This weekend we went to Tokashiki island with our friends from the ‘hood. We’re a pretty close bunch, our three families. When you live this close together your house becomes my house and pretty soon you’re walking in without even knocking. Its good to have neighbors like that.

Tokashiki is part of the Keramas and is about a 40 minute ferry ride from here. We opted to rent cars so we could drive around the island for a bit but the main goal was to just set up camp on the beach for the entire day. The island is ‘inhabited’ but just barely.

As all of us with children know, packing for a day trip is no small feat. Between the three families we had 6 adults, 4 kids and 2 babies. There were coolers and carseats and bags of beach towels and backpacks and sand toys, a skim board etc. So you can imagine my surprise when we saw our rental cars. Two cute pink Daihatsu Mira’s were waiting for us. Two pink Mira’s for 6 adults, 4 kids, 2 babies and our gear.

The husbands immediately went to work loading up the gear and I was a bit giddy thinking about how! fun! this was…we were like a real live traveling circus- COMPLETE with clown cars.

Dave, the fighter pilot, was manning Mira one. Yours truely- Mira two. And it was a little bit like that part in the movie Home Alone, when the cousin does the headcount and counts the neighbor boy subsequently leaving Maccaulay Culkin at home. Nathan was not in our car, but I had a fairly good feeling he was in the other. Kids were bouncing around, sticking their heads out of windows (seat belts schmeatbelts), babies were riding in laps while their carseats were stuffed anywhere there was room. And before you get all stressed out- the Mira is a 2-cylinder so we were grinding our way up the hillside with our 6 adults, 4 kids and 2 babies (all the while Dave is making a “giddy-up” motion out the window) and even on the downhill parts the fastest we went was 40km (24mph). Lets be honest- we probably could have walked faster than we drove– but where’s the clown-car fun in that?

Once we arrived at the beach, which was absolutely beautiful, we popped up an umbrella and beach tent, snacked, drank beer, laughed, snorkeled, swam, kids threw rocks, babies napped in the shade, adults laid in the sun and it was the most fun I’ve had in awhile.

We clown car-ed it back to the ferry with some seriously tired kiddos and got home around 7. Its days like this that I feel so lucky, to be surrounded by such great people and to live where we do. And as I write this Im reminded of the lows that come with the great highs. The low will come tomorrow when the moving truck pulls up with the large wooden crates to pack out “the Magnadudes.” And starting tomorrow, life wont be quite the same. There won’t be 3 mom’s sitting chatting while the kids play at the park. There will be one less kiddo and one less baby. There will no pilot in the neighborhood and I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again- everyone needs at least one fighter pilot in their life.

I keep thinking for as many times as I’ve been through this that it should be getting easier. And it never does. So, be nice to me, its going to be a sad week. But…boxes should be coming, so I have that to look forward to.

Filed under: Military Life