Fun Signs

Some of my favorite signs I've seen in Japan so far.  :)

Just one of the many perks about living overseas.

The Artist

"I'm an artist," Alexa said dryly, matter-of-factly. 

Not "I wanna be an artist," and not "I'm gonna be an artist." Rather, "I'm [currently, sure as I'm sitting here, no doubt about it] an artist."

One of her friends, a little older than her, was complimenting her on a picture she drew. Intended or not, Alexa perceived it as patronizing. And she wasn't having any of it, at least not from a near peer.

And sure enough, she is an artist. She created these lovely flowers today without any help from mom or dad. 

We'll have to work on the attitude, but she's definitely a creative one. 

3rd time's the charm

Alexa figured out how to ride her bike, sans training wheels, on just her third attempt.  Cassi captured it on video. 

Now, all she wants to do is ride her bike.

Silly Saluting

I don't know if anyone out there is still reading our blog.  We post so sporadically, that it's probably very dull to follow us, but this little exchange I had with Alexa needs to be memorialized, so here goes.

Cassi and the kids picked me up for lunch today.  We went to our favorite restaurant, an Indian place called the Great Taj Mahal, because they were having a lunch deal to commemorate their 6th anniversary of being open.  The curry there is great, but we go for the naan.  It's outstanding. Here's to 6 more years of soul-pleasing naan...

Anyway, this place is just a stones throw from base, so there were a lot of personnel from base enjoying the lunch deal.  On our way out, a group of three Airmen were strolling up to the restaurant.  They saluted me, I returned their salute.  Alexa noticed this and asked "Why do you always do this?" as she's hitting her forehead repeatedly. I said, "We have to do it for work," thinking I would spare her (and myself) the explanation of military customs and courtesies that contribute to good order and discipline among us service members.  Alexa just starts cracking up.  Like really laughing.  And I don't think I've seen her laugh like this before.  She gets giggly from time to time, but this was different from giggly.  She really found this idea of hitting your forehead with your hand funny.  And maybe the thought that I had to do it for work contributed to the humor.  I said, "you're a funny girl," because her cracking up made me start laughing.  She said, "no, I'm not the one who does this all the time" and starts hitting her hand against her forehead again.  We laughed all the way to the car, and I've been laughing about this throughout the day.  She's 5, by the way.

Christmas and Other Celebrations

We've had a very good week, so let us tell you about it.  Santa Clause found his way here, and apparently had a surplus of Hello Kitty stuff that he had to unload here.  Alexa's been pretty excited about Hello Kitty since we got here, and it's only recently that Cailin has caught on to the greatness that is Hello Kitty.  So, it was at the top, bottom, and middle of both of their Christmas Wishlists.  But before we get to the gifts, let's talk about Christmas.

We've tried to ask the girls often why we celebrate Christmas.  As we got closer to Christmas, they started giving us the answer we were looking for: Because Jesus was born in the stable.  We sang a lot of "Away in a Manger" over the last 3 wks, usually because one or the other of the girls wanted to sing it.  And it paid off in a big way the week before Christmas at church when the closing hymn was "Away in a Manger."  These little girls out sang everyone.  It's not a contest, I know, but it was still impressive to see and hear them belting out, nearly in tune, "...The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. (!!!)"  We knew they both had a solid handle on the 1st verse, but even we were surprised when they finished the second verse just as strong as the first.  Everyone around us were turning to see where the sound was coming from, then after the meeting people who were sitting on the other side of the church came up to tell us they could hear Alexa and Cailin singing.  It was great.  These girls love to sing.

On the Sunday right before Christmas, Alexa somehow got it into her head that she wanted to draw a picture for the front of the ward program.   Neither of us know how she came up with this idea. Anyway she started drawing the nativity, but then didn't know how to draw a manger.  I gave her a very rough idea, because I'm the world's least talented artist, and she took it from there.  After church we told her who was in charge of the weekly programs, and Alexa, by herself, found that sister  and delivered her drawing. Well, we showed up this week surprised as anyone that Alexa's artwork was on the front of the program.  Alexa was a little embarrassed by the attention she received, but deep down I think she liked it.

