The Blessing

Guess what? I'm pregnant : )

Over the past few months I've been learning what a precious miracle a baby is and God has answered our prayers. Jonah and I are officially nervous, expecting parents. The baby should be making its grand appearance mid-April.

There's the facts, now I'll give you some details about how I told him!

I found out on a Thursday morning and hid the pregnancy test in the medicine cabinet. I didn't scream when I saw the test or anything, I was just in a grateful state of mind/good mood. Jonah and I had the best ride over to his work that morning because we were both in great moods and I thought he'd get suspicious because I'm SO not a morning person, but he was looking forward to flight time and was probably already running through checklists in his head. I wanted to tell him Friday so that he could let the thoughts sink in and just enjoy the moment (and not be interrupted by work). So, Friday morning after I dropped him off I went to the hospital to confirm the pregnancy. Next, I went by the store to get some stuff to decorate the house, along with some first gifts for the baby. I hung streamers and a sign and decorated the table with baby stuff for him to see when he came in. I went by Chili's and got "baby" back ribs for dinner and made gourmet brownies my brother Zeno sent for my birthday (thanks zeno!) That evening I picked him up and told him we were going to see a movie on base but first I needed to go home and get my jacket. He still had NO idea. In fact, he proceeded to call some friends we were hanging out with that night to invite them to the movie that I completely made up. Thank goodness they couldn't go.

When we got home I ran in to get my place and think of what I'd say. Jonah walked in and went straight upstairs (in our house you can go straight upstairs and never see into the living room). A little annoyed at this point, I called him downstairs and when he asked what was going on, I told him in a not so clever or thought-out way that he was going to be a Dad. His mouth dropped open and stayed that way for about 5 seconds while we hugged.

Some Okinawan gifts for the baby

I was really excited to find this tiger because Jonah's very favorite toy when he was a toddler was his stuffed tiger. I was surprised to find this one amongst the very limited selection on base.

When we talked to our families the next week on skype they asked us the usual "how was your weekend?" question. We told them that "the three of us went snorkeling." They sort of paused and someone said "wait, the three of you???" to which we replied "yeah, me, Jonah and the BABY!"

Hope you enjoyed the story! We love and miss you guys!

Bible Study

Hey guys!
I took some pictures of a recent cocktail party the girls from Bible Study threw. It was really fun to get all dressed up and the best part was that prizes were involved : )  We played a game called "KENU" (i think?), which is basically like bingo with a deck of cards and each player won a necklace in a white elephant style (of course we each brought one).

The food was as good as it looks and it seemed like we were in downtown Asheville or something, not on a balmy, tropical island.  I was super happy with the necklace I won. It came from my friend Elisa and it is gorgeous.

These are a few girls from the group. Don't they look great? I'm not sure where I got the idea to where an Easter dress to a cocktail party : )

Hope you enjoyed meeting some of my new friends! See you next time : )

Minnie at the Bark Cafe

Minnie and her new friends

Well you guys have received quite a bit of updates on Jonah and I since arriving to the island, but for those of you who are curious about Minnie, rest assured she is still the center of attention in the Warren household. She is so funny, she has developed a new trick of bringing me a toy to throw and then backing off, sitting down and growling at me until I throw her toy. The worst part is that obviously she doesn't get in trouble because the growl/whine is WAY too cute. She also likes to bring a toy up on the bed when I'm reading at night, and because it's only fun to play with the toy on the edge of the bed, she'll eventually drop it and then stare at the toy growling until I lean over and retrieve the toy for her. Sigh. She also enjoys tipping the trash can over in the kitchen, a new trick that is worth the punishment every time.

So, a couple of weeks ago I met some of my friends at a place called "Bark Cafe." I was expecting to sit outside with the dogs, but this cafe actually lets you bring your dogs inside. The corners of the room have hooks mounted to the floor where you can attach your dog's leash so that they can roam about.

Minnie & Jasmine

They have a menu of dog foods and human foods. I had ginger pork and Minnie split some muffins with her friends, Jasmine and Loki. There were dog bowls with water available as well.

Jasmine & Loki

The dogs had a really good time and we did too! The cafe was very cute, as most things in Japan are.

Minnie browsing the store

Minnie did some shopping but was unfortunately turned down by her mean, cheap owner. She was however, with the help of good friends, able to have a few bites of their tasty purchases.

