Its been a while

Here's some pictures to start things out right!

Mia At her first birthday. notice the plastic bracelet she loves to accessorize. she is waiting to blow out the candle on her cake but as you can see she has already dived into some chocolate!

Huis Ten Bosch had some amazing tulips in February. They just had fields and fields. and of course us being american we couldn't just sit by and take pictures of pretty flowers we had to send our little toddlers in for some candid shots, dont know how happy the huis ten boschites were about that...a few flowers died for the nobel cause!

We also went to Bio-Park. its like a huge petty zoo. its funny cuz the animals they have are like Beavers, goats, lamas, sheep. all things we have in america but here they are like way cool animals here. they even had a puppy petting zoo which was weird to me. they had a bunny petting area and a whole bunch of monkeys to feed. Aj tried to give this one a leaf but he wasnt thrilled by it. right after this shot, however he did jump from aaron to me to steal the flower i had put behind mia's hair. i dont know what made her more upset the monkey or stealing her flower.

This was our day trip to Hirado. Its a pretty big fishing town a few hours away, interesting fact, it was (maybe is) the largest whaling port in japan) it is also a huge christen site (if you want to know why you'll just have to google it cuz it would take too long to explain) they have a huge castle here that we went and saw and also tons of hot springs and hot spring spas. this is a free foot and arm bath. As you can see the kids loved the foot bath. it was raining that day so all the splashing didnt really bother us, we were all generally wet by the end anyways. it was awesome though. 15 mins and seriously my feet felt so soft. im sure many of you are now having flash backs to pedicures of ladies hunched over scrubbing the tar out of your feet all for baby soft heels...Hirado foot spa: way better, way free-er!

well it must be obvious that aaron is in port cuz i haven't blogged in forever. but he has duty tonight so i found some time after putting the kids to bed! Right now is Golden Week here. its one of the few major holiday that japan has. there was a Sakura, or cherry blossom, festival a few weeks ago, but since the country was in mourning after the earthquake and tsunami not much was done for it. the sakura were amazing. i cant even tell you how beautiful it was! it only lasted about a week. everywhere all the trees just instantly bloomed with all these white and pink cherry blossoms. even better was a week later when all the petals started to fall, it was like a pink snow. i loved it. we did manage to get some family pictures taken. it was towards the end of the blossoms so not a lot in the trees but still pretty, i'll try to post them up soon. even more amazing is we are finally going to be moving on base. for any of you that are currently blog snooping because you just recently got orders here (hey we did it!) LIVE ON BASE! its all i can say. dont get me wrong we love or little cho and actually its not even that little it is really nice but man do i miss my american conveniences. i know what your thinking too, Sam your just a baby you can totally live without that stuff all the japanese do, but let me tell you once you have it and it gets taking away you really miss it. i am so excited for a REAL dryer that will actually dry my clothes (line drying isnt all its cracked up to be especially when you have a neighbor that likes to smoke out on his/her balcony!) you think oh i wont mind not having a dishwasher, but add that to the humidity and ever time you do the dishes (which is at least once a day, ugh) your hair will frizz into a poof ball and all the windows will fog up instantly which will later lead to you scraping mold out of the window pane. awesome i know! dont even get me started on the trash and lack of garbage disposal. but what i am so unbelievable excited for is a Yard!!! oh i wish you could here me squeal with glee just by writing it. we have a nice little fenced in yard for the rug rats to play in and our very own cherry blossom tree, I CAN WAIT FOR NEXT SEASON! aaron is not all that thrilled about the actually move (who knows why, its not like he was here for the first one!) but since we are going to be in a townhouse we can get a puppy and he has been malling over that one...we'll see though. we both really want a dog but it does make things complicated for moving back to the states and all that jazz!