On Christmas Eve, our next door neighbors had us over for a Christmas Eve dinner with games and a live nativity, in which our children played significant roles.  Cailin was the angel bringing "glad tidings of great joy" to the shepherds "keeping watch over their flock by night."  Alexa was Mary, and Ian was a very healthy baby Jesus.  Good parents would have taken pictures to share with all our many readers spanning the globe, but on this night we weren't good parents.  Luckily for all of us, there were good parents present that sent us these:

On Christmas morning, the girls woke up around 6:30 as usual.  And as usual, we made them play in their room until 7.  That's how we roll, even on Christmas.  Then we sang some Christmas songs and then let them come down to see if Santa had been here (Sorry the video's a little fuzzy, I reduced the file size a little too much).

I was very excited to get a new pair of hiking boots.  We'll see how many times they get to the summit of Fuji... Cassi also got new kicks (that's what us cool kids call them), but hers were for running.  The girls were very excited to get Hello Kitty socks, Hello Kitty clothes, a Hello Kitty alarm clock, Hello Kitty toothbrushes, and Hello Kitty coloring books.  Oh, and Cassi just reminded me that they also got Hello Kitty dolls.  Oh, and she just came back to remind me about the set of Hello Kitty bath toys.  I'd say we've got Hello Kitty covered, but it's obvious who's covering whom.

A week or so before Christmas, Cassi took the girls to the thrift store to let them pick a gift for each of us in the family.  They got me a bag of long golf tees (perfect, because I don't use the short ones).  They gave Cassi some star-shaped wooden clips that she'll have to find a purpose for.  And I loved what they picked for baby Ian:

Anytime the topic of Christmas came up over the past few months, Alexa was very excited to announce to anyone/everyone that her birthday is just two days after Christmas.  So, once Christmas came to a close, it was time to focus on the birthday girl.  The presents started anew, mostly from kind neighbors and her thoughtful grandmas.  One gift that was not Hello Kitty was from Alexa's friends, Gabe and Genna.  It's a game called Headbanz in which you put a card containing a Disney character on your forehead w/o looking at it, and ask yes-or-no questions about your card until you can identify what or who's on your card.  It comes with some outstanding hats.

This little cheater looks at the card, slaps it into her hat, then fakes like she doesn't know who's on her card for a few questions.  So for this one, she said "Is I'm Snow White?" No.  "Is I'm a horse?" No.  "Is I'm a Dwarf?"

On Alexa's birthday, partly for our anniversary and partly for Alexa's birthday, we went into Tokyo to spend the night.  The military owns a sweet MWR resort there in downtown, called the New Sanno.  It's great for us because it is just down the street from the temple, and it's great for the kids because it has a pool.  Our plan was for one of us to go to the temple while the other watched the kids, then switch.  But, our Bishop, who is also our neighbor and awesome, found out about our plan and offered an improvement to our plan:  They could go with us and their 14-yr-old daughter, Hikari, watch the kids while we all went to the temple (you may remember Hikari from when we watched her hamster, Honey, a few months back).   Hard to say no to that deal, and it worked out great.  We got to go to the temple together, the girls got to play with Hikari (they LOVE Hikari) and Ian did what Ian does (chilled/slept the whole time).

After going to the temple, we all went with Bishop Skabelund's family to an awesome ramen restaurant, and then we set out to see some Christmas lights in a ritzy part of Tokyo called Roppongi.  On our way, Bishop picked up Cailin (w/o telling her in advance) and set her on his  shoulders.  She was grinning ear-to-ear.

The only lights we were able to see were the city lights, pictured below, and the lights on the small trees in that picture of Cailin's teeth.

Roppongi, with the famous Tokyo Skytree, at night

The lights we hoped to see had been turned off after Christmas was over.  Japan is big into energy conservation these days, so that may be why they were so eager to pull the plug.  Oh well.  We found a TV station in that area (I'm not sure who's idea it was or who knew to go there) where they had what seemed like a kid's play place with characters from the cartoons the station broadcasts.

Here the girls and Hikari pose with a character called "Doraemon."  I'm sure he's awesome in every way. 

Cailin with a panda bear.  Don't know what this little bear goes by, but my guess is it starts with "V."

This little game was fun.  It was in Doraemon's section, in case you care.

And because I just can't help myself, I challenged Bishop to a Doraemon pump-off:

Sweet victory is mine!

