June 2013 Monthly Recap

I feel like I've been getting busier and busier, which makes me really glad I started this monthly recap.  Although it doesn't cover everything we've done, it's a good little summary if I haven't gotten a lot of posts in throughout the month.  Aaron has stayed busy with work, and we've gotten a lot done around the house.  We've I gotten a lot more plants, which is a chore in itself to maintain all of them, but they make me happy.  We've also been doing a bunch of wood working projects which I'll share at some point.  We made our own end-grain checker pattern cutting board, our own 6 foot long floating shelf, and a console table behind our couch.  It's finally starting to feel cozy here.  Below are some other things that have been keeping us busy.

One of the bases here held a flightline fair with lots of planes on display for sofa status folks and locals to climb in, take pictures, and ask questions about the planes that are stationed here.  I finally got an up close and personal tour of Aarons tanker.  In typical Kacey style, I climbed all over everything had to get a picture of me in the pilot seat pretending to fly and then laying in the boom pod.  While he worked the fair, I climbed in and out of every osprey, helo, and cargo I could.  More pictures in a future post.  It was pretty neat to see all the locals wanting to learn about everything and how grateful they were that we are here.  

This next picture blows my mind every time I think about it. I've known Aaron nearly 16 years or so, and never EVER once have I seen him eat a pancake like this before now.  Hell, I've never seen anyone eat a pancake like this.  He hollowed it out and poured syrup completely in it.  By the way, these were the best pancakes ever....brown butter is the secret!!!

People ask us a lot of there are weird bugs or rodents here.  From my experience, I'd say not really.  We experienced tons of bugs in Florida, and here I would just say that there are A LOT more of them.  EVERYWHERE.  There's definitely a larger variety of spiders.  And then there's this guy who's been hanging out on our recycle bin for a while.

I dropped a friend off at the airport a few weeks ago and decided to take advantage of my trip south.  I got lost and found some new neighborhoods, and then headed to the Itoman Farmers Market which is now my favorite market to go to here, but a trek from our house. There is one huge building of fruit and produce, one building of fish, one building of restaurants and gift things, a garden center, and a handful of food stands.  I bought myself a couple of the largest oysters I've ever seen, they were shucked and wrapped up in ice for me to go.  I drove down to the southern most cape of the island and ate my oysters on the cliffs with this view.  How is this even my life?!?!?! Seriously...it's just a normal Wednesday.

While I personally didn't care to see the headliner American pop band that played here last weekend, I was curious about the turnout and how the base put on this type of all day music festival.  It was pretty freaking professional, I was impressed. And I couldn't believe how many people there there. It was insane to see that many people on base, never mind that many Americans in one place in Japan.  I couldn't get enough of the sunset, and left shortly after it set.

I've been trying to get some volunteer hours under my belt, and am still in the process of applying through different places.  I'm officially a volunteer with the USO - which just reminded me that I need to pick up my volunteer appreciation certificate!!! Earlier this month I volunteered at 6am to set up a tent and grills and whip up hundreds of pancakes for the runners of a 5k.  It was a lot of fun and everyone was super nice, so I've already signed up for future events.

I was really excited that I got to dog-sit for 2 labs for a few days. It made me miss Bosco a whole bunch, but it felt good to be appreciated by a Labrador for a while.  Those of you with labs know exactly what I mean.

We spent a hot day up north and hiked Hiji Falls.  Bring lots of water, there are 5 million stairs.

Spelling gone wrong.  Cantion = caution and an undocumented wraning = warning.

We've got bullfighting here in Okinawa, and it's a little different that what you probably think.  This time, there are bulls fighting each other.  The first one to chicken out and turn to run away loses.  Trainers are there to encourage the bulls to stay mad and against one another.  It was really awesome to go to a local event like this.  I'd like to do a post on it soon.

Oh! Here's a picture of me going wood shopping.  This is for our console table.  Do you have any idea how awkward it is to put a 10 ft board in a itsy-bitsy car (that is NOT 10ft long) all by yourself in the tiniest parking space ever while chasing down your lumber cart as the wind whips it around the parking lot?  It's awkward.  I'm surprised no one stopped me with it sticking out the window.

One of the most exciting this I did this month happened just this past Sunday.  We went deep sea fishing with  some friends about 3 hours off the coast of Okinawa.  Our boat of 10 people caught about 70 fish, mostly Yellowfin Tuna and Skipjack Tuna.  This is one of the smaller tunas, on average they were 2-2.5 feet long.  Someone on the boat caught a 70lb tuna on a drift line and a 3.5ft wahoo while trolling.  It was a crazy long day, being on the boat for about 11 hours, but it was so much fun and I'm such a happy girl seeing all of the fish in my freezer.  Oh man, the amount of raw tuna we've consumed the past few days is probably criminal.  So amazing.

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