School's Out for Summer!

As of 11:35 am (Okinawa time) the school year finally ended! I know alot of you have been out for awhile, but our kids are just now escaping.  London is so excited to now be "A First Grader" - Mom, however, is a little traumatized by that.

Cannon, London, Isaac and Andrew heading into school for the last day (note the humidity on the camera lens!)

London and Mrs. Hammer - his awesome teacher.

London coming out of school.  Is he excited or what?

Cannon's excited too - 5th grade here I come!

All the teachers waving goodbye to the buses.  Sayonara!

Celebratory lunch at the noodle restaurant.  We got corrected by the Japanese on how to correctly eat the noodles, but the kids preferred their way!

Emmy attempting to do it the right way.

What better way to say summer than an afternoon splash in the pool?  The weather has been so rainy here that the front yard is a swamp - hence the muddy water.  They didn't seem to care!

Row, row, row your boat

Today I got to experience a truly Japanese tradition - Dragon Boat racing.  About a month or so ago I wrote about the dragon boat races that I attended in Naha (capital city) where teams of men or women race against each other in long boats.  I really thought at the time, how cool would that be to be a part of a team?  But practices were early (5 am in the water!) and long (six weeks before the race) so I thought it might only be a pipe dream.

But yesterday afternoon, my neighbor, Angie, told me that there are dragon boat races all summer in various communities around the island and that there are two teams of military spouses that race in them (the Summer Dragons).  Furthermore, she had been asked to fill in for someone who couldn't make it so she was going to get to race!  With my tongue a-waggin' I asked if they needed anyone else???  The answer came at 9 o'clock last night - I could go!!!  I wasn't sure if I was going to get to race, but I was game just to be there as a part of the festivities.  So shortly after dropping the kids off at school we headed to the bottom of the island - across a short bridge to another island (Ou-jima) to the races.  Turns out Team B was one body short so without any training, grueling workouts or freezing practices I realized my dream of being a part of a dragon boat race!  I really feel a little bad for skipping all the hard work just to realize the glory, but the other team members seemed appreciative to have me there because otherwise they would have had to forfit.

The newest Summer Dragon member!

My friend Angie and I

The motley crew

We're in!  That's me in the back left with the ponytail.

Powering down the first stretch!

Made the first turn and heading back to the second turn.

We made it!  Came in second, but not bad.

My biggest cheerleader (I got a little wet from the splash!)

Turkish Ice Cream

Stevie was post call today so we were able to have lunch together at a yummy little Turkish restaurant over by the sea wall.  We've eaten there before and the food was tasty, but this time we also tried the ice cream.  My friend Angie told me to try it because it's a little different from any ice cream she'd tried before.  Not by taste, but by consistency.

The ice cream comes in a little frozen cup and looks ordinary, but then you start kneading it with the spoon and it becomes like bubble gum consistency!  It tastes pretty good too!

Our 15 Year Anniversary!

On an average Thursday night seventeen years ago, a boy and a girl went to a country bar in Waco, Texas to do a little two steppin' and the rest is history...

Seventeen years (fifteen of wedded bliss), twelve houses, two careers, three kids, four cats and a dog later I present to you the "Then and Now of Stevie and Louise Coats"!


Then...40 was old
Now...40 is the new 20

Then...Kids were a terrible idea
Now...Kids are a terrible/wonderful idea

Then...Louise was the bread winner
Now...Stevie’s the sugar daddy

Then...A dog would be nice to have
Now... A dog was nice to have

Then...Stevie was a student
Now...The kids are the students

Then...We lived in a cracker box apartment
Now... We live in a concrete cracker box

Then...Our shirts had wrinkles
Now...We have wrinkles (speak for yourself says Steve)

Then...We drove a 1990 Honda
Now...We drive a 1995 Toyota

Then...$20 bought dinner and a pitcher of beer at Al's Pizzeria
Now...$20 buys one bourbon and water at Sammy's

Then...We had Stevie’s TV from when he was 13
Now...We have a 46” plasma TV

Then...Oklahoma City bombing
Now...Daily IEDs in Iraq

Then...150 million watched OJ Simpson not-guilty verdict
Now.. Got him the second time!

