Your Life Is So Hard

The title of my post is something that Hiram said to me the other day. He was being completely facetious. For the past two months, he has been out working his buns off trying to sell pest control in strange places to strange people, almost completely friendless, while I, on the other hand, have...spent six amazing weeks in Okinawa bonding with my wonderful mother, playing at the beach, watching countless movies, eating good food, and scuba diving with my dad...then enjoyed a girls only weekend trip to St. George with many of my favorite ladies on the planet shopping and eating out...and finally spent the last two weeks in Texas with my favorite boys (Hiram and Is) experiencing many of San Antonio and Houston's hot spots. Yes, my life is so hard. Not.

I am now going to proceed to document my last two months in pictures...there's about 50 of them, so this is going to be the longest post EVER.

For a late birthday present, my mom took me to Cocok's to get my nails did. I had a wonderful pedicure experience and couldn't believe how beautiful my feet and toenails were when my sweet Japanese gal was finished. I should have taken this at a better angle.

We visited some famous caves with my mom's relief society where Okinawans hid from the evil Americans during World War II. There was a lot of horrible propoganda fed to the islanders about what we would do to them if they were captured, so many killed their children and took their own lives rather than wait to see what we'd do. One of the caves we couldn't go into because it was basically a tomb with many human remains, but this particular cave was a much cheerier place. Two Okinawan men who had worked in Hawaii and knew Americans went into the cave and convinced the people hiding in it that they would not be harmed, and not a single person died.

I love pictures of Israel sleeping in his car seat. He has a hard time falling to sleep not in his bed, so I know that he's had a really good, fun day when it ends with this.

Israel loves to play and climb. Fortunately there were like a million playgrounds.

Teguchi Beach



The aquarium.







Tropical Dream Garden (or something like that).





It was a good day.


Our trip to Okuma.








My mom has a quilting group with quite a few sisters from the Japanese branch. These two darling little girls are the daughters of one of those sisters, Momoko and Nanoko. They didn't speak a word of English. They loved Israel.



Another beautiful garden we visited.








Of course my mom loved Israel. It was sweet to see how much Israel and my dad loved each other, though.






The Japanese have some crazy sweet toilets. This one was in the airport. Notice that you can play a "flushing sound." This is in case you want to cover the sound of a log dropping, or a fart, or something. Some toilets, you could control the temperature of the seat and the pressure and angle of the water that sprayed to clean you after using it.

I'm a huge fan of airports that have play areas for children. It makes a BIG difference, let me tell you. This was one of the play areas in the Incheon Airport in Korea.

The Salt Lake Airport has toys and things for kids to play with. Here's Israel as we were waiting to fly to San Antonio to meet up with Hiram. I don't know how he knew what to do (was it instinct or had he actually seen it?), but he grabbed the little basketball and went with it immediately to the hoop.

It happened to be Fiesta Week in San Antonio while we were there, so a couple nights we spent downtown enjoying the crowds, lights, music, and delicious smells.


The alamo!

Hiram hadn't been to a zoo since he was little. We took Is. I don't know who enjoyed it more.

I love flamingos.

We took Israel first to the two things we thought he'd enjoy the most. First, we went to the petting zoo, which was actually kind of lame because there were only goats. What the crap? Where were the bunnies, guinea pigs, hamsters? The second place was The Tiny Tot Adventure Spot. It was awesome. There was an indoor (so air conditioned) play area with toys, a sandbox, and best of all...a little "river." That was Israel's favorite. He looooves water.



Hiram and baby playing in our extended stay swimming pool.

We spent some time exploring San Antonio's Riverwalk. It was beautiful and super cool.


Waiting for the parade.

Walking the 15 miles back to our car at the end of the night. I love that little hand on his dad's arm.

The next eight pictures we took at the Brazos Bend State Park in Houston. It was huge with great trails for walking, running, or biking all around the various lakes. The coolest thing was that there were alligators ALL over the place--not contained in any way--just there chillin' in their natural habitat. We steered pretty clear, but still we were sometimes no more than six or seven feet from one. We counted about 10 that we saw.








Then we drove to Galveston to see The Gulf. It was not very pretty. In fact, we found it rather ugly, but of course it was Israel's favorite activity of the day.



Another successful outing.

We drove up to the space center Friday. We debated whether or not we really wanted to pay $40 to go to a museum, but the first 20 seconds of our visit made it more than worth it. We walked in, and the first thing we hear is a million kids laughing and screaming, and we see this incredible play place. I have never seen Israel so excited in his life. He started going nuts. I'm sure his eyes got wide, and he started yelling, "Dat! Dat! Dat! Dat! Dat! Dat! Dat!" with his arms up and hands in fists. I don't know how to describe it, but it was hilarious. They had a wonderful little area exclusively for children five and under. I loved that parents were more than welcome to accompany their children.

We got to see the room where until a few years ago all communication with the space shuttles and such took place. On the top of that building, in the direct center of the campus (for lack of a better term) was a flag pole with the United States flag raised, and we learned that whenever that flag is raised, it means we have an American in space. The flag has been up now for over 10 years. We also saw Memorial Grove where there is an oak planted for every fallen astronaut.

I could not believe the size of the shuttle, and all but the very tippy top is used to carry fuel. Isn't that a sweet couple? We observed their behavior and Hiram seemed to find it a little too mushy. He's forgotten how we were when we were first in love.

Again. How does he know? He took this garbage and went immediately to the garbage and tried to put it in.

Ha ha ha. I just thought this was funny.

And our day ended happily.


We had such a wonderful, happy time with Hiram. We miss him already. We appreciate his hard work to provide for us. Love you, Hun!

A quick funny conversation between Hiram and me:

Hiram: What are you watching?
Ashley: I don't know, but its a Hallmark movie, so I'm sure it'll be great.
Hiram: Is Steve Martin in it?
Ashley: No.
Hiram: Then how can it be great?