Slices of Life

March 12, 2012

Today was an interesting day for Andrew. I stopped by the school to give him his glasses because he forgot them at home and they were taking their standardized tests this week. I went up to his classroom to find that he was the only one not there. I told his teacher that I would help locate him by checking out the cafeteria and the nurse's office. To my surprise I found him in the nurse's office with an ice pack on his arm. I asked him what happend and he said that a big kid fell on him while he was playing football at recess. I later found out that the "big kid" was actually a big girl. The poor kid didn't even get to eat lunch and both his lunchbox and coat were outside by the playground. I ran out to get them for him and then asked him if he thought he would be ok until school was over. He said his arm hurt but he would be ok. After school he said that his arm really hurt so we headed over to the hospital to drop him off to Mike so they could figure out if it was broken. I took the other kids home and got ready to meet Mike and Andrew at Costco. As they were leaving the hospital they called me and I asked if everything was ok and Mike said that Andrew was just fine. When we finally met up with them at Costco I was shocked to see that Andrew was fine but with a BROKEN ARM and a bright green cast. Those boys are such joksters. The good thing about Andrew's cast was that it was waterproof which meant little maintenance and completely bag free in the shower. We are so lucky to have such great connections to the Radiologist and the Orthopedic Surgeon...both are great friends of ours. I felt really bad for Andrew but he had a really positive outlook on his situation. It only took 2 days before the nastalgia of the cast wore off and the itching started. Poor kid.

 

March 13, 2012

Emma LOVES to play the piano. She has no problems practicing where I usually find complaining from the boys. Sometimes I will find her sitting cross legged on the piano bench. After she plays her practice songs sometimes she will just play made up songs. I love to see how interested she is in learning how to play. I love her creativity in making up new songs.
 

March 19, 2012

It is not uncommon for me to find Abby with just her underwear and shirt on. She does prefer to be pantless when we are at home and it will only be for a short time that she can do that and get away with it. Today I found her eating her snack on top of the kitchen table. She was just so cute as she sat up there talking to her fish as she ate them. Then she saw the camera and turned on the silly button. Boy do I love this cute and crazy little girl.

Piano Recital

The kids have been practicing so hard for this piano recital and their piano teacher has been working them hard to get their pieces perfect. Andrew lucked out and didn't have to play in the recital because of his broken arm. That is not to say that he didn't try to play his piece before the recital to utter frustration because he just couldn't quite rotate his wrist enough to play the left hand. The boys had planned on doing a duet as well so I stepped in and played the duet with Peter. The recital was really nice but also VERY LONG. It was divided into three sections with two small breaks in the middle. Abby did quite well as long as I let her play games on my phone. Both Peter and Emma played really well with no mistakes that I could tell and didn't seem very nervous about it. They even sat quietly during the entire recital in their assigned seats. I was happy to see that they recognized Andrew anyways even though he wouldn't be able to play because of his broken arm.  His teacher told everyone how hard he had worked on his song. I thought that was really nice. Everyone got flowers at the end...even me. We love Hiroko sensei...she is the best!

Kimono Dressing

I was so excited to not miss this year's Kimono Dressing put on by the Officer's Wives Club here at Yokosuka. I missed it last year which made me really sad. One of the other mom's from Emma's kindergarten class put it all together and invited some of us school moms to join her group. I was a little late in arriving (because I had forgotten to put the chicken in the crockpot for our RS mtg that night) so I missed being able to pick which kimono I wanted. Most of them were already taken and many of the girls were already in the middle of getting their kimonos put on by the sweet Japanese ladies. I was left with this nasty peach colored kimono...yuck. That thing would have completely washed me out because I am the pastiest person in the world. I kindly asked the Japanese ladies if they had any more kimonos and I think they took pity on me because they brought out three bags that had not been laid out. There was this beautiful dark purple kimono with pink flowers and I knew it was the one. Before getting my kimono on I quickly sat down to get my hair done because no one was in line. It was a good thing too because the line got pretty long for hair after the first big set of girls were done getting their kimonos on. I had two ladies work on putting my kimono on and the entire time I kept hearing them say how beautiful this kimono was. It was like they had never seen it before. It was fun to watch them dress me. Believe me when I say that there were a ton of layers that went into this. By the end I felt like I had on a bunch of girdles minus the discomfort. We had fun taking pictures of each other and shuffling around in our tiny sandals...because that is really all you can do is shuffle. I finally understood why Japanese ladies in kimonos shuffle. I wish I could have kept that Kimono on longer because it was so pretty but alas, we had to change before eating lunch.

Mt. Fuji Sunset

Over the weekend we went out to eat with our friends and on our way to Kamakura we saw the most beautiful sunset out towards Mt. Fuji.  I was so disappointed that I did not have my camera that I vowed that I would have to keep an eye on when we would have another clear day so that I could go out with my tripod and get good sunset pictures of Mt. Fuji.  It was not more than a couple of days later that I was able to have my night alone at sunset.  I honestly did not know all what I was doing but I did rely on the knowledge I had about low light photography.  I feel like my first real attempt at night photography went well.  I learned a whole lot in the process and met a couple of other Japanese photographers near the end of the night who showed me a few tricks.  It was a fun night!

     

Odaiba

Today's adventure was to finally explore the little artificial island of Odaiba across from Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo. We have passed by this place a dozen times driving out of Tokyo and we always make the same comment..."We should go there someday." No more excuses. We went, we saw, we explored, we ate, and we had fun. We first went up to the top of the Fuji Television Studio building and enjoyed the great views from the lookout on the 25th floor. We splurged and let each of the kids flatten a coin. We never do this so it was a real treat. We also got to enjoy seeing a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty. That was kind of odd but cool in a way too. We walked to this outlet mall called Venus Fort but it was nothing like the typical outlets we are used to in the US. It was neatly arranged inside like the Venetian hotel in Vegas with the sky as the ceiling and lots of overly priced shops. Nevertheless, we had fun exploring the car garage museum there and even stopped by the little go cart track but wasn't able to ride the go carts because it was all full for the day. We did stop by the Toyota Auto Expo and looked inside all of the new Japanese Toyota models. We sure love the Japanese version of the mini van...THE ALPHARD. It has the coolest captain chairs that look like little spaceships. They recline all the way and have a foot rest. The driver and passenger seats have both heated and cooling seats. So many cool features are on this car but I'm not sure it is worth a price of $60,000. We even saw a car that had no bar between the front seat and the middle seats. How easy that would be to get kids in that car!

Back outside we let the kids do one ride each. They all choose the trampoline jump. Strapped in they were able to jump up to 50 ft or so. We didn't think that Abby would do it but she was so excited to be doing something that the big kids were doing. After a few jumps and realizing that she could go pretty high she got a little nervous and instead of crying she just let out the most hilarous nervous laugh. The girls and the boys were able to jump at the same time on different trampolines. What a blast.
 
The day just wouldn't have been complete without some time at night to take pictures of Rainbow Bridge. Afterall, that was one of the reasons I wanted to stay until dark. There were a ton of boats on the water and it was just beautiful. A sunset would have been nice but I opted to be ok with the dark sky and the lights from the city.