Tuesday and Wednesday, plus getting ready for Guam! : )

Tuesday: Branden was sent off to school. I went home and got myself ready. Put my face on, put my hair in hot rollers, ha ha ha. Got dressed. Dressed Noah and headed to the Catholic yochien for the PTA meeting. The priest came in and spoke with us all first, for about a good 15 minutes. He spoke about hatred. That hating someone, is worse then being hated. And then he started talking about how couples tend to argue, because they are being selfish and only caring about themselves. Yada yada yada! I understood a great deal of what he was saying in Japanese. Some stuff I didn't understand though, because I am not an expert with the Japanese language so some stuff I missed. But I could understand the main parts, I think. Noah behaved so perfect. He sat in the chair with me the whole time. The principal actually commented to me at the end, that he was so wonderfully behaved. I didn't say anything, because I know Noah is no angel, he can have "days where he behaves like a star" and then "days where he behaves like a naughty little boy" and I'd prefer leave and go home type days, ha ha ha. So, I didn't read too much into the comment, I just said thanks. Before I left and went home I peeked into Branden's class, they were painting. I waved at him, he waved back and I went home. Got on some comfy clothes and fixed Noah and myself some lunch.

Tuesday evening, I gathered all the snacks for the airplane. The portable DVD player and kids DVD's. Noah's giant Little Einsteins sticker book that keeps him occupied forever! ha ha ha. And the DS lite, plus games and managed to get the carry on all packed and ready to go. Phew, glad to get that knocked off! After dinner, I went upstairs and packed for both the boys, I packed their swimwear. Hats, shorts, house clothes. Just got the boys all 100% done. So, carry-on packed and the boys are both packed, double check! Yay! And the airplane we are taking has those mini TV screens for every seat, but I always pack their own mini DVD player just in case. I also will pack a medium sized obento for the kids to share, with karaage and rice balls/onigiri. And some fresh fruit/diced up apple. So they can munch it on the plane. The flight's only 3 hours long, they will be fine. : )

Wednesday: I have to pack for myself today. Get my straw hat, swimsuit all gathered. Shorts and skirts all packed up, and ready to go, as well. Sigh, that's what I have to do today.

Travel plan? We will be in Guam a lot longer this time. The boys and I will fly out Thursday morning/tomorrow obviously, he he. Only a 3 hour flight, so we arrive in the afternoon. My dad is picking us up at the airport. The kids and I, are going to stay 2 nights at my dad's condo. And then Noboru is flying out to meet us on Saturday. And we will then check ourselves in at the Hilton on Saturday and get a rental car. So, 2 nights at dad's place, for the boys and I. And then 4 nights at the Hilton for the hubby and the kids and I. The boys and I will be in Guam for 6 nights total. So, just about a whole week will be spent there. My dad is getting so excited for us to come. He's been bleaching his floors, window sills and everything else, preparing for his only 2 grandkids arrival. Getting things all spic and span for us to be there. I will be happy to just hang with my dad and spend some quality time together. He has a swimming pool at his condo, we can swim there or head to the beach. Do some site seeing or whatever. A bit of shopping. Also, the Home Depot opened there in December, and Noboru is just dying to go there (the dork, lol). According to the web, it's the world's 2nd largest Home Depot in the world. And we all know the Kmart is supposedly the world's largest as well (although if you ask me, it doesn't seem any larger then one in the mainland US, hmm :), but I have been watching the Home depot be built whenever I was in Guam for the past year, even back in October, and it's huge. I wanna hit the mall. I also wanna get the kids some haircuts in Guam as well. And get an eyebrow wax ASAP (my god do I need one, yikes). Watch all the new TV shows, the current ones, and eats lots of yummy food. But basically just relax and enjoy some tropical weather, which will be a nice change since the weather here in Chiba has been bitterly cold. : ( Bye everyone! I'll miss you all, but will catch up with you all, when I get back. Obviously my dad has a computer, ha ha ha. So I may update my blog while I am there, or maybe not. For now, I'll play it by ear! Anyway, I better get to packing. Bye you guys! : ) And dad.....see you tomorrow!!! : )

