You Might Be A Redneck if...

Your laptop is held together with camo-ribbon and duct tape.



One of the hinges to my laptop was already broken and held together with duct tape. This allowed it to stay open just fine, it just couldn't close.



Coree came home from her first day of high school, excited to tell me all about it. (I'll tell you all about it in another post. It's exciting stuff.) Then, as she hefted her 50 lb. backpack, back onto her shoulder, she bumped the corner of the screen and the other hinge snapped, laying the whole thing out. It was kinda funny, but not. I tried duct taping the other hinge, but without anything to support it, it wouldn't stay up. Coree came up with the idea of attaching string (or ribbon) to the corners as a brace.



So there you have it...360 degrees of my redneck laptop. I will use this thing until it's last, dying breath, I swear. This is it ladies and gentlemen. This is where the magic happens. Well, the writing, anyway. I upload the pics from the iMac. When I can get the kids off of it.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

I am SO excited about this post! Remember my post about this video here?

Well, maybe I should back up and first try to explain part of what it's like being an American attached to the military on Okinawa. There is a high concentration of Americans here. We are still a small part of the population overall, but the highest concentration of American military in Japan are stationed on Okinawa...not to mention all the civilians who are here in support of the military (contractors, school teachers, etc.)

Anyway, it would be quite easy to just live your life here going from one base to another, having a totally American experience. Truthfully, that is probably the case here for most Americans...even those who live off base. We have very little dealings with the local population, other than shopping, site-seeing, dining, etc. I don't have any real friends who are Okinawan. Even the ladies I recognize from the culture group {which I participated in last year} in the halls of our church building (we share a building with a Japanese congregation but meet at different times) I don't really know that well...just a little about them. Same with my housekeepers. They are here to do a job and we have a limited ability to communicate with each other.

What I'm trying to say is, for the most part, our daily paths are very different here. We are Americans having a mostly American experience on Okinawa, and the Okinawans are...well...living their normal Okinawan lives. Anytime our cultures come together, it is an exciting thing. I know it is for us, and appears to be for them (in my experience), too.

This is what makes this video so very exciting:


I love these kids! They are so darling. Just in case you are not familiar with the Miley Cyrus video...it has nothing to do with the song, so this video is obviously a remake of the video our kids did, not her video.

We need to arrange a meeting between the two groups this summer when Josh is home. My favorite part is the outtake reel at the end of the video. Josh had actually talked about doing one at the end of his project because there were so many funny moments. I think he should still do it. Stanford can't be taking up too much of his time, can it?



And just for fun, here's a Party in the USA mash-up which includes the video, too.

So sorry if I got that song stuck in your head. Hehe.

Pineapple Pie

Just like in the USA, packaging doesn't always tell what's inside the package here. (Could you imagine if you were a foreigner in the USA, buying a can of Crisco, because there was a picture of a nice, crispy, fried chicken on the outside? That'd be quite a surprise.)



Anyway, this pretty box of beautiful pineapple pictures and the "wind of Okinawa" caught my attention. At first, I wondered if it might be dried pineapple. That might be a reasonable conclusion, right? Well, the English on the shelf tag said, "pineapple pie," which could mean anything here...but now I was really curious. Into the shopping cart they went.



After ripping off the paper and opening up the box, I found (of course) lovely, individually wrapped packages...



Which definitely looked way too small to be little pies. At this point I was guessing pineapple fruit leather?



But I had to chuckle as I opened the wrapper and this was what I found.



Thin little pastry-cookies. I think they ran out of room on the shelf label...it was short for "pineapple piecrust," which is just what these little bites taste like. I'm guessing these are all dolled-up for gift-giving (which is all about the presentation here, less about the contents) because we plowed through these in two minutes. They took more effort to unwrap than they did to eat. But, they were tasty and a fun, new experience. And now I don't have to wonder what's under the wrapping.

Hug-O-War

Another Stuart tradition we started several years ago, is family hugs after family scripture reading/prayer. Everyone gives everyone else in the family a hug and says goodnight. (I even kiss them and tell them I love them, but I don't force them to do this for each other...that just might send them over the edge.) We felt we needed to implement this for a couple of reasons. One, as kids get older, you may think you'll still show them affection on a daily basis...but then you realize the opportunities are harder to come by as paths cross less frequently through the days full of activities. (I don't tuck in my teenagers and read them stories. Haven't for years. If you do, good on ya...but I know my kids would balk at that idea.) The other reason is that the kids would NEVER show each other affection unless someone was leaving on a long trip (and how often does that happen?) or they were forced to.



So, we just decided we'd each get in the habit of hugging each other every night. It's funny to watch the older two boys...who share a room, but will not even change clothes in front of each other. (I'm serious. Cliff and I are NOT overly-modest/prudish people...but dang if we aren't raising kids that way! If we stay in a hotel, no two of them will sleep under the covers together. Someone will have to bring separate blankets to wrap up in. I'm not kidding. Takes the whole "he's touching me!" complaint to a new level. For a close-knit group, they have some weird boundary issues.) Anyway, back to the older two. Their hug is more like a simultaneous chest-bump, double back-slap. They are such dudes.



