Liberation Day.

Apparently, in Saipan, the 4th of July is Liberation Day and NOT Independence Day.

(I had one lady correct me on this fat. Sorry honey, but I'm an American and in America we call it Independence Day.)

We went to the parade where we were told had a total of 9 floats this year! (Wow!)

I was mainly there for the little shops and shakes.

It is seriously SWELTERING HOT here. Everyone carries umbrellas around just for shade.

June has been a little grumpy about her last 2 teeth that are coming in.

So we bribed her with a shake.

Can't he just stay this little forever? Owen has honestly been looking so big lately it's heartbreaking!

He's lost all his chub and looks so grown up.

Betcha didn't know Saipan had a bike gang, eh?

This made me cry. Very few people saluted or put their right hand over their heart during this and it made me so sad. I looked up to take a picture and saw the Navy Servicemen standing and saluting and I lost it.

These poor guys were right after the Queen of CNMI Pageant winner and sadly she got more applause than they did. I made sure our kids clapped and cheered as loud as we all could to try to make up for it.

The Scouts. Most of these boys are from our church. 

King of Saipan.

Kidding. I really don't know what this guy was because no one ever explained it but I thought he looked pretty rad all decked out.

We don't actually have any Jollibee's here in Saipan but I remember them from when we were in the Philippines. I was so excited because I thought it was a poor man's McDonald's but found out I hated it when I very unfortunately ordered their version of spaghetti.

June is definitely my cuddler.

Tim was holding her and out of nowhere she wrapped her arms around me from behind.

Love to see them together!

Owen got this hat for his birthday from one of his cousins and I'm in love with it. I think he looks so cute in it and I totally don't mind wearing it when he is sick of it on his head. :-)

This is the closest thing to an ice cream truck here.

And the riot that followed it when they announced free juice boxes. Seriously? Those juice boxes are a whooping 35 cents! I couldn't believe the masses of people fighting over these things. The police even had to break up some fights.

And then of course they were all over the ground.

The hippie inside me was a little ticked.

This is really all I wanted to see. A dog walking a deer. It's the strangest thing but the owner of these "pets" seriously trains them both to do things together. I've seen them playing frizbee at the park and a friend of mine has seen him "walking" the deer at the beach. So, so bizarre!

Happy Independence Day America!

Nature Walk

Tim was involved in Youth Conference this past weekend for the youth in our church and therefore needed our car. Keeping two kids entertained for a full 12 hours without transportation was a bit daunting to me so that morning I made a list of things we could do when the kids started to get restless.

One of the activities on the list was to go on a "nature walk." We live in a gated-like community (there's no actual gate but there is a guard at the entrance) so the grounds are pretty big. I told the kids we were going "flower picking," and Owen was super excited that I was going to let him use the scissors once we stopped.

We brought along our bucket and some really crappy scissors.

 (Unfortunately, we had to leave Mr. Giraffe behind)

Our first cut.

June loves flowers. She was really excited to scoop them up to put in our basket.

Our place is called "Flametree Terrace" so it's inevitable that there be flametrees on the grounds. I absolutely LOVE the Flametrees. We just missed the big blossom last year so I still relish in seeing them everywhere.

We saw lots of interesting flowers.

We did a little dance amid the falling Flametree flowers.

This is one of three Banana trees we saw. Best part? You can chop them down when they're ready and eat them for free! We also have coconut trees and a lemon tree.

Once we got home the kids helped me fill these old bottles and put our favorite flowers in them.

It kept them busy for a whole hour (which was surprising to me since it was so hot outside) and they were so tuckered out they took an amazing 3 hour nap afterwards!

Squish.

Keeping the kids entertained around here is no easy feat and I've been slacking lacking. I gave myself a good kick in the pants a few days ago and we're back to the real world instead of zombies in front of the TV all day.

The kids really like to help "cook," so we made some jello and I let them have at it with some "squish testing" material. Basically, I just gave them a bunch of dried noodles to squish into the jello. It was pretty fun to say the least. 

*we ate half of it first before experimenting. Taste test required first, right?

They had a lot of fun doing this and it was pretty cute to hear them say, "squish" so many times.

Later it started to melt and turned into a Dexter scene look-a-like.

J-ELLO spatter.

June ended up looking very zombie-like in her eating techniques once we ditched the experiment and went back to eating.