Sunday night and Monday! : )

Sunday evening at the store, they had these live crabs, they were only 500 yen each. Noboru loves crab, so he bought 2 of them. Yes they were alive and came home with us alive and were even alive when I snapped this picture. Ha ha ha. He slowly boiled them up, because he says that if you boil them up too fast, out of fear they lose their legs. Safety mechanism I gather, I dunno, I'm no crab expert, ha ha ha, but that's what he says. : ) Meanwhile he had himself a little crab feast in the living room while we watched, "So you think you can dance" Sunday night. Kids and I had breakfast for dinner, we had omelette's, potatoes, bacon and toast, good dinner, err breakfast dinner, ha ha ha. The show was really good. They voted Sara off, and I was really bummed out about that, I thought she was fantastic! : ( Good show though and man, it's getting down to the wire. Anyway that's how we ended Sunday night, after the whole museum thing in the day. : )

Monday morning I did not snooze, I didn't wanna get all off with my timing again, sigh. I woke up around 8:00 am. I was speaking to a girlfriend of mine in Osaka on Skype that morning and we were talking about, missing foods from back home. I told her how I missed this great Thai restaurant back in Denver called the "Wild Ginger" best Thai food in Denver, seriously. I miss it. And how I missed this really good Indian place I used to get take-out from. And then I was telling her how much I missed all the different Mexican food restaurants back home as well. So, as we "agreed and yup, yupped each other. Meanwhile I listened to foods she missed. I told her this year, I will try to make food that I miss. Rather then just just simply missing said food. Why not, learn to make it myself. I mean heck as long as I have a cookbook, I can certainly give it a go at least. So, after we hung up, I starting flipping through my cookbooks. I opened up the BBQ cookbooks, my Southern cookbook. Heck, I even have a fruit smoothie cookbook. Ha ha ha. So, I opened up this Mexican cookbook of mine and found a recipe for tortillas. Having never made them before, I read the ingredients, I had them all. Hmm. And with Monday being a holiday in Japan or was it Sunday? Anyway, Sunday or Monday, the schools were off today. Branden had no school today, so today was just a quiet day at home. I figured why the heck not. So I took the cookbook to the kitchen, cranked up some tunes and by gosh. I made tortillas. I surprised even myself! Ha ha ha! Because I had no idea, I could make them. The power of cookbooks, I tell ya! Wink! : )

They came out really good. I plan to try making these again.

I placed them in a Ziploc gallon freezer bag after they cooled down. They made the best cheese sandwiches/quesadillas. Yumm. : )

For Monday night's dinner, I made yakitori and stir fry veggie. I used a bottle yakitori and it made dinner really easy for me.

My bean sprouts were only 19 yen. You can see in the pic, my half cabbage was only 49 yen. A really cheap meal.

I stir fried the veggies with a bit of margarine and salt and pepper and it was done in no time flat.

A really simple, inexpensive dinner. This is what we had Monday night. : )

You all know most everything Noah wears, he got from Branden. Ha ha ha. My poor second kid, he's such a little ragamuffin sometimes. He gets some new stuff but the majority of Noah's stuff is gently used from his older brother.

Good thing he doesn't care in the least, ha ha ha. Anyway, Branden has a whole drawer full of hats. And I realized the 2 in the background in this pic, were too small for B now. He outgrew them. I tried them on Noah, a pinch big, but who cares. I transferred them from Branden's drawer in his room, to Noah's drawer in his room, ha ha ha. So he scored two cool hibiscus hats. Meanwhile, my mom had sent Noah these 3 new hibiscus hats for Noah a week ago, the tags say UPF 50. And extra wide brim to protect from sun damage. Thanks mom, she usually picks up little odds and ends all year long for both the boys, I think she's thinking Spring lately, lol. I'll have to pack some of these hats in the suitcase to take to Guam with us this week, so Noah can use them. Go Noah go! : ) You both are such good kids! And I'm actually really glad my older kiddo, can share clothes with his brother. : )

