I don't understand...

Wrong.

Did I ever write about the first Christmas we were in Japan and I was really homesick and my in-laws took us to the brand new mall and it had beautiful Christmas lights everywhere and made me happy but when we went in the mall all of the signs said "1th Christmas"? That was wrong, too.

tenth anniversary

It was ten years ago today that Chikara and I promised our lives to each other. Promised to stay together through all sorts of things that we knew nothing about! The first year of marriage was such an emotional roller coaster but every year since then we've learned to be more understanding, more supportive, more forgiving, more patient, more loving and as a result we are more committed to each other than I could have imagined on the day we said "I do".


I'm so glad we decided to go away, just the two of us, and celebrate our first ten years of marriage. Part of me thought that it was a reckless, selfish thing to do. Part of me has a hard time putting me first but now I know that it was the right decision for us. The girls did great without us. They slept well, they played nicely and they didn't seem to notice that we were gone until we returned and then there were tears and stories of all of the fun things they did in our absence and the inevitable questions about presents!

For our part, we will remember that we stole time away from our kids to do the things that we cannot do when we are with them. Sleep in, sit in a hot tub under the stars watching the ocean waves roll, eat appetizers for dinner with a chocolate shake on the side, order enormous hamburgers and not finish them, walk instead of drive and read books without interruption are just some of the luxuries of "child-free" life that we enjoyed.




















Are you drooling yet?

















We did talk about our children at length and we wondered what they were doing during certain moments of the day. Was Emi being too bossy? Was Misaki sad? Was Sakura cooperating? Did Natsuki even know what was going on?












Gina! Thanks for all the great advice. We had a wonderful time...

tidbits

Hey, sorry for the silence. The reason is the same as always, there's been a lot going on. No surprises there!

We have decided to go to Guam. After a lot of thought, I decided to extend our trip by one day so we'll leave on Monday late in the evening and then return on Thursday very early morning. I was hesitant at first to do it this way because that means we'll be leaving our kids for THREE WHOLE NIGHTS! I'm most worried about Natsuki. What if she doesn't sleep? What if it's too much for our friends? In the end, I talked with both families and asked them to think about it and both of them said that of course that would be no problem. I was very relieved. Anyways, the tickets are bought and paid for so there's no turning back now.

I am determined that once we arrive in Guam I will not worry about the kids. They'll be fine. It's only three days. I can get them back on their normal schedule once the trip is over. Nothing bad is going to happen. See? I feel better already! Sigh...

I am starting to get into the holiday spirit. Yesterday we went to Costco and I bought this year's turkey and a pumpkin pie. After a few tries, I managed to get them both into our freezer to be preserved until our Thanksgiving Dinner. We are celebrating with Stephen and Abigail and their son, Matthew. They informed us recently that they are expecting their second child and I am so excited for them. Anyways, we all have a lot to be thankful for this year. And I'm also thankful that we were able to get a good-size turkey and a pumpkin pie! Last year, my husband had to go to Costco a few times before we were able to get a pumpkin pie. I was freaking out a little bit!

One funny thing happened while we were at Costco. After we had bought everything, we sat in their cafeteria to have some dinner. All of a sudden Emi turned to us and asked:

Emi: "Mom, what type of guy do you like?"

Me: "Ummmm, this type of guy?" (pointing to Chikara)

Emi: "No, I mean what style do you you like?"

Me: "What? I don't know what you mean."

Emi: "You know, style of guy, what style of guy do you like?"

Me: "Uh, clean? Doesn't smell crazy? Dresses nice? I don't know..."

Obviously it's been awhile since I've thought about this. She gave up since I wasn't giving her the answer she was looking for.

Me: "Who was talking about this with you?"

Emi: "Kenji-kun." (our neighbor who is in first grade with Emi)

Me: "He asked you what type of guy you liked?"

Emi: "Yeah." (with a tone like "Duh, Mom, of course")

Let's just say the conversation ended there because I could see that Chikara was holding onto his fork a little harder than before. White knuckles = worried father! Sometimes she really surprises us!

Natsuki is trying to walk around all over the place. She's in such an awesome stage right now. Everything she does is cute, even when she's having a temper tantrum. She's learned some words and some baby signs so she's able to communicate with us more. This means a lot less screaming in our direction when there's something she wants. Sometimes she won't actually do the signs but will nod vigorously when we say the words. Whatever. She's making herself understood. She can also say "Daddy", "I love you", "Ikou" (let's go), "Sugoi" (awesome), and "ato" (short for arigato or thank you) and she can sing Twinkle, Twinkle and I Love You, You Love Me from Barney and do the actions for Pattycake. She can do the signs for "more", "all done" and "no" and she can wave "bye-bye" and blow kisses. She also plays peek-a-boo but she never actually cover her eyes so someone who doesn't know her probably wouldn't know what she's trying to do! I've gotten most of this on video but it's on our old non-digital video camera so I can't share it here. Sorry. It's so very cute but maybe that would be too much showing off!

