Another long weekend

Giant Banana Spider in our backyard (as big as my hand!)

We are really enjoying all of the time off Dustin has had lately. Last weekend was Labor Day weekend so 4 days of no work, this weekend he got another 4 days off for their battalion's 100 days of safety, and then there are several other things coming up soon he will be off for that we are looking forward to. We are going to a family retreat at Okuma (military resort on Okinawa) Sept. 17-19 which should be really nice and it is entirely FREE.... meals and lodging are all provided - thanks Army!! Sometime towards the end of the month (or early Oct) will be another 4 day weekend to make up for the Friday and Monday he had to work during the long weekend after they finished with their field training (and that was the weekend BEFORE labor day) So pretty much 4 long weekends within a month! So what did we do this weekend?? We decided to check out the pool on Torii Station. There is one on Kadena but it cost to get in and Torii has better hours. On Saturday we went to a bizzarre at Kadena Middle School with asian custom furniture and crafts--it was basically a waste of time but we would have never known if we didn't go. Afterwards, we got some practice changing diapers. We watched our friends' little girl Maggie who just turned 1---It was a lot of fun. We got out the stroller and went for a nice little walk and then came home to eat and read stories! Today (Sunday) we went to church then went out to eat at a Japanese/Italian restaurant with a group of friends. (Yeah, I said Japanese/Italian) weird huh! The pizza had eggs on it, and there were weird peppers on top of all the entrees. That ended up taking longer than we thought since there were so many of us. Tomorrow we are going to head down to Naha and try to find the Ashibinaa Outlet Mall and then check out Peace Prayer Park. The outlet mall supposedly has real American stores (there are malls on Okinawa, but so far we haven't found any with American stores--only Japanese clothing and stuff) The Peace Prayer Park is a monument to all the dead from the battle of Okinawa--American and Japanese. (Look at our next blog for pics!) We are hoping we can get an early enough start to make it back before the pool closes and maybe even check out the beach afterwards. We'll take our new camera and post pictures for everyone to see.