Happy Birthday Fletcher!

It's Fletcher's birthday! We're so excited! The boys have been excited all week and the day is finally here. Singing "Happy Birthday" is half the fun....blowing out the candles is the other half. And chocolate chocolate cake tops it all off. We're enjoying every second of having Fletcher here for his birthday. Happy 36th FCT! We love you!

Birthday Dinner - Grown Ups Only!

We were so excited this year to actually get to celebrate Fletcher's birthday with him. We invited some friends to join us for dinner at The Cafe just up the street from our house. I'm actually looking at the restaurant as I type this. Talk about convenient, but more than that, it's darling. The food is wonderful and the view is beautiful. We had the place all to our little group, so it was a nice night of fun stories and great conversation with our friends in Okinawa. I have to say, Fletcher certainly raises the bar on 36!

I See Necks!

The last professional haircuts the boys had was the weekend of Thanksgiving. I trim them up here and there, but not up to Fletcher's standards. I love my boys with longer hair....not too long, but a little covering their ears doesn't bother me. Actually, Beau's long blonde locks keep him looking like my baby a little longer. Since it had been a while, we decided it was time to get a haircut, so we tried this place out in town we had heard about. It's known for being "kid friendly" and that it was. This was the longest I have ever seen Beau sit still and I think the Japanese version of Dumbo helped. Kid friendly it was, but English friendly, not so much. We communicated strictly through head nods and that was it. They spoke no English and all I could say was "good afternoon" and "thank you".....next time I'll go in with more haircut terminology. Either way, they gave great cuts.....very short, but well-done. When Fletcher saw the end results, it was like Christmas in his world. I snapped a few pics of the haircuts in process and the shampoos afterwards (which I thought was interesting).

Tropical Dream Center

President's Day gave us an extra play day with the kids, so we headed up north to explore some more. We went to the Sunset Plaza playground which is next to the aquarium and then into the Tropical Dream Center. The flowers were beautiful and smelled wonderful. It was one of our "winter" days, so the temps were around 55. I know that doesn't sound cold, but when it's hot 90% of the time, 55 feels freezing. I had on 3 shirts.....no kidding. The kids had a blast and so did Fletcher and I!

Sunflower Festival 2012

The Sunflower Festival is this month which really just means the fields of sunflowers are in bloom. Mom was here last year to go with us and I remember being amazed at how tall the flowers stood. The owner of the land is so generous to let people cut flowers to take with them. I took the boys after school this week to check them out. Again, they were beautiful. Because we went on a weekday, there weren't many people there which was nice for us. We passed a sweet little lady on our way in visiting with her elder group. The man told us she was 89 years old and she wanted to meet the boys. Bennett shook her hand and took a picture with her. She was a tiny little thing! Each of the boys brought a few flowers home. As you can guess, Bennett had to pick his for Ali in Marietta.

Beau Loves Justin Beiber

Baby, Baby, Baby Oh......these kids love this song and more specifically, this line in the song. It is on repeat now in my head, but seems to brighten their days. My boys like Mr. Beiber! Not sure if that should worry me or not, but as long as they aren't dressing like him, I'm good for now. Their daddy thinks the kid needs to pull up his pants and lose the earrings, so for now listening to him doesn't equal watching him on TV. Living in the Okinawa bubble seems to be working in Fletcher's favor.....temporarily. :)

Vivid Imaginations

I love listening to the boys invent scenerios when they play together. These two always have wild imaginations and have since birth. We're blessed that their little minds have occupied them through multiple long plane rides, layovers, traffic, etc. However, Beau's imagination prolongs bedtime from time to time. The other night it was a dragon biting his toe in his bed and just gets more elaborate as he re-tells his story. Last night it was Darth Vader. This video is just an example of how that goes down.

Cherry Blossoms 2012

Unlike our adventure last year up to Nago, this year we actually got to see some beautiful cherry blossoms. We're blessed to have Fletcher still home and we're taking advantage of every second. Bonus time is not lost on us!:) The Cherry Blossom Festival was actually last weekend, but we learned our lesson last year not to be too eager. Waiting an extra week was key, I think. The boys hiked their way to an awesome playground. Seriously, the playgrounds here run circles around the ones back home. We took lots of pictures, so bare with me as I post some of my faves.