Wandering around

More pics from around the neighborhood... click on the pics if you'd like to enlarge them!

This grows in the trees around here.

Maybe she was too short for the task? haha

Fisherman.

oh, my love of signs :)

We love the English translations! :) 

Training area...

And if you're thirsty, there's a vending machine on every other block :)

I found a sweets one!

Christmas Eve: Let's go snorkeling!!

We were very excited to spend our first Christmas together...even if we were away from all of our family and the beautiful snow! We missed you guys!! So... we had a pretty simple Christmas agenda. Christmas Eve: snorkeling, church and dinner. Christmas Day: make more food and Christmas dinner with the Optometry clinic staff. 

Christmas Eve was a nice high 60's-ish temperature day...so believe me, we were not complaining! We decided to rent some wetsuits and put our snorkel gear to use! This was my first time back in the water since the summer and with my broke back... I think you all would've laughed at me trying to get 'wetsuited up' for this adventure... thanks to Chris for his patience and help with his broken wife! haha. The snorkeling was great!

We love our underwater camera!! Pictures do no justice :)      

                    

Kudos to Chris on this one :)

So after we were done swimming with the fishies, we got ready for church and had a nice Christmas Eve dinner for 2 :)

Here's a pic of the Christmas tree and us! Chris did the decorating before I got to Okinawa... can you tell?!? I loved it!!

The next day we had Christmas dinner with all of Chris's coworkers....great gathering of friends!! I made the usual... lemon bars :) Nothing like getting a new bunch of people hooked haha. 

I'm finally here!!!!

I left Dearborn on Dec 15, and got to Okinawa 48 hrs later!! The trip took a lot out of me with my stupid back, so that was not so fun... but the reward waiting in Okinawa was great... my husband! Yay!! So with getting there just a few days before Christmas, we were very excited to finally start our 'real' lives together! :)

I think I spent most of the first few days resting... I was so excited to do stuff, but I'd usually get tired and pass out by about 3:30 in the afternoon. I blame that on jet lag and the stupid back of course! But we did get out walking around to snap some pics with our fancy new camera from Laura and Tracy :) These pics are from our neighborhood...not too shabby of a place to live! We may not have picked the biggest and newest looking apartment to live in (see post #1), but we feel extremely fortunate to live in such a cool place for our first duty station!

I thought this was a sweet sign  :)

What Chris did while I was still in the States...

So most of you know that Chris was here in Okinawa as a 'geographic bachelor' (without the wifey) for the first 4-5 months. So what did he do for all that time?!? Pretty sure he wasn't toooo bored...

He took up scuba diving!!

He's gone to some pretty cool places and seen lots of sweet fish, octopuses, sharks, etc... The reefs in Okinawa and the surrounding islands are amazing! 

He's made some great friends to hang out with... 

Here are Randy and Adam on their way out for a dive...

He went to the Philippines for a military exercise... did some eye exams. See the link in the last post from November!

Hung out more with Adam and Mary :)

Explored caves and checked out the Habu snakes. Yummo :)

So that was Chris's exciting fall!!