After our fun with Doraemon and co., we said goodnight to the Skabelunds, and we headed back to the New Sanno for some fun in the pool.  It was kinda late (about 9 pm) so we told the girls they could choose if they wanted to go swimming that night or in the morning, but not both.  They naturally chose swimming now over swimming later so we got about an hour of swimming in before the pool closed.  Cassi made a liar out of me later when she decided she hadn't had enough hot tub time.  So we surprised the girls in the morning with another hour or so of pool time.  And Cassi got her hot tub time.  It did not disappoint.

It's a little hard to pack so much celebration into one week, but this year it worked out.  We had a wonderful Christmas, even tho' we weren't able to be with our family.  And we had a great time in Tokyo celebrating Alexa's birthday and our 8th Anniversary.

Merry Christmas, friends, and Happy New Year!

Baby Brother

  It seems harder to find time to do pretty much anything with a newborn.  That's why I'm only now blogging about our baby brother Ian.
  I was induced Friday September 28.  They started the pitocin at 7:30 and Ian was born at 12:48 pm with only about a half hour of intense pain - probably my best delivery yet.
  Things went so fast at the end that the dr and nurses weren't ready for him.  But I sure wasn't going to try to keep him in so they could get things set up.

  Here's the proud papi

  And the tired, yet happy mami

 Brad brought the girls over a couple hours later and we asked the nurses to come take a picture of our family.  Well, I guess this nurse thought after helping deliver the baby that she was now part of the family.
 

  She was a nice nurse so we couldn't turn her away.

  Here's our sweet baby boy. 8 lbs 12 oz, 20 in.

  His fingers are almost as long as Brad's "short" pinky.

 
  This was my first time delivering at a military hospital - adequate, but not the happy place the other hospitals were.  It may have been that because I was there over the weekend the food was not good at all (just reheated leftovers I think).  The nurses were just ok.  They discharged me after 24 hrs, but didn't leave me with any medication.  So, the next 24 hrs that I had to stay with the baby were a little hard (they won't release the baby before 48 hrs).  I was so ready to go home!

Taking Ian home from the hospital.  He has lots of hair, but no traces of red like his sisters.

  The girls LOVE their brother!

They're always wanting to hold him.

  When Ian was 10 days old he got a fever.  When it didn't go away, I took him to urgent care.  I thought they'd tell me to keep a cold rag on his head or something.  But no, a documented fever in a baby this young is an automatic 48 hrs in the hospital.  They had to do lots of tests on him to make sure he didn't have a serious bacterial infection.  Then they had to give him antibiotics thru an IV.  Our poor little guy was miserable.  But, I got a lot of cuddle time over the 2 1/2 days we were there.
  They had to wrap his whole arm up so he wouldn't pull the IV out (it took them over an hour to put it in)

  Luckily all the cultures came back negative.  The pediatrician's guess is that he got roseola, which is virus where you have a spike in temperature for 1-2 days and then a rash.  They said it's very rare for a newborn to get it, more common in 6-8 month olds.
  It was a little scary, but everything turned out well.  And again, we were excited to get out of there.  Although the food was WAY better this time (probably because we were there during the week).

  More pics with his sisters.

  A sister in the Spanish branch in Mt Home made Ian this sweater, but by the time I put it on him (at 6 wks) he was too big for it.
  This little kid can sure eat!

  And now he can smile.  It makes me happy!  This smile was at taken at 7 weeks.

  We finally got a passport photo that worked (at 7 wks).  We had to put him in a straight jacket to keep his hands out of his face. :)

  And here he is at 2 months.  I took him in today and he weighs 14 lbs 6 oz!  We sure do love our chubby buddy!

Grammy in Japan

My mom came to stay with us after Ian was born.  We loved having her here.  She was here for 3 full weeks.  I was scrolling thru the pics on my phone, and I realized that we did a ton with "Grammy" but we've documented/publicized none of it.  So, to remedy that unfortunate failure, I'll share some of the fun we had.

First, we took her to see Mt Fuji.  We drove down there her first weekend here.  She was still a bit jet-lagged, but she agreed to the trip.  We packed a lunch and drove down to Lake Motosuko, one of the famed Five Lakes of Fuji.  Lake Motosuko has the added distinction of being "the place where they took the picture of Mt Fuji for the 1000 yen bill."

So, naturally, we had to get our own pic from that very spot (I'd also like to get a picture with the guy on the front.  Great hair).  The clouds thinned just enough for Fuji-san to peek (or peak) over the top.  I like this picture.

