It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

My giant kid. Can you believe another year has passed? First day of SECOND grade. The history from left to right:

Feelin' happy in her new sneakers.
"Mom, WHY are you coming to the bus stop with me?"
With a couple of her bus mates. Watching them all grow has been crazy.
Ok, mom.... I'm outta here. Enough with the camera.
I can't wait to hear about it. But I'll probably just get, "It was good!" Until I pry.

Last night.

Last night I had sushi & other goodness at a fantastic restaurant with my friend Kelly and my new friend Mary. I was so very happy to eat a delicious dinner with friends, and to meet Mary because I LOVE reading her blog. She makes amazing videos too. She said, "I get a little sad when I see your stiletto heels on your blog and you haven't posted anything new." Trust me - I know that as each day passes there are a few (not many, but a FEW) folks who are very disappointed that I'm not blogging.

That's lame of me. Mia returns to school on Monday. I'd like to make it a part of my day - even if it's just to put up a photo or a quick sentence - to blog again. Because I like it. And a few of YOU like it. And I miss it!

Anyway - I did NOT have my camera with me at said fabulous restaurant (a sushi place in Hamby) but I will definitely go back there again.... but I do have a few summer photos, more specifically of the fishies we've been watching because it's so unbearably hot outside we really must be in the water at all times.

Have a great weekend! More on BACK TO SCHOOL for the next post!

Macau Engrish

My favorite sign on my Hong Kong/Macau journey was at Fernando's in Macau. After quite a bit of wine and sangria, I headed to the bathroom. I went back for my camera to take this photo of the sign on the back of the door.


Apparently incoherent people are common in the bathroom in Macau. Makes sense.

And a quick shot that I've posted on Facebook already of Mia in the pouring rain with the sunset behind her. Typical Okinawa summer. The sunsets are killer once again - but a little more rain would make them even better!

I'm Back. I Think.

HI THERE. Is anyone still here? Anyone? Bueller? (crickets chirping....)

I am. Still here that is. And Craig misses my blogging. So for him, I'm going to make a valiant effort to do more personal blogging this summer. (And hopefully for one or two of YOU, readers.)

First up - a video of something pretty dern cool. From the children's museum next to the Okinawa Zoo. VIDEO.....



And for Mia & Staci (Mia's BEST friend in 1st grade, who just moved back to the states) it was a last day to hang out together. It was super fun for me too, Tiffany!

The girls playing in the costume room...



little chair

BIG CHAIR

giant donut & tea next to giant chairall the kids in the giant chair
learning about air pressure
Mia & Staci's last great hug :(


and all the kids on the koala bears at the zoo entrance.

Amazing father's day shots soon - we took a road trip. It's hot. Super hot. But we're hoping to hit Hawaii this summer via Space A. Cross your fingers! We're dying to go. I've missed this! Back soon....

Mia Quote

(I know, it's been forever. I'll post some Thailand photos soon. But this one had to be blogged.)

Mia: Today at school was fun. We had a substitute teacher.
Mom: Oh yeah? How'd that go?
Mia: He was cool. His name was kinda funny.
Mom: What was it?
Mia: Mr. Hyman! (grins & giggles) Isn't that FUNNY?
Mom: What's funny about that name? (Stifling a laugh and slightly amazed.)
Mia: Mr. Hyman. Like, "HI, Man!" Haha! Isn't that funny?
Mom: Yes. Very funny. You have no idea how funny.

Mia at the Yomitan Starbucks

Photos taken by Craig, edited and compiled by Aviva. Funny faces provided by Mia. (Who also has a very loose top tooth as you might notice due to the much larger gap in her mouth.)

More Mia Goodness...

About 10 days ago, Mia missed the bus. First time ever. I was convinced it must have left early because I send her outside in plenty of time to get there - the bus leaves at 8:15. She came back in the door at 8:17 and said she had missed the bus. WHAT? That bus must have left early.

"Did you even SEE the bus?" I asked as I pulled on pants and shoes to drive her to school.
"No, it was gone."
"Were there grown-ups still standing at the bus stop? Did they tell you the bus left?"
"Yeah, Pierce's mom told me it was gone."

I was still confused because she was back so soon after the bus should've left - so I guessed it had left early and drove her to school.

This morning Craig was getting ready and Mia was about to eat cereal, and Craig said, "Oh - did Mia tell you why she missed the bus that day??"

You can imagine the expression on my face.