Sakura has turned up the volume over the last few months and everything she says comes out loud. I mean really loud. I mean I get a headache a lot. She's not loud because she's angry or hyper, she's just loud. If her life was drawn into a cartoon, all of her words would be CAPITAL LETTERS, as in "MOM, NATSUKI IS OVER THERE!", "MOM, I LIKE CHEESE!", etc. All day I am telling her to be quiet or go away. *Please* go away and yell at me from across the room instead of right beside me. Please. My head is killing me. Also there's been a lot of crying from her lately. And, of course, it's louder than before, too, and harder to stop. I know this is a phase and we're working through it but it's driving me crazy! On the plus side, she's using the potty really well. We did have an accident the other day but she had gone a whole month without any problems before that so I'm really pleased with her progress there. Now if I can just get her to go to the bathroom by herself. Baby steps, baby steps! One thing that I love about Sakura is her singing. She loves to sing and make up songs and one thing I want to do with her through the next year is make a video of all the songs that she likes and makes up. She remembers songs very quickly and although a lot of the words are of her own creation, she sings in tune and with a lot of emoting! In some ways Sakura really reminds me of my sister Hannah at this age (not the loudness, although...) with the dancing, dressing up and singing. Hopefully one day Sakura will be a great singer like my sister is.

Misaki is changing before our eyes. I have been worried for awhile about Misaki entering first grade. She seemed so lost sometimes like she wasn't really paying attention to what was going on around her or even capable of defining what she is interested in. In some ways her "go with the flow" mentality is really helpful but in other ways I wondered if she'd be able to discover her identity as she goes through elementary school. Lately we are starting to see her be more of an one-chan (big sister) and take a little more control of her own life. Mostly this would have to do with not doing *everything* that Emi thinks of but also I see her offering her own suggestions for activities, thinking ahead about events that we're going to, offering comments on what we're doing, talking about her friends at school, etc. It's all very encouraging and I think she's going to do well at elementary school (fingers crossed!). We still need to work on her completing projects or chores to the end but, as with everything else in our lives, we're taking it one step at a time.

Emi is really enjoying elementary school. Besides all the interesting conversations, she's really developing her sense of right and wrong. She's very black and white about all situations, which is great, but we're also teaching her about grace and seeing past the black and white to what the other person might be going through. Grace and compassion are two concepts that I think are the key to change in Japan. She's made some great friends and I get a lot of comments from other mothers about what a good friend Emi is which is very encouraging for me.

Emi also is enjoying the activity of being in school. She enjoyed the sports day so much so we're really trying to think of how we could get her involved more. The other day our church sponsored a soccer event. There's a church in the States that send soccer players to other countries to do outreach events and a guy at Chikara's work knew a guy that was coming over so they asked around to some of the other guys and everyone was really excited about having a chance to play soccer. On Sunday afternoon, after church, we went to a local park and the guy, TJ, worked with the kids first on passing and other soccer skills (don't ask me, I don't know much about soccer!) and then the adults played for a bit. Emi had such a blast. She came back all excited and told me about the goals that she scored and what she had learned. The guys came back sore and exhuasted! Hee, hee!

Anyways, there is a little update on our family. Chikara and I will go to Guam next week so expect pictures and an update from me!

walking fool

I finally captured Natsuki walking. I'm so proud of my big girl!

PS Sorry for all the clutter in the picture. I'm going through our storage loft right now.

treadmill dancing?

This is very funny.



Enjoy!

one year ago

Today is the one year anniversary of my blog!

Thank you to all of you who have taken an interest in me and my family through this blog. I have really appreciated all of the encouraging words, cheeky comments and timely advice.

I wonder what another year will bring...

Why?

When my husband and I were trying to decide where to go for dinner on our 8th wedding anniversary, we decided that for our 10th anniversary we should go away, just the two of us, for a weekend to someplace romantice. A few weeks later, we got pregnant with Natsuki (Coincidence? I think not!) and even then, one of the first things I tried to figure out was how old would she be on our 10th anniversary. Could we still go away? She would be one year and three months. Yes! It would probably be fine.

Last year, we started defining the trip more. Where would we like to go? We narrowed it down to Guam or Okinawa. Both destinations were short plane trips (we didn't want to waste time flying), tropical and romantic, etc. Due to Gina's reports on her trips there, I decided that I wanted to go to Guam because it had the added benefit of feeling like being in the States (Taco Bell here we come). Perfect! Chikara was really up for anything so over the summer that became our plan.

