Sunday, March 6, 2011

Days Gone by....October, November and December 2010

I'm a horrible blogger.  Will I ever get better at this?  Who knows.  But, for now, I'm going to do my best to quickly recap October - December 2010 so I can get back on track.  We just returned from a fabulous vacation to Guam and I want to include details from our trip, but I feel like I need to update you on the end of 2010 and then we'll move on to present day 2011!  Thanks for being patient with me!

October brought lots of excitement to our family here in Japan.  Ryan and I found out that we would be expecting Baby #2 on June 6, 2011!  Matthew will finally be a big brother!  To make things even more exciting, the ultrasound showed that we will be having a GIRL!  Hooray!  I had morning sickness through week 16 of this pregnancy, which was challenging to deal with as I tried my best to keep up with Matthew!  We survived and the second trimester has restored my energy and also brought on lots of nesting as we prepare a nursery for the new baby.  I feel so blessed and thankful that the Lord is growing our family!

November in Japan is beautiful.  The leaves change to the most beautiful bright orange, yellow and red colors and the weather was so pleasant.  I can already tell that fall will be one of my favorite times of year here.  We celebrated Thanksgiving with some of our close friends here at Yokota, and had 4 families all together at our house (8 adults and 4 kids) for turkey and all the yummy sides.  Ryan's squadron, the 36th Airlift Squadron, held an exercise in November that had seven C-130's flying in formation.  It's the first time they have done this in many years, so it was exciting to be able to watch them take off.  Here's the video (sorry my camera work isn't great).  Ryan wasn't flying that day, so Matthew and I went up to the squadron, which is right on the flightline, to watch with him.  It was very neat!


December was an eventful month (as usual).  Not only were we excited to celebrate our first Christmas at Yokota, we were also celebrating Matthew's 2nd birthday.  He loves Sesame Street, so I put together a Sesame Street themed party for him and his friends.  The kids had a great time and I thoroughly enjoyed planning the party!  We had Sesame Street themed music, foods and decorations -- my favorite being the Elmo cupcakes.  We also had a small bouncy castle for the kids to jump around in and some other tunnels and toys to keep them entertained (it was too cold to play outside).  Here are a few pictures of our celebration. 


The Christmas season was tough since it was the first time we were spending it without family, but we still felt so blessed.  This was the first year that Matthew seemed to get excited over gifts and all the presents under the tree.  His grandparents sure did spoil him this year (but I suppose that is what grandparents do best!)!  We managed to set up the camera to get at least one family picture in front of the tree.  It didn't come out very well, but here it is...

Matthew continues to grow and amaze us daily.  He's such a happy little boy and we are proud parents!  We are hopeful that 2011 will bring us another healthy baby and a year full of excitement here in Japan! 

2 comments:

Shelly Perkins said...

So cute and so great to see new pics of you guys!! I can't wait until this sweet baby girl is born~ Praise God for His precious children! Love you!

Unknown said...

I love it! Thanks for sharing!