Sunday at the science museum! : )

Today's one and only plan was head to the grocery store and get about 4 days and nights worth of food (not a whole week, since I am leaving soon). But, we could go around 3:00pm we figured. So this morning we got dressed and went and had some fun at the science museum first. We spent about 3 good hours there. Could be even 3 and a half hours, there. It was so much fun! So much to look at! I forgot my camera at home, which is rare that I forget. And I also forgot my keitei/cellphone. But Noboru had his keitei with him, so I used it and took some pics. Sorry the quality isn't so great of these pics, but his keitei is old, ha ha ha! : ) Here's Branden and Noah walking up the stairs and into the museum.

We just paid admission, gave our tickets to the lady and were about to go in. Price was good to get in, 300 yen for B, Noah was free. And 600 yen each for Noboru and I.

You touched the keypad if you were a male or female. And your age range. Like age 4-7 or 20-25 for example. And it tells you how much water your body is made up of. We punched in Branden's information. And that blue water solution on the right is how much water Branden's body is made up of. The visual was cool for the kids and even Noboru got a kick out of this. Noboru got on it, and as it turns out you guys, he's not full of sh*t you guys, he he, joke. He's actually full of water,lol! The line for Noboru almost reached the silver metal band at the top. We were cracking up so hard about this. We were in outright hysterics when I told him that. : )

This was cool.

This was make your own energy! They had to ride the bikes at a fast speed. And if you could go fast enough and actually could make some energy or power of your own, the wind chimes would ring. However, it took so much fast bike riding that Noboru and Branden had a hard time getting the chimes to chime. No matter how hard they tried. Oh and as they were riding this, I sang that song in Willy Wonka, when Gene Wilder, was riding that bike. "In spring time, the only way to ring time" or something like that. Ha ha ha! We had an absolute blast being here today! : )

On top of this are the chimes, that barely chimed.

They gave up and they cheated instead! Ha ha ha. They did it like this and they sure got the chimes to chime this way! The cheaters! Ha ha ha. : )

You could even stomp your way to get some energy. This was a lot easier to do then the bikes were.

Or you could turn the wheel to get some energy, Noah was actually really good at this. He he he.

How do planes fly? It was cool to see here at the museum.

The boys watched and watch how that wing got lift. They were amazed! It was such a nice learning type day!

Yup, as it says, that Bernoulli's theorem explains why planes can fly.

Sinking and floating.

They got the biggest kick out of learning about a "free/natural vortex" and a "forced vortex"

Forced is like a washing machine. It is forced to go in the cyclone type spin.

Like a washing machine. We ooh'ed and ahh'ed this. Ha ha ha. Nerds that we are! : )

free/natural like the picture says is a bath tub. It freely/naturally just goes down the drain.

Yup good example how a bath tub drains water. Just freely/naturally. B was going..."so this ones forced and this one is free/natural" and we said, yup, yup, yup, that's right. The visual was good for the kids. Me too, ha ha ha. : )

Waves.

Useful balls in daily life. This part of the museum was interesting for us too.

It says here, if you write/make one line. The ball in a ballpoint pen moves/rotates whatever, 214 times. My gosh that's something I never knew. Next time I am watching Jeopardy, I will be on the look out for that question, ha ha ha. : )

Balls in cosmetics. I never realized, really interesting. Hmmm. : )

Ball shaped organs in your body.

There's directions on this mirror in English and Japanese. Noboru was following the directions of this when I clicked this picture.: )

Balls in life. Or other objects with balls on them. Ha ha ha. How funny! These people must like balls or circular objects in general, I thought. : )

A view of the countryside. : )

And then the boys could get in front of the blue screen and be in their own video game. Ha ha ha!

