Easter Eggstravaganza 2017...

I hope everyone had an eggciting and eggcellent Easter 2017!!! We sure did! As usual, it was just a small little low key thing here at our home for our family. And it was perfect for us! Both Branden and Noah received an Easter basket with a bunch of American yummy goodness inside.: ) 

Just because we live in Japan, doesn't mean I don't make the holidays special. I always give it my all. So my kids will enjoy it. : )

We had music playing in the kitchen. And the kids were coloring Easter eggs. 

I love that my 15 year old is smiley and happy and loves spending time with us. I always heard....that teenagers get so moody and want to just hole up in their rooms. But lucky for us...that's not the case.

Branden, I see your eggs in their little cups.

I think Easter eggs are so pretty. So bright and colorful. Do you know what became of all these eggs? I made a huge amount of egg salad and there's only about 20% left in the fridge still. Everyone loves it around our house, so it never lasts long. : )

What a gorgeous egg you colored Noah! Totally vibrant, I love it! : )

The week before Easter, I bought this pack of Easter cakes. The kids enjoyed them. Japan seems to be really catching on to Easter, which of course makes me really happy! : )

The kids didn't want to draw any pictures on our eggs this year and you know what....that's totally fine. I always want them to color the eggs how *they* want. And hey..if they feel like decorating them further fantastic. And if they just want to color them and do no more...that is totally fine too. : ) Oh and...the weather was fantastic for Easter Sunday. But...the kids didn't want to hide the eggs in our backyard this year.. they wanted to hide them in the house. Now that they're getting older. Though they're only age 11 and 15. I hid them age appropriately...let's put it that way. When they were toddlers, I hid them in easy spots. But this year...I hid them in such HARD spots. My kids could not find 3 of our Easter eggs. And I mean they looked long and hard, but they could not find them. 

In America, when I was growing up, we would either have an Easter ham. A big beautiful honey baked spiral one. Or we'd have a turkey and all the sides. That's if we were having our Easter celebration at home. Now...if we met up with our extended family...we would all meet up at a park and everyone would bring something. Like a 6 foot sub sandwich. And we'd bring 2 buckets of chicken. And someone else would bring a huge amount of potato salad and macaroni salad. Someone would bring pies and chips etc. And drinks. However with living in Japan. It just depends how we feel each year. Once or twice, I made homemade fried chicken and we had mashed potatoes and gravy and salad and those delicious Costco dinner rolls. And 2 other times we had a Costco rotisserie chicken. I think I also roasted a turkey one year. Twice we BBQ-ed in our backyard. It just depends really. This year...we decided on Good Friday....hey why don't we just order some pizza and keep things super chill and low key for Easter Sunday. That way...before the busy weekday starts, we can all sort of just relax on Sunday and I don't have to make a huge ol' elaborate meal. We all agreed and so Sunday...Noboru ordered some Dominoes online and since our nearest pizza places are in Narita City, since we live in a very rural town. He drove the 30 minutes and picked up our pizza. We ordered 2 large pan pizzas. 1 was a pepperoni lovers (double pepperoni) for the kids and a pepperoni and mushroom for Noboru and I. And we ordered a large order of baked french fries. And he picked up some soda along the way too. All and all... how was our Easter 2017? It was awesome. It was low key and chill, just our style. And that's about it. : ) I sure do hope you all had a nice Easter this year too. : ) 

Throwback Thursday...

Since this coming Sunday will be Easter Sunday. I thought it would be fun to take a quick little stroll down memory lane on 2 of our past Easters. This picture is from 2008! We have celebrated Easter every single year that we have had kids. And I celebrated it my whole life too. It's really important to me... to teach my kids, my culture. This way they can know about Japanese culture and also my culture too. : ) 

We always have an egg hunt! 

