Hi Stranger

My apologies if you have been checking this looking for updates. We are home in NY and busy little bees visiting everyone. Don't worry, I'm taking lots of pictures to share with you, and I will share them soon. But for now, I'll catch you up. We got to NY on July 14th, late at night. We flew into JFK and then had to drive to Albany. The flights were as to be expected with a one year old. She did good on the shorter flights, not so good on the 8 hour flight. We had a 2 hour flight to Taiwan, a 8 hour flight to Alaska, and a 6 hour flight to NY. Going to Alaska was the hardest, she didn't want to sleep and cried a lot. But going to NY and finally fell asleep and slept for 4 hours. So I just had to occupy her the last hours of the flight. We've been here a week and all is going well. Olivia has adjusted fine and some days she doesn't wake up until 8 AM! Daddy is coming tomorrow, and we are very excited to see him. Olivia enjoys waking up the whole house in the morning. She also enjoys chasing the kitty cats. And Mommy enjoys being able to do her hair in the morning because its not 1,000 degrees with 100% humidity. Not to me anyway. Olivia met her cousin Izzie (and mommy did too for the first time). They love to play together. I have yet to drive, because I'm a little nervous that I will drive on the wrong side of the road. So far we've gone to the park, visited with lots of family and friends, gone shopping, watched normal TV, and ate food we haven't had in a long time. Tomorrow we are going to go to a museum in Mass to see a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit. Then we will come home and wait for Daddy to arrive. Here are some pics with my little camera to hold you over until I can get the other ones up.

All buckled up (bunny too) and ready to take off:


Mommy and Olivia on the plane:


Note: When traveling with a 14 month old, do not worry about packing toys to play with on the plane. She will only want to play with the empty food carton and her spoon.


Don't let this picture fool you. She didn't sleep a lot and this was actually IN the airport, not on the plane...

Our huge plane that we took from Taiwan to JFK with a stop in Alaska. It was a 747.

See? It had two floors:

I woke up to this, she did it herself. I think she might be getting ahead of herself...

Yesterday, we went to Friendly's. Home of the best ice cream in the world. MMMmmmm.

Here's Olivia and her Aunt Dandy while we were waiting for food:

Water = FUN!

Daddy wanted to do something fun this weekend, since Olivia and I will soon be traveling to NY and leaving Daddy as a single man for ten days. We decided on Comprehensive Park. Comprehensive Park is a huge park that has a small water park inside of it. Olivia and I had gone before, but Daddy hadn't been yet, and neither of us had tried the water park out yet. The first time we went there, we stopped at the pond to watch the ducks...and found out they were overly friendly (probably because people always feed them). These two ducks came right up to us, I crouched down to snap a picture and the big one in the back must have thought the two in the front were getting food, because he came screeching in at the last minute. I managed to take the picture and got this image, but I thought I was being attacked by ducks at the same time!


The water park has two big water slides, a lazy river, and a few baby pools with fountains and slides for the kids. And they let you bring in your own tubes, so we could just let Olivia float down the lazy river all day! Well, we could if she would just sit and relax in her float...but no, she is too bold and brave to do that. She sat in her float for a little while, then got tired of watching everyone else splash around and she wanted to splash around too. She even tried to climb out of her float! She must think she is bigger than what she really is. Her she is going down one of the kiddy slides:


And trying to run off and play. If he let go of her, she would just keep walking around in the the pool, not afraid at all:

Splashing with Mommy:

On the way back to the car we stopped at the pond again. These turtles thought we had food and came right up out of the water towards us:

Last night we took a walk on the sea wall. She loves when we let her walk on her own. Well, actually she wiggles out of our hand and tries to run away, laughing the whole time we chase her. Her newest trick is ducking and running between our legs as we are trying to stop her from going any further. She is trying to peek over the seawall at the ocean here:

Distinguished Graduate

The Distinguished Graduate "has graduated in the top ten percent of the class by demonstrating exceptional academic and leadership skill..." Why do you need to know this? Because Mr. Michael Ellis was one of the Distinguished Graduates at the NCO Academy Graduation!! Yay! His hard work the past 6 weeks paid off. Friday was graduation day. They had a diploma ceremony during the day at the school and then a dinner ceremony in the evening where they announced the awards. So he didn't know he was getting the award until they called his name at dinner.
Everyone was invited to attend the diploma ceremony during the day. So, Olivia was able to see Daddy walk across the stage. Here she is waiting for Daddy to walk:

The special guest was Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force (Ret) Jim Finch, he handed out the diplomas. Here he is giving Mike his diploma:

