A Harry Potter Party

 One of our friends put on an amazing Harry Potter birthday party for her daughters.  It was impressive!Callie, Delaney and Rylee went and had a marvelous time.

Callie went dressed up as a Dementor.

Delaney went as a regular Hogwarts Student. 

 Rylee was just Rylee.

Delaney is posing with her wand. 

Rylee is being sorted by the Sorting Hat.

Sasebo..... again

 So, as I said, we were on a girls trip.  After the Giant Buddha, we went on to the Temple.  We did a session, and then still had 2 hours of driving to get to Sasebo.  We got in late and slept in late.

Saturday we did the 99 Island boat tour and had a good time.

April is posing on the ship.  They have the jacket and cap you can use for dressing up.

It was incredibly hard to get a picture, but there were jellyfish everywhere!  It was crazy.  Cool though.

It was so pretty! 

And there may have been some shenanigans before we headed home.

Big Buddha!

 I went on a Girl's Road Trip.  Initially Dan and I planned to go to Sasebo to see Josh in his Cross Country meet.  Sadly, Joshua injured his heel and couldn't run.  Rather than cancel our van and hotel reservations, I invited two of my friends and we went on a road trip.

We left on Friday afternoon and drove to Fukuoka.  We went to see the giant Buddha. I think they said it is the largest statue of a laying down Buddha in the world.  I believe it!  It was HUGE!  There was a lot of other awesome stuff to see and meander through, and it was a really pretty area.

I know, it doesn't look THAT big. 

Well, it is. 

Better perspective?

It was really cool.  And I took a ton of pictures of the other nifty stuff around:

Back to School

School finally started!  Hooray!

The morning light was not good for photos. Joshua humored me when I asked him to walk into the shade.  That wasn't great for photos either.

They are SOOOO excited to get back to school!  .....not. 

I sure do love these guys.

Last bang for the summer

 The last Saturday before school started, the base had it's annual Music Festival.  Marian went out to attend with her friends and we meandered over much later in search of free food.  I saw Marian very briefly.

She was all dusty! And holding a lion ball.

She said there may have been a dirt war with some other kids. Apparently fun was had.

And we watched a lovely sunset before heading home.