Sakura season

Cherry blossoms are iconic in Japan so we had to make sure we enjoyed them here for our last cherry blossom season in Okinawa. I love that the blossoms here are such a fun shade of pink. Our first year here we got to enjoy the cherry blossoms on mainland in Kyoto and the volume here doesn't begin to compare with there, however, most of those are white, so the pink here are fun and colorful. Japan goes crazy for cherry blossoms (sakura). Starbucks has Sakura mugs and drinks, McDonalds has a sakura shake and soda, etc. It's everywhere and it's pretty fun.

This year we drove up to Mt. Yaedake to see the trees blooming. The drive up the mountain is lined with cherry trees and paper lanterns for the festival. The combo of Orion lanterns and pink blossoms will forever remind me of Okinawa. There were lots of cars, all moving pretty slow, so I got out of the car to take some pics and ran back and forth between our car and Alexa's car who was about 3 behind us. I probably looked a little crazy but it was worth it :) I hung out the window for the rest of the shots.

Once at the top, we parked, ate some dinner (thanks for the homemade onigiri Brea!) and then walked along the festival street lined with cherry trees.

We of course had to take pics of our baby in the tree...and several passer-bys also decided to take pics of our baby in the cherry tree :) Not quite the sight it was with Rowan on the fence in Kyoto, but I still think it's funny that people want pictures of someone else's kid who they don't even know!

 Me and my boys. I'm one lucky mom.

 Love this family of mine!

 The "kids" minus Boden, plus Alexa :)

Alexa, me and Brea...my life here would definitely not have been as good without these girls!

The mandatory face in the hole photo :)

And the trees were illuminate for our drive back down. It was pretty cool. There were people pulled over taking more pictures all over the place. It was a really fun atmosphere.

 So glad we got this experience again to enjoy nature. Rowan loved looking for the pink flowers on the trees :)