Then...First class stamp cost $0.32
Now...First class stamp $0.44

Then...Date nights cost $20
Now...A babysitter for two hours costs $20…

Then...Our family could fit in a Miata
Now...Our family requires a mini-van

Then...We were in love!
Now... We are in love!


Then...

Now..

(Photo courtesy of Emmy!)

Botanical Gardens

It's our 15th wedding anniversary today!  Whoo-hoo!  Fortunately Stevie was post-call today and so we were able to spend the day together.  He says that he threatened the nurses with deployment to Afghanistan if they woke him during the night last night for anything other than an emergency, and fortunately they heeded to his threats.

So we headed off this morning to the Southeast Botanical Gardens to take a look at the tropical flowers and a stroll around the gardens.  Mom and I went to the botanical gardens last October and found a large pond covered in seed pods from lotus flowers. 

They were fascinating in themselves, but I really wanted to see what the pond looked like full of lotus flowers.  Well, June is lotus flowering season in Okinawa and they were impressive!  Huge leaves sat about 3 feet off the water and projecting up from them were two foot stems supporting huge lotus flowers.  They are very beautiful flowers and very photogenic.

Another fun spot in the gardens is the fish pond where massive quantities of carp swim in wait to beg for food.  They high-tail it across the pond the minute you step to the edge in great anticipation of any dropped morsels.

There were all kinds of interesting tropical flowers although most didn't have English signs so their true type kept us guessing.

Relaxing in the hammocks!

Emmy on the "cowch"

Chinese Food in Japan

I had a hankerin' tonight for some Chinese food - you know quick, down-and-dirty, cheap Chinese take-out.  Since the only Chinese I've tasted since being on island was from Manchu Wok which is located in the food court on base (next to Taco Bell and Burger King), I was wanting to branch out a little and see how the Japanese did Chinese.  After all, Okinawa has a strong Chinese influence so in theory there should be some good Chinese restaurants here.  In theory.

I found a recommendation for a restaurant called Peter's Place - not very Chinese sounding, but maybe Peter is a common name in China that I hadn't heard of before - and headed across town to order some yummies.  What I found was a decrepit building with a faded sign indicating this was Peter's Place.  I entered the building and walked past a room full of dank Chinese antiques with a sign announcing "30% off ALL".  I walked past that room and up a dark, musty staircase toward the sound of a lonely sanshin (a native instument that's a simple guitar).  To my right at the top of the stair case was a near empty room with a solitary man sitting at a low table overlooking the street absently stroking his sanshin and waiting.  For who?  Me, apparently.  For this was Peter of the namesake restaurant and he did look a whole lot more Chinese than his name would suggest.

I entered the restaurant and was handed a menu to make my selection.  It looked interesting (wink, wink) with choices like beef and broccoli, beef and vegetables, beef and noodles, beef and rice, curry beef.  Hmmm... Where was the Kung Pao chicken?  Szechuan beef?  Lo mein?

The best part, though, was the question from the waitress after I placed my order.  Did you bring a Tupperware container?  Huh?  This lady was speaking very good English and yet I was still confused. Why?, I enquire.  Why for the soup, of course.  Of course.  Meals come with soup but they have no containers for the soup!  Isn't that a riot?!  Even more of a riot is what I found when I unwrapped the bag at home.  Apparently they "found" a container for our soup.  Stevie thinks they dug it out of the trash...

That's egg drop soup in there, not minced garlic!

Apparently everything in Japan is small, even the egg rolls!

So the lesson learned after my one hour trip for "quick, take-out Chinese" is that I might need to control my cravings in the future.  I should have gone with Steve's suggestion to order pizza.

Aquarium

(one of the 3 whale sharks in their large tank)

Cannon had his last field trip of the year today to the Churaumi Acquarium in the northern part of Okinawa.  It's a fantastic aquarium (2nd largest tank in the world!) that I've written about before.  Today we enjoyed going around it with Cannon's best friend, Isaac.

A megaladon jaw (prehistoric shark)

Cannon and Ike