January...from the eyes of March (not the "ides")

Well, I guess I can officially say that I am NOT a good blogger!  So much to do and no time to spare for updating.  In my defense, I was preparing for Little E's birthday party for maybe two of those three months and every spare second I had was put into making gifts or decorations for her.  Yes, I realize that sounds ridiculous (spending two months on a three year old's party) and truth-be-told, once it was all up...it didn't even look like it took me that long.  But that's what you get when your toddler stops napping and you don't get a huge amount of time to work on things!

So here's what we did in January!

A new year's trip to a Buddhist temple (a Japanese tradition).  We visited the Naritasan Temple which is just a bit south of us.

 The Naritasan Temple is known to bless its visitors with fertility...yikes!  Hence the Buddha with babies in the statue below.

After visiting the temple and seeing the monks doing their New Year's chants, we grabbed our "oracle" for the year.  If you didn't like the saying, you put the oracle on the fence, leaving it behind you.  Little E's said something about it being a good year for her to marry...so we left it!  

There were tons of food stalls there, so we got our lunch and of course, Little E got her hands on a candied apple and managed to take a bite out of it before we could stop her...so she got a very sticky treat for the ride home.  Sneaker sneaker!!

We took a trip with our great friends, Diana and Evan to Mura Mura village up near Yomitan, one day in January.  It was such fun to see the kids together and we had a delightful lunch as well!

Mura Mura Village is set up to look like an old Ryukyuan Village would've looked like.

Here are those two little darlins' painting together!

We found a funny tree house that the kids just had to climb!

We went to Yomitan to see the East China Sea from there...beautiful beaches!  We also got to feed a goat and see a giant Shisa!

   We had "the perfect day" on President's Day this year!  Awesome lunch at Pizza in the Sky, beach and Aquarium with Shelley and Jared!

the wait was an entire hour...but the view was outstanding!

I brought tons of snacks and we used them as appetizers!

Pizza in the Sky is a house converted into a restaurant.  Best pizza I've had in a LONG time.

One day we will sit at the Japanese tables here.

Finally got our seats!

So excited to eat!

Shelley's tea set was so pretty!

Worth the wait!!

We then headed to the beach by the Aquarium.  The water was perfect.

When we got to the aquarium, we were right on time for the feeding of the whale sharks!  Such a cool experience!

And that was our January in a nutshell!