Kickin' It!

Konnichiwa! We are doing our best to beat the heat. Apparently August is the hottest month, so we are getting excited for the fall and to be done with the extreme heat and humidity. Anton's temporary boss left this weekend, so with the heat they will now be switching to an earlier schedule or even a night shift. Early on in the week, me and Maggie got to attend a "Sunflower Festival", it was my heaven on earth, just fields of sunflowers ;). I even branched out and ate some Japanese food from a street vendor. It was pretty hot, but Maggie just couldn't stop smiling at everyone. This week we also went to the branch temple trip on Friday. They try and go once a month, so we were excited to try out the Tokyo Temple. We were hesitant to leave Maggie with anyone,  however, the Branch President's wife offered to babysit Maggie when she stayed home with all of their kids. We were first time parents leaving her with a babysitter for the first time, so we made plenty of rookie mistakes and forgot a piece to the Pack n' Play. Needless to say we were a little late but finally got on the road. The temple is fairly close, but takes about an hour and a half with all the traffic. There was plenty of traffic... Tokyo has like stacked highways and at some parts there are three highways/roads stacked on top of each other and the GPS never knows which level you are on.  5 miles in Tokyo traffic is equivalent to at least 30 minutes, so needless to say we didn't make it. We didn't want to come all the way out there for nothing, so they showed us this cool luxurious hotel in downtown Tokyo that is owned by the US. It is mainly a place for active duty military guys to stay and then government workers at the embassy or contractors. It's pretty sweet, because a downtown hotel in Tokyo is easily $200+ a night and you can get a room at this hotel for $50-$75 depending on your rank. We got to the temple to check out the grounds which are the size of a tiny garden, but we had a good time! We ended up eating a nice dinner at the hotel and had our first date without Maggie since she was born (besides the one time in Hawaii) with our Branch Presidency. It was pretty fun and at least now we have a story to tell. Maggie did great and all of the kids loved her. She woke up when we picked her up and didn't fall asleep again until midnight, so it was a long night! We revamped Saturday and headed to the outdoor pool on base for a fun pizza party with our friends here! It was a perfect afternoon that was overcast and not too hot, so we enjoyed some fun time with Maggie in the pool. She did awesome and just loves being in the water with her sunglasses on! It was a fun day! We are celebrating our 3 year anniversary on Tuesday, can't believe it's already been that long! We are excited to finish out summer, there is an open base/Japanese Festival in a couple weeks that we can't wait to attend. We will also try and go to a couple fireworks shows, because we all know the Japanese love their fireworks!