Noah's school field trip, a new swim level achieved for each of the boys and some homemade chocolate chip pecan cookies! : )

On the Friday that was, October 30th, Noah's school had an ensoku/field trip, this one was without us parents. This wasn't just his class, it was for the entire school. Every Fall, the kids of this yochien,take the same trip, to the same destination too, lol. Branden took this same trip every year way back when, he was in yochien. And when B was a blue badge, I thought and reflected upon, "wow this will be his last unaccompanied trip with our yochien." And here I am a couple years later, meeting up at 8:30am same meeting spot, lol. Except now I'm with my youngest and last kiddo. Meanwhile, Noah that morning, was so excited it was his very first field trip unaccompanied by us parents. Yes he had 2 before (the picnic lunch in May and the grape and sweet potato harvest) but those were with us parents and stuff, so this was his very first one unaccompanied. Two of the sensei's were in this pic, and they were taking attendance.

All the older classes were hand holders of the younger classes. Blue badges and pink badges helped the red and yellow badges.

That Thomas thermos used to belong to Branden. : ) Sure I gather I coulda bought him a new thermos. But I think it is smarter to reuse if we can. One of my good friends, told me, her (red badge) daughter was using her 3rd grade daughters backpack she used to use. And I then pointed to Noah's school bus backpack and unzipped the zipper and showed her the name written on the inside "Branden last name" And she smiled and I smiled. No need to show boast or need the newest thing. Just being practical. And that was the way with a lot of the kids at the field trip. A lot of the kids I know their older siblings since when B used to go there, I recalled such and suches backpack and saw their younger sibling using the same one. Smart I thought. And I knew they knew that was B's old backpack too. I did however put a new name sticker on the thermos though. But ehhh, Branden is still written in marker at the bottom of said thermos. And it's okay. : ) No need to put on airs. : )

After the kids went to their field trip that Friday. The hubster and I went and had breakfast at Coco's. However our Coco's is still on that (not very good) breakfast buffet thing. And no longer serving regular breakfast? So, we left and went to Jonathon's instead. See their Halloween decorations near the drink bar? : )

Noboru had the breakfast sandwich and I had the hot cakes, both our meals came with the drink bar. They didn't have hot cocoa like Coco's does but it was okay. : ) Sometimes we just gotta go with the flow and roll with the punches.

My pancakes and hot coffee. Cute coffee cups right. I really thought they had cute coffee cups they had all sorts of designs.

Friday, I ran to the grocery store got a weeks worth of food. And then I ran to the Daiso/100 yen store. I picked up some very unexciting stuff, lol just extra laundry clips, some shoe hangers, some chisai towels for the kids. For which I had to lug the sewing machine out a few days later and sew name labels on the kids small towels. Branden needed a new nylon towel for the shower. And just a few odds and ends. It's amazing how a person can go into the Daiso and then buy another thing then another. I try to limit myself to spending 1000 yen in there at a time or less, but this time I think it was 1200 yen. Curses on that amazing store! :P

So, I finally got around to buying real shoe hangers, well wonders never cease. However I must say, these were a real beast to slip onto each shoe, and once while trying to get the shoe on the shoe hanger the plastic piece slipped off and I had to redo it and it just seemed to be more of a pain this way with using the proper shoe hangers, how did that happen? : ) I sorta think my make shift "extra hanger and clips works way way better" and is more useful. Grumble grumble. I'll give it 3 more weeks with this, either I'll get the hang of these or I won't..... we'll see. : )

This is a story ummm not about washing, but more of a story about a bird and some poop. Bare with me here.... to tell the whole story real quick, this happened the day of Halloween, Oct 31st. So, my towels were outside drying along the fence, as always nothing new there. However and this is the good part. So, Saturday it was a very windy day. Good weather for towel drying. Everything was extra clipped nothing was gonna knock those babies down! So, anyway after my son looked outside Branden said, "mommy there's a bird on your towel" I said could you guys go outside and shoo him away. They said sure and so both my sons went and shooed the bird away. The kids came back inside and so the bird flew right back to my towel. He didn't land on any other towel mind you. Wasn't interested in any other towel, he only wanted to sit on my blue and white striped towel. So he sat once again. Now the other towels were completely bird free and I can tell you, in the 3 or 4 years we've lived here, this was the first time a bird ever landed on anything of ours that we washed. Anyway, a few hours pass. And I go outside and get all the towels. All are fresh and dry. And then there was my towel. It had bird poop on it not once it had bird poop on it *3* different places!!!! What kind of freak bird was this? I had briefly mentioned the bird that morning to Noboru. By afternoon when I come in with the towels and I have all clean towels on my right shoulder hanging and my striped towel folded in my hand and the look on my face. He said "what is it" I said, "remember that bird from this morning. He crapped all over my towel, also why only my towel?" Not quite sure what it was, but my husband burst into hysterical laughter in the kitchen. He thought that was just the funniest thing he had ever heard. Clearly I wasn't amused by it (at the time), so I went upstairs, put my towel in the washer, spray and washed the ahem poop areas and ran it into the washer all by itself, because I didn't have anything else to wash and I didn't want the stain to set in. By now it was too late to dry outside, but also I was semi afraid that bird would come back for my towel again, that dirty rotten scoundrel. So, I threw my towel into the dryer. Gee, I did need my towel for my bath that night you know (and yes we each have 2 towels each but that one is my favorite). : ) Luckily for me, it was dried hours before bath time. But yeah....wasn't that just weird? Ha ha ha. Now days later, of course. I can see the humor in it, but Saturday, I was definitely not feeling the love for that bird. I haven't seen him this week so far and I've hung towels out quite a few times since.

