Birthday Boy

Guess who turns 2 today??

Celebrations have included new treats, wrestling with sister, trying on new collars, having a hundred photos taken (well, maybe not 100....), and sleeping in the sun. Tonight's party includes barbequed chicken on the porch. Let the good times roll.

Happy birthday, little man.

A New Toy

After almost a year of living here, we finally got ourselves a grill. Actually it's more like Noa's new toy. He's loving it. We celebrated with grilled turkey burgers on Saturday night.

Northern Sights

If you take the freeway up to the northern part of the island, you will see these signs on the side of the road. Teresa calls these "Pumba Signs"*. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a real Pumba hanging out by the freeway.

*in reference to Pumba, the wild boar, in The Lion King

Stuck

My Summer Vacation
by Julie

After celebrating my birthday with my husband, I spent the next week stuck at home due to extremely painful sinus pressure. The doctor decided that antibiotics were needed...

I hate being sick.

At least I have company.

Birthday

It's official. I'm now 28. Megs made me a rice krispie cake, but by the time I was able to take a photo, I had already eaten a corner of it - oops!

Yesterday, Noa had the day off and he had planned a dive trip for us, but it was cancelled due to poor visibility (most likely, I'd have to raincheck the dive anyway because my sinuses are messed up right now). So, it looks like we'll take the dive this weekend instead - we'll be diving with WHALE SHARKS! I'm so excited. He even borrowed a friend's underwater digital camera because he knows how important it is for me to photo document everything ("it's all about the blog" are famous words in the Hammer household). So, stay tuned for details on that trip!

In spite of the poor weather yesterday, we decided to drive up north and see the butterfly garden and aquarium (one of my favorite places on the island).

Noa and I model the goofy red hats provided to attract butterflies:

Our self portrait:

At the aquarium:

I still think the garden eels are cute, even if they are eels:

I tried so hard to get a good photo of this sea turtle, but I missed my window of opportunity:
After that we went out to dinner with friends and had an impromptu game night at our place. Much fun was had.

Lastly, here is one of my favorite gifts from Noa - a "purse camera" (as I call it). Now I can have a camera with me at all times to capture more funny things in Japan.

Done!

Well, the school year is officially over and I am now on my summer break. Here are pics of my packed up classroom. I think it looks so sad like this!

What does the summer hold in store for me? I'll be headed to the states in July to visit Jess and Mike, then my family, and then go to a wedding with Noa. When in Okinawa, I plan to do some diving and island exploring with Noa, spend time with some friends and my dogs, and of course, plan for next year (you just can't stop me!).

Parting Gifts

Today was the last day of Kindergarten for this school year. Tomorrow and Friday, Teresa and I will be packing up the room for the summer. It's been a tearful couple of days at school between saying good-bye to a great group of kids and trying to function on little sleep. I received some very thoughtful cards and gifts this year, including this quilt which was made by some of the parents and all of the students. Each student (except one who moved earlier in the year) made a square on the quilt.

6 Years

1 cruise

2 dogs

3 moves (one international)

4 graduations*

5 cars

6 years of marriage

Yep - we did it - we made it to #6! Unfortunately, I had to work most of the day (with the end of school right around the corner, I'm putting in some long hours). In spite of my crummy hours working away from him, Noa still treated me to his famous flower bouquets (photo to come), we went out to dinner and enjoyed a movie. We also had many calls from family and friends, which is also a welcome treat. It was a simple, but sweet anniversary.

This year, I'm just glad to be together with Noa. Being here and living among other military families, I see a lot of people who cannot be with their loved ones for anniversaries, birthdays, and other holidays, so I cherish the fact that we can be together.

Happy 6th, Babe. I'd choose you over and over again.

*okay, technically 3, but I'm counting my graduation from Gordon, which was a month before our wedding. The rest were Noa's graduation from Tufts, graduation from his medical residency program (NAS JAX), and my graduation from UNF.

Graduation Masquerade

I know, excuses, excuses. However, there are very, very, very good reason why I haven't been in the blogosphere lately. Most pressing, and now over, was Kindergarten's Celebration of Learning Ceremony (AKA Kindergarten Graduation). You see, it's DoDDS policy that we refrain from referring to this ceremony as graduation or even promotion (although that's exactly what it is). Also, the students may not wear caps or gowns or really anything that may cause one to think, "hmm, looks like that kid is graduating." Although I strongly disagree with this decision, I have to go by these rules and thus sucessfully worked towards our Celebration of Learning Ceremony, which was held on Friday morning.

It was a huge sucess. The kids were cute. And I only messed up reading one name (not bad, in my opinion!).

Just a few photos:

We had a patriotic theme. Here's the stage set-up, complete with the handprint American flag (made by the students, of course).

