Tsuboya Pottery Festival

This Saturday, Holly and Jason's mountaineering expedition to climb Okinawa's highest summit, Mt Yonaha (1,494 ft above sea level), was canceled due to inclement weather. Instead we implemented Plan B and rode on the Okinawa monorail for the first time...

The Excitement Level Builds to an Almost Uncontrollable Level as We Await the Arrival of the Monorail

Finally our Sweet Ride Arrives

Future Conductors in Train-ing

Our destination was the 30th Annual Tsuboya Pottery Festival, which featured about 50 craftsman selling thousands of pieces of hand-crafted pottery. It was fascinating to see the different styles of each pottery maker...

Our Purchases
Out of the thousands of pieces of pottery to choose from we picked these pieces for several reasons:

Reason 1 - We liked them.

Reason 2 - They were drastically marked down. Everyone knows that Holly and Jason can't resist a bargain.

Reason 3 - We only had 5,000 Yen on hand. This may sound like a large sum of money, but at the current exchange rate it is only equivalent to $57.47. Having only 5,000 Yen on hand turned out to be a really great thing because the piece of pottery that Holly really liked was on sale for $2,000.

Beach Rock Village and Tropical Fruits Land

We celebrated this Veteran's Day and remembered all of the past and present sacrifices of our soldiers by climbing around tree houses and hanging out with farm animals at a funky hippy-esque place north of Nago. Say hello to Beach Rock Village...

As if Beach Rock Village wasn't fun enough, we decided to get crazy afterwards and visit Tropical Fruits Land, which more properly should have been named The Tropical Fruits Already Fell Off Most of the Trees But We Also Have Butterflies and Exotic Birds Land...

Show Me Your Scary Faces!

The Kids Feeding the Exotic Birds

The Exotic Birds Feasting on Jason's Cranium

The Exotic Birds Attacking the Photographer (Holly)

Well Isn't That Special...

This Saturday, Kadena Air Base celebrated the 10th Anniversay of hosting the Special Olympics. It was a huge event with about 1,000 special olympians from Okinawa competing and 1,000's of volunteers and spectators there to provide support and encouragement. We volunteered to help out with the softball throw (no pictures - too busy helping) and then had fun watching some of the other events...

Aliens and Princess Witches

This scary Halloween season an Alien and a 'Princess Witch' were found roaming the halls of the Dalpias Estate...

Denver's Third Grade Halloween Party and Parade

Denver is the handsome looking alien with the pale skin and his teacher was dressed up as Queen Amidala (Star Wars)

The Kadena Branch Halloween Party...

...was AWESOME. McCall had a chance to highlight her self named 'Princess Witch' costume and Jason had a chance to pig out on all the desserts.

Pumpkin Carving

This year's pumpkin carving event was exciting as always. Ever since he was old enough to help, Denver has been 'grossed-out' by the pumpkin guts and has made us clean the guts out. On the other hand, it was funny to watch McCall's face light up with delight as she dug out the slimy pumpkin guts.

Halloween Night

It rained on Halloween night, but that didn't deter our Aliens and Princess Witches. The trick or treating crowds seemed quite a bit smaller than last year, but we still served 610 trick-or-treaters. After McCall returned from her candy gathering, she really enjoyed helping Daddy give out the candy.