"Yeah - there were some Japanese tourists out there that wanted to take her picture. They asked her and she said, "Hai!" and was busy being a little paparazzi hound for the tourists. That's why." He turns to Mia, "Sorry I dimed ya out, kid."

She looked at me and grinned sheepishly and let a little laugh out.. like, it's all good, right? Bygones....

I admit, it was hard not to laugh. But next time, she's gonna walk to school on her own. Gotta love living in a hotel!

Heard This Past Weekend

Craig: Mia, why are you such a slow eater?
Mia: Daddy... I'm not a slow eater, you just need to be more patient.

Mia Playing Piano

I'm quite sure we'll do better, but here is a preliminary short video from the 5D Mark II of Mia playing piano. (Which frankly is just as impressive.)

I miss my blog. I will return...

This blog gets neglected...

when things get busy. Sorry.

I have photos of a pottery village trip, the incredible Naha tug-of-war, and some amazing dive shots from my trip to the keramas. But right now, I'm working on the stuff I get paid to do - and my paying clients would be less than thrilled if I didn't have their stuff done on time so that I could be posting my personal stuff.

It's coming! Promise! While you wait... 2 stories.

I just had to call the housing agency to have a maintenance person come out. He came today to fix a broken drawer and look at a couple of things. When he was finished, he commented on our piano. I asked, "Do you play?"
"Skoshi..." (a little).
"Please, sit!" I turned on our digital piano - which, I might add, even this guy agreed was pretty good for a digital jobber.

He just played me the most gorgeous song, almost without error. Wow! Now that's not something that would ONLY happen in Okinawa - but it's rather unusual to have a housing maintenance guy sit and play an intricate Japanese song for you on your piano.

The second story - Mia of course. She is miss INDEPENDENT now, and walks to the bus on her own in the morning and then home again in the afternoon. It's about 1 1/2 blocks up the road, and it's really not a big deal - but last week it was raining one day and I went to grab her. She got off the bus with a scowl, and said, "Why are you HERE?" Uh - because I figured I'd bring a raincoat for ya so you wouldn't get soaked. You're welcome! Jeez.

So a couple of nights later, Craig remembered what happened and said, "Mia - why don't you want Mommy to come to the bus stop to pick you up sometimes? You used to love that."

She thought for a minute and said, "Well - because I can do it myself. And I can do stuff I can't do with you when you walk with me."

"Like what?"

"Well.... " long pause, "Like petting the doggies and kitties on the way home." (Dogs, whatever, but the ferile cats out there?! Yikes. But hey, she was honest, right? We got a good laugh out of it.) Thankfully the cats mostly run off before she can reach them anyway.

Ok, I had enough time to edit photos from the dive trip.

And I wanted to share this story on Athena's blog. She's a photographer in Hawaii (a very talented one and you should call her if you're there because she rocks) and she helped us do something very special for a very special friend. I can't wait to hear Edith's take. Thanks, Athena!!

Have a great day - PHOTOS SOON - I'm not going to promise, because I have FOUR shoots to edit for work and my personal stuff comes last - but you know, soon. And I just planned a 3-day trip with a girlfriend to KYOTO in November for changing leaves. I can't WAIT!

First Day Of First Grade

Well, today was the first day of first grade for Mia. She handled it with the independence and general sassiness we expect from her. No, she did NOT need me to drive her to school on the first day because she will take the bus - and she PROMISES to tell me ALL about it, so don't worry. Ok then.

A quick flashback to one year ago. On the left, first day of kindergarten. On the right, well - darned near adulthood.

A much larger and more weighed-down backpack, that's for sure - REAL school supplies. We read and write now. And no more of that extra underwear business (though I still feel I must TELL her to pee when she's dancing).

I picked her up from the bus stop and was eager to hear about her day. She was sitting next to a very nice new girl on the bus (new to Okinawa, anyway) and they seemed to have had a lovely ride home. The bus was quite late, but I would imagine most kids had no clue which bus they belonged on at the end of their first day.

We walked home and I grilled her, and she gave up some good info; she had a Japanese class, and will be having that class once a week. She had reading time, and NO naptime, and recess on a NEW playground with SWINGS and many of her friends from last year.They read a book about the first day of school, and something about toads and lizards, and she's at seat #2 and she handed me her folder that contained a pretty extensive homework calendar among other things.

We were walking in the door and after talking about her day she said, "There was a lot of work. All day was work work work. Even in our free time we have to read or write! I like kindergarten."

