our feet so that she could keep filling, as did all the kids.  Such a fun morning and it was nice that the weather cooperated. 

 Here's Brock checking out the eggs.  He wasn't impressed at all with the grass.  Notice below his extra long stretch to reach the egg.   He certainly wasn't going to crawl on the grass to get it. 

Saturday afternoon the base was hosting an Egg hunt at the ball diamonds.  They were advertising 50,000 eggs and had 4 different times for each age group.  The picture below is taken through the ball fence.  You can't see Reagan, but she's out there somewhere.  She cleaned up with 19 eggs and had a good time. 

 Brock, not getting what all the fuss with Easter egg hunting is all about :).

They also had Japanese dancers and other performances going on.  This little guy was so cute to watch.  

A shisha dog performer. 

Reagan decorating our easter eggs. 

Easter morning's egg hunt was indoors since it was raining hard outside.   Here's Brock on the move. 

The kids with their Easter goodies.  Keep in mind this is from the bunny, 2 sets of Grandparents and an aunt and uncle.  The bunny is not that generous!

I love this action shot of Reagan.  You can see her hair flap as she flounced down to grab an egg.

Reagan cracking her eggs to see what's inside.

Okinawa Zoo

A few weeks ago, my friend Allison introduced Brock and I to the Okinawa zoo.  I've been dying to take Brandon and Reagan back, because it was so different from any other zoo we've visited that I knew they would be excited.  I should mention that the zoo enclosures are not very big or nice and that is the main difference between zoos here vs. the states.  Also, you can get so much closer to the animals here.

Brock and I during our visit with Allison and Natalie

Reagan at the Zoo entrance

Here's a good example of how close you can get.  Have you ever been so close to a Hippo?  PS - they don't smell great.  

This was one of coolest things we did today.  You could feed the elephants for 200 yen (about $2).   Reagan got in line and was given a few branches to feed to the elephant.  Afterwards, the nice zoo worker took our photo.  

Brandon isn't choking Brock, I promise.  

Japanese people tend to have a different idea of personal space than we are used to.  It's nothing for many, many people to cram into elevators.  This is Brock checking out the other people hovering over the stroller.  There were 11 people and 2 strollers on this ride.

Here's Reagan with the lioness.  She was asleep the first time we went by, but we started to hear her growling so we went back for another look.  Luckily we didn't encounter anything like the below sign.  I love Japanese signs!

Toward the end of the zoo, there was a really nice petting zoo area.  Reagan was in heaven.  (funny side story - yesterday she bought a small plant with her own money so that she could have her own pet to take care of.)  Getting to hold the animals just made her day. 

Here she is with the chicks.  You'll love the sign that explains how not to handle the chicks below.

This is where the fun really started.  Look at this adorable, bundle of fur and dander....can you guess where I'm going with this??  That's right, Reagan had a huge allergic reaction to this little guy.  

Reagan with the turtles

 This is the after shot.  At this point, her eyes were just watery and she was sneezing like a crazy person.  She went through a whole pack of tissues in about 5 minutes.  By the time we got home, her eyes were swollen up and watering.  We loaded her up with benadryl and eye drops and after a long nap, she is looking human again.  She still has 2 dark rings under her eyes and I'm sure I'm going to get an email from the teacher tomorrow wondering "what happened to reagan?"

So, now we can add guinea pigs and cats to the list of things to keep Reagan away from.

Trina's visit

My friend Trina just came to visit  a couple of weeks ago.  It was so nice to see her and although her trip was quick, we had such a good time.  I so appreciate the huge effort it took for her to get over here.

Trina and I love to shop.  I enjoyed showing her all the strange Japanese items.  We found these in the Costume section of the 100 Yen store (similar to the Dollar store in the states).    I don't want to ruin the fun, you'll have to look closely and figure them out for yourselves.  

Getting your nails done here is a work of art.  They do such elaborate paintings that it's almost a shame they are on your feet.   Here we are at the popular spot Cocok's (pronounced CoCo's).  Notice the view of the East China Sea out the window.  

Here are the finished products.

Brock took to Trina right away.  He really loved reading with her.  

Below is a sign that we came upon at the Sea Wall.  They were doing some construction and we thought that the sign seemed so polite, if not a little odd.

Trina and I went down to Kokusai Street on Friday.  Brandon took the day off so that he could watch Brock and we could have the entire day to ourselves.  We ended up eating at a place called Bamboche. The place was crowded and we had some confusion about where to sit.  We got all set up in this booth when we were informed that we couldn't sit here, as it was reserved.  However, once the lady that had the booth reserved found out we were tourists, she gladly let us sit there.  The strange thing was, we couldn't understand her at first and think that she was asking us if we were military or tourist.  Neither of us understood her when she said military, so we agreed with tourist.  I wonder if she would have let us sit there if we'd have said military....oh well.  We enjoyed out lunch and were on our way.

On the grill we had carrots, bacon and some other cut of pork.  We also had salads, tempura vegetables, french fries and soup.  

 This was a hidden street we stumbled on while shopping Kokusai street.  

We headed up to the Aquarium on Saturday.  The drive up to the aquarium is pretty scenic and we wanted to show her some of the prettier parts of the island.