Leaving so soon......

We are officially out of our base house. We passed the inspection :) and now we live at the Westpac lodge. It is nice to have 2 bathrooms and 2 computers with internet access so we are not really complaining. Ellie is having a really hard time with all of the changes going on. We will be on Texas soon though so she will be better when she gets to Grandma's house :) We are going to miss Okinawa so much. This duty station has been so awesome. We have a wonderful church family that is going to be so hard to leave. We have grown so much here. We are excited though to see what is in store for us in Maryland. Hopefully I can post some pictures soon!

Thanksgiving Fellowship

Kelli and Evan

Playing Raving Rabbids. These guys are so competitive.

We were eating outside, it was SO cold!

Evan decided to grab Kelli's plate and shake all the food off! :)

Yummy food.

Our oven baked turkey.

Yummy fried turkey, courtesy of the Phipps.

Ellie and LJ were jamming to the Raving Rabbids music.

We had 22 guests in our little house for Thanksgiving. We had such a great time. We were outside for a while and then it got really cold. We all managed to squeeze inside. It was a great time. We are really going to miss everyone so much. Thanks Thornhills, Maupins, Johnsons, Flores, Bassetts, Derek and Phipps for a wonderful day.

Girly girls

In the Cinderella house. Gotta love the cake mustache.

Cake time!

At McDonalds waiting for the food.

Ellie was invited to go to a birthday party for a little girl from church. The mom had a tub of water for the girls to soak their feet before they painted their toe nails. Ellie found a little case of eyeshadow and put it on all by herself. That is why her eyes are blue. She had a fun time but we were both exhausted because this was the same day that we went to the park!

Day at the park

The boys were surfing on this roller slide. A Japanese guy said that they were "Sugoi" which means cool.

Caleb and Jonah Phipps, Nehemiah and Noah Barnett and Jay.

Ellie was playing with a Japanese girl. They were making mud pies. Ellie loves to play in the dirt!

Jay was being silly!

You may have seen this park before. We have been here several times. I wanted to take the kids there once more before we leave. We invited the Phipps and we all had a good time. Kristy and Ben even showed up and surprised us! :)

Church kids

Look at Ben's face! He is so funny!

Ben, Ethan and Ellie.

These pictures are from a while back. I was helping out in the toddler room with these rascals. :)

And so it begins........

Ellie was so excited that the guys were packing her stuff. (And she was enjoying her apple.)

Yesterday some movers came to pack up our first shipment. I was trying not to cry as they were working. It is so weird that it is time for us to go already. I can remember when they brought out stuff and now they are packing it up!! We are happy that we are moving to a new place but there is that part of us that doesn't want to go!

Family Expo

Yummy Oreo ice cream sandwich.

The base held a family expo so we decided to go. They had free ice cream and lots of bouncies and fun things to do.

This is the day that the Lord has made.......

I will rejoice and be glad in it.

I bought Ellie a Veggie Tales music CD and this song is on there. She loves it and so I just had to get her on video singing it.

Random pictures

This is before I cut the grass. Can you see how tall the weeds are? I can honestly say that I will not miss cutting this huge lawn! This is only a piece of it.

Our little house.

Jay and Ellie. Ricardo let them make cookies. That is what Jay has in his hands.

Playing outside while Ricardo and I do the yard work.

Very cool slide.

These are just random pics from the last couple weeks. Our time here on Okinawa is coming to an end soon so we have been taking pictures of various places here on Oki. Stay tuned for more of our favorite places.

Enough said.....

Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
For wisdom and might are His.
And He changes the times and seasons;
He removes kings and raises up kings;
He gives wisdom to the wise
And knowledge to those who have understanding.
Daniel 2:20-21 NKJV

Halloween

It's Indy!

So pretty!

My beautiful Ariel.

Scooping out the pumpkin.

Here are some pictures of the kids. Ellie had an Ariel costume but as soon as I was done taking the pictures, she took off the costume! She didn't wear it to the church carnival!

Adventures in.....the Philippines??

Ricardo was in the Philippines for about 2 weeks on an exercise. Here he is taking a lunch break making some new friends.

Fun, fun, fun.

Ellie had so much fun whacking the crabs.

Posing on one of the little rides.

A vending machine that had french fries and yakisoba along with other foods. I was too scared to try it!

Jay and Noah playing a game. Yes they are shooting with machine guns!

This is really cool. There are tons of huge balloons and fans that make them swirl around you.

Ellie and Ben on the bouncey.

Jammin in the van on the way to the Fun land.

At the Fall festival, they let her play a game and she won!! She had to throw bugs into buckets.

Jay got to climb the wall at the festival but this guy kept holding on to him!!

So last weekend we went to the Fall Festival at Jay's school and then on Sunday we went with some friends from church to this indoor play place. We had a busy but super fun weekend!

Landform Project part 2

The finished project.

Our mountains came out really well. This was one of the only things that I really helped with on the project.

Almost complete.

Here are the last few parts that needed to be finished. I think that Jay did a really good job. I only helped him with the mountains and cutting with the knife. He did the rest by himself. We'll see if he gets a good grade. I think it's awesome.

Landform Project part 1

The "blueprints".

Building the canyon.

The volcano in its early stages. Gotta love papier mache.

The board.

We had fun painting.

Jay had a project to make so we decided to take pictures of the progress.