Okinawa or bust

While Ryan went on a humanitarian mission to Mongolia this month, the kids and I weren't going to just sit around and miss him in Misawa.  So to have our own adventure we decided to take a trip down to Okinawa on Space A flights. Here we are in Yokota AFB after making a successful hop from Misawa to Tokyo. The kids were really concerned about the car coming out of the wall at this 50's style restaurant on base.

Your travel plans are unpredictable when you're flying Space Available on military planes.  This is how you feel after waking up at 3:30 am, checking out of your hotel, showing up at the flight line for a flight at 4 am and not getting on the flight because there were too many people on it already.

We ended up enjoying 5 days waiting in Tokyo because all the flights were cancelled to Okinawa because of a typhoon blowing through the area. We cut our losses and went bowling, to the library, visited a huge water play land and enjoyed all the parks we could walk to.

When we ran out of things to do we played games in our hotel room in the air conditioning, an amenity we don't enjoy in Misawa. 

 Here we are on our flight to Okinawa on a sweet cargo plane (KC-135). We only had to show up at 5 am for this flight. Do you know how many times I had to put everyone's ear plugs back in over the course of a 2.25 hour flight? I don't think that 50x would be an exaggeration.

 I rented a little Japanese car once we made it down to Okinawa. The three youngest were in the back and Helen was in the front with me helping me use our Japanese navigation device. We drove 4-5 hours to the north of Okinawa island to Okuma Beach where we spent most of our time. Every morning we would go for a hike up the cliffs along the beach.

One afternoon it rained and the kids had a great time playing in the puddles. It took me back to my childhood fun.

The next day we went out on the glass bottom boat for a short tour along the coast. Alice and Jane were convinced that the boat was going to tip us right into the water. We got to see a lot of neat fish and coral just like at an aquarium with the added excitement of waves and pleas for bathroom breaks. 

The girls finally talked me in to taking them to the beach once I realized that we could borrow these life jackets. Four little kids are a lot to keep alive without flotation devices. 

One of the highlights of our trip was visiting the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. I was tickled pink to see the perfect number of spaces available for our kids to take their picture. Carl sure is getting big.

These white sharks were awesome!

Lest we think that sharks couldn't eat the girls in one gulp... I love this hermit crab! 

We had a great time with the help of tons of people all over Japan watching over this crazy "single" mom with her little crew. The best part was catching up with one of the ladies in my old MTC district that I discovered at church!