Tokyo Trip

A few weeks ago, Helen and the entire Kindergarten population celebrated 100 days of school. I was overwhelmed by the amount of treasures associated with such an event. Jane got in on the action as well.

 At the end of February, we went down to Tokyo to see the temple. I was so excited to see cherry blossoms. It means that spring is working its way north. They are about two months ahead of us.

Here we are at a beautiful city park across the street from the temple.

 Is there anything better than sitting at a table by yourselves with panda pastries? Helen got the raw deal, as she did not find the sweet red bean filling to her liking. Jane's panda had ham and cheese. You spin the wheel when you can't read the Japanese descriptions.

 Here we are enjoying the sun at the Ueno zoo. Our kids wore the least amount of clothing compared to all the other little Japanese kids, most likely due to their frigid homeland.

 After a long day, public transportation is always welcome.

 We went to a children's museum and made these cute little Japanese dolls out of paper. I had no idea how to make them cute and watched other moms and copied their style. No shame at all.

 They had a music room, and we all got to sing Old McDonald while the girls played along.

 Here is the highlight of the trip: swimming every day in the hotel pool. Our swimming pool in Misawa has no shallow end so these girls really embraced their swim time in Tokyo.

24 inches in 24 hours

We know that the US is having a lot of unusual snow, and we were beginning to feel left out until yesterday when we enjoyed a serious blizzard. Actually, the blizzard wasn't nearly as fun as the clean-up was. I have to admit that before we even started shoveling the walks and cars out, Ryan shoveled a path to and up our sledding hill while I was busy improving our fortress (the girls call it a castle). Then Ryan got distracted making a snow cave under our pine tree while I made improvements on our sledding slope. It's all about priorities. Clearly, fun is our priority.

 
 

 

 A miracle occurred and all the kids looked at the camera at the same time with pleasant looks on their faces.

Christmas Bells are Ringing!

We prepared another carol on the bells this year to perform at our congregation's Christmas Music Program. The girls are much more advanced than last year, but Ryan was a little concerned about including our (barely) two year old in the production. After viewing the first video, you will understand his apprehension. Probably he was ready to fire his entire orchestra. Luckily, 5 minutes a night, for one month goes a long way. In our defense, nothing we did could keep Alice's bell from going up her pants or jumper as the case may be. Don't worry, just as Ryan had hoped, Alice was stunned by the 100 pairs of eyes looking at her during the real performance, and she sat motionless except to play her bell by pure reflex right on cue as we'd trained and prayed for.

Uncle Nate and Grandma "Bee" Visit Japan

Mom and Nate took the long trip half way around the globe to visit us in early December, and we all enjoyed every minute of it.   

Here we are enjoying some Japanese "Sizzlers" at the mall.  We tried to give them as may new culinary experiences as they were willing to try.  They were good sports and let us introduce them to sizzlers (meat/veg/rice sizzling on cast iron plates), our favorite Indian curry/lentils/naan, and conveyor-belt sushi.

We visited one of Misawa's many Shinto shrines overlooking the pacific ocean.  The Buddhist temple was closed, but we still appreciated that statues and monuments outside.

On a snowy afternoon we visited a replica of a historic Samouri house, complete with rock garden and stone lantern (below) and wax statues in period clothing. 

The best part by far of having Nate and Mom here though was all the time they spent hugging, tickling, reading to, chasing, and playing with the girls and teaching Carl how to laugh.  After four solid days of hearing little girl voices call out "Uncle Nate & Grandma Bee!", our house seemed awfully quiet when they had to fly back home.

  

Late Fall Fun

This year we got to pick persimmons again and the girls got in on the action. It takes all their muscles to pull the fruit off the tree. I have to confess that I got a little nervous about fruit ricocheting off our neighbors windows. 

 For Thanksgiving we made our turkeys, but they didn't have any candy corn left at the store so I bought some blueberry almonds. There were some disparaging remarks about them looking more like Blue Footed Boobys than turkeys, but that didn't stop us. Either way, they go down really nicely with a glass of milk.