Awesome! And now this is 2 years later from the previous pics. This is from Easter 2010! I had an Easter party with friends at our home Easter 2009, so I am not sharing those pics today. : ) The boys definitely look 2 years older, since the pics up above. We had a lot of low key fun planned for that day. Just noshing on some Easter candy. Coloring some eggs. Hiding the eggs about 5 times... if not more! LOL. And we also planned to have a backyard BBQ. Just very relaxed though...just very lean Costco ground beef. So we made chargrilled cheeseburgers and some fries. Again...kicked back and low key is our style. So that's what we did that day. : ) 

A gray overcast day. But it did not stop us... from the 4 of us being outside and coloring our eggs. We dyed the eggs. We let them dry. We decorated the eggs. And then the boys went inside the house. No peeking!!! : ) And I hid them all over the backyard. 

They looked all over! Such fun! : )

Daddy had rolled out the cold BBQ grill from the shed for later in the day. But Noah did look for an egg in there and yes there was one in there! Bran in the background looking hard for an egg too. Hope ya'll can find where I hid all the eggs! Good luck! : )

I think I should do a Spongebob....4 hours later!!! LOL. Later after about a billion egg hunts. I hid the eggs twice. Bran hid them for Noah once. Noah in his toddler-ness tried his best to hide them for Bran. Noboru hid them for the kids once. Gee whiz when all was said and done. We were all egg hunted out. And it was time to start our simple BBQ. Keeping things super low key means no stress. And that's good, because I don't want any! : )  

Just a simple backyard BBQ. And we just chilled at home for the remainder of our Easter Sunday Funday!!! : ) 

Throwback Thursday...

Easter morning, March 2008! Noah was like 2 and a half years old and Bran was 6 and a half. 

Noah just put a jelly bean in his mouth.Yum. : )

I always asked them..."okay show me...show me how many eggs you found!" And they would hold them up and show me! : ) And I would go..."wow you found so many eggs!" : ) Awww. : ) Alright, enough Easter for now. : ) But this was from Easter Sunday way back then. Celebrating Easter is just something...we have always done in our house, here in Japan. The Easter dinner we had from that year/2008 and when we colored the eggs, I showed on a TBT a few weeks ago. : ) 

Easter 2016...

I hope everyone had a nice Easter! Ate plenty of Easter chocolates, colored many eggs. Hid and found many eggs. If you go to mass, hope you enjoyed that. As for where we live, we don't live in a big city or city at all... for that matter... we live in a true rural town. There is zip for churches in my town. However there is 1 Catholic church in the small city nearest us, where my kids used to go to school. However they have no English mass. I went and tried mass once in Japanese there and I felt really stressed out. I knew and said the prayers in English while everyone said them in Japanese. I just felt really lost...and considering church should be a place of comfort...I just felt really out of my element having it be all in Japanese. My nearest English mass would be in Tokyo which...would be a 4 hour round trip from my house. So no thanks. I'm happy that we have American TV here at my house and I can catch a nice Catholic mass in the comfort of my own home, any time I want. So, that's how we roll here at our house. : )  So, I got to enjoy my English mass at home. It was a lovely holiday spent with family and loved ones! We had a nice quiet little Easter here at home. We had gotten back from Guam, just the day before, on Saturday. So we were back from our trip. A fully restocked pantry. And we were all in good cheer over here! A couple day delay. I am sorry. But, with the boys being on Spring break, I am just relaxing and enjoying hanging with my family here at home, therefore haven't been online too much. I do however have 2 big posts to post. Soon-ish, though I'm not in any rush either. Plus the TBT. Easter Sunday, the boys woke to a full Easter basket each. 

We usually color our Easter eggs on Saturday/the day before. However since we were flying in an airplane the day before.... to get back home to Japan. And then unpacked at home and hopped into Olive and drove to Costco to pick up 2 rotisserie chickens. 1 for Easter dinner. Therefore, this year we didn't color our eggs until Easter Sunday. No worries, the boys always look forward to coloring the eggs.

