Tis Blossom Season

 I went up to Nago to Mt Yaesake with some friends to admire the blossoms.  They were blooming and quite lovely!

So pretty!  And worth the hour drive.  I got roped into driving because I was the only one with a vehicle large enough to hold 5, and enough gas to get us there. 

 See all the trees?!  Sigh.  I love it!

 We intended to approach the mountain from this road, but did not.  The GPS sent us up a tiny one lane road that got narrower and more overgrown as we went.  There were weeds and trees scraping both sides of the van when the road abruptly ended, and I had to back out a quarter mile before I could turn around.  So, it was quite an adventure to appreciate this!

But oh... my heart! I do love the blossoms. 

 Most of the ladies I was out with. I do love them too.

They are such a vibrant color.  This breed of cherry tree is much more like the ume.  But gorgeous, none the less. 

More pretty street. 

 Me and the pretty trees.  I may have taken a ton of photos, so be grateful I did not post them all!

My friend Amy, who is working on her photography skills, and Anna, who is an amazing photographer already.

She took this photo of me. 

After admiring the trees, we went to lunch at this shabu-shabu place in the mountains.  It was impressive, and impressively priced.

Maybe we were paying for the ambiance.  Look how pretty the place was. 

And this was just the outside!

I opted for this tasty soba set.  The fried rice was excellent, and the beef in the soba was fabulous. The rest.... meh. But it was still a great day with some great ladies.

Odds and Ends

Rylee's hair is getting longer.  The bottom layer is coarse and curly and prone to bad snarls.  I tried french braiding it before bed and this was the result.  It was fairly effective.  And you can see that koolaid does NOT come out!  We have tried everything, but apparent;y we will have to cut it to remove it. 

We had an event I needed to make a dessert for and the dessert needed to be flour free.  I found this Flourless Chocolate cake and we tried it out ourselves first.   

It was a wee bit runny.  The children declared it delicious and with ice cream they raved about it.  I did make it again, and used a 9" pan rather tan the 8" the recipe suggested.  I also cooked it an extra 5 minutes, and it was perfect. I know because I made 2- one for us and one for eat event and I sampled both!

I am horribly offended that this is the weather for January! 

After having so much fun scrapping kimono blankets, I tried it with a bunch of the Japanese fabric scraps we have.  I maybe should have started smaller. But it came out ate and Delaney immediately claimed it. 

 A glorious sunrise as I walked Delaney to the bus stop at 6:30 in the morning.

My friend introduced me to Family Mart's soft serve ice cream and it is the most delicious thing ever!  I have stopped to get it more times than I care to divulge. 

Temple Trip!

We organized a Ladies Trip to the Temple for Jan 25.  We met at 7:30am in the parking lot on base and carpooled to the airport. I have a giant van, so I took 7 people in it and we parked at the airport.  We caught the 9:50 flight to Fukuoka and had lunch at the airport.  Then we navigated to the Temple via subway and taxi. We barely made it to the 2pm session, which was the last session of the day.  Then we did the reverse back to the airport, and took the 8pm flight home.  I did remember to note where I parked, so we did not wast time looking for the van like last time!  It was a good day.

On the plane, leaving Okinawa!

 Lunch at the airport.  I had a delicious burger. I was not feeling adventurous.

 The temple!

  Ooooh, and a picture of me at the Temple!

We enticed someone to take our picture in front of the temple.  However, redid not get any of the temple into the photo! But here is our group.  We had 9 ladies there!

Group shot in the metro area. 

 Us on the metro.  I think I was texting Dan here, and was not prepared for a picture.  Oops.

Running with Marian

 Marian kept talking about a running route that Cross Country use to do, and eventually we found a morning to give it try.  Well, the first time we tried, we took the wrong road.  It ended up being a lovely run.  This.... this, however, was NOT lovely.  It was a lot of icky uphill.  Thus, there was a bit of walking.  Marian confessed that she had never made the full 3+ mile uphill run without walking, so I felt better.

We did run along this road with the pretty view.  But it was hilly. 

This was the last 1/2 mile of the run.  Can you see our destination there?   The only problem with the last steep 1/2 mile down, is that it meant a steep 1/2 mile UP after we turn around! 

 We ran to this temple/shrine and then turned around. It made about a 7 mile loop. It was.... not fun.  It was also hot.  Like 70 degrees, so that was even more NOT fun.

But here I am, in all my red-faced, miserable, sweaty glory, proving I did it.

Callie's Drama Cast Photos

 Callie is on the Far East Drama Team.  The play they will be presenting is called Women at War. (Or is it Women and War?) The Drama teacher wanted to do the cast photo by the Quonset hut and the planes, to make it nice and official looking.

Here Delaney and Rylee are ignoring the sign that says Do Not approach the Plane.

Callie in her "Donut Girl" outfit as they try to place everyone.  lee is standing in for the girl that was late. This was the photo in front of the Quonset Hut. 

And the photo in front of the plane.  Not the final product, just the one I took... and it was raining, so I did not care if it was perfect!

 Rylee got bored and hid under the little tree.

Ryukyu Glass Village

My friend Anna puts together an excursion and aims for one weekly.  I have only been on a few, but with the realization that we are down to a few months before we move, I realized I better go do more stuff.  Her adventure that week was to go to the Ryukyu Glass Village.  I was unfamiliar with it, but it sounded cool.  And hanging out with friends is always awesome.   Anna did mention that her main motivation was to go see the gorgeous stained glass windows.

The windows were rather glorious.

And someone with a cooler camera than I took this photo.  Its so pretty!!

The "Glass Village" was really just a large shop and glass blowing workshop.  So you were lured in to buy things before you could do much else.  Thank goodness the prices were all well out of reach for me!  They did have some lovely things.  The ladies wanted to do the glass blowing experience, but I did not want or need either of the items you could make, so I opted out.  But it was fun to watch them!

For the glass blowing experience, they guy brought out the molten glass. 

He locked it into the mold on the floor, and you got to blow it out to expand it to the mold.

Then he let you hold and spin the pole until your friends got a good photo.  Then he took it away.  You got to sit down with gloves and do something to make the top of the glass smooth and then you were done.  They thought it was great.

This s the workshop.

Since I didn't do anything cool, I figured I may need a selfie with the shop!

I saw my friend my put her phone on the floor to get a selfie with the beautiful ceiling, so I had to do that too!

And then I discovered what happens when you go on an adventure with a professional photographer on a trip that does not involve water.  She makes everyone pose and she takes photos.

She did promise me that no matter how odd it felt to have to put my chin forward and down, that it would look great!

She did a good job.  I need more trips with her to get more great photos!!

Then she asked me to help her try doing some double exposures.  I had no clue what she wanted to do, but I was happy to stand there and let someone else throw my hair into the wind.

Those came out pretty cool too!