Coming back

Can't have a Japanese Christmas tree without Hello Kitty!

Whew!  The holidays were rough this year!

First, we celebrated the Birthday Ball in mid-November.  I went to the salon in the Kadena BX.  Even with a picture of how I wanted my hair, it turned out nothing like that.  I also looked at all the PX's for glittery finger nail polish without success.  Very disappointing.  (I'm sure one of the nail salons could have done the glittery french tip for me, but I didn't have time to experiment before the ball.)  Right after the speeches, we had to come home.  Isaac refuses to take a bottle (and he wasn't eating solids yet), so the sitter called.  Oh well, there's always drunken karaoke next year.

Then came Thanksgiving.  Although I had originally planned on going to one of the base clubs for buffet dinner, our sponsor and his family cooked a big meal and invited us over.  (omg, lumpia!  So delicious!!)

Christmas time!  The season started off with lots of fun.  We decided to buy a fake tree (although I did see some real ones being sold at Camp Foster at the beginning of December).  And much to Hubby's chagrin, I decided that if we're going faux, I don't want to half-ass it with a green tree, let's whole-ass it by getting a white sparkly one!  It's so tacky I could die!

But then, stress!  We decided to host a Christmas party at our house - for about 40 people in the unit.  Um, yeah.  Not a good idea when Hubby was in the field for a week, we still had boxes and packing paper filling up two of our rooms, my oven is the size of a microwave (pictures are here), and our two rug rats let me get nothing accomplished - ahhhh!!!

I had wanted to go down to Itoman City to see the light display, but we never had time.  I wanted to have a lazy morning of mimosas with chicken and waffles (which btw, did you know KFC is the traditional Christmas meal of Japan?  The store near our house had police directing traffic and a line down the block!  Crazy!!)  But we were so busy and so stressed, we didn't have time for those things this year.

After the hectic Christmas, we enjoyed a quiet New Year's Eve at home (got silly drunk with Hubby and watched Tropic Thunder).  Then life got away from us again - he had to get ready for Thailand, Isaac and Owen were both teething, Isaac starting crawling, family issues, ect.

Now it's almost February and I feel like life is finally settling back down.  I'm getting back into a good running/work out routine again (I also finally ordered a BOB double jogger - fingers crossed it will be here soon!)  Plus, I found a couple new groups through Facebook: Stroller Warriors and Adventure Moms.  Hoping to get out with them soon and start seeing the fun side of Okinawa again!

One important island lesson I learned over the holidays:  if you see something, don't hesitate - BUY IT NOW!!  Right before Thanksgiving, I needed to whip up a side dish for a single Marine lunch.  I had to search all over the place and luckily scored one of the last bags of mini-marshmallows on the commissary's shelf.  Then at Christmas time, I thought that we could wait and get some new ornaments later.  Wrong!  Most of the decorations were gone after Black Friday.