They kept trading colors between the both of them. And Bran was waiting for his eggs to get darker and brighter. His eggs were soaking. : ) And 3 waiting to go and take a dip. : )

Egg-cellent job Noah!

Decoration time.

They both were making spring symbols. And both were making a ladybug. Noah had a chocolate lady bug (pictured) near the crayons that he was using as his model. : )

Branden's really artistic and his came our egg-cellent. Meanwhile Noah's was a great effort. Branden said, "Noah yours looks like... half ladybug half turtle" "Yours has turtle legs" Noah cracked up laughing (pictured here) he doesn't take it personally. I was thinking half lady bug/ half stag beetle? But again an A for effort. And it's all in fun, it's not like we're giving out awards or anything here. : )  By the way this picture just reminded me but seriously though...Noah has the whitest and most straightest teeth!!! He has amazing teeth! Really gorgeous teeth!Straight no gaps. White. Shaped right. Never had a cavity, neither boy has ever had a cavity. Anyways....moving along...

Noah listening to his brother when I snapped this picture.

Branden and Noah's Easter Eggs 2016! : )

Easter dinner. The whole gangs back together again! You can clearly see the 3 of them are clearly cracking up in this picture. We were cracking up, hard ya'll. If you could be a fly on our wall. All the funny and hilarious conversations, you would hear. Again because we just got back the day before. I didn't make... like this whole elaborate meal. Because time just didn't allow for it. However we had a rotisserie chicken, which I did throw in the oven for 45 minutes to reheat and recrisp the skin. It looks darker in this picture but it was tender, juicy and amazing. We had homemade mashed potatoes. Gravy. Broccoli and a big salad from Costco bought the day before. What did I do with the other rotisserie chicken? I made homemade taquitos, the night after. So Monday night and boy.... were they good. I took pics too. : )  Back to Easter dinner, I thought Easter dinner 2016 was a success and not too shabby, considering we just got back the day before. : )

Now all eyes were on Noah, he was speaking and his dad is smiling, so is Bran. we just had a pretty nice dinner, great conversation as always and a nice but simple Easter meal. : )

My plate from Easter dinner 2016! I hope you all had an amazing Easter as well. Oh and by the way, we hid the eggs throughout the downstairs, 3 times this year. Before we turned the eggs into egg salad! Noboru and I hid the eggs in such hard places, that there were 2 eggs the kids could not find. We had to show them, where the 2 missing eggs were hiding.  : ) 

Happy Easter 2015. Easter basket. Coloring the eggs. Easter egg hunt and Easter dinner...

Happy Easter everyone! I hope everyone had a lovely Easter! Ate their fair share of chocolate and Easter eggs and whatnot. : ) We sure did over here! Here are our Easter eggs 2015! I think they came out egg-cellent!

Branden and Noah's Easter baskets this year!

Easter picture of the boys! And now for some outtakes.

The giggles started with Branden! You can see, he started to smile in this pic. And then that led to Noah going all crazy happy hysterical, too. @_@

A bit blurry this one, but you get the idea. Both are now laughing like crazed hyenas! Okay this started me laughing. Sorry, I can't help it...once the ball was rolling, I had to join them! So, now I was a crazed laughing maniac too.

Branden now turns to Noah in this picture and says.."Noah stop laughing!!!" However Branden is still also laughing!" Hahaha. : )

Branden says, "should I give you a Homer Simpson-esque Bart type strangle?" He didn't. But I said.."please don't!" All the while, they keep laughing. How on earth can I get 1 picture with them not laughing hysterically? Should the pic in their photobook for Easter 2015, have their picture missing? lol. Hmm. I tried a few more. Trying really hard not to give up. : )

They tried so hard but it came out like this. Noah's now giving us "stink face." And Branden is still laughing hysterically. Come on Bran! Come on Noah!

Alrighty, kids, this is the last one. Hope one of these pics is salvageable. Hahaha. I think this one will be used in your photobooks for Easter 2015. And maybe I'll add, your outtakes as well. So we can remember how goofy and silly you two always were! : )

A look inside their Easter basket.