These tables were for our families.

My paraprofessional and friend, Teresa, who helped with every step of this huge event.

Conehead

Well, it looks like Sarge isn't the only one on the mend. We took an emergency trip to the vet a couple of nights ago because Gunns had a ruptured abscess on his rear (sorry if that grosses you out). It's looking much better with daily cleanings and antibiotics, but he is not liking the cone he has to wear around his neck. Sadie on the other hand is taking full advantage of having Gunnar in a constant state of submission.

Beautiful Aka

Noa convinced me to take 2 days off this holiday weekend to spend with friends on the beautiful island of Aka. Aka is one of the small islands off of Okinawa; it's only an hour and a half ferry ride to get there.

Aka truly is an island paradise. We spent time hanging out with friends, exploring the island, snorkeling, swimming, and sunning. Here are some photos from the weekend. I'm already looking forward to going back and diving Aka someday.

Noa and I at one of the many look-outs on the island.

The island has many deer. We went looking for them at night.

Some of the group on our night walk exploring the area.

A (large) hiding hermit crab.

Beautiful beach photos (I felt like I was in Hawaii, minus all the tourists, while on the beach)

Sewer covers depicted the deer.

The ferry

The view from our minshiku (basically, a guest house/hotel).

Dairy Issues

Milk is one of Noa's favorite substances on Earth. He drinks milk everyday. However, living in Oki has challenged Noa's enthusiasm towards his favorite beverage. First of all, milk is only sold by carton - no gallon jugs. So, we have to buy several cartons at a time to support his milk habit. We usually keep about 3 cartons in our fridge at a time.

I think the process of getting milk from the states to us is to freeze it, ship it over frozen, and then put it out in the dairy cooler at the comissary. We have learned from experience that this process is not fool-proof. We've found spoiled milk, chunky milk, and today we discovered brown milk. It doesn't smell bad and it's not quite the right color or consistency to be chocolate milk either. Neither of us wanted to test it to find out.

Cousins

I've always said that IGs and meerkats act so similar, it's like they are related! Check out this IG Post entry of an IG service dog named Byron who visits the zoo and gets an up-close view of his "cousins". Cute!

http://www.igpost.com/index.php?showtopic=63271

My Big Girl

Sadie turned four years old this past week. Here she is in her new kimono. Although it was a busy work day, she did get a special birthday dinner, got to play with a new toy that dispenses treats, and got to cuddle with dad on the chair. Life doesn't get much better than that.

Happy 4th Sadie!

Bullfight

Anyone who knows me well, knows my love for animals. So it may come to a surprise to hear that I attended an Okinawan bullfight today. These bullfights are not like those in Europe (so I'm told - I've never seen one in person). The Okinawan bullfight actually starts very ceremoniously. The boys pictured below are purifying the pathway for the bulls with salt.
Then the bulls are brought out. The defending champion is marked with a red ribbon tied to the tail and the challenger wears a white ribbon. They are brought into the ring and face each other, their trainers standing close by.




Then, the giant bulls lock horns and push. The trainers stamp their feet and shout to cheer their perspective bull to victory. The bull who pulls away from the fight is considered the loser of the match. It's pretty amazing to watch these giant beasts push against each other. I did get nervous that they'd poke out each other's eyes, but it didn't happen in any of the rounds we watched.

The place was packed! You can see how full it was in this photo.

More ....

When the winner is determined, the bull is dressed up and a child is seated upon him to hail victory. Then, there's cheering, music is played, and we'd wait for the next pair to come out and fight.
And now, some photos for fun. Tom becomes brave an not only approaches, but touches a moaning, foaming-at-the-mouth bull. Tom is crazy.
Here's part of our group posing for a group shot with a random Japanese guy (back, center). We congrated in this one area and hung out here for awhile. This Japanese man never moved over even though our group was right there. He stayed put the entire time. He kept his back to us and just watched the bullfighting. So, we decided that he had to be included in the group shot.

Lastly, I had to include a photo of the sewer covers from this town, known for this sport.

Happy Homecoming

Meghan has been away for the past few weeks. She has become quite the world traveler; this past trip was to Vietnam with a friend. She celebrated her birthday while away, but we decided to have an impromptu birthday dinner tonight in honor of her return home and her birthday. It was a great night out - reminiscent of Christmas dinner - except we went to Macaroni Grill. Pictured here are the girls (l-r, Liz, Meghan, me, and Jen) however, we're missing Beth who had to take the little ones home to bed. I'm glad Meghan's back and I love hearing her stories about Vietnam. I never realized that it had such a strong French influence there. Between her stories of the great food, the nice people, and her custom-made jeans, I'm ready to jump on the next plane out. Welcome home, Megs and happy birthday!