Mika Turns 2!

Mika turned two years old today.

Emi, 4, says she is twice the girl that Mika is.

Okay. I made that last part up.

We had a simple party at home.


Emi helped make some cupcakes:


Then we opened some presents!

Some books from Grandpa and Mimi:

(The jacket is from Auntie Lisa)

Some clothes from Baba:


But her favorite present were these "squeaky shoes" from Emi:

Happy Girl's Day!

March 3rd is Girl's Day, here in Japan.

We are so thankful for our two girls!

They made these cards at preschool.

Mika on the Mend

Thank you everyone for your prayers.

It was kind of scary; Mika's fever came and went for 8 days!

Praise God she is over it now.

She is not quite 100%, as you can tell from the video below:



Nah, just kidding. This was from a couple weeks ago.

Please Pray

Please lift up Mika in your prayers.

She has had a fever for the past 4 days. Her temperature got as high as 40.4 a few times, which is quite high (104.5 F)!

Doctors have ruled out the flu, pneumonia, strep, and bacterial infection, so it is just a bad cold I guess. Please pray that 1) Mika will recover soon, and 2) No one else catches this nasty cold.

I'll say this for the Japanese health care system: No way would an x-ray, a test for flu, another test for strep, and consultations with 2 doctors cost only $18 in the US!

The Longs

We got to visit with Brent and Kyomi Long. They live up in Motobu, so they were just 5 minutes away. We get to see them once in a while, but it had been 1 1/2 years since we last visited.

Brent leads a small fellowship here -- mostly Junior High Schoolers. So we wanted to stop and visit, and we hoped that we might be an encouragement to them.

Brent shared a message from Romans 14:23b "...anything that is not of faith, is sin."
Kind of a sobering thought; anything that we do without faith, without trusting God... is sin.
It was a good, encouraging word from the Lord.

We all stayed after service for some sandwiches and fellowship.

Funny, we went thinking we would encourage the Longs, but they ended up encouraging us!

Expo

We came to Expo for 2 reasons: 1) to catch the Dolphin show and 2) to play at the park.

We had almost front row seats for the free Dolphin show. Good thing we were in the 3rd row -- the folks in front of us got splashed!


It was a really good show and Emi wants "to be the girl that rides the dolphins" when she grows up. Go for it!

Nearby was the park. This one is kind of unique as they have a series of nets:


Emi enjoyed the nets, but Mika wasn't old enough yet.

So she had to make do with the baby area:


Mika is sitting in a shell of some kind.

Well the girls really enjoyed the day.

Motobu

One of favorite places on Okinawa is Motobu.
It's a small, sleepy resort town right on the ocean.

Occasionally, when we have time and money, we like to come up here to "get away."
It reminds me of when we lived in Hawaii -- where do you go for vacation when you live on Hawaii? Answer: Las Vegas. Not that I have ever been there.

So, since we cannot afford Tokyo or Hokkaido, we do Nago or Motobu.



It is cherry blossom viewing time here in Okinawa.