Birthdays!

In all the chaos of  family visiting, stomach flu, colds, and life we celebrated 2 birthdays.

Tennyson turned 2!  She is such a sweet girl with a large dollop of mischievousness.  We were lucky to have Grammy and Grandaddy visiting to help make the day extra special.  Only a few more birthdays and we will always have family around to help celebrate!

We enjoyed the usual toddler fare - fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and fruit.

After our Disney trip this summer Tennyson fell in love with Tinker Bell, so we found lots of Tinker Bell toys for her to have and a pair of PJ's.  Grammy and Grandaddy gave her some cute clothes that she desperately needed.  Her adopted aunt Lyndsey gave her a Tinker Bell and a Winnie the Pooh hair clips.

It was all followed by Raspberry Cheesecake, of course (Jason was picking!).

Tennyson keeps us on our toes.  She is the only one of 4 who ever has gotten into my jewelry box or junk drawer.  If she wants your attention she will get into things that are off limits until you start paying attention.  She is super smart and makes us laugh.  We love you Tennyson!

Murasaki Mura

Murasaki Mura is an old Okinawan Village.  It was built in 1992 as a set for a TV drama Ryukyu no Kaze - the wind of the Ryukyus.  It now is a place for tourists to visit to see an old style village and enjoy making traditional Okinawan crafts.

This is a road way.  I think they built walls around all yards.  In fact, they still do, they just are solid concrete.  It keeps things from feeling very open.

The kids are posing with various Shisa made by local artists.

They let the kids practice their Kanji.  These brushes are made from that nut type thing sitting on the table.  It is local, but since everything is in Japanese we don't always come away with all of the information.

In this one area you could make your own Kaleidoscope if you wanted.  They had a large Kaleidoscope set up so you could see how it worked.  The kids thought it was pretty cool.

Grahm wanted to make a glass.  Ryukyu glass is unique to this area and is pretty cool.  We have a few glass ornaments for our Christmas tree.  They walked Grahm through the whole process while I am on pins and needles worrying about how hot in the glass is.

Charlotte and Jayce decided to make their own Shisas.  Jayce wanted to make it from clay and Charlotte wanted to paint a finished one.  While they were busy creating them Tennyson and Grahm explored the garden and blew giant bubbles.  Charlotte picked out her colors and with minimal help from Mom painted her Shisa.  Some how we didn't get a picture of Jayce working on his.  Hopefully I can get a picture before we get around to painting it.

Sorry!

I am sorry I have been missing.  Life has been overwhelmingly busy lately.  My parents came to visit for 2 weeks (more to come) and I have been frantically trying to get our Super Saturday project ready for tomorrow.  Lucky for me I have been feeling much better for the last month, yeah!!  I will be posting all of our recent adventures soon.

Thanks!  Micah