Zoo and sushi

We had our household goods picked up almost a month before leaving the island (this was a majority of our stuff...pretty much all of our furniture, etc), and then our final shipment, the express shipment (kid beds, toys and kitchen stuff) was picked up 10 days before we left island, which is when we moved into the Shogun Inn on Kadena. At this point we sort of felt like we had come full circle, staying in a crappy Okinawa military "hotel" in this period of limbo, just like we had been introduced to the island 3 years prior :) However, it was an experience that I wanted together as a family, to kind of get some closure on this amazing period of our lives. The Remedios' got crazy fast orders and were supposed to be leaving after us, but then things changed and they got them off the island a week before us. The only good news in that was that they stayed in the same building as us for their last 2 days so we got to do some fun hanging out. We hit up the zoo, sushi, ice cream, etc. It was so much fun. 

The zoo was small, but I loved it. You could go for only an hour or 2 and see almost everything, it wasn't an event to go, just something you decided to do and did it in any given morning. A year long pass was $20 and the kids were free. We had some fun days there.  One of the best parts of the zoo are their very real warning signs :)

 One of the most sad parts about both of our families moving away was that Rowan's first real friend was no longer going to be a part of our daily life. He doesn't totally comprehend it yet, but it made me a little sad knowing that this will happen several more times throughout our military life, and he will eventually understand. These guys were pretty cute!

 The beginning of the zoo has a huge hill that you have to walk up to get to where all the animals are. Rowan walked on the foot prints singing, "the ants go marching, HURRAH, HURRAH!" It was so cute.

 One of my favorite animals here are the hippos. They let you get frighteningly close to them which is pretty awesome. Grant was literally about 12 inches away from one of their faces at one point. Don't think we'll ever get this close to a hippo again.

After we see all the animals, we let the kids ride these cars and sometimes the train or carousel. They were pretty fun little things.

After working up an appetite at the zoo, we hit up Newport sushi for their last Okinawa dinner. It was really good tonight, definitely didn't disappoint. (Dinner with 4 kids was a little crazy but they did well overall)

Love that they love sushi. They both LOVE shrimp so those rolls were their favorite.

Then, we took Dom, Barb, Joey and Finn to the airport the next day and had to say bye. We hope to see them soon!