In other news. Good news. Branden tested last Wednesday and passed and he is now a level 5. And Noah tested Saturday (the day of the bird incident) and he also passed and is now a Sakura/cherry blossom. They were both so excited to pass. This week both, Branden and Noah will be in a new swim lane and doing different training.

Sunday, I baked some homemade Nestle Toll house cookies with the boys.

The cookies we made. : ) I've had about 4 cookies total so far but my hubby and the kids have been enjoying them all week long like crazy. Which makes me happy.

One of our simple but yummy meals we had lately. Ginger pork, some rice and some steam veggie. And some jasmine tea.

What else...what else.

The weather in the part/area of Chiba, Japan we live has really grown so freezing cold this past week and a half. We have now turned the heat on for the season in the house. And turned on our floor heating, so the house will remain toasty warm all Winter now. Also in my home state, I saw on the news about the major snow Colorado had 2 weeks ago. Boy did they get slammed with some major snow. No snow for us here, but man has it grown bitterly cold though. Definitely no longer shorts weather anymore. : ) When the kids go play outside now, they go wearing sweatshirts, gloves. It's definitely been chilly willy lately.

This is our floor heating, we keep it on 35c-40c all winter long. That's 95 degrees F to 104 degrees F for you Americans. That is honestly really toasty warm for a floor, the whole downstairs flooring is that toasty warm, kitchen floor, living room, bathroom floor, genkan floor, everywhere downstairs. There's really no need to wear slippers or even socks in our house (not rubbing it in) just explaining how winter is like in our home is all. And the upstairs is carpeted and central as well obviously, so we just don't feel any cold at all. A couple years ago, I took a picture of Noah when he was about a year old or so actually snoozing on the floor one time and blogged it. The reason he was laying on the floor was because the floor is so hot and feels so good. Between the floor heating and the central heating, the huge amounts of insulation and the solidly built house we had built, the bitter cold in Japan never seems to bother us/affect us. And for that we are grateful. Our old house rental in Japan on the other hand, it was the typical one room was kept warm the rest of the house was freezing cold. Even the bathrooms were freezing cold. Every morning the kitchen floor felt like a sheet of ice, I think the experience of living in our old house rental gives us great appreciation for living in our home now, does that make sense/dykwim? Meaning we know how cold Japan gets, we know how tough it was living the other way, so in a way, we stay appreciative and the experience of our other house, keeps us humble, as it should, I think. We don't take it for granted I guess would be an easier way to put it. Anyway thought this might be interesting for some of you reading this in the US.

Wednesday of this week I went to lunch with 3 yochien friends, so including me, it was 4 of us. We had lunch at Coco's. I had the spaghetti set. We chatted about typical mom type stuff, I guess....flu vaccinations, the swine flu, Costco, some American holidays that are coming up. Very very nice and friendly ladies. Oh, we also have a school bazaar coming up in November and many of us will sell baked goods. When B went there I baked cupcakes. This is my first time for doing this for Noah and I will be baking cupcakes again for that. The picture above is of the teeny tiny order from Costco/Flying pig that came for us, this week. Just 2 items no biggie. We go through cheese like you wouldn't believe, that huge 1kg bag we bought a while back is sadly long gone. This block of cheese was a good price, and we need it for cheese and crackers, grilled cheese, in omelets, geeze we eat cheese with so much. And the tortillas are always nice for sandwich making, they make yummy wraps.

Though the boys closets and clothes sorting was done eons ago, I did get around to doing my closet a week or two ago. All my winter stuff is now all out, my Summer stuff is now all packed away except for a few outfits I always keep in a drawer for trips to Guam and such. I didn't do much winter buying for myself this season. Hubby bought me, a really gorgeous pair of Bobson jeans. And I ordered online 2 Gap argyle sweaters at Gap.com. They make some really cute ladies argyle sweaters every single year. I bought 2 of them last week, the gray and green and the 2nd one is the navy blue with pink argyle print. I wear a medium at Gap normally which is why I order from Gap and Old Navy more then any other store, because I know my sizing at those 2 stores like the back of my hand and I know how they fit on me, however Gap online has reviews from customers now and the reviews for this particular sweater is said to run freakishly big??? This worried me a lot and ordering from overseas in the first place is a huge pain in the butt to begin with. However the " running freakishly big in size comments" freaked me out and I'll admit worried me. So, I ordered a small and a medium, in each. Anyway pardon my grumble grumble, whatever size ends up fitting is the 2 I'll keep and I obviously plan to ship the ones that don't fit straight back to Gap. I've done this once before a few years ago. Anyway I'll be happy when they get here. They should be here any day now.

