Let Christmas Begin

The day after Thanksgiving we decorated our Christmas tree while listening to wonderful Christmas music. The kids had fun putting up ornaments from their past and from Mike's childhood. Our tree has become a symbol of so many wonderful moments from our past. I love how excited the kids were to put up their school ornaments and their favorites from our stash. I finally gave up trying to make the tree look perfect and have learned to embrace the joy and beauty of the mixture of goodness. My only stipulation this year was that I got to decorate the tree with red ribbon and put on my two Willow Tree ornaments. The rest was left for the kids and they got to put the ornaments anywhere they wanted.

After the tree was decorated we officially opened up the season by acting out the nativity with our cool costumes designed by my talented cousin Jenny.

Our Nativity Cast:

Mary - Abby, Emma
Angel - Emma, Abby
Joseph & Shepard - Peter
Wiseman - Andrew
Narrator - Mike

The kids had so much fun dressing up in our special Nativity costumes. Abby joined us this year. It was fun to see her get so excited about taking care of baby Jesus. We are excited to repeat our Nativity play again on Christmas Eve. Of course our night just wouldn't have been complete without Grandma Candace's lemon poppy seed bread. Let the Christmas Season Begin!

First Nativity

Christmas Eve Nativity

A New Thanksgiving

I was really looking forward to a relaxing Thanksgiving this year. The theme this year was to simplify everything. This morning Mike took the boys to the football scrimmage and while he played with the guys the boys ran around and played with some of their friends that were there. This was the first year Mike took the boys and I am thinking this will have to be a tradition. ALL the boys will go and play football or whatever in the morning. The girls and I stayed behind to shower and get ready for the day. I started on some of our Thanksgiving dinner and talked with family on the computer. Then it was off to the kitchen to figure out the timing of everything. Our very small oven meant no turkey this year. What...no turkey on Thanksgiving? It must be sacrilegious to not eat turkey on Thanksgiving. I mean what is Thanksgiving without the beautiful glazed turkey? There was no way I was going to try and stuff that big bird in our teeny tiny oven so we had to be creative this year. Mike recently bought a rotisserie attachment for our grill so our bird of choice had to be chicken! We marinated and stuck two small chickens on the rotisserie and I must say that they were quite tasty. Dare I say they were even tastier than turkey? Yes, they were better than turkey. I think we have found a new tradition for Thanksgiving.

Our Thanksgiving Menu:

Rotisserie Chicken
Rhoades Rolls (too lazy to make my homemade rolls)
Candied Sweet Potatoe Casserole with Toasted Marshmallow Topping
Mashed Potatoes
Deviled Eggs
Stuffing (yep, it was from the box)
Sparkling Apple Cider
Pumpkin Pie

I think we all agreed it was the tastiest Thanksgiving meal we have ever had. I guess there is something to be said about keeping it simple. The sweet potatoes came from the can and then I added a few more things. The stuffing came from the box. I didn't even make my own rolls this year and used the Rhoades rolls instead. They were fine but I actually missed my homemade rolls. I will be making those for Christmas dinner. Everything else had to be made from scratch and that was find by me.

New traditions this year:

-we played Christmas music all day while we were cooking and playing
-the boys played football in the morning
-we made a rotisserie chicken instead of turkey
-we put up the Christmas tree and will decorate it after Thanksgiving
-we read everything from our Thankful Jar
-we waited to clean up dinner and watched a Christmas movie instead. This year it was "The Grinch"

A tradition for next year:

-family game of football in the park after Thanksgiving dinner. It was too dark this year because we ate too late but next year we will eat earlier so we can have some good family fun.

