Tanabata Festival

Alice has embraced helping in the kitchen. Especially when she gets to lick the bowl clean while Mom is busy putting the cake in the oven.

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Helen has been reminding me to make her a new pink dress since last summer. Here is this year's model. Is there anything better than pink and flamingos?

I've been trying to get a lot of baking done and cookies into the freezer in anticipation of summer. The girls are always willing to help.

The girls love when Ryan comes home and they get to try on various and sundry pieces of his uniform. 

Last weekend was the Tanabata Festival, which our kids love. They get to walk/run all the way up and down main street swimming through streamers. On the right you can see the squid drying out on a squid spinner.

In the picture below is a new food for us - a Japanese waffle in the shape of a fish filled with custard filling and topped with whipped cream and strawberries. It makes me think I need a new waffle maker.  

Here is a short video of a man making my favorite Japanese noodle dish - yakisoba.  It would have been longer, but the batteries ran out.

Happy 4th of July

Life is so good when you get to have snack time outside.

 A couple weeks ago we did some serious yard work. Family working time is our favorite - sticks, bugs, worms, mud, flowers -- could life get better?

It takes some really big muscles to drag huge bags of leaves across the yard.

 A couple of weeks ago I went to the 8th Asia Pacific Conference on Clinical Nutrition, in Tokyo. Here I am with my friend from Reunion Island and another woman from Japan. Below is my complimentary lunch from the first day. I think that was my first bento box - and it happened to be vegetarian with all the complementary nutrients that are currently the rage. A woman from Africa summed up my feelings nicely when she said, "I think I am going to be hungry this week."

Last year I ordered this fabric, it came around Thanksgiving time and I finally started working on the dresses in May. One of the challenges is that it doesn't really feel like July here until August. The girls love the spinning potential of the dresses best. Don't worry, Alice is not in the choke hold, as it may appear.

We have a great new foil dessert that got 5 stars in our home. Take a sugar cone and spread peanut butter inside. Mix together marshmallows, chocolate chips, and pieces of banana. Put tasty morsels inside cone and wrap with aluminum foil. Cook for 3-5 minutes on coals (or in oven when it is typhoon season).

Wedding, beach and a birthday

Ryan got to go out to California this month to join in Regan and Erin's wedding. While there, he also got to see all his family, eat Mexican food, listen to Spanish Pop radio, drive on the right side of the road, use his windshield wipers as turn signals,  and gaze longingly across the Pacific Ocean missing us.

Last week we enjoyed unusually warm weather so we went out to see if we could find any sea glass on one of our favorite beaches. Luckily it hadn't all disappeared over the winter. 

 Alice is officially at the age where she thinks she is a grown up and wants to walk alone.

Helen turned 5! You might not recognize her any more because she is smarter, faster and taller than she has ever been before. My attention was drawn to these very details by her all day long. Five-year-old kids are a lot of fun!

 Everyone loves birthdays at our house. Especially since the birthday girl shares her treasures. 

Cherry Blossom Season

Springtime in Japan brings a lot of rain to our neck of the woods. The girls have been anxiously awaiting the time to use their new umbrellas while "Singing in the Rain." 

Apparently Alice has learned that the secret to covert activity is a good disguise. She gets in trouble for messing with the Tupperware, but who could growl at such a cute little dragon.

  Jane turned 3! This has been a much anticipated birthday (by her) and she requested chili for her special dinner.

I love that I can still talk my kids into ice cream cake rolls for their birthday! Helen is so exited to turn 5 in a month that she thought she would join Jane in the finger action.

Alice discovered the piano a few weeks ago and has embraced it. The best part is if she gets a little tired from practicing, she can always look out the window to check on the construction work.

I love cherry blossom season. The blossoms are beautiful, the weather is warm-er and it means that spring is really here.

Guilin, China

I was so excited for our next stop. All the travel books said that Guilin is the perfect place to escape the crowds and pollution readily available in the rest of the country. We took a boat tour down the Li River with 40 of our closest friends. It was foggy, but it never really rained on us, and the views were worth it. 

These little boats would come up behind our boat to sell food for appetizers and meals. This man has a fish, but we also saw a squawking chicken take the transfer over.

Alice was not our most enthusiastic nature appreciator on this trip. She seemed to think it unfair to be in the backpack instead of running from bow to stern (thanks Horatio Hornblower).

These karst hills were so impressive and the girls had a great time wandering around the boat, looking at them and chatting.

Happy travelers!

The following day we drove 3 hours up to the Longsheng Rice Fields. They were really impressive and worth the nauseating drive up the winding road to reach them.

Ryan staved off the rain by purchasing a sweet double hinged umbrella.

Poor Alice is not going to remember any of these adventures, since it is so easy to fall asleep when fed, warm and swaying back and forth.

A view from the top. That's the river you can see below, not the road - it's not twisted enough. 

One night we had a hard time deciding where to go for dinner. Then we saw these fun buckets of fish. On the menu are 8 types of fish, turtle, crayfish  clams, duck and chickens. The girls had a great time watching the wildlife while we waited for dinner to be prepared.

We ordered braised chicken, which turned out to be the whole chicken. Helen was super excited to eat the foot. The girls loved, loved, loved eating the pieces of chicken. I was surprised. Clearly my aversion to recognizing parts from anatomy was a learned response.

Here we are at Elephant Trunk Hill and there's a woman with her Cormorant birds, which don't look like they fish for her anymore. It is amazing we were able to get this picture since there were 50 people trying to take their pictures all in the same spot to our right 5 feet away.

The girls really embraced the Reed Flute Cave experience. Especially since the use of pink and purple lights were found throughout the cave.

Camel mountain in Seven Star Park in Guilin. The sun came out!

Street food! Ryan thinks were ordered Mongolian hot pots from real Mongolians. Who knows, but it was easy for me to point to everything for them to put in the hot pots. They were delicious.

Xi'an, China

To add to the general excitement of our trip, we took the overnight train from Beijing to Xi'an. We had a 4 berth cabin which had enough room for our luggage and sleeping. It was great, especially since it got us out of the train station, which was a more intense Chinese cultural experience than I was ready for. 

Here we are on the old city wall in Xi'an.

Before going to see the Terra Cotta solders, we got to see how modern tourist-friendly replicas are made. (note Alice's strict attention to what was happening). I thought the girls made great Terra Cotta warriors and a big shout goes out to Hannah for giving us the idea for the photo. 

These 8,000+ warrior sculptures from 200 BC were so impressive, as were the hundreds of tourists vying for the same photos. 

For lunch we ate dumplings - my favorite meal while in China. Ryan claims that they all tasted the same, but to those with more refined taste there were at least 3 flavors: burning fire, regular and sweet.

After lunch we had a personal dumpling-making class, which was one of the highlights of our entire trip. I The intensity of our Play-Doh time will be going up a few notches in response.  Disclaimer - the fine dumplings you see on the right were not ours but those of the chef. 

On our way to the airport we talked our guide into letting us stop at a park to stretch our legs before our flight. The cherry blossom trees were beautiful and our little girls made quite a stir.