Roller Slide!

At the bottom, it goes crazy fast!

Thursday thru Sunday

Ok, been a few days again - already!

First of all, I'm happy to report, that after a layaway mishap we found the one and only Weber Spirit 210 on the island and I put it together this week. Finally - I can grill my dinners! Back to steak and seafood - I couldn't be happier. (Thanks, Mom - that cover finally was put to use!)

Thursday I met a few moms at a children's center not too far from home - it was fantastic! Big park area with roller slide and zip lines...

Here's Parker enjoying the zip lines - Mia (who quickly developed a Parker crush) in the background.
Parker's little brother, William. Yes - I swam in the pools of those blue eyes and lived to show you the photo....
Eli rollin' right at me!
Parker taking on the slide on his belly.
Oh goodness... and then there's Yukari. Her folks will definitely need to keep this girl under lock & key!
So since it was gloomy out, we thought the backup plan would be that the center also has an indoor part; complete with a room for toddlers & babies, a big library with some chairs and tables (even if the books were in Japanese, Mia & Parker were fine with it!) and a gymnasium. This is where the kids tried to work that hula hoop:
Really fun morning!

Friday night we went to Banyan Tree (an on-base restaurant) to have pizza. On the recommendation of a Jersey dude from Asbury Park who Craig works with and said that's the best pizza here. Well, it was ok - I'd eat it, but it's not what I'd run for if I was craving pizza. Frankly, I guess I'd just keep on craving pizza because I haven't found anything great yet. I AM hopeful - the Neatherys have a favorite place that we'll definitely try - and it might be the only place I'll go for pizza from then on.

Saturday Mia played in a soccer game and had lots of fun.
And then we headed up north for a drive. We found ourselves on Camp Schwab - the northernmost military installation here - and they had cottages at Oura Wan Beach. These were taken at the beach below the cottages. As you can see - gloomy cloudy day - WINDY too, but it was so nice that it was not hot! Here are a few gems - the rest can be found here.





Can you tell by this smile that she's slightly tired of cheesing for the camera? Not surprising.

Saturday night we went to Somchai again - this time I worked a picture of my green-lip mussels...
Oh my goodness. Everything else came to the table and was dug into so quickly I couldn't take pictures. Besides, I couldn't be bothered to turn on the camera when it smelled and tasted so fantastic! I'm drooling again just looking at this picture.

Anywho, that's the haps. Chargers lost - pathetically - to the Vikings, and now I'm watching THE game - Indi vs. the Pats - GO INDI! (However, let the record show that I do think Brady is one of the best looking football players ever.)

Hour Shmour II...

Bear with me, I'm an idiot - I screwed up and did the time change in the wrong direction & a week too early - see below - new chart.

There's no daylight savings time change in Okinawa. I thought maybe I'd show how much fun this math will be - as of next weekend we are 14 hours apart and from the west coast we'll be 17 hours apart.

You know - in case you wanted to call our Vonage phone.... or something like that. Maybe. One day. For kicks. To hear our voices or whatever.

Courtney had asked for a chart a while ago, and I thought this would help more people, so here it is:

In other news, one of our new quests is to visit all the incredible playgrounds (specifically insanely large and cool roller slides) on the island - there are 91 parks on this island, and we'd like to visit at least most of them if we can. Here are some shots from Tonbaru Park yesterday - where everyone, including Craig, Casey and me, enjoyed CRUISING down this monstrous slide. I do apologize, we brought the long lens and couldn't get the whole insane slide in 1 picture. I promise not to do that again.

The kids bring cardboard pieces for under their rear ends. This is smart for 2 reasons- the rollers are bumpy (can you say owowowowowowowowowowowowowowow!?) and the friction heats up the rear to a point of pain. This did NOT, however, deter Brice and Mia from climbing the stairs and netting over and over to come back down countless times. Very fun. And yes, my tush is sore today. The Japanese children at the park squatted and went down on their flip-flopped feet! That was hilarious to watch. And those tiny bodies REALLY picked up speed.

The Long Weekend

It's Tuesday. I'm sorry I made you all wait for all this, but the post here should catch up. I've really barely been in front of my computer let alone at home for a few days!

Mia's birthday was Thursday, and as I mentioned in a previous post, Craig was on a 10-mile hike after work so he wasn't home to celebrate. We put off the celebration until Friday, so when Mia got home from school she opened gifts from family & friends. She got (among other things) books of "why" (yes, she's at that stage and starting to read big-time, so she should go LOOK IT UP), an origami set, clothes from Gymboree (that are adorable and fit great - long-time family friends sent them and she wore an outfit from that box to the birthday party, see below), The Jungle Book DVD, a game for the DS, more clothing from her parents, and a Littlest Pet Shop set.

That evening we went upstairs to Hokulea, the yummy restaurant on the top floor of our building, where I finally took some food pictures. Here's the Funky Franky Roll (spicy sausage wrapped in a banana pepper and then rolled in lettuce, rice, seaweed, roe, and some kind of sauce. Craig wanted to try it and he dug it):


My delicious lomi lomi salmon appetizer:

My beef with mushrooms entree, which was good down to the licked plate:

Craig's gigantic pina colada girlie drink. He wouldn't pose with it for me:
All in all, great Friday.

Saturday was rather windy & rainy - there was supposed to be a typhoon. We stayed inside most of the day. I had a shoot at 5 which I think went great and was lots and lots of FUN (our first shoot on our own, so that was fabulous), and then we just hunkered down for a relaxing evening together.

Sunday was Mia's birthday party. We held it at Skoshi Bowl, a separate bowling alley that is ONLY used for kids' parties on weekend days. They have the whole place done up glow-in-the-dark and provide pizza and drinks and shoes and FUN. Brilliant and inexpensive idea. We came early and set up the cake & goodie cups.

