CA Sunshine Coming Our Way...

We're anxiously awaiting the arrival of our friends Ila and Danny. They are on the plane and heading to Okinawa right now! We're scrambling to clean up the kitchen (the mess from Thanksgiving preparations of course), and do some organizing and winter cleaning around the house. I'm just taking a break =)

Ila and I have known each other since 2003, when I came to work at TYC doing toy development alongside her. We quickly came to realize we have so many similarities, we constantly think alike and can practically finish each others' sentences - it's as if she's a Japanese version of me! To no surprise we became great friends, and it certainly made the 5 years that we worked together fly by so fast. In that amount of time she saw my relationship with Danno bloom up to our wedding and I was fortunate to be apart of her and Danny's wedding, all just before our military travels began.

I think this is one of our first photos together when we went to E3.This is our first TYC Halloween, and each year we coordinated as a pair. Some day I'll have to post the following years!
The first time I've visited Japan was for a business trip...Here's us having a good time trying out a Japanese photo booth (they get decked out with blue screens and wind machines)! There's too many other funny ones to post right now.
So we'll be out for a while since Ila and Danny will stay with us here in Oki for a 3 days, then we're all off to explore Tokyo together for a week. It will be Danno's first time there, and Leyna's first time traveling on a plane! An adventure awaits. With Ila fluent in Japanese, we're lucky to have her be our tour guide, plus unlock some mysteries here in Oki (like how to use our dishwasher) haha. So we'll be sure to come back with a recap and photos of our fun. Until then, take care and Happy Thanksgiving!

Smile!

Amongst all the random photos we take day to day, we've been trying to take a photo of Leyna marking each month birthday. She's quickly becoming more and more expressive, silly, curious, and skilled, which basically makes taking a photo of her with a dated sign all the more challenging! We went from simply trying to get her to look at the camera, stay upright, smile, and now to just hold still...though we do love that it's become so easy to make her smile.
We try to narrow it down to a few best, but with this past 4th month, truly the fun part was seeing the sequence of photos. She's such a ball of energy now and is eager to grab anything nearby...followed by putting it in her mouth. Her current favorite is paper (even book, tags, tissues...) so the end result is not surprising!

Hyakunichimairi - Celebrating 100 Days of Life

On October 12th, Leyna turned 100 days old. In Japan, like many other Asian cultures, a baby's 100th day since birth is celebrated. Traditions include the baby, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother dressing in their finest clothes and visiting the family temple, followed by a feast at home with family and friends. A ceremony called Okuizome symbolizes the first formal meal of the baby. They prepare special dishes (consisting of foods like Miso soup, a whole fish often eaten on days of good fortune, red bean rice, and a smooth white rock symbolizing healthy teeth) and present them to the baby. Of course a baby cannot actually eat the meal yet, but family members participate in the pretend eating ritual in hopes that their child will never suffer from lack of food throughout their life. These days parents also take their baby to a studio to take photos, so they have 100th day packages to cater to this milestone.

Of course we didn't do the shrine visit nor do the eating tradition, but we did at least take her to a photo studio to capture a bit of the Japanese spirit! They dressed up Leyna in mini kimonos and other costumes of our choice, and we received prints and a nice framed photo with her footprints. It was a fun experience! We weren't sure how long she would last...5 costume changes, trying to keep her sitting still, and getting her to look at the camera with toys and funny noises. Well she made it through wonderfully and we're happy to have this assortment of adorable photos of her...

Outfit 1: Okinawan Kimono. Started off great. It was challenge to keep her hands from disappearing...
Outfit 2: Japanese Kimono. She got a bit upset in this one...maybe just too much commotion trying to make her smile. But we got a shot!
Outfit 3: She absolutely loved the Hawaiian outfit, it was hard to narrow down the pics. Looks like she's about to hula...
Outfit 4 & 5: Since we wouldn't dress her like this on any normal day, we had to get her in something super girly with ruffles and everything! As you can see, she worked it with a softer, sweet face. haha