Nakijin Castle

Entrance to Nakijin Castle Ruins... on either side of the 'door' are little sentry rooms with two tall skinny windows each (probably for archers). This is one of the World Cultural Heritage sites, I believe the tour guide said there were nine of them. My favorite castle ruins so far, it is big, beautiful, has great vantage points, and doesn't have too many stairs.

Here is the highest ground in the ruins, for the main quarters. It is surrounded by a moat-type ditch (thus the bridge).

Homes of the royal advisors...

like I said... great view!
Coryn apparently lives right there... he must have been Ryukyu royalty in a past life... :)

Coryn's Computer Art

some have captions
I believe I did the purple, yellow, red, and light blue ones

St. Patrick's Day!

For St. Patrick's Day we celebrated with a 'green thumb' tour to the Southeast Botanical Gardens where we potted a hibiscus ("hibiscuit") and played. Coryn was eyeing a purple one while we had our lesson on hibiscus origins and variations and then saw a pink one and changed his mind.
This was our horticulturist, nice man, little english, and though they had some difficultly with translation I was able to help a little with my plant background :)

Carter got to feed the koi for the first time... and he did try to eat them at the beginning then he saw how much fun it was watching the fish go after them and didn't have any problems.

Of course, we had to stop at the playground for a break from all the plants and there was a highschool on tour... I tried to ask what school they were from and they told me Osaka, I'm not sure if that means they were from a highschool named Osaka or if they were actually on a school trip from mainland Osaka... I wouldn't be surprised at either. There were enough kids there to keep Coryn and Carter occupied... Coryn's been noticing the lack of attention to him for not being the youngest. He took full advantage of the boys there and had pictures taken of him, told which boys to come up and slide with him... he was quite the little ruler.

Carter was happy just to have someone watch him walk around and try to rock on the little animals... personality wise they are so alike! gluttons for attention!

Things I've Made & Mmmm

Mmmm... best shaved ice I have ever had! it was a block of ice with strawberries frozen into it, which was shaved so finely that it melted like powdered sugar in the mouth and it was drizzled with condensed milk and what I'm assuming is a simple syrup but I didn't ask about that one, I asked about the milk to make sure it wasn't mayo (it really wouldn't surprise me if it had been). Fantastic!!!

Here is the kokeshi doll I made... parts I like, parts could use some work... for instance, I like my hair except that I realized the style didn't make sense because it looks pulled back but there's no bun or anything.

At long last, the results of my first pottery class... well, some of them, the other two I didn't really feel were worthy of photographing. (not entirely my fault, the glazes came out weird)

Here is the unfinished jar I've been working on this month... we'll be glazing it this week and should see the results next week.

Bedtime Shenanigans

A couple of weeks ago I made the bold move of combining the children into one room. Altogether it has proven to be a good decision, making the bedtime routine more efficient and giving the boys the comfort of having another person in the room (not me). Not that it doesn't have its downsides... when one cries you pray that the other doesn't wake up, or Coryn finds that he can't go in his room while Carter is sleeping (not that he needs to). Here are a couple of recent bedtime child fun intances:

The boys were sick last week and thus a little more of light sleepers (most of the time either of them screaming in the night doesn't bother the sleeping one). Coryn 'woke' (and I use the term very lightly) up screaming like he always does when he needs to pee in the middle of the night. I raced in to try to salvage Carter's night, but he was screaming by the time I got there too. So I took Coryn into the bathroom and placed him in front of the toilet, seat up, pants down and went back to get Carter. Coryn's still crying and I go back to see what the matter is and I find him shuffling towards the sink, pants around his knees, and he's stopping at the stool having bumped into it... it was a close call, I got there just in time to redirect before firing!

I put the kids down pretty easily, both still awake when I left but thats not uncommon, and headed downstairs to gather the recycling. About one minute (seriously, could be less) later and I hear a "mom", I head to the bottom of the stairs, and there's Coryn. "Yes, dear?" "Carter's touching me." Their beds are on the opposite sides of the room. "He can't touch you when you're in bed, get in bed" "But why?!?" "Its bedtime" "But Carter's touching me!" "He can't touch you when you're in bed... get... in... bed." *sniffle* I head up to turn the music down about two minutes later (noticing it was much too loud) and Coryn was asleep.

Spring is in the Air

The days seem to be getting warmer here, though I have to admit that the winter was nowhere near as bad as we had been told it would be (and from the pictures I've seen of last winter, it was pretty harsh) which is a good thing since the container we sent from Ft. Bragg with all of our cold weather gear in it back in September just arrived about a week and a half ago... we were the last of the 12 PRT's to recieve it which is about par for the course.



The evenings don't even require a sweater after the sun goes down any more. It is forcasted to rain for a few days starting Wednesday so we'll see what happens after that but when the sun is actually out, unimpeaded by clouds or any other natual phenominon it is really nice. In fact, people are starting to get sunburned, not me though, knock on wood!



I would love to post some pictures but the terrible internet connection we have won't allow me at the moment, and when I say at the moment I am referring to the last three weeks that I have been trying so I will just leave you with a few words that I am doing well and greatly appreciate all the goodies i have been reciieving from everyone. I'll keep trying with the pictures but in the mean time, happy spring everyone!

A Little Bit of This...

Have I ever told you that I love the Japanese bakeries? freshly made bread everywhere! its a good thing I read some Japanese, this one is called "bitter chocolate donut" which was a chocolate pudding filled chocolate dipped chocolate donut... in honor of White Day.

Carter recently woke up as a little rascal... shoot, now I can't remember his name!

knee pad man! or protection man? no, that doesn't sound right.

Isn't the air hockey cute? Every mall has an arcade section including its own toddler climbing area, some of the games are cute and short!

Loving the bath and the crazy hair!

Other Feb Happenings

They finally finished the park! Here is the beautiful basketball court which took about a month to make (level, pour, destroy, level, pour, dry, clean, paint, paint, paint, paint, no really there are four different levels of paint on this) and but a few hours to be covered with rocks and bits of dirt from the 'green' that is yet to be grown grass. Kids love it.


505th Red and White Social, kids danced all night.

Isn't that a stunning suit? (Jax, do you recall who this is?)

After excercising at the gym, Coryn likes to sit and read the newspaper (really its about getting a smoothie, but he thought he'd look all grown up)

The last week of Feb was mostly consumed with AFAP, here is my FRTI group, we did awesome! Best delegate group ever.

Pottery Class

I started taking pottery classes. February was beginning, and March is intermediate. We made cups and saucers in beginning and we've started on lidded pots this month. It should be interesting!

Clay comes in a nice big block which you shear off of to make pieces. First you knead it almost like bread to get the air bubbles out.

Then you throw it on the wheel (no really, it needs to stick to the wheel).
Then up and down, up and down, get it ready to be worked.
Here's my pottery buddy... I always felt inferior to her wheel work, but in the end my pieces looked better.

Here's my first cup. I'll post pictures of the finished products... I've made three cups and one saucer so far.