Cherry Blossoms!!! (Parental Content Warning!)

This past Presidents' Day, we were honored with an invitation to go to Naha with our friends, the Jones family. The Naha Cherry Blossom Festival had just passed the day before, so we waited until all the Okinawans were back in their offices on Monday before we enjoyed their cherry blossoms in a more intimate setting. The blossoms were beautiful, and we had a blast!

Unfortunately, Cliff still had to work, because he's leaving on this deployment thing at the end of the week and had a hugely long list of stuff to do...so he missed out. It would have been more fun with him, but in the same way we have to go on while he's deployed...we just enjoyed ourselves anyway.

The Jones family is awesome. Before we got here to Okinawa, they were just "friends of friends" because the Crabtrees, Kretschmers, Slatterys and the Fairchilds ALL knew them (at 3 different duty stations)...but we had never met...but we've been making up for lost time. Their kids are basically the same ages as ours...except that they have a bonus 5 year old at the end. Their oldest son brought a date, so she is the blond girl you'll see in the pictures mixed in with all their brunettes.

Here's some beautiful kids surrounded by some beautiful blossoms:


It's actually rude here to photograph people without their permission, but occasionally, when I need to act fast, I just play rude American. You can't see her face, anyway, so she can just be random, kimono wearing lady in cherry blossoms:


I wish Cliff was there...this would have been a great family photo:



Here's the whole group...except the photographer (me):

Don't we look like a fun group?

We actually heard this thing groaning and cracking:

But why let personal safety get in the way of a good photo op?


Same with this one...they swore they felt it tipping!


We had fun chasing and feeding pigeons. Coree was a little freaked out that they were brushing against her legs.


And since there is a soft drink vending machine for every 27 people on the island...of course there was refreshment nearby. Here's all the kids enjoying their selections. The favorite was a grape thing in an aluminum bottle that had gelatin chunks in it. I don't think you have to have texture issues as bad as mine to think this is just gross to be drinking something out of a bottle that you can't even see that's all lumpy like that. Grape cottage cheese anyone?

So then we headed home by way of Coco's Curry House. It was delish, as always...and we took up half the restaurant with our group of 13. Here are some of the sights on our drive home:


Spiderman and Uncle San in one shot! There was also a Statue of Liberty around there somewhere...we'll have to catch that one sometime, too.


What is a Book Off? Is that anything like a dance off?


This was some sort of rally or protest...I tried to get a better shot as we drove by, but it was blurred. Drive by photography is a crap shoot.


OK...we kept passing this bus in stop and go traffic. The first time I saw it, from a distance, it looked to me like either a naked, pink vampire...or a cartoon flasher with a pink trenchcoat. Then I got this closeup...that almost incapacitated me from laughing so hard to the point I would have had to have Brenda take the wheel...but wait, she was laughing just as hard!

OK, so this is obviously not a trenchcoat or bat wings...but some sort of pod this little phallic guy is hatching out of. I'd sure like to know what he's advertising!

We had so much fun on our day trip, and we are eager to find out where the Jones family will take us next!