If you have spent time with Faye, especially outdoors, you are probably familiar with her insatiable desire to “reorganize” things. For example, any trip to the beach ends up in a massive effort to take select sand from the beach and place it in the water, or handfuls of water that need to be placed on the beach. It is very entertaining to watch (except when she is trying to rearrange my mulch), particularly because she does these tasks with such focus and intensity.
The weekend before last brought such nice weather and I was tasked with occupying our daughter so Shannon could get some serious school work done. It was a joy for me, as I just spent the past 3 weeks away from everyone in California. We went down to our private beach for some initial rearranging work and a swim, where I came up with the perfect Faye activity.
I scrounged up what containers I could find along with some water and food coloring and wala, a homemade “science kit” is born!
Using what I call the tongue-intensity metric, you can see this activity is about a 7 or 8.
This led to hours of fun entertainment, for Faye and her parents. She explains it best, so I’ve included this short video.
It turned out to be a real fun weekend for all of us. Just what I needed after some time away from the family. My daddy-daughter day went so well, I offered another one up to Shannon so she could have another productive study session. It gave me a perfect excuse to head to Jacksonville to visit the temple I call the bike shop, since it is not far from the closest Toys R Us. Faye even test-drove a few of the kids bikes in the shop (and several more at Toys R Us).
As you can see, Toys R Us was an adventure in itself, and I was able to spoil my own daughter for a change with some Cold Stone Creamery ice cream.
Did you expect her to pick something other than blue ice cream?
This is my last weekend in Okinawa before I head to mainland Japan to finish out my deployment. I could not have thought of a better way to end it. After a long and exhausting week, I met up with the old Pensacola crew for an evening of authentic Japanese kareoke.
We had expected to be in a large bar singing in front of everyone, but the standard in Japan seems to be private booths for each party. I was a little disappointed at first, but the setup was actually a lot better since we could all sing song after song together. We checked out our share of tambourines and maracas from the front desk, fought through the kareoke menus (in Japanese), and rocked the house!
We all had SO much fun. The fancy kareoke machine had some kind of rating system at the end of each song that we couldn’t quite figure out, but clearly the higher the “kCal” number the better the singer’s score. Seth and I topped out with a 9.6 for our rendition of Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive”. The last song for the night was none other than the Styx hit, “Mr. Roboto”. What else would you close out a kareoke night in Japan with? The entire crew joined in with the chorus. We evidently saved our best for last, because we scored a 10.4, and the crowd went wild. The max score very well may be a 99, but we were all convinced that we broke some kind of record. As always, there are more photos in the gallery.
I can’t wait to get back to my family back home, but I have to say I will really miss my Okinawa friends. It’s been so great to see everyone again and they have been so great to me during my stay here. I only hope Shannon and I can return the favor when everyone gets back to the States.
Faye and I enjoyed our Halloween Day. We started the day with a parade during her pre-school class to the PX (base department store) across the street and back. She was so excited to have a visit with me during her day, and I thought the whole thing was adorable.
Later in the day, Faye helped me bake some challah and some other yummies for dinner and after. She always loves helping in the kitchen.
Finally, after a nice dinner, we headed out in our stroller. It was pretty dark on our street and there were very few kids out, so we just visited the neighbors we know. With so little kids around, Faye got hand fulls of candy at every stop. It was pretty late when we got to about the 5th house, and Faye said she was done. With that, we headed home to look at what she got, try one piece, and head to bed. Thankfully, the excitement and energy exerted during the day canceled out the sugar and she fell asleep pretty easily. All in all, a great day!
Faye and I are really enjoying our visit with Grandma and Grandpa Pilvinsky in Georgia. We got here last Thursday and will stay through this Thursday. It is great for me because Cathy and Mike are always willing to take care of Faye while I relax. And Faye loves spending time with her Grandma and Papa.
Some of the highlights so far have been a trip to the pumpkin patch and a visit from Faye’s Uncle David and David’s girlfriend Kelly. We also enjoyed visiting the Ocoee River, host to the whitewater events of the Centennial 1996 Summer Olympics, to watch the whitewater rafters and kayakers.
Faye helped Grandma wash her car yesterday, and ended up washing herself and Grandma too. There are more photos from this event – that literally turned into a bath for Faye – in the gallery. We should be back in town by Friday when we will start planning for Faye’s third birthday and getting ever so close to the mid-way point of Jason’s deployment.
The day after Jason left for his big adventure, Faye and I packed up and headed out for our own summer fun. We started the trip at my parent’s house 3 hours away where we spent time with family and friends. My mom then joined us for the rest of our trip up to Philly and New York. The Philly trip only took us 5 hours – much shorter than our usual 10-12. With only one stop, it seemed like a very short ride and left plenty of time for relaxing at Grandpa’s house.
Mom, Faye and I will head out tomorrow for NY city, where we have only a few stops planned over the course of a few days. From there, we are off to visit the Eckers family upstate NY where I plan to do a lot of relaxing. I think relaxing is the theme of this trip, with lots of help from grandparents and family friends. Faye is enjoying herself, and has only once requested that we go home now. I hope to be up here visiting until around mid-August, when we will begin moseying back down towards home.
Although Jason is our usual photographer, I have been given specific instructions from him to take many photos while he is away. I will do my best to take them and post them here soon.