Did you hear that? That creak.... the door to REAL SCHOOL has now been opened. Welcome to the world, Mia. It isn't all naptime and playing dress-up. But Mama's here for you - we can still do that stuff at home.

Night At Plaza Pool

I was on my way to join Mia and Craig at the Plaza Housing Pool on base here for a night-time pool party some friends were having. The phone rang.

"Mama!"
"Hi, baby, what's up?"
"Are you coming? You have to go in the POOL with me because I can't go in the big pool without you!"
"What? Why?"
"There's a TEST!"
"So take the test."
"You have to be 10 years old to take the test Dada said!"
"Put your father on the phone...."

I established with him that there's no age limit on the test, and she's perfectly capable of passing it as a level 4 swimmer; ahem.

I arrived at the party with my camera and after saying hi to the adults, I spotted Mia in the pool.
I asked Craig if she got some kind of sympathy vote, and he said, "Nope. She took the test, passed it, and now she's welcome to do whatever she wants in there." My confident kid jumped right in - swam the LENGTH of the pool (not across, the length - this is a big pool.) and floated for a minute and tread water for a minute. Now she has a bracelet to wear at any of the USMC base pools.

You can see her bracelet and her still fantastic diving form here:


It was pitch black outside, the pool itself was lit underwater, but the outside lighting made for some interesting exposures here... so bear with me at ISO 3200 and 50mm at f1.2 for this stuff. (if you care... if not, move along)

I was pretty impressed at the stopped action here.

Much more light when she was under water. Look at my little fishie!

Hello there.... Dara, eat your heart out!

It's too bad she hates swimming. Torture, I tell you. They literally turned off all the lights when it was time to get out and 9 and the kid was STILL whining about having to leave.

Side note - there were a few corpsman on the sidelines of the pool, not swimming. I asked why and they said, "Small pox." They had been vaccinated that day for an upcoming Iraq deployment. Seriously. They STILL think we're going to get small pox in Iraq? Annoying. And just plain unfair. But thanks to you guys - for staying out of the pool and for your service. I appreciate it.

End Of Summer Fun

Hi there! A few things to report to you, wonderful readers who I've neglected quite a bit this summer. This post is about the last day of swim, then I'm doing one on Pizza in the Sky and Emerald Beach if I can finish before having to make dinner.

Due to the fact that I only posted a couple of animated gifs in the last post, I figured I'd give you a better look at the photos from the last day of swim class.

Much to our dismay, though she is a very strong swimmer - Mia is no diver.
Yeah, wow. Look at that form. Even Mia saw this and said, "My legs are supposed to be straight." No duh. However, when I saw Tara's daughter dive in, I felt a bit better about it....
It still cracks me up that my kid points her fingertips toward the water as if the perfect dive is going to happen - and then leaps in feet-first.

She WAS, however, very happy to receive her certificate.
Level 4 is a big jump from level 3. It's goes from 25 minutes to 50 minues, for one thing. And now the kids swim in the lanes. Mia was fine with this as long as it was for backstroke or for flirting with the boy students in the class.

The last day of swim was rather sad for the Camp Adventure swim teachers, most of whom were from Iowa and California. Much like others who are new here, they were amazed at the quality of the toenail art to be found at Cocok - so they took the trip just before returning home.

Eight girls, one guy - Prince Charming. Who struck this pose the moment I had the girls lie down on their tummies for this shot!

A bit bigger version fo the sideways swan dive. This was just so priceless - Prince Charming, you're a hoot!

In Response to Ernie

So I just saw this bit of hilarity and it reminded me to write about something (this coincidence is a pretty good one too by the way... I can't believe I hadn't blogged this yet and Ernie made a parody of this particular song).

So that song, "I Kissed a Girl" (by Katy Perry - not the much more harmless 1995 Jill Sobule version) is popular right now. It's catchy as all heck and once it's in your head you're singing it for days. Here's the problem.... when you have a 6 1/2-year-old DAUGHTER who's singing it for days, it suddenly becomes horrendously inappropriate. HOW do you explain this? "The taste of her cherry Chapstick," grrr..... I do not need Mia singing this to the masses in her new 1st grade class. At least I was in junior high when "Like a Virgin" came out, and I can't imagine how happy the parents were with Madonna's choices.