And after the diploma ceremony they held the class final retreat. We got to watch them in formation, lower and fold the flag, and present the flag to the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. Remember how I told you Mike got to hold the flag? His official title was Guide On. Here they are waiting to be called into formation:

Olivia picked out her Daddy in the sea of blue, and wanted to go over to him. We wouldn't let her, so she kept waving to him instead:

The Final Retreat - Mike's flight, "The Raptors":

The NCOA Class 09-5 (all of the graduates):

Parade Rest:

Saluting the flag as it's being lowered:

The folding of the flag:

I'm glad I caught this one. After the retreat, Craig is congratulating Mike. Craig is also Mike's supervisor at work:

Olivia is so proud of her Daddy:

And later at the dinner ceremony...

Mike was a part of a special tribute to past Chief Master Sergeants of the Air Force. He stood on stage and had a speaking part about a quote once said by the 5th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. After the quote he lifted a cloth to reveal a portrait of said Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. The picture quality isn't great, it was really dark, but you get the idea. Mike is the one in the middle. Notice his white gloves? Fancy. He did an excellent job!

The commander, the chief, the Senior master Sergeant, the acting first shirt, and Mike's supervisor were the attendees of the dinner ceremony (and me too, of course). Dinner was wonderful.

Craig and Jennifer:

Miss Sue (the commander's wife) and I:

Holly and Jason (the acting first shirt):

The graduate and I:

Here is Mike receiving his award for Distinguished Graduate from the 13th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. This was the first time Mike met a Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force and he was able to receive an award from him! Very cool.

The Distinguished Graduate and I:

With all his work people. From the left: SMSgt Schmidt, Lt. Col Mundie, TSgt Ellis, MSgt Adams, CMSgt Polumski, and MSgt Terhune. They were all very impressed and proud of Mike.

Happy 4th of July!

Kadena put on "AmericaFest" for the 4th of July weekend. It was a festival with planes on display, bands playing, food and games, and fireworks. The local Okinawans were invited to come on base to attend on Saturday. We went on Friday when it was just open to military, since it would be less busy. I'll post some pictures from that later. But, on the actual 4th of July Mike had to work at "AmericaFest," all day (really alllllll daaaayyy), so Olivia and I went to Craig and Jennifer's, had dinner, and watched the fireworks from their house. But first, since Jill would be home alone during the fireworks, Olivia and I thought it would be nice to take her for a walk before we left. And it was a good excuse to get some cute pictures.
Here we are at the park. Notice that both Olivia and Jill are dressed for the occasion:

Playing on the playground:

And later watching the fireworks:

She loved them! And she wasn't scared at all from the bangs. So, how is the sound of fireworks different from thunder??

We hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th!!

Rainy Beach Day and Airplanes

Mike had Friday, July 3rd, off so we decided to meet some friends at the beach before we went to AmericaFest that night. There is a black cloud that always sits over our house. It can be nice everywhere else in Okinawa, but there will be a black cloud over Camp Shields. We have just come to accept this. Therefore, we never know what the weather is like elsewhere, because it always looks like its about to pour at our house. Well, as we drove closer to Torii Station, the looming black cloud followed us. We thought we'd chance it anyway, since we were already ready for the beach. We got there it was raining off and on. Boo. Maybe the rain will go away, or so we thought. So, we started playing in these sprinklers they have there:


It took her a minute to warm up to them. But she liked them once she figured them out! Here she is stepping on the water and seeing that it splashes all around:


All the water came up at once!


Wet Baby:


She's a fish:


Walking the boardwalk...What? It doesn't look like rain, does it?


And the rain finally caught us. We found shelter and sat to wait it out. At least she was still smiling:


Rainy Day = No day at the beach


Later, at AmericaFest, we just plopped her in the seat of this Helicopter...I don't think she liked that very much!

When my dad was stationed here, this was the plane he worked on. The F-4. If I remember correctly, he loaded the bombs. We don't use it any more, but I guess the Japanese do. This is their model:

Can anyone guess what this is? I hope you guess C-130. It's just the plane Mike worked on the entire time we were at Moody (all 8 years!). They put the flags in the window on the top of the plane. Whenever Mike would come home from deployments and I would go out to watch him land, this is what you would see after they landed - Flags popping up from the airplanes. I'm a sucker for things like that and it got me every time.

This is taken from inside the plane, looking up at the flag:

What do you think, future C-130 pilot? Surely, these won't still be around by then...

Coming out of the plane with Daddy's help:

Here are a couple videos from earlier in the day when we were at the sprinklers!

Silly girl!