On the same trip, we also visited a traditional japanese village named Iyashi no Sato.  One of the websites I saw on this village described it as a "mixture between an open air museum and a craft village."  The houses are ancient-styled houses that were destroyed during a typhoon in the 60s and have since been rebuilt.  Each house serves a different purpose.  There was a paper making house, an armor house, a pottery house, etc.  I also got this video at the aptly-named relaxing house.

The village also boasted of an amazing view of Mt Fuji, but what was just as impressive was the camera power brought by the Japanese tourists.  (I'm sorry, I had to take this picture.)

Oh and I couldn't pass up a pose with the mountain flowers.  Don't judge me.  You would've done the same.

Our next outing was to a local gyoza restaurant.  Gyoza are like pot-stickers, but the first time I compared  them to pot-stickers one of the attorneys from my office assured me gyoza are way better than pot-stickers.  He was right.

We heard about this place named Gyoza Ten-Go-Ku (Gyoza Heaven), affectionately referred to by the Amerikajins here as "Communist Gyoza."  The name derives from the famed Seinfeld episode about the soup nazi (it's only 7 and a half minutes, you owe it to yourself to click on that hyperlink), because of the rules involved when eating there.

We reviewed "the rules"with mom on our way there (hoping to avoid an international costanza incident).  The first two rules make sense from a business owner's perspective: 1) Everyone over 7 has to have their own order of gyoza, no share-sies.  2) Everyone over 7 has to order a drink.  These two rules guarantee the owner about 1000 yen ($12-13) for each patron over 7.   The third rule, however, doesn't make as much sense, but rules is rules: 3) After the initial order, you can order more drinks but no more food.  (You read that correctly).

The rules may be strange, but you can't argue with the results.  Here's one order:

Each gyoza is about the size of a fist, so there was really no problem with rule #3, because we were struggling just to finish what they brought us.  I took this picture after I'd polished off one of the gyoza.  So, yeah, five fist-sized gyoza was plenty.  I'm a huge fan of communist gyoza, so if you come visit us, you know we'll take you there.

A day or so later, we went with Grammy to an aquarium.  Grammy had "go to an aquarium" on the short list of things she wanted to do while here.  So, we obliged (that's what we do).  We also took the opportunity to get to know the train system here.  It turned out great.  The train system is pretty slick, once you get the maps figured out.
 
The aquarium had everything you'd want in an aquarium.  A dolphin show, a seal show, a shark tank, some electric eels (creepy and fascinating), jelly fish, a ginormous bronze whale tail (wait, wha?).

Here's Grammy posing with the shark.

I wish I could've gotten a video of this, because my mom was getting anxious about having the shark lurking behind her with "only" a sheet of glass between it and her.  She was cracking me up.  I took a bunch of pictures as he was moseying by, then I lied to my mom and told her that none of them turned out so I could see her get nervous again while I took more pictures when he came around the next time.  Was that wrong??

The aquarium was built on the edge of this impressive park near Tokyo Bay.  After we'd seen all the mer-things we could see, we walked around the park.  There was a running path with workout stations.  Cailin and Alexa had to try each work out station.  They got in a pretty good workout, but they weren't too tired to strike a pose (they never are).

Here Alexa's shouting "Go Aggies!" (We didn't bother to find out if the Japanese had any cultural/social issues with a 4-yr-old using public space to cheer for the best university in the state of Utah.  We went on the assumption that they'd appreciate and even encourage such behavior.)

The last thing I'll mention is our very abbreviated trip to see the Imperial Palace.  My mom had to get to the airport by 1pm on 1 Nov.  We swung by the Imperial Palace before sending her off.  Unfortunately, it took longer to get there than we anticipated so we didn't even have time to walk around the East Garden which is the only portion open to the public.  Here are a few of the pictures we captured.  It would be fun to go back and spend a day there.

If you know my mom, you'll know understand that this was the beginning of a very teary goodbye.

From the Imperial Palace we hustled back to the train station, bought a ticket, got some directions to the right track, and hustled down to get her on her way to catch her flight.  We thought about sending her the wrong way so that she could stay a few more days with us, but we did the right thing.  Actually, I did end up getting her a ticket to get off the train at the wrong terminal, but she figured out where to go and made her flight on time.  That was totally an accident.  Totally.

Thanks for coming, Grammy.  Y'all come back now, ya hear! And bring Papa.