So far in December...

Here are some pictures from this month so far...


Ryan's Birthday cake! Happy 27th Birthday!!!


This past Saturday I had my friend shave Mozart because obviously from the picture below her hair was out of control.




Well here she is! We normally have a groomer do it, but she isn't very good and we always end of having to help her. So my friend that works at the vet office helped me shave her... without a guard on the clippers. So this cut will last a while.

Gotta love her "boots with the fur", now she needs some "applebottom jeans"!

Ryan and me at a Sushi place in Hiroshima, and no we don't like sushi, but our friends that we went with really like it, so we tried it out, and we still don't like it.

Here are a few pictures from "Dreamination", one major road in Hiroshima is lite up on both sides with a whole bunch of different stuff. Here's a few pictures, our camera started to die, figures.

Kitties

Here are some recent pictures of the kitties lately.

Spartacus will lay down and lay out his arms like that.


Yesterday night our friends came over and they have a little kitten that they brought with them. Spartacus didn't really like him, he didn't hiss or swat at the kitten, but we very wary of him. This is them sleeping together; once the kitten (Samuri) got close to Spartacus like then, Spartacus got up and left.

Such a cute little kitten.

Here's Mozart and Spartacus laying in the sun together.

And Mozart laying in her bed that was up sideways.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...

We put our Christmas tree up this weekend. Last year we had a fake one, but we wanted to get a real one this year. We got a noble fir, and it wasn't very expensive at all. Hopefully it'll last until Christmas.

Here are a few pictures of Mozart checking out the new tree.

The tree with just the lights on.

Ryan putting on ornaments.

Now that star is crocked!

And the final product!

We don't be home for Christmas this year though, we'll be in Hong Kong, but it's still nice to have a tree up and our friend will be here to take care of the kitties.

Mijajima Firewalking Festival

A couple of weekends ago we went to Miyajima for a Firewalking Festival. It was some Budhist thing where they build a fire out of little paddles that people write prayers or something on them, then the priests bless them before they are thorn into the fire. Once they're all thrown in, the fire gets layed down and the head priest blesses it and throws salt or something around. Then the priests get's women's purses or bags and puts them over the fire and blesses them also (which I had done :) ). After that, the head priest walks over the fire, then his lower priests, then it's open to the public. We had planned to do the walk, but after 60 people walking over it, there was a pathway made which was all burned down and only black cold sut. So we didn't feel like waiting for the other 200 people to go through and wait our turn. So we left and had lunch. Here are some pictures from that day.



The stairs up the hill to the temple.

As you were going up the stairs if you looked down to the side there were all these cool monk statues everywhere.

All the people at the ceremony.

That is the head monk in the purple

They are getting the walkway made.

The old people walking over it.

A nice close up of someone walking over it.

Next time we'll have to get there early and get a spot at the front so we can walk over it!

Marine Corps Ball 2009

On November 12th Ryan and I went to the 234th Marine Corps Birthday Ball. It was held on base inside the basketball court at the gym; not too fancy, they put camo netting everywhere to disguise where your at. Here are some pictures from that night.

Birthday cake

Me and my co-worker Karen.

Our friends Jared and Amanda

Those are two of Ryan's friends, Brad and Ricky

Ryan and one of his Gunny's, Gunny White

Here's a picture of us at the house.

Here are two of the pictures taken at the ball.

New Furniture

Every Spring and Fall there is a bazaar here on base where vendors from all across the Far East come and sell furniture, clothing, and whatever else you can think of almost. Well I had been wanting something for our hallway when you walk in, but a little end table like thing. But when we checked the bazaar out, we liked too many things; so this is what we got.

We really liked this because of the mirror, but we wanted something that had more storage in it. So we continued to look around.




Then we saw this little piece. We liked it because it had more drawers and it was just the right size; but it didn't have the mirror. So we continued to look.



Then we saw this one, it had another piece as part of a set, but we really didn't have room for it. We liked all three pieces and couldn't decided. So we went home, thought about it and just said "heck, let's get all three!", so that's what we did! And I REALLY LOVE them all! I had just had a partylite party and needed a place for some of my things so these were perfect.

The lantern on top is a present my co-workers got for me because the bazaar was the weekend of my birthday and Ryan told them I wanted it. When I went to go buy it, it was gone. I was so sad, and then on Monday at work they brought it out to me. It was really a surprise, and it was only $26, you can get some great steals at the bazaar. We got all three of our pieces from three different vendors for a total of $975; but if you could have gotten them at one place, we could have gotten them down to $750 I'm sure. It was almost like being in Beijing again, all the haggling for the furniture. Which kinda brings me to my next annoucement, WE'RE GOING TO HONG KONG FOR CHRISTMAS!!! Whoop Whoop! Oh ya, we're excited and we're already planning our 4 day trip!

100 Yen Store

Ryan and I went to the 100 Yen store (aka dollar store) and found these dog outfits that we thought would be fun to put on the Mozart and Spartacus. They didn't really like them; Mozart just takes it and sits there, and Spartacus will try to take it off, but will still play around. Since they don't like them, we use them as a time out punishment instead. I think Spartacus is catching on because it's getting harder and harder to get it on him.

Spartacus looking hood.

Mozart clearing not liking being held, and the outfit.

Spartacus is in the background trying to take it off.

Cute Mozart with the hood on.

Spartacus trying to hunt. You can see 2 of the thousand toys he has around the house. His favorite is to play with the balls that have bells in them in the middle of the night. So those get hidden sometimes.

And this was just a cute on I took. It looks like hes hugging his daddy.

Again, a cute one. Spartacus loved sleeping on Ryan while he was playing his video games.

Here are two videos of him trying to take if off, it's cute.