Lots of good smells

The cafe owner took the dogs' pictures and now they are famous in all of, well... a little street in Okinawa. But posted on the wall of fame is their group shot, which looks something like this...

The humans took a group picture as well...

All in all Minnie had a wonderful lunch date with her friends and is happy to be an Okinawan dog : )

Greetings from Minnie!

Everyone have a great weekend!
We love you guys!

10,000 Eisa Dancers Parade in Naha

Kokusai Street

 Hi guys! I'm sorry this post is a little late this week! I wanted to share some pictures with ya'll of a festival Jonah and I went to on Kokusai Street last weekend. People of all ages participate in this festival which progresses like a parade down the street.   

It was so hot that day, but that didn't stop all the kids from dancing in their Ryukyu Kingdom costumes and knotted turbans. The Eisa folk dance has Buddhist roots, historically marking the end of Obon, where the dancers would dance and chant to honor the dead. It is now a Japanese tradition, but the bright costumes and different types of drums used for the rhythm are distinctly Okinawan.

My adventurous friends Leslie and Julia

This was my favorite dance. These guys were all ninja-like and were really fun to watch.

Hope you enjoyed! See you next week!!

The Fish Market at Tomari Port

Last weekend Jonah asked (well... pretty much begged) to go to the fish market to get some salmon. He is more adventurous than me when it comes to making your own sushi. I don't know why I doubt him, he always does a great job. This time I had even checked out a sushi book from the library to find out exactly how they make that rice so sticky. And I even learned what kind of solution the Japanese use to flavor the rice and keep the rice from sticking to their hands. So, with my book and Jonah's gusto we felt adventurous enough to finally buy something from the fish market.

Fish markets are great because they smell all fishy inside and kind of give you the heeby jeebies, but Japanese ones are even better because they have weird stuff like sea snakes in tanks.

Yikes.








And this.

 Yikes again.










But we make our way over to the edible stuff (by our standards) and pick out our fish for the day. Jonah decides he wants some dark red fish (I couldn't figure out exactly what it was) to go with his salmon. We buy our slab of salmon and decide we should leave before we lose our appetite  :)

So we take our salmon and mystery fish home and the sushi turned out pretty good. We just fixed nigiri, or sushi, depending on which you refer to this style of sushi with. Nigiri is basically a ball of rice with a slice of raw fish on top. While we were fixing it we were just cutting off slices of this raw salmon and eating it. It made me crack up to think about what we were doing and how I had never even seen sushi until I went to college. I have to say though that salmon is the best-tasting raw fish. It has a wonderful texture and a nutty flavor that tastes delish with the soy sauce. Yum. If you're hesitant to eat raw fish remember that adding just a little wasabi to your soy sauce might prevent food poisoning. You need wasabi "because the Japanese diet includes quite a bit of raw fish which, potentially, can contain parasites and bacteria and because of it’s strong antiparasitic, antmicrobial and antibiotic properties it [wasabi] could even prevent food poisoning," according to one website. You don't have to worry about it when ordering from restaurants, but when making sushi yourself it's VERY important to make sure the fish is "sushi-grade", meaning it meets the freshest standard. You usually can only find "sushi-grade" fish in groceries in coastal regions, where fish is caught daily. We finished our sushi off with some edamame with sea salt. It turned out to be a really good meal thanks to Jonah!

Other Sushi favorites....
Katie: Rainbow roll, Alaskan roll, Philadelphia roll, California roll
Jonah: Spicy tuna roll, Marine Boy roll (spicy tuna roll with salmon on top)

And thanks to my friends here I've just discovered that I really like Thai food, so I'm sure you'll be reading about that someday too! Hope you guys have a great weekend!! Love yall! Zeno and Tiffany, hope yall had fun in LA!!

The Rare and Glorious "Aha!" Moment

You know the kind... that rare and glorious "aha!" moment, the one that proves you're not crazy. I'm still coming down from a high of one of those that I experienced tonight. It's funny, I was just talking to my friend Monica this week about how I would segway this blog into deeper topics, ones that loom behind the shallow surface. Well, my "aha!" moment has inspired/reenergized me and now I will quickly post this before I run out of bravery!

First of all, let me start with the observation that sometimes God leads us toward something before we even know exactly what it is. So when you're doing it people may ask why and you may not have a good answer for them, but ultimately if you know in your heart that what you're doing is out of conviction of the holy spirit, you just need to trust God to bless you for it.