Coree is such a mommy's girl...she really only wants to be hugged by mom. She would give everyone else a weak little lean-into/arm-pat...if I let her get away with it. Sometimes when I see her do this to one of her brothers, I give her the same quality of hug and when she protests I say, "What? That's how you hugged (fill in the blank)! I thought that's how you liked to be hugged?" Jake loves to hug everyone. This sequence is of Jake trying to force Coree to give him a real hug, instead of the arm-pat she gave him. I told Coree I was going to keep taking pictures of her until she hugged him.



Here we see she does actually know how to hug. In fact, she's hanging on to me for dear life...



Which allows Jake to come in for the kill. She's giggling into my shoulder the whole time. Maybe it's not that she dislikes hugs from brothers as much as she likes to play games? Hmmm. I'm going to have to rethink my gameplan.

Sunday Driving and Island Hopping

First of all, let me apologize for the length of this post, but I enjoyed our Sunday drive SO much, I wanted to take you along for the ride. Cliff was itching for a road trip. Those are kind of hard to come by on an island, so he got out a map and looked for the closest, easiest option for driving to a neighboring island. Then he charted a course, and we piled into Apollo. We headed up the 330 to the 75 to the 10...



Then took this beautiful bridge...



Out to Miyagi island...then over to Ikei island.




I have to admit, it was a great idea.



The weather had been pretty bad (it's still pretty gray in these pictures) and it felt great to get out on the road.



Too bad we missed these windsurfers doing their thing. They were already putting their boards away.



Interesting looking building here. But we were burning daylight, so we didn't stop to see what it was...



We got back out on the road.



I guess these are to keep us from driving into the water on the sharp turns?











We saw that red bridge ahead and knew we needed to stop.



Even in bad weather, the water is so beautiful here.



Patrick (of course) has to stand on the "plummet to your death" side of the bridge for the picture.



Just gorgeous.







Troy was standing way to close to the edge for my comfort.



Now do you see what I mean?







Speaking of Patrick and plummeting to his death...like a moth to a flame. He saw this rope and couldn't resist. I wasn't actually going to let him demonstrate his ROTC repelling skills, this was all just for the camera.



Then I heard this tractor rumbling down the road behind us. The driver was adorable...she was all smiles for us.



Then we got back on the road to see what else we could see...



Big Time Resort. Love it!



I loved this painted resort map staked into the ground.



And this awesome tree. I want one of these in my yard. Simply Seussical.



We decided to drive around this rural village near the resort and found another lovely old lady pushing a cart...



And another on a bike.



And lots of other snapshots of rural life...



The roads were a little tight for Apollo. There was not a lot of auto traffic here.



But of course, there were vending machines.



We turned down this road to see how close we could get to the water...



We ended up at a dead end just past a private home, so we turned around and went back to a cement dock where several men had parked to fish. We got out and were greeted by quite the welcoming party. This little guy...



Followed by this one. They both had shoelaces wrapped around their necks.



They were SO cute. They loved the Fritos, too.



I don't know if this guy was jealous of the attention the other two were getting, or if he smelled the Fritos, but he crossed the road (hehe) to join the party...



And we were just one donkey short of heading to Bremen Town.



It was a challenge to get Fritos to the rooster without the dog intercepting.



We managed to get him a few, though.



The kids got a kick out of telling him to "sit" in Japanese. He was very well trained.


Chances are, you don't really want to watch four videos-worth of us playing with these animals. But I couldn't decide which videos to include here. They were just so dang cute, and the fact that we were standing by the ocean and were descended upon by a dog, a cat and a rooster was pretty novel. But you might have had to have been there. Patrick said, "Any minute now Momotaro is going to show up and offer us a bowl of noodles." The dynamic between the three was really weird. The rooster picked on the kitten (I just missed filming the rooster on top of the kitten, kicking the life out of it) but the dog terrorized the rooster...so it all seemed to balance out, and they seemed to be happy together.



















We had to leave our new friends and make our way back to our home island. It was getting dark and starting to rain.



And luckily, just when we were feeling parched, there were random, side-of-the-road, vending machines to quench our thirst...



With both hot and cold selections.



Half of us got cans of hot cocoa, and the rest of us got soft drinks. I chose a soda made with the local Okinawan lime-ish fruit that I'm too lazy to look up the spelling of right now.



Crazy, crazy kids. Yes, the boys are spelling "blood."







I must have driven by this weird store a dozen times, but was never a passenger, stopped at this light.



I'm thinking we need to leave here with one of these.



Or maybe this Habu skin? It'd make a great table runner, don't you think?



I'm actually seriously thinking of drum end tables. I'm going to have to come back here and get a better look in the daylight.



In case you didn't guess, these two were "hanging around" outside a pizza place on our ride home. Get it...pizza? gorillas? Yeah...me either.

Thanks for driving with us! It's hard to believe we've been here for two years and STILL haven't seen it all.