Then last month I started to research how much the trip would cost and it looked pretty affordable so yesterday we started making calls to reserve airline tickets and this is where the dream turned into a nightmare.

Our anniversary is on November 15th, which is a relatively cheap time to fly since there are no national holidays. We decided to go from a Monday to a Wednesday to avoid the extra charges of going on a weekend. BUT, the cheap flights (JAL ANA) to Guam from Osaka-Kansai International Airport leave at 9:40pm and arrive in Guam at 2am (!). The returning flight leaves at 3:55am and arrives at 6:35am. Seriously, this is a WTF moment. If we left on Monday and returned on Wednesday, we would only be in Guam for 26 hours. The more reasonably timed flight (NWA) costs a lot more and is therefore too ridiculous. Sigh...

Our other option would be to go a day early but that would mean that our kids would spend three nights away from us. Now my friends have volunteered to watch our kids, which made me feel so good because either they really like our kids or they really like us, but three whole nights watching two extra kids can be a lot and I don't want to impose upon their good graces. I might want to do this again!

So I guess we're going to look at going to Okinawa. Hopefully there will be no surprises there.

feeling a little fried

It's been a big week for owies in our house. Last week at Misaki's sports day I got sunburnt. Please see evidence below.



Fortunately it was just on my arms, right below my neck and my face (not my shoulders or back) but it's been such a long time since I've had a sunburn that I didn't realize it was happening and then after I couldn't remember how to take care of it. We had two sports days in a row and the weather was cloudy for Emi's sports day and we were all fine. The weather was supposed to be the same for the next day but it totally cleared up and there were no clouds in the sky at all. Plus where our assigned area was, our faces were pointing in the direction of the sun when we were watching Misaki's events. But seriously, through all of this, I wasn't even thinking about the possibility of a sunburn. It's October, for goodness' sake! I hadn't put on any sunblock or anything. About an hour before the lunch break, Chikara was suddenly wondering if I was OK and asking if I wanted to go to the shade. I had no idea what he was talking about and I kept saying I was fine. During the lunch break, we sat under a tent the school had provided. When I took Sakura to the bathroom, I saw myself in the mirror and I was red as a lobster. Crap! I stayed covered for the rest of the events and then we went home. Later that evening, I realized that it wasn't as bad as I had initially thought but it looks awful so I get a lot of stares wherever we go. As if being a foreigner with four cute kids wasn't enough. I'm in the peeling phase, now, much to Emi's delight so I'm sure it'll be all gone soon.

This last Thursday Emi's class had a field trip to the zoo in Kobe. When she got home, her face was all scratched up and she had a big goose egg on her forehead. It turns out that when her class were running together down a hill (why?), a kid behind her bumped her and she fell and smacked her face up.



She was not really thrilled that I took this picture. I got a call from her teacher about and he said that she had smacked her top tooth, too, so we should keep an eye on it. Fortunately it's still a baby tooth so we lucked out there.

Then yesterday I got a call from Misaki's teacher. At first I thought I had missed the bus but it turns out that when Misaki was playing outside after lunch she got smacked in the face by another boy's head (ouch!). The other kid wasn't looking where he was going and ran full force into her. By the time she got home, the area under her right eye was still swollen and this morning it's started turning purple.



It's kind of hard to see so I might take another picture tomorrow. I'm actually kind of glad that she got smacked up, too, because now she and Emi can be injured together. I just hope that no one thinks that we did it to them!

I do have some good news. Natsuki took her first steps yesterday. Yeah! Actually she did a lot of one-stepping followed by dramatic falling but once she figured out what we were trying to do (finally!) she took four steps in a row a couple of times. I think the best part is that she was really excited about her accomplishment and kept trying to walk. Eventually she got too excited and was falling down all over the place. But on the whole it was a "step in the right direction". Ha, ha! I crack myself up. I'll try to get her on video when Chikara's home to help me. In the meantime, here is a picture of her concentrating on putting a straw in a cup.



This kept her quiet for 20 minutes.

Fortunately tonight is the TV premiere of High School Musical 2 so Emi & Misaki have something to lift their spirits. We're going to go to my friend's house and watch it with them since they have cable and we do not. I know that if we had cable, I would sit around and watch television All. Day. Long. I have no self-control in this area, especially when I'm homesick. But tonight will be fun. I'm going to bring popcorn and pop and I'll probably spend the whole night explaining teenage angst and what it makes teenagers do to the girls the whole time. Fun!

