So yes, I realize that I have been neglecting the blog. Sorry. Of course, I’ll try to do better, but I’m not making any promises this time! All I can say is the nagging helps. I didn’t realize I had so many readers, but since I have gotten several complaints about not updating the last few weeks, I guess I had more than I thought. I’m flattered…
So in the last few weeks, we started homeschool. I completely intend to do weekly reports like last year, but we are on week 4 now and I haven’t done any, so I guess I’ll start with a monthly report. I’ll make it my goal to do that tomorrow (remember, no promises), and just give you a general family update today.
We finally got all of our furniture from Florida this past Monday. I am so glad to have it, although there are quite a few things I wish I had brought that will just be staying in storage for the next three years. Namely, furniture. I have some cute tables and another dresser that would have been really nice to have. Oh well. We have our new couches in the living room, put down some huge area rugs to cover the schoolhouse tile and painted the wall blue. I am really happy with the way the room looks. We have a new entertainment center coming sometime very soon, but apparently it was delayed with the typhoon. Once that arrives, I’ll post pictures of the living room, but until then, here are some random pictures of the couches, the rug and the wall color:
We also painted Madison’s toy room under the stairs. Actually, we’ve pretty much painted every room in the house, but I have pictures of how we did Madison’s toy room, so… She wanted it to look like a garden and she wanted to make handprints for the flowers. Here is what we ended up with. I think it looks pretty good. We also bought a rug for the floor. These floors are hard!
We have been doing quite a bit of exploring as well. I found a great store off base that is kind of like a Target, only way more expensive. I think things cost more here because of the cost of shipping it to the island. Either that people just don’t realize they are being scammed… Either way, I mainly shop at the BX since prices there are closer to what they are at home. But this is a great store for window shopping when I miss Target (which is everyday, but I’ve only been there twice), and it does have a really nice selection of kitchen tools (the BX does not). And we also found a shop off base to buy Madison clothes – cute clothes, great prices. We bought three dresses and seven shirts for about $20.
We’ve also been able to try quite a few local restaurants and most of them have been great. There is only one that we wouldn’t go back too, a Chinese place (go figure), and the rest are wonderful. We found a place that makes fabulous fried rice, one with good seafood, and another with great cream puffs. And the best place is a garlic restaurant where pretty much everything has garlic in it. I love garlic.
As far as sightseeing, Madison and I took another tour (more on that later – that is it’s own post I think…), and a few days ago we went to Monakids Jungle with some families from Matt’s squadron. It was kind of like Chuck E Cheese, only everyone spoke Japanese. Madison came up to me while she was playing and said “I made a new friend! She only speaks Japanese, but she still likes me!” It was cute. This past weekend we went to the farmer’s market and a china store – I have picked out the Japanese dishes I want to buy before we move back, now I just need to save my money… At the farmer’s market, we bought some vegetables and some bread, and Matt and Madison bought flowers to plant outside.
(A lot of people here carry umbrellas when it is sunny to protect their skin…)
(That is bacon and eggs on toast, ready to buy from a little bakery…)
We are also planning to go to the aquarium on Columbus Day when Matt is off work. It is the second largest aquarium in the world and was featured on the discovery channel. It looks amazing.
I finished my first cake class and am taking a break. Hopefully I learned enough to do a decent job on Madison birthday cake in a few weeks. I am planning to take the next level in December. Here are the other two cakes I made. I have definitely not mastered the rose, but that’s ok since I know there is a store in Wichita where you can buy them 🙂 I do think my handwriting improved from the first cake.
And finally, a family update wouldn’t be complete without some pregnancy pictures, right? I am definitely starting to show and I have started to tell people here that I am pregnant because I don’t want everyone to think I am just chunky… We have an ultrasound on Oct 21st and hopefully we will find out what we’re having. We weren’t going to find out, but Madison has her heart set on a girl, so if it’s not going to be a girl, we need to give her some time to prepare!
(Madison thought if I was getting my picture taken, she should get hers taken too.)
So I think that’s a pretty good update, right? You all are set for the next three weeks. Just kidding. Maybe.
RED HERRING? 