Exercise: I haven't spoken of exercise on my blog in forever....seriously the longest longest time. I think I just fizzled out with it sometime this Summer. Now what does that mean exactly. Does that mean I've been totally unmoving. Absolutely untrue. In truth, I ride my bike with Noah about twice a week. Running after my kids in general keeps me on my toes, anyways. And I do use my treadmill about once a week. I know...once a week is not great, but hey just being honest! So, while I am healthy, I still have that desire to be fitter (don't we all?), to know I can do more. Yet being as busy as always. It's gone on the back burner. Well until now. I am going to make a bigger effort to do my exercise DVD for right now, I'm shooting for at least 1-2 times a week and to do treadmill more and hopefully try to fit in riding my bike more too and maybe an actual few walks in my neighborhood too. We will see. At least though, I am trying to stay fit, so that is a plus and that is a positive. I figure if I can do something exercise wise 5 days a week, then that would be cool. Maybe a bike ride one day, a nice country walk the next, a workout dvd the next day and you get what I mean. So, anyway still at it. Still giving it that old college try. : ) : )

What else: I placed a really good size order from Amazon.com for the boys. Stuff for Christmas, some books, some DVD's, and some educational workbooks as well. I plan to hide them away in the attic and when I get some Christmas wrapping paper, I'll wrap them up. I get so excited around the holidays. : ) And I am happy that I started with my Christmas shopping.

TV Talk:

These are 2 of the DVD's we rented for November, we will pick 2 more as soon as we get around to seeing Star Trek. The Strangers on the other hand, we watched Saturday after the kids went to sleep. I do like scary movies, so does the hubster. This isn't really scary in the sense of ghosts or anything like that. It is supposedly based on a true story, about a home invasion, a very disturbing home invasion. I won't go into great detail (but don't read ahead if you are worried of any spoilers) someone knocks at the door at 4am, and it's a girl asking " is Tamara there?" They answered the door. And said "no Tamara lives here, you must have the wrong house." My husband and I kept yelling at the TV "don't answer the door, don't answer the door!!!!" I am not really a screaming type girl during horror movies or in any other type situations. I can handle it for mostly any movie. But this movie had me screaming quite a few times. Haven't seen a good scary movie like this in a long time. It will have you at the edge of your seat. Screaming a few times. And if you're expecting a nice little cute ending with warm and fuzzies and rainbows at the end. Skip this one. The end is horrific. But since it's a scary movie to begin with, it does it's job. 2 thumbs up for this scary movie for sure.

Star Trek, we haven't seen it yet, and I would definitely not consider myself a trekkie at all. I know who Spock and Kirk are for sure, but I think I might have seen a few of the old episodes but never really got into them at all. I did however like Star Trek the Next Generation with Data and Jean Luc, lol. And have never seen the other series from this really maybe one or two episodes at the most. But, I did want to see this movie. Hopefully we can see this one, sometime this week.

Hell's Kitchen just started for us in Japan and it's on the Fox Life Channel. I caught the first episode last night, it was so good. I have seen newer seasons online but it's nice to be able to see this on satellite now.

What else have we been up to? Well, Branden has a teeny tiny field trip but technically not a real field trip, it's another one of those "exploring what's in our town" type field trips. He has that on Tuesday, so tomorrow.Besides B's upcoming mini country field trip tomorrow. November 10th. And the yochien bazaar November 20th which I will be baking for that. I am also getting ready for Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving and look forward to that every year. : ) Anyway these are a few of the goings ons that's been happening in our neck of the woods. : )

Swine flu: It seems the swine flu is all over the place these days. So, I should update what's happening swine flu wise where we live. Oddly enough, our town is basically not affected. The elementary Branden goes to is fine. Now, there was rumor that one of the kids at our local junior high possibly had it? And that is why the town undokai last month was canceled because our town worried if the elementary kids are near the junior high kids, yada yada.... could a wide spread epidemic happen? I think they worried greatly about it, which I can understand why of course and canceled it. So that is why B's town undokai was canceled and plus the typhoon that happened the Thursday before the town undokai which didn't really do much but the huge amounts of rain really did a number on the field. But yeah even now our town is still pretty much swine flu free. Ughhhh and I hate saying that, because it's almost like tempting fate and now the whole town will get it now that I said that. : ) : ) But yes our town seems unaffected by the swine flu. Knocks on wood. Now for the small country type city Noah goes to yochien in. Swine flu seems to be semi wide spread in the local elementary for that city. The whole 3rd grade classes were canceled for more then half of the month of October!!! Which lots of those 3rd graders are the mom's I am friends with and their younger siblings go to yochien with Noah. So while the swine flu is happening in the city nearest us. Noah's yochien has not had 1 single case of the swine flu yet (knocks on wood). Again, it doesn't mean they won't get it. I am just saying for right now. Our town has not had any major outbreaks. And no one has had it at our yochien. Again though I do worry. Just like all of us mother's/parents do. Sigh. I do have my kids on the swine flu vaccination waitlist though. They are 2nd priority, first priorty is for kids with asthma, pregnant ladies, etc etc.

Anyway, I have a house to clean and an exercise dvd to do. Have a wonderful week! : )