I hope all of you have a great weekend.

rokko island

One of our favorite places to go is Rokko Island in Kobe. Everytime we go I'm reminded that it is, in fact, a utopia for expat families with small children. The center of the man-made island is surrounded by buildings and partitioned off from the streets so you don't need to worry about your children getting hit by idiot drivers. There is a Subway Sandwiches AND a Wendy's besides the requisite McDonald's, Starbucks and convenience stores within 5 minutes walking distance from each other (translation: heaven). But the greatest thing about it is the waterways that the kids can play in because the water is only a few inches deep and there are waterfalls and bridges and jets and the kids never get bored even after hours and hours have passed. It's awesome!

Because there was a national holiday, we decided to take our friends with us and introduce them to our secret utopia (seriously, there's hardly ever anyone there). They have two children ages 4 and 2 so I knew it would be perfect for them.

It was also going to be the first time for Natsuki to go into the water. On our summer vacation, she enjoyed the ocean for all of 5 minutes before she started crying so it was hard to say what she would think about this. Chikara sat with her and she just stood at first...

... and then she tried touching the water but if you look at her left hand, it's clutching Chikara's shirt very tightly...

... after about 20 minutes then she relaxed and played on her own while Daddy kept an eye on her.

not enough hours in a day

I've been meaning to update but with all that's been going on it just hasn't happened. This will be short because... well, just because.

Three Sundays ago we went and visited Chikara's grandparents (my first visit since Grandpa was hospitalized) because it was Respect for the Aged Day. We compromised and took them out of dinner and did not go in their house because then Grandma doesn't have to worry about "cleaning" the house. We were really watching them to see how they were doing and although they moved slower, they both finished off a whole steak dinner! Each! I guess they're fine.



The following Sunday (two Sundays ago) we went to visit Chikara's Great-Grandmother. She would be our children's great-great-grandmother. I've never met her before and Chikara hasn't seen her since junior high school (he thinks!). I wasn't sure what to expect so I gave the girls a serious talk about being quiet and listening and obeying right away before we went in. We were guessing that she was in her late 90's but actually she turned 100 years old this last May. She even got a Certificate from the Prime Minister of Japan and a plaque.

Amazingly, she came out to the entrace of the house to greet us and then showed us to their living room, talked up a storm, said funny stuff (and laughed at her own jokes), interacted with the girls, etc. Probably if you met her you would assume that she's in her late 70's because she moves so well and is so mentally alert. She lives with her son and daughter-in-law and they got married later in life so their children are the same age as us and they have one grandchild who is 3 years old. It was great because there were a lot of things for us to talk about. I was really glad that we had made the effort to visit her.



One thing that we noticed about her is that she was really positive. Hardly any negative comments came out of her mouth and we could only surmise that this is part of the reason why she's made it to 100!

The Thursday after that, the girls got lice. We received a call from Misaki's preschool in the morning that she had lice and they were going to send her home so we could de-louse her and the moment we got that call my mind went blank. I didn't know what to do and "shampoo" was the only word that kept bouncing around inside my head. Every sentence I said had the word "shampoo" in it. Then I realized I should check Sakura (Natsuki was sleeping) but I realized that I didn't know what I was looking for so I went straight upstairs and tore all the sheets off of Misaki's bed and threw all of her bed linens in the washing machine. Once she was home, I compared her head with Sakura's and she had it, too. This could only mean that all of my kids had it so I sent Chikara to buy the de-lousing shampoo and to get Emi from school. I spent the next two hours in the bathroom shampooing and combing their hair. Once I was done we discovered that Chikara was the only one who didn't get it. Yes, I had it, too. So I washed all of our bed linens in turn throughout the day and read a lot about lice online until I had more of a grip on what I needed to do to irradicate it from our house. Tonight was the last scheduled shampoo and all of us were lice-free but I will keep checking everytime we take a shower for the next month just to be sure. I guess this is lice-season. This was the first time I swore in front of my kids, too. Sigh...

This last Sunday was supposed to be Emi's sports day but it rained so we had it today and then Misaki's sports day will be tomorrow. I would like to insert here that last year Misaki got mumps the week before sports day and it cleared up just in time for her to participate and this year she got lice the week before sports day and it cleared up right before sports day, too. I wonder what she'll get next year.

There's a lot of other things we did throughout the last three weeks, like for example, I started a group for stay-at-home moms that go to my church. I did the whole thing in Japanese, even leading worship from the piano. I think it went well. I'm going to do it for three months and if everyone thinks that it's worthwhile then I'll continue doing it until I'm not a stay-at-home mom anymore! Also, Sakura is potty-trained and Natsuki learned how to crawl off the couch by herself and those two things have made my life a little bit easier.

Hopefully I'll be able to fill in some more details once this next weekend is over.