EARTHQUAKE!!!

So the other night, Chris and I were VERY abruptly woken up by an earthquake. We've had several here already, but smaller ones that just make everything rattle and creek in our apartment. This one was a little different though...
We jumped out of bed, only to feel the earthquake get stronger. We were in our bedroom and started to hear things crashing down and glass shattering. It was pretty scary! It didn't last too long, but it felt like forever. We knew it wasn't enough to bring down the apartment building, so Chris ran to grab his stuff and ran to grab the dog (who was petrified and threw up after the whole ordeal was over). Thankfully, except for a shattered glass picture frame), nothing broke that can't be fixed with some super-glue. Honestly, as hard as it was shaking, I'm surprised that a lot more didn't fall... but we're glad it didn't.
We found out that the earthquake was actually a 7.0 on the Richter scale (only a handful of them happen a year), and it was the same size of earthquake that hit Haiti... kinda scary. The difference is that it hit about 50 miles southeast of where we live, so we didn't get the brunt of it.
We've been feeling a lot of aftershocks yesterday and today (our place just feels like it's vibrating) and we're expected to get a tsunami with 6-foot waves sometime soon (so no hitting the beach for a few days!)
Anyways, that's about the most exciting thing that's happened in awhile here!!

Valentine's Day...

For Valentine's Day, my sweet husband made me dinner!
He made Kobe beef steaks, topped with buttery crab, along with herb potatoes and a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake... yum! He used pretty much all the butter and garlic that we had in our fridge (obviously it was delicious) and he even decorated the cheesecake!

Who said romance dies after your married???

Wedding Bliss!!

Last weekend, our friends from church (Kayo and Andrew) got married. She's Japanese and he's American (a missionary out here), so it was neat to see their cultures mesh in this Japanese/American wedding. This is a picture of Kayo and her dad walking down the aisle... (she is the most excited person I know, which you can clearly see on her face in this picture)!
They did some things American (like get married in a church instead of a temple, and have a maid of honor and best man, which the Japanese don't do). And they did some things Japanese (Kayo's mother and some other women were in traditional kimonos, and Kayo read a letter to her family and friends during the reception). I also thought it was really neat that Andrew said his vows in Japanese to her and she said her vows in English to him (although they both are fluent in both languages).
It was also sweet that their first kiss together was on their wedding day... but funny because Kayo pulled away when he went to kiss her! (I think she was just nervous!)
I made the cake for the wedding... I've found that some cakes just go together so stress-free and easy while others make me sweat it out the entire time. This one went together so well! I actually enjoyed doing it...
And Kayo told me in an email the other day that it was "the beautifulest cake i ever seen."... so sweet! It makes all the work worth it!

Koshi's Birthday Party!!

Koshi just had her first birthday! So, I know this is lame, but I insisted on throwing a birthday party for her...
We had it at the park on base and invited all of her doggy friends (ie. all of our friends with dogs). It was kind of a dreary day, but it turned out to be a lot of fun! We had about 10 dogs show up... they were running around like crazy, chasing balls, etc. We didn't actually get any good pics of all the dogs that were there, but here are a few of them...



I also made cupcakes especially for the dogs... here's a picture of Koshi eating hers.

I thought this picture was cute too... one of our friends's daughter was walking around with Koshi's leash in her hand, trying to put her on it, but Koshi wasn't having any of that!


It was also one of our friend's birthday this week, so I made her a cake too and we just celebrated them together... I hope she didn't mind sharing her birthday with my dog!

Koshi seemed to love her party... she ran around so much at her party that she came home and slept on the couch all evening!

Cherry Blossum Festival!

The cherry blossums have bloomed! These trees only bloom for a few weeks a year, otherwise they just look like dead tree branches... so, when they are in bloom, they have a huge festival about an hour north of us in Nago.
Little booths line the streets...



Here I am, picking out some sweets to eat! I don't know the name of what I'm looking at, but they're really doughy tasting and filled with a sweet paste on the inside, made from beans. It sounds really unusual, but they eat them all the time here... I like them because of the doughy consistency. But I made Chris take a bite of it because hadn't tried them and I thought he was going to start gagging... then proceeded to say "this is awful!"





At the end of the long path of food/game booths, there is a huge set of stairs that supposedly led up to these "castle ruins." Here we are at the bottom of the stairs... the picture is kind of misleading, as you can only see the first 50 of the 500+ stairs.








At this point I'm sweating... and we're on the first portion of stairs...
I put "castle ruins" in parenthesis because there were no castle ruins... in fact there wasn't much to see at all at the top of hill... I wish someone would have mentioned that as we were climbing up!
However, the view of the cherry blossums was gorgeous!


















Here's a close up...



































Chris's friend from Cedarville came with us... he's actually stationed in the states somewhere, but is "deployed" to Okinawa. Again, I put "deployed" in parenthesis because you think of a
deployment to Iraq, Afghanistan, or at least the desert... not to the gorgeous tropical island of Okinawa. It's a tough life they have, I'm telling ya....

So, here's Jon, trying out Japanese food...


















They had an adorable group of Japanese children putting on a show with their drums... they were dancing around, banging on them. It was so cute!


















And here's a picture of a banyan tree we saw when we were leaving the festival... I love the trunks of the trees. They're so unusual looking... this particular one had wooden ladder-looking things on each side to help keep it standing up...























We took one more tour in our car up a mountain-side to see a few more cherry blossum trees. I almost decided I wanted to get one, but then thought I would be sad the 49 weeks of the year that my cherry blossum tree just looks like some dead twigs...







So many fun things to do in Okinawa!!!