Today we got to celebrate thanksgiving in August. Dima will be deployed for the actual thanksgiving, so I took it upon myself to create thanksgiving early this year. We were excited for our first thanksgiving alone (we are usually with family) and i was a bit nervous of making the whole thing on my own once again. All went well though. I made mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, and of course turkey. I tried an apple rosemary turkey where i stuffed the bird with cut up apples and rosemary sprigs, then stuffed the skin with rosemary and sage. It was basted every half hour in an apple juice/butter blend and came out very fragrant and yummy. I was terrified I would overcook the turkey, but it actually came out perfect. I have to say it was the best turkey I ever had. No offense to my mom and dad!

Here I am preparing dinner. I am 17 weeks pregnant in this photo which is the akward stage where I look like i'm just gaining weight.
Here's the turkey. Man did it look great! I am very proud of myself!
Dima finally got to carve the turkey. That was always his dad's job, so now that he's a dad to be he got to do the honors.
Poor dima tourtured Neko with the food.
After the dinner, Neko passed out. The turkey must have gotten to him! He could barely keep his eyes open.
Then Dima came over and played with him. Here they are looking very silly playing together.
We had a great thanksgiving. I doesn't make it any better that dima will be away for the real one, but it is good that we got to celebrate the holiday together. I look forward to many more thanksgiving dinners in the future.

No sushi for preggers...

This morning, Dima had to go into work for a meeting at 6am. When he finally returned around 10:45, i was in the mood to go out for lunch. I was really in the mood for this one place we have gone to many times now. It is a sushi restaurant that sells a bunch of great meal sets for only 980 yen a person at lunch. It's a beautiful place, but for some reason they have had this one sign about their "grand open" for awhile now. Since 2002 from what I heard! Not to mention they have some pretty views of some pretty Okinawa scenery right around the corner! (we really do live in paradise!)

We both ordered a meal set which includes a drink, soup, salad, tempura, an appetizer, a meal, rice, and a dessert.

The place is really nice inside. They have a really pretty sushi bar and we always sit at the tables that are in the ground so you sit on the floor with your legs under the table.

I would have loved to have some sushi, but of course, can't eat all the good stuff since i'm pregnant. Dima ordered the sushi plate which looks like this.

Man that salmon looked good!

I ordered chicken terriaki, which was ok I suppose. It tasted more fried then I like i guess. It was still good though. I was able to snag the shrimp sushi off dima's plate since it's cooked and that made me happy enough!

All in all, it was a good lunch. Like i said, we love this place and go all the time.

BOY, OH BOY WHAT A BIRTHDAY!

Today was Dima's 25th birthday. I stayed up until midnight to wish him happy birthday as soon as it was officially his birthday. He was half awake so he didn't really sound too enthused I suppose. In the morning, I surprised him by having presents on his night stand for him. Apparently in his family, they would wake up to presents on their side table in the morning. My family always exchanged in the evening after dinner and cake. He was happy I remembered that and was excited to open them. I got him a very funny mad lib type card where you made your own story with the stickers included. It was a really cool card! He also received a digital camera so he can take photos on the MEU while he's away. It's no special camera, just a simple point and shoot camera, but to be honest I think that's all he needs. Not to mention the 2 year accidental damage warranty was a good investment! He was pretty happy with his new toy and can't wait to use it!

After I left there, I made dima's cake balls for his birthday. Cake balls were something I heard of online and decided to try to make. You basically make a cake, crumble it up, add icing, form balls, and dip them into chocolate. I did Dima's with funfetti cake and icing, his favorites. I did learn that next time, I will have to WAIT to add the sprinkles until it is all mixed. My balls came out kinda purple because the blue and red sprinkles mixed together. No pun intended there!

Dima came home early today, at 5 (wow!) so that we could swing around to the hospital with our neighbor to see the baby on the ultrasound. We made our way down there (after hours, so sneaky!) and got the machine out. We saw the baby, who is getting even bigger, and were even able to make out the bones. We saw the entire spine and legs and arms very clearly. He told us that the baby was looking great and everything was looking to be going well. He then tried to find out the gender of the baby. It took awhile, because the baby kept moving around and put it's hands between the legs to not let us see! FINALLY after pushing against my belly enough, we were able to get a shot of the top of the head, two spread apart legs, and a............................................

WEENIE!

Yep! It's a boy! We couldn't be more excited about our little man. Dima was really crossing his fingers that it was a boy, I didn't really care one way or the other. So this made us both very happy, and was without a doubt the best birthday gift Dima could have asked for! Looks like we both guessed the gender right... now we need to wait for the day the baby is born to see who won our baby guessing game! For now, we will sit back and enjoy the happiness this has brought us!

After our very successful trip, we made our way to the seawall for some Greek Gyros! Dima LOVES Gyros so he picked this place for his dinner. We ordered some pita bread and hummus to start off with, which I wouldn't get again because it came with so little hummus it wasn't worth it. Dima got a beef Gyro, and I got a chicken Gyro. This was my first time having one, and it was pretty darn good. It came with fries that we both ended up throwing away though, they just had too much salt on them!

After Dinner we came home to sit in the front of the neighbor's house and enjoy the nice night. We ate cake balls (which were amazing thank you very much!) and hung around. Dima enjoyed a celebratory whisky and coke, and it was a very low key night, just what Dima likes.

All in all, I would like to say that Dima's 25th Birthday was a very successful one on both of our parts. It makes me excited that we will get to celebrate our birthday with our little one this time next year!