I guess that's the point of this post. But if you'd really like to know.... here's my BIG issue that's taken me TWO YEARS to atleast understand what it was I was dealing with. So, here's Katie in a nutshell: growing up people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never really said a profession, I just knew I really wanted to fall in love and be a Mom. Out of God's grace, I was blessed with a really wonderful mom. I can't say enough about my Mom and what she means to me now that I fully understand the impact she had on my life. So, when I left home and went to college I was drilled with the idea that my career would be my purpose, my contribution to the world, my self-worth. I am so thankful for my college education, but one of the most backwards things I learned there was that my self-worth would be defined by my career.

God gives us callings and purpose. Many of us are blessed when the two align and we can use our career to glorify God. You don't have to be a minister to minister to others. It's wonderful to have a job that you enjoy and provides for your family, just don't let it become your self-worth. That was my problem. 10 days after graduation I got married. I was wonderfully whisked away to FL, where I would be for an undetermined amount of time (with the Marine Corps I could count on it being short). I did enjoy taking photography classes, working for a photographer and starting my own photography home-business. Then as I was wonderfully whisked away to California I struggled with what to do with myself for the short 6 months I'd be there. I cringed (literally) when people asked me: "what is it that you do?" Isn't that one of our first questions for people, after the "what's your name...," "where are you from...," "what do you do?" I have struggled for two years with my self-worth because of  a stupid question that I get asked everytime I meet someone new. I struggled because in college I started to define my self-worth in a career. When I graduated and entered into the military lifestyle, my hopes of a big career quickly went down on the priority list. All of a sudden I had a wonderful husband that I was crazy about, a new adventurous life, an interesting string of family issues and grievances, all of which helped me put my priorities into perspective. But one area of my life was a mess, my self-worth. I lost confidence in myself when I felt like my self-worth was missing. In some ways it has been harder than dealing with my father's abandonment. It took a long time for God to get it through my hard head that I didn't have to define my self-worth by a career. My self-worth comes from Christ alone. If I am never anything more than a child of God then that's okay. Maybe as I write these words I'll start to really believe them.

As some of you know, I'm not on facebook anymore. I felt like God had put in my heart that I needed to get off facebook. After comparing myself to other people and realizing I cared too much about what people thought than I wanted to let on, I eventually got fed up with myself enough to pull the plug. I felt like a huge burden had been lifted and I knew right away God would bless me for it. Now, there is NOTHING wrong with facebook. There IS something wrong with comparing yourself to other people (coveting) and caring too much what people think. I was embarrassed to tell people when they asked why in the world I would be off facebook. I could tell them the symptoms but I didn't even really know myself the true reason I let it go, the core of the issue. Finally tonight at a conversation after bible study it just came out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying; my "aha" moment. I just said "I got off facebook because I didn't want to define my self-worth based on what people thought of me." Boom. Roasted.

Not really though, because I still struggle with it. I'm not saying everyone should get off facebook- I personally did because of my problem. And I'm sure the next time someone asks me "what is it that I do," I probably won't say "oh, well, ya know I'm just a child of God... that's what I do..." Even as I type this it sounds (reads) weird to say that what I do is what I am. That's my problem, I've somehow intertwined the two, but to borrow a phrase from one of my husband's favorite childhood shows, GI Joe, "knowing is half the battle."At least now that I know the root of my big issue I can deal with it. No earthly role, whether it be a mom, wife, business woman, etc. should define who I truly am. God gives us desires, biblical priorities, passions and gifts that make us who we are and we should unashamedly use those, but with one purpose: to glorify him and nothing else. Ultimately our identity is in him... when we boast, we should boast in Christ alone.

1 Corinthians 1: 20-31

 ²⁰Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²²Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
 ²⁶Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹so that no one may boast before him. ³⁰It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. ³¹Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."^[d]

Under the Sea

Well, it's safe to say we need some practice with our underwater photography. The fish are quick! This was our first time with our underwater camera. Jonah was scubadiving while I was snorkeling so most of what you see are my pictures and a video he took deeper under the water (about 70 feet under the water).

The last one is the video Jonah took under the water. I promise we'll get better and add more soon : ) We hope to do some diving/snorkeling this weekend as long as the weather stays nice. Anything to get into the water is a good idea because it's averaging 90 degrees with 80% humidity!!! The water temperature is about 81 degrees right now, which feels like bath water, but it's a nice escape from the muggy weather.  

Hope you enjoyed the pictures and we'll see you next week!
Love,
J & K