May: Month 10

  So this is our 10th month living overseas!!  WOW, I never thought I'd be doing this.  Still I sit back sometimes and think, "Am I really living overseas?  Am I seriously the only American in this store? Can I really just drive 20 minutes to swim at a beautiful beach?  Can I, please, learn better Japanese so I can tell the little boys outside our windows to stop screaming at each other?"  Ah, foreign culture!  Funny enough, the Japanese don't have a very hands-on approach to rearing children so you'll often see kids as young as three and four out by themselves, playing in the street or with a pack of older kids.  We have a little gang here on our street that likes to hang out by or house because it has the only shade around.  So loud and no adults around to discipline so they're constantly getting injured or playing with glass and rusted rebar...hilarious.  I laugh about it sometimes...and other times I just want to pull my hair out.  I just want to take a nap!!!  Summer will be the hardest because they'll all be out for summer...yippee!  Well, we plan to go to the beach or pool EVERY DAY!
  Speaking of which, May has been making up for the rainy season by monsooning on us 6 out of every 7 days!  We were getting stir crazy and then Memorial weekend hit and now it's blazing hot with sun every day!  We've been to Torii Station beach and Moon beach this week and we can't wait until the Foster pool opens for morning swims!  We've been to the aquarium again (Little E kept asking for two weeks) and finally to Pineapple Park which is a funny little place where you ride a car around a garden and then taste tons of pineapple foods.  Delicious!
  My belly is getting bigger and I'm now in only maternity clothes...which I had to buy because all my maternity clothes from Little E are WINTER!  Not gonna work here...Still feeling great and looking forward to knowing the gender!
  Our house church is going wonderfully.  We have three families in our home each Sunday and it's very laid back and encouraging.  Adam's been doing a great job leading every worship and Little E is getting a lot out of the experience of being an integral part of the whole worship time.  She's also learning to sing loud and can remember all the stories about Jesus that we've gone over.  She's amazingly smart, I tell you!  We're enjoying the close community aspect of a house church and hope to just get closer and closer!
  I hope to have better pictures of the belly soon!

Here's the little bean at 8 weeks...11 weeks ago!

We went to Bios on the Hill a few weeks ago with Diana and Evan.  Little E still talks about the water buffalo  with the rope in his nose.

Little E and Evan in their little elf houses

Bios on the Hill treck

A rainy day: here is Little E and her "thneed"

Little E did an entire 90 minute p90x routine with Daddy one night

This is the face that Little E and I make whenever Dad is doing something weird.

Ready for the rain in our boots...and it's hot so we're in shorts too!

Pineapple Park

Like Adam needs a bouncer...

Memorial Day at Torii Station

April, come she will

  I feel like I should apologize at the beginning of EVERY post because of the length between each entry.  The last post was from March and here we are almost into June!

  The time has flown by and much has been happening.  First off, it's the rainy season and April was surprisingly almost rainless!  Lots of zoo and park days ensued as well as a whole week of Little E being the sickest I've ever seen her!  You know it's bad when she won't even drink "spicy drinks" for you (those are sodas in Little E world).  She laid around and watched so much tv, I thought her eyes would fall out.  But as soon as I'd turn it off, sicky crying would begin and that's never good.  But she bounced back (not sure what it ended up being, not strep or infection...) and is her silly self again!

  The other thing I should mention at this time is that
       WE'RE PREGNANT AGAIN!!!!  

  That has been taking over my mind and time.  I'm feeling amazing and we're already at 19 weeks.  We find out the sex on June 10th and I'm super excited!  I have three other friends here on the island who are also pregnant with toddlers and it's WONDERFUL to go through this change with them.  We talk about second pregnancies and how to deal with a toddler and a newborn, cravings and sickness...wonderful.  heh heh.  So we're due on October 26th and I'm so glad that my mom has decided to come out again to be with me and Little E for a few weeks.  Don't know what I would do without her.
  I'm starting to feel the little bug moving around in there.  Little E is curious about the baby in mama's belly and she prays for it.  I think she considers it a girl because she always says, "Be with baby's belly in mama's belly, here she is strong and big."  She kisses my belly and says, "Hi baby" to it.  So sweet.  Just wait until she figures out that babies are not all they're cracked up to be at first!
  I'm only worried about delivery and aftercare.  Not sure how my body is going to do this time around, and with steep stairs this time too...yikes! So there's our April!

Maggie and Little E at the Zoo!

Zoo day with Evan, Cameron, Little E and Maggie!

Loves those bunnies!!

This is the longest roller slide on the island and we rode down it on a Rubbermaid tub lid.  SO fast.  Shawn and Cameron actually got air at one point and I think Shawn strained his neck trying not to die.

Sicky and Mama relaxing

This is around 14 weeks, and I love the shot of my armpit.  I've got to get Adam to take these pictures!