We just finished watching So You Think You Can Dance (aforementioned big favorite in this house) and on a recent episode, Katy Perry was on the show singing this song. That was the first time Mia had heard it, and she LOVED it. She has a good musical ear, so within minutes she's jumping around the house singing it "I KISSED A GIRL AND I LIKED IT!" AAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

Every so often, hubby has a stroke of genius in the parenting department. Suddenly he decided that if they got creative with the lyrics it would be really funny. Thus ensued, "Mommy kissed a horse and she liked it!" And, "Mia ate a cicada and she liked it!" (Yeah, 3 syllables, so what? We made it work.) Whew. Crisis averted. And her creativity is pretty good really.

I think Craig was quite proud of himeslf. Until her retort was, "Daddy kissed a boy and he liked it..."

Hi. I LIVE Here.

First... tonight's lovely rainbow. This is a lousy shot of it - when we got in the car it was the brightest most amazing rainbow I've ever seen. Mia asked what made rainbows... I explained to her about the water droplets and the sun, but realized I should have just said, "It's magic, baby."

Recently I went to Sesoko Island with some girls... It's about an hour & 20 minute drive north, and the whole drive was just so beautiful - I knew it wouldn't disappoint. It WAS hot as blazes out there....and this was taken from the parking spot.

Somehow when you look at THIS:
heat isn't such a huge factor. Besides, my feet were in the water. That felt pretty good (though if it weren't for my camera, I'd have jumped in).

We were walking, and this guy showed up with an octopus ("tako") on a hook! It was still alive, and all of us got to walk up and feel what it was like to have little tentacles suck onto your fingers (it feels rather strange, but very interesting). I like this portrait very much.


On the way back, Anne stopped the van just one more time so I could snap this:
Oh yes - we will be back. In swim suits. With snorkel gear.

This is Mia with her friend (fellow only child and smarty-pants), Grace.


They were swim buds last session, and still will be buddies past the swim class thing as I will be in touch with Grace's mom. Her dad leaves for a YEAR in Afghanistan, and I think we need to be doing girl things together like tea parties and such. Especially since Grace's mom is from England. And I very much enjoy listening to her speak with that crumpets and rubbish accent.

My kid. How did she end up being this cute big girl?
She now swims in the deep end, treads water, "pencil dives" to touch the bottom, and is learning the butterfly stroke, side stroke, and breast stroke. Soon she'll be driving. (NOT)

We love it here. We've been busy, but enjoying our craziness. Friends are leaving, that's not a part we love. But I'm thrilled to have made them and I know we'll see each other very soon. As I live in a time warp on this little island.

Have I mentioned... I'm starting a business? With ITS OWN BLOG too? Yeah. That's insane! I'm excited and petrified all in the same breath. I'm realizing this tiny island grows smaller in the photog community. At Mia's swim lessons I've been speaking to Tara (who is a complete character and I can see that friendship working out very nicely) - and now to other folks who are recognizing me! My 15 minutes has started, everyone! Set your clocks, I hope it can last!

Japanese Shirt

"Mama.... can I get a Japanese shirt?"

"You mean like you want me to buy you a shirt at a Japanese store, or a shirt with Japanese characters on it?"

"Yeah, one with Japanese writing so that the people can see that I'm saying something nice to them."

(anyone who speaks the language want to come out with me to find a shirt that says something nice in Japanese?)

Buy Me Some Peanuts & Cracker Jack

Saturday morning, Mia's team - The A's - had their first t-ball game. I had no idea how entertaining and cute this would be. The kids had so much fun.

The rules at this point are a bit more lax; they have about 15 kids on the team, and each kid gets to bat. The ball is on a tee (obviously), and there are no outs counted and no score kept. Until they're 7. At which point, they're back to the regular rules.

What this means is that everyone can bat, which is great. But it also means that every time, the kids in the field are directed to throw the ball they catch to first base. Or home plate, but mostly first base. THAT means all the kids in the outfield and anywhere to the pitcher's right are not seeing any action. At all. In this heat.

So here's Mia at shortstop. Charged to go. Wait a minute.... nothing's coming my way. Ok. Officially bored to yawning.

Mia's first time on base!


Heading in after rounding the bases.

In the dugout cooling off.

Cutest batter EVER.

Hm. Ok. What to do here. (Guy on the left is the head coach - awesome coach. Like him very much.)
We need to work on the power in that swing....
But that girl can RUN.
Hot and sticky in the dugout.

All in all, great game! The kids fielded REALLY well! Mia goes right for the balls - in practice. But yesterday she just didn't get anything coming her way so no chance to practice. Soon enough. She's so happy to be out there.