The Ellis Family: 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.