A Few Pictures from Lilia's Birthday Party

Lilia turned one about 3 weeks ago, but I decided to have her birthday party in June when Cliff was GUARANTEED to be home. I think I have finally learned my lesson. NEVER plan on your husband being home over here. NEVER. By pushing back her party date a lot of our good friends had moved or were gone for the summer and Cliff got called back out anyway. Ok... lesson learned. On the bright side, we still had a good turnout and the weather was lovely for our FAERIE GARDEN TEA PARTY! This tea party was complete with faerie wings, delicious food, and lots of flowers and fun. I spent three nights making most of the food which included homemade tarts, Oreo truffles, tea sandwiches, cupcakes, two different kinds of cookies, a vegetable tray, and deviled eggs! (My mom was here to help with a lot of it too.) We also had cream puffs and some sandwich spirals. I think everything was a hit and it was worth the trouble. We had pink lemonade with frozen raspberries and we played "pin the faerie on the flower" and "I spy the faeries." We were so grateful to everyone that came and made Lilia's party so much fun!

Busy Bees

Friday afternoon after Cliff left I took Lilia over to Mari's house for a Cherry Blossom Tea Party! She lives very close to a canal that is bordered by cherry trees and makes for a delightful blossom viewing location. The cherry blossoms were at their peak last week, but I was surprised by how lovely the blossoms remained this weekend. A grand time was had by all and Mari really did a fabulous job throwing this little soiree together for all of us!
Kristin and Madelyn above
The spread
The hostess with the mostess

Lilia makes friends by taking their toys. Fortunately Lilia's friends seem to be more passive than she is and take it all in stride.
Yoink! What mom? You don't approve?

The remnants of the cherry blossom season

Enjoying some juice and/or sakura tea!

Lilia getting into things



The change of command dinner for Cliff's squadron was last night. Cliff isn't here right now, but I still went! It was so nice to get a babysitter and have a night out. I THOROUGHLY enjoyed myself. It was like a date night minus the date. I would have preferred to have Cliff there, of course, but there is no point in both of us sitting around by ourselves being lonely and miserable. Kristin and I drove together because her husband is gone too.

Meatball Mari!
Kelly, Kristin, and Mari at our table a.k.a. "Det Lonely." We worked it.

Robyn's husband was the man of the hour. They will be leaving Japan soon and turning over command. I will miss her a lot.
Some of the guys

"Come hither Mari"

Chrissy and me

This morning (Saturday,) we got an early start. Got up at 5:30 with Lilia and just stayed up. I had "flight suit photos" today with the OSC at 8:00am. Lilia came along and was mostly good.
More pictures to come.
We went home for a little bit after the pictures to bake some cherry blossom cookies for the festival today and get some packing done for our trip tomorrow.

A picture with Hello Kitty/ Clay Shane...
Some flight line pictures