This year we decided it'd be a great idea to tell guests to bring a donation to the Okinawan American Animal Rescue Society in lieu of a birthday gift. It worked out great, and we collected $100 for the cause! Our family will bring the donation this week. Mia was very excited, and we won't have to find a place for a bunch of toys she doesn't really need.

A great time was had by all, here are a few pictures. Here's Mia and her buddy Zoe (whose family lives across the street):
Here's Nicholas in his size 10 (he's 11 years old) glow-in-the-dark shoes! Dang.

The happy bowman family after Mia blew out her candles. Thanks for taking some pictures, Leighanne!
Leighanne SOOOOooo busted Mia licking her cake!

Leah & Mia ready for another game.

They developed a game where they'd roll the ball and then lie down in the lane to watch the results. See that shine? I'm pretty sure that was due to their bodies polishing the floors.
The rest of the birthday shots are here.

After the party and some cool-down time at home, we got in touch with Derek & Anne across the street (parents of the new baby Knyte). Anne offered up the babysitting services of her visiting mother, and the 5 of us (baby Knyte was just a passed out child the whole time, so that was easy) went to Transit Cafe down the road for a stellar dinner and even better company. How nice it was to have a grown-up night out, and thanks to Grandma Friedlich, a great kid night out too!

She said our kid had some pretty funny things to say... one of which was of course about vegetables. She had chicken & macaroni and cheese, and I guess some green beans were on the plate. She said she didn't have to eat vegetables and when asked why, she said, "because I'm the guest." Nice try, kid.

After sleeping off our meals, we woke up to watch most of game 3 of the Cleveland/NY playoff series, and then headed out to meet Asako (local friend and sweetheart) and the Cyr family at Cafe Curcuma. This Thai restaurant was waaaaaay down south on the island. We drove over an hour, but when we got there, we realized why this place is booked a week in advance for lunches & dinners. The food is good, but the view makes it taste even better. For those who know the place in Big Sur, we're now calling this the Nepenthe of Okinawa.


Here's a shot of my curry sampler plate (I tried it before I thought to take the picture, so the big blob of sauce on the rice was NOT there when it arrived). There was rice, a salad, a delicious piece of plain chicken, and 3 kinds of curry on the plate (all yummy). In the center is a small bowl with tapioca pearls & azuki beans. Sweet & delicious after the spicy curry. In the background of this shot to the left you can see a papaya salad that was also scrumptious. Sweet, a little spicy, and cool - great side dish for the spicy food!


Outside I found a very cool rock wall and made Mia laugh while posing, I really like this shot.

The Bowman family in front of the KILLER view!

After the nice long lunch, we went to Peace Prayer Park. It's a very big park, with many different monuments and symbolic pieces. Also a museum. The main focus is to pay respects to the people who died there during WWII. About 200,000 names are on stone slabs in the part of the park pictured below - there's a computer where you can find names you're looking for. Asako's grandfather perished there, and here are Austin & Mia pointing at his name.

Then we went up to the Okinawan Peace Hall. Unfortunately, there was a ceremony being held in the room where the large (12m high) Buddah statue was, so we couldn't go in there. However, by the entrance of that hall there was a plant and several butterflies. Upon examination, I realized these suckers were REAL!! This one was just finishing emerging from his cocoon - there were more cocoons all around him on the leaves, they are literally shining gold cocoons. It was incredibly beautiful.
More fabulous pictures can be seen at: http://gallery.mac.com/bowmancr#100111

Hope that caught everyone up! Any questions?

Zakimi Castle Ruins

At several locations on the island, there are castles and castle ruins. After visiting Zakimi, a smaller and less exciting one than others, by the way - we're definitely going to hit all of them! What a beautiful (hot) place, Mia even got into the photog game because we gave her a camera to play with! (You will see in the photos.)

Just lovely - and about 15 minutes from our house, so when the weather breaks, we'll go back and explore further.

All of the photos are here.

Here are some of the goodies.

Uh oh - someone has caught the shutter bug. She's so cute, when she takes a picture, she looks at it on the screen and says, "oh yeah - that's a good one!"
Headed toward the entrance:

I like this one, you just see her looking out from the shadow.
It's no perfect macro shot, but this butterfly was SO pretty and was fluttering so fast - I'm happy I even got a decent shot.

A Few Photos

I did a little recon mission to the park Saturday morning (where I was going to shoot the family on Sunday). As it ends up, I'm thrilled that I did because the park is ENORMOUS and I couldn't find the spot that Shelia described on the phone the day before. Thankfully, she answered her cell and straightened me out, therefore I was confident I could get back there on Sunday. So at about 10am I shot a bunch of pictures, including these of what I am guessing to be a resident kitty:

Those little shrines along the background are everywhere in the park. I assume they pay respects to local ancestors there, but don't really know.

So after arriving back home (also having seen a high-end audio store that Craig will drool for - I brought home some Marantz, Accuphase, and Esoteric brochures with those "if you have to ask how much you can't afford to go into the store" looking things) and describing the stuff at this amazing park, Craig figured we should all go. Mia was excited for the play structure I saw, and we all were going to feed ducks & fish, etc.

Well, once again, mother nature thought differently - we got out of the car and the first thing I noticed was purple-black sky over blue-green water. Nice looking but threatening. We played at the park for a while before it came - and I told Craig to put away the camera, we'd be soaked. Boy was I right - we ran to an awning nearby to "wait it out" - something you might be able to do in Miami, but definitely NOT here. Finally after killing time for 15 minutes we decided to make a break for it. The last couple of pictures in this latest album are of our hysterically laughing soaking wet kid.


The photos from before and during the rain can be seen here.