We are grateful for (from our thankful jar):

-flowers
-to live in Japan
-a husband who is fun and funny
-that daddy teaches piano lessons
-to live in a house
-God
-my room
-the chance to be on this earth
-happy and healthy kids
-our health
-friends
-a husband likes a clean house
-church
-my brother
-Andrew's thoughtfulness and caring
-children who are eager to help out around the house
-home
-a good job
-an awesome family
-a daddy who takes the train so we can use the car
-food to eat
-Abby and her cuteness when she says, "I woke up mommy."
-family
-Emma's kisses
-no poopy diapers
-Andrew's smile
-candy
-cool kids
-Peter's laugh
-the heater
-apples
-mom and dad
-a mom who flew out here to visit
-my wife
-my family, my granparents, my aunts, uncles and cousins
-healthy family
-the gospel

Cub Scouts

The Cub Scout program here in Japan has been amazing. Both of the boys have great Den Leaders and have accomplished so much since joining Pack 33 in the Far East Council. Andrew started out with the Webelos this year and completely skipped his Bear year due to the difference in age and starting times between this pack and our last. Andrew and I will be working on his Bear at home and will finish that sometime while we are here. For now he loves to be with the other Webelo scouts that are his age. His den leader is probably the most organzied leader I have ever met. With consistant den meetings and motivation from the den leader to get lots accomplished Andrew has already earned his Webelos Badge, Fitness Activity Badge, Citizen Activity Badge, Travelers Activity Badge, Athlete Activity Badge as well as the Achievement Ribbon for the Year of Celebration. We are so proud of him.

Peter is new to scouts this year and has loved being a Wolf Scout. He made is first achievement by earning his Bobcat and has earned a couple of belt loops and is on his way to earning his Wolf soon. His Den Leader is probably the most qualified leader I have ever met and has really taught the boys so many useful things. I have been so impressed by how much of a difference an experienced cub scout pack has made to my boys. They are so lucky!

Tokyo Disney Sea

Our second day at Disney was spent at a new park called Disney Sea. It took some of the rides from the other Disney parks and put them into this awesome park. We LOVED Disney Sea almost better than we liked Disneyland and that is saying something because Disneyland is SO COOL. Disney Sea was divided out into different parts just like Disneyland. We had fun exploring the Mediterranean Harbor at the entrance, Mermaid Lagoon, the Arabian Coast, Mysterious Island, Lost River Delta, Port Discovery, and American Waterfront. The big rides were Journey to the Center of the Earth, Storm Rider, Indian Jones, and Raging Spirits. We rode everything at least a couple of times because we were able to get fast passes all day long. Our favorite ride by far was Raging Spirits because there was a 360 degree loop in it. Only the boys were tall enough for this ride. I was so proud of Mike because this was his first roller coaster with a loop in it! The girls loved Mermaid Lagoon the best and the underground Tritan's Kingdom which had smaller rides based off of the Little Mermaid. At the Arabian Coast we saw Stitch, Abu, Aladdin, Jasmin, Jafar, and Daisy Duck. The characters were so infatuated with our blonde children that we didn't really have to wait to see them. They came right up to our children. We even had some Japanese girls want us to take their pictures with our kids. Abby thought that was funny. There were a few things we didn't have time to do like the Tower of Terror and the Fortress Exploration but we will just have to do those next time.

One of the interesting things we noticed while at both Disneyland and Disney Sea was the vast array of different flavored popcorn that you could get. We found Soy Sauce and Butter, Caramel, Black Pepper, Strawberry, Garlic, and Curry flavored popcorn. We tried the Curry, Caramal, and Strawberry flavors and all were delicious. We also enjoyed snacking on the Mickey Mouse Churro sticks during the day. We dined at the Arabian Coast for lunch and had excellent Indian food. It was nice to end our day at Disney Sea with dinner at Cape Cod where we ate American hamburgers and fries! The food at the park was so good.

This trip we let the big kids get their own Disney hat. Mike bought Mickey's sorceror's hat at Disneyland and ended up giving that to Peter because we could never find the coveted Mickey's top hat that we had only seen once during the day. Andrew found another hat similar to the sorcero's hat but with ears that lit up and Emma found a pink Minnie hat. With hats in tow and tired kids we slowly headed out of the park as we watched the water show. People had saved places for the show atleast 1-2 hours beforehand so we really didn't have the best views. Each of the kids took turns on Mike's shoulders so they could get a view of the show. We saw just enough and ended up near the entrance for the fireworks at the end. We didn't want to be caught in all the people traffic heading out of the park after the show was over. We left completely satisfied from our two days at Disney and were surprised that it only took us a little over an hour to drive back home! A day trip to Disney will defintiely be in the works next year.