Christmas Celebrations!!

We had a great Christmas season together... lots of things to go to, but that's okay with me because I love Christmastime!!

Chris and I are at his squadron's Christmas party... it was pretty uneventful, but we still had a good time dressing up. And I do realize that I live in Okinawa, but am still badly in need of a tan!!




I realize that this is not a good picture of me... I have that awkward eyes-half-closed look, but I still love this picture because 1). it's of me and several of my friends here and 2). my friend, Audrey, who is all the way on the left, is 9-months pregnant in this picture. She was 2 weeks from delivery, but you can't even tell she's pregnant at all!! I think it's partially because of the camera angle and her black dress, but she looks amazing!!
(She just had her baby last week... she and her baby boy (Barrett) are doing fine!)


Chris and I spend Christmas Eve with friends from the church. Lea, Sam and I made Christmas dinner for the singles and college students. It was a fun night of food and games...

Can I just mention that I hate this blog site!!! It's horrible to use. For example, this underline feature just came on and there's absolutely no button to turn it off... plus it does weird things like delete my picture and text at random times.... grrrr!!!


Anyways, here's a picture of my cute doggy, loving Christmas. Her favorite part is ripping all the paper into little tiny pieces, can you tell??


Chris and I were especially thankful to spend Christmas together... we thought he was going to have to leave for Alaska and miss everything. So, it was a great time to spend with friends!

Otherwise, we haven't been up to too much. Chris has been really busy at work... he's now in charge of all the awards in his squadron. I've been really busy with cheerleading. To make a long story short, the two girls that were in charge of the program had enough and decided to quit... they then asked me if I wanted to take over the program. Things seem to be turning around for the better... we just had our tryouts yesterday and we took 12 new girls on the team.... but it's been a LOT of work! I haven't had too much time for cakes, but I've made a few this month... if you want to see them, you can check out my website: www.customsweetcakes.webs.com. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We missed spending the holiday with everyone!!!

Well, hello everyone! It is my posting debut on our website! Just trying to help out the wife. She is currently writing her lesson plans for her class tomorrow, teaching English to the Japanese. So, we'll start with Thanksgiving. It was our first Thanksgiving away from our immediate family. We do have a lot of firsts since this is our first year in Japan. However, it was ok being away. We have developed a great sense of family with our small group that we meet with each week as well as with Japanese and Americans at our church. But when you wake up to a site like you see below, you can't help but think that God is watching out for you while you are in a foreign land without your family and you can't not thank God for his beautiful creation. That was my first prayer of thanks on Thanksgiving day. This sunrise was absolutely beautiful. Even when I don't get a sunrise because its cloudy, I get to wake up next to my beautiful wife and thats a gorgeous sunrise in and of itself!.....was that cheasy? Oh, well its true. On to our next pic.

After the gorgeous sunrise I headed out to a local park where my church, Calvary Chapel Ginowan, played the other Calvary Chapel of Okinawa City. I don't think I had played flag football since high school gym class. It was a blast! Just a bunch of believers getting together for a friendly competitive football game. I think I had a few receptions as I helped block on the offensive line and I played safety or the linebacker position on defense like my man Ray Maualuga on the Benglas minus the hair. I'll get a wig for next year. I had 3 interceptions for some pretty sizable returns. It was just a great time. Nothing like food and football all on the same day. And yes that was my football for the day because being 14 hrs ahead of east coast time, all the games came on the next day. Playing in that game really started the day off right....I made this tackle by the way.


The day after Thanksgiving we celebrated the marriage of one of our friends from church and she had Julie make her wedding cake. This was Julie's first wedding cake and it was pretty awesome. The whole process didn't make the kitchen look so awesome and I had to clean it all up but the end result was pretty impressive!



Again, another first for us. This will be our first Christmas away from our family, but our first Christmas together being married. So that would make this our first Christmas tree! Julie beautifully decorated our tree with all her decorations she brought from the states that so impatiently could not wait to get out of the box and around the apartment and on our new tree! And Go Bucks! Beat Oregon in the Rose Bowl!














Just a couple days ago we attended my squadron Christmas party. It is a little hard to get into the Christmas spirit here because now, its Dec 6 and I'm still in shorts, t-shirts and flip flops, its still in the 70s here and no snow! Anyway, the party was fun. We got to get dressed up a little and eat some good food. I mean, I can't remember the last time I wore dress shoes and a tie. I am so used to wearing my "pajamas" to work every day! And getting dressed up means my wife getting dressed up and when she does.....well a picture is worth a thousand words, but I'll use a few anyway, she looked pretty hot that night!

This is Julie, letting out some anger and stress on some poor helpless Japanese dude. Yes, as sweet as she looks, she does have another side to her!

Actually, this was a probably one of the most coolest places we have been to on Okinawa. Its called Round One. It is seven stories of absolute fun! So you start on the 6th level and pay to play for either 90 min or 3 hours or more. So we payed for 3 hours and you get to play arcade games, mini bowling, tennis, soccer, and golf games and mini bikes all on one level. Then you go to the top level and up there you have two basketball half court courts, a soccer field, tennis court, batting cages, pitching cages and archery! This would be my little brother's dream! Its like the ultimate Chucky Cheese for adults and kids. My little brothers would pretty much go nuts if they got to go there, so hopefully if they come next summer I'll take them there. They would love it. And when you are done with playing there is even an A&W and Baskin Robbins in the same building! Here are some pics of us playing everything we could. We didn't get to race the
mini bikes but our friends did. Julie played a little tennis and I played a little soccer.









Well that is all for now. I have to get to bed so I can get up for the Bengals game that comes on at 3AM! Until next time....Konbanwa...Oyasuminasai...Matane!