Fun in the States

Although we went home for a cruddy reason, we still managed to have some good times. Here the kids are on some random dragon at Sunset Beach (the beach right by our house).

Considering we flew a ridiculous flight pattern both to and from Oki we had a rather uneventful trip (thankfully). By ridiculous I mean we flew from Okinawa to Tokyo to Los Angeles to DC to NYC to Buffalo. Coming home it was Buffalo to NYC to DC. Spend the day and night in DC. Fly out back up to Newark to Tokyo....5.5 hour layover....to Okinawa. It was a LOOOOOONG flight, but hey it was free. And, if you ever get to fly Continental as opposed to United then DO IT! They had DVR's in every seat with about 150 movies and 50 TV shows, plus video games. As a parent I am usually getting interrupted during a movie on a plane about a zillion times. However, I would just pause, tend to the child and continue watching an hour later. It was wonderful and I actually saw 2 full movies on the 13 hour flight.

Another funny thing happened to us as evidenced in this picture below. On both the long transoceanic segments we received seats that not only weren't together, NONE of us were together. Yup, even 10 month old Kate was seated by herself. Obviously that wasn't going to cut it, but they insisted there was nothing they could do about it. It was real fun having to wait until everyone was seated and have the flight attendants beg for some poor soul to give up their aisle seat so my family could (sorta) sit together. We ended up having the boys sit together and several row up having the girls sit together. It was tricky when someone wanted to eat but the food back was with the opposite parent. Or when Kate needed a diaper change but the diapers were with the other parent, but it worked. At least WE were the ones changing Kate and not some random stranger.

My mom with my Grandma Ruthie and Kate. Oh yeah, the dog, Lotus, is my mom's favorite child.

We went to the Buffalo Museum of Natural History one day. I love doing stuff like that, but I don't have as many opportunities in Oki. However, I also love going to the beach and I get to do that all the time in Oki. It's a trade off I guess.

Here we are at the kid grocery store at the museum.

Rob got to take a quick trip out to Utah for a few days. Here he is with Grandpa Kiser and his dad. There's no family resemblance or anything (THICK sarcasm).

Rob got to go to the temple (me=jealous). Here he is with his youngest sibling, Micaela and his mom.

Back in NY again, Rob took little Ben golfing with big Ben and Scott. Big Ben aspires to be a golf pro and since both him and Scott work on golf courses they had to play a quick nine. Little Ben was in heaven as evidenced by this video. Very focused, but happy.



To say my mom has had some work done on her house lately would be an understatement. They added on about 1000 square feet including a complete remodel of the kitchen. The landscaping and outside work is still being finished up and creates big puddles when it rains. The boys found this frog one day in such a puddle. I think the kids thoroughly enjoyed being able to explore the woods and having an acre to run around on. I enjoyed just letting them play and not worrying about some neighbor kid hitting them or the MP's yelling at me for underage inattention. Yes on base you have to be SEVEN to be unsupervised while playing outside. Ridiculous in my book.

Anyway, it was a really nice trip and I'm so glad we were able to make it. Thank you to Rob's command for giving him the time off and for paying for our tickets. It would have been a huge financial burden for us to fork over 6 tickets last minute.