What one has, the other one has to have too. I always want to be "Even Stevens" about things, with raising 2 boys. : )

All the extra candy. If the weather wasn't raining all day on Easter Sunday, I had planned to invite 2 of Noah's classmates over and let them color eggs with us and I'd hide them all over at the park in our housing community. But, the weather was raining buckets all Easter. So, it was just Bran and Noah, which was perfect anyways. : ) 

Time to color the eggs. 

Noah coloring his boiled eggs, in the different colors. 

Having fun!

What a rich, vibrant purple egg. I usually use Heinz vinegar, I grew up using for our eggs, when I was a kid. Since living in Japan though, I would go to Kaldi and buy Heinz vinegar since it's available there too. In Japan, it is expensive buying Heinz vinegar. However this year, I used an easy for me to find, regular Japanese vinegar, it's cheap as chips and we had it on hand and it works just as good! And the colors came out just as bright. I will use it in the future, from now on. : )

A blurry, but happy pic.

Nice fresh haircut, ready for school to start. It started today actually. Noah had a half day today. : )

I made sure Noboru took both boys down to the barber for nice fresh haircuts before school started. Branden's hair looks really nice. He started school today too. : )

Branden, coloring a very nice vibrant colored egg.

Even though Branden's 13, I'm glad he's not *such* a teenager that he thinks... this isn't fun anymore! Bran loves coloring eggs and he loves the egg hunt the best! : )

A very nice blue egg.

Noah coloring a yellow egg. 

Really getting into it!

Decorating...

Noah decorating too.

Noboru came home from work and we asked him, if he'd like to join us. And he said...for sure! So, he made this egg, an island egg! And he made 2 more, 3 total. Noboru loves decorating eggs, each year! So, do I. Which is probably why both the boys love it too! : )

Tada, our Easter eggs for 2015!

Look at that green sparkly one. All of them came out pretty cute!

We were at Costco Inzai, Saturday, the day before Easter. We needed cheese. But while there decided to pick up a rotisserie chicken for Easter. However they were out of their normal sized ones and had these teeny tiny ones instead. @_@ So we bought 2, and stuck them in the fridge and on Sunday I put them in the oven to heat up, and get a crispy skin again. We were going to have mashed potatoes and veggie. But Noboru said...let's have those burrito or fajitas type things with them. And so Saturday we all said...cool, that's fine too. And so Easter Sunday that's what we had. A pretty un-Eastery type a meal. I know. : ) Hahaha. But, that's okay. : )

I quickly sliced up the meat and put onto plates. A dark meat plate and a white meat plate. And we dug right in and started making wraps with the stuff. 

Mine pictured here.Rice, rotisserie chicken, lettuce, cheese, sour cream. It was so good. : )

Noboru enjoyed his.

Noah enjoyed it too.

Bran too. After dinner, I quickly cleaned up and everyone pitched in to help. And then we asked the boys to go upstairs, while we hid the eggs downstairs.

Is someone looking at us? Hahaha. Noah found this egg, first!

Look at the light, see something?...how about a blue egg? Noboru gets *really* into the hiding thing. He unscrewed the light fixture and everything. He hid some eggs in really difficult spots. Branden found this egg! This was the last egg found. 

Noboru pulled out 2 yellow cups...he laid them on the steps of the step stool. I said, what is that for? @_@ He said... we will use this as a distraction! @_@ It did work, because both boys did check, to see if anyone hid an egg underneath the 2 cups. LOL. 

Nothing quite beats an Easter egg hiding in the cutlery! I also hid 2 in the fridge. While 1 child found 1 egg in the fridge, the other one was left...for the longest time. We hid 20 eggs twice for both the boys, and we made it challenging both times. And we never used the same spot twice and we hid them in very hard spots. : ) Anyway, that was our Easter 2015, this year! : )