 

Carl is doing great - growing like a champ. He shows an unusually high amount of social acumen (the ability to make good judgments and quick decisions, typically in a particular domain) and has already begun to smile and laugh. 

Here we are making gingerbread houses. Something about 5 kids 5 and under with candy and frosting just warms my heart. It's the activity that keeps on giving as I sweep up 100's of nerds and catch girls snitching candy. 

At Helen's school the best classes in the lunchroom win the "Golden Dragon" Award which the kids then get to take home for the night. Wasn't I surprised to see that the dragon looked more like a rubber chicken than any dragon I've seen. I was assured by Helen that it was actually a baby dragon.   

Alice turned two! Hopefully her second year won't be a dangerous as the first, based on the bonk on her forehead.

Grandma and Grandpa Johnson's Visit

During this trip we traveled out to Hirosaki Castle for the Chrysanthemum Festival. The leaves in northern Japan are lovely this time of year, and the drive was beautiful, if not a little twisty. 

 We tried to take a family picture here for our Christmas card, but it turns out that our kids are more photogenic with their grandparents then they are with us.

 The Aomori prefecture where Hirosake is located is famous for apples, and here are our ice cream connoisseurs sampling the apple ice cream.

 While we were there we saw a couple of people getting the warriors all dressed up in their mum outfits.

 Just a little sampling of the street food for you. No we aren't brave enough to try them.

 Alice is so happy to have a little brother! On the right is our attempt at a passport picture, which was later rejected.

Here are the girls all dressed up for the Halloween party in their fairy costumes that Grandma made them. This picture doesn't even capture a portion of their excitement to be fairies. 

Baby Pictures

Finally, a few photos of our newest edition.  Carl looks about the same in each of the following 5 pictures, but I still can't help wanting to show how happy each of us is to have him in our family.

 

Happy Columbus Day!

This year Ryan tried a new design for our Columbus Day ship, inspired by "Seymour and the Juice Box Boat." 

Our design was a lot more sophisticated than the usual newspaper boats that leave stains on the side of our bathtub.

 Here are our little midshipmen with their "Seymours" all ready to set sail.

The paddle on the back was a fun addition.

 Lest we think that the seas are always calm...

Now the live action:

News from Japan

Ryan says that if I post today everyone will think that we're announcing the arrival of our new baby. This is not the case. No new baby yet, but we do have some fun pictures to share before the baby takes center stage.

Here are all of my favorite woodworkers with their protective eye wear on. I wonder if Ryan feels left out because his don't come in pink or purple tone.

Here is a picture from last month when it was warm at the park.

Is there anything as great as being a kindergartner? I ask again. You get to make crowns and your teacher lets you pick a prize from the treasure box if you are good all week. And I think that we can all agree that those sunglasses are treasures.

 Sometimes it's tough to be one, just ask Alice.

And sometimes it's the greatest thing ever to be one since you are old enough to put cherries in our favorite chocolate covered cherry cookies all by yourself.

Ryan is our Scout troop's Committee Chairman, and yesterday was the big International Scout Day on base when 600 scouts and leaders come from all over northern Japan to have a great time. Ryan was in charge of food, and he took his job seriously. Two weeks ago he made us practice cooking 60 hot dogs in our crock pot to see if it would work. It did, and we now have 55 hot dogs in our freezer that we can pull out at a moments notice.

This picture shows what cooking 600 hot dogs look like. Awesome! (Don't worry Emily, I sent him with our meat thermometer and he checked temps every 30 minutes. No danger zone infractions.).

First Day of School

Helen had her first day of school last week and I have to ask myself if there is anything as wonderful as Kindergarten. New friends, new schedule, new crayons and pencils, new backpack, new teacher... Life could not be better. Ryan has been humming "Sunrise, Sunset" for a month now in anticipation.

 Amber sent us fabric in a package last week that not only crossed continents and oceans, but also decades in order to reach us. The girls love dressing themselves up in what I'm sure will be the next big fad: Turkish-Hawaiian Fusion.