The babies are loving life here. mia is a full fleadged walker. Man i thought it was crazy with her crawling but now that little miss independent is walking i wish i could rip myself in half to chase after them cuz they always seem to be going in opposit directions. Aj is such a little smarty. he loves dino train and super why right now. he loves letters. he will see words like "EXIT" and say "look mommy T-R-B-N" and he is just so proud of himself for spelling just like on super why and man im pretty proud of him too! we were thinking about putting him in a japanese preschool so that he could learn a second language but we got invited to be apart of a christen preschool on base and we might just do that instead. i think some of his little playgroup buddies will be doing it too so that might be better for him.

Nagasaki Lantern Festival Feb '11

We went to the Nagasaki Lantern festival the beginning of Feb. it was so much fun! i almost didnt go, a little scared about going out by myself but Jane had talked me into it and i went with three other wives from the denver. we went early in the week so there wouldnt be too many people. i thought it was crazy packed but Jane kept saying how there was so few people. we could barley push our strollers through the crowd! and yes four white women pushing strollers is quite a sight to behold here. i think we had about just as many pictures taken of us as were taken of the lanterns! it is weird to be the minority, even weirder when people ask to take pictures with your kids!

a park we stopped at, notice the dinosaur lanterns in the back ground? aj is obsessed with dinosaur train right now and the first thing he did was to go down the line and name them all. he knows a lot of them too. sometimes he corrects me!

A cute moment of holding hands, these are a few of our buddies from playgroup!

see all those people, thats not a big crowd here!

they had this huge shrine. the lantern festival is to celebrate the new year. i kinda thought they should have rabbits since it is the year of the rabbit but maybe its wrong to kill rabbits on the year of the rabbit!

So i know there are no pictures of mia but she was there mostly bundled up in her stroller. it was a warm day but got cold by the night. we are still waiting for some warm weather here. we had one good weekend last weekend and we went to siki park (amazing pictures to come!) but now its cold again, low 50s. cant wait for some warmer weather. Aj cant either he has been asking to go to the pool since January!

random thought

so a long time ago a very good friend of mind posted about the verification words that you have to type to add a comment and how she always tries to guess the word that it is or what it would mean if it is a word. i love it, cracked me up, so here is one i got today and it made me smile.

Exican: n. Someone who renounces their hispanic heritage.

Aaron's Fall Deployment

So even though aaron has already come home and gone back out i thought i would put up some pictures from his deployment last fall

Aaron and His friend Greg got to go on one of the Helicopters, Im not sure why but they took some pretty funny pics

They had a huge Thanksgiving dinner on the ship. Aaron is the FSO, Food Service Officer, and one of his jobs is to be over all of the cooks and food preparation of the ship. He makes sure they always have all the food that they need on the ship. In the picture with him is the CO of the ship and the XO cutting the cake as well as the SUPPO, Aaron's department head.

"Land Ho!"

Ice Cream Sandwich, they take things literally her in the east!

I thought these tea pots were way pretty, they are painted on the inside

Hard at work...isn't he cute!

Well it has been a busy two months for us. Aaron was able to come home for a week over thanksgiving. it was a much needed break after three months apart. we all went to huis ten bosch to see the christmas lights. then in december aaron was finally able to come home. a four month deployment! it is soooo nice to have him home again. they had a nice big homecoming for the ship but sadly it was the first day it snowed so it had to be cut short so everyone could get out of the cold. since then we have just been sightseeing. My mom and kyler came and visited us for ten days around new years and that was really fun. Mostly we are just trying to enjoy family as much as possible! Mia is getting so big and has started to walk while holding on to things. she can also say a few words including "aj" her best bud. Aj is such a good littler helper and ask Aaron all day everyday "Aj help daddy?" he just loves to do anything with aaron, fixing things, cleaning, dishes you name it if its with daddy he loves it!

big chocolate fountain in Huis Ten Bosch

Merry go Round in HTB

Awe Love!

I got that christmas tree from main base to my house, up the elevator, and all put together all by myself! the security guard downstairs thought i was very weird to be carrying an 6' half dead tree to my house.

Picking up daddy after a long deployment

goofy aj!

At the Peace Park in Nagasaki. Site of where the atomic bomb hit.