Fish and eels and other more serious sea creatures were trying to eat the kids in the video game, so they were bouncing all over the TV monitor running from said sea creatures. I think Branden got bitten by a huge eel like thing. We were watching on the TV monitor outside and it was funny! You can tell it's the boys because they are both dressed the same and B had the blue balloon in the video game and Noah is holding the yellow balloon. Ha ha ha.

And the game finished. That's all folks! : )

Nope the kids had to do it one more time. Ha ha ha. : ) Good thing this museum was as dead as a doornail. And no lines anywhere. So they could go again. And it was free anyway, so. : )

Okay family time, to leave the museum and let's head to the grocery store now! : ) Today was a good day! And a wonderful way to spend a Sunday! : )

We got Branden's desk tonight, now we can cross another biggie off the list, in the ol' getting him ready for the first grade category! Phew! : )

Out of everything, we had to do to get Branden ready for elementary school. I think the desk part was the hardest part for us. Should we get a western type desk, like Ikea? Or should we get a Japanese one? Here's the thing though and bare with me why, I type out my thoughts. For us, it doesn't necessarily have to be western or American at all. But it should be the best it can be. Like our home example, we prefered American kitchens so we got one (and that's only because I do bake a lot). American bedrooms, attic and rest of the house. And however to be fair, we prefer, Japanese toilets, so we got those. Why? Because Japanese toilets are in our opinion, better. They are practically robotic. Some move up and down. They have heated toilet seats. Shoot water if need be, in parts I won't mention, lol. So our toilets for example are nice and Japanese, they are warm and toast our buns in winter time, lol and we don't regret not having western toilets in the least, we prefer Japanese toilets all the way. Or take bathtubs. Again, we prefer Japanese style bathing. The tubs are deeper like hot tubs. The whole communal family bathing idea is one that we love, so it never was a question that we would not have a Japanese bath tub. I'm not so crazy about American bathtubs and showers, sorry, friends and family in America. Sorry, but they are too shallow/short, the water can't be rewarmed and they're just too small. : ( So, basically we choose stuff with whatever is the best for our family, regardless of origin, doesn't really matter at all to us. If that makes sense. So, now we go back to the desk. An Ikea western type styled desk? Or a Japanese one. We weighed heavy the pros and cons of each. The picture of the desk here is from the Ikea website. The thing is the Ikea desks were pretty bare minimum. Not much room for books. No extra shelving to be seen anywhere. This is the million dollar question, we asked ourselves a hundred times? Is this pictured desk, useful? Again to be fair, Ikea had other types of desks there, but they were all pretty bare minimum. And not so useful. After much thought, I was thinking no. I checked the US Ikea website and saw many of desks that looked just like the one pictured. No real extra storage space, or book shelf space or anything. Just a flat our table, type desk. I even checked the Ikea Japan site. Again same stuff. Just bare basic table type desks. A girlfriend of mine was heading, to Ikea in Funabashi a few weeks ago, I asked her to give a look see and if it looked good we'd drive there ourselves.. I asked her if she saw a desk with shelves and slots for books, etc, to let me know. She went there 2 weeks ago, and she said, no such luck. She actually emailed me a pic of the desk area and yup, she was right. Just bare minimum type table, type desks. No extra anything. Now we were starting to sway towards the Japanese desks. And we've been sorta swaying that way since the start of December actually. But we were still not sure at all, either. So we've just been weighing in on this for a few month's as well. Sigh. He he he. We wanted a desk that had plenty of space for books, plenty of space for doing his homework, shelving, nook and cranny, type spots to store his school stuff, we didn't care where it came from, as long as it would be a good and useful desk, that's all it basically boiled down to for us. So we just put off looking, until now. And the desks at Ikea were actually cheaper then the standard Japanese desks as well. So we woulda saved money, if we woulda got an Ikea one. But, I dunno, we somehow felt it was a better idea to get a Japanese one. Manufacturers in Japan, know how much homework an average Japanese child, gets and they make the extra shelving space for that. My mil even called us a month ago, asking what was taking us so long in finding one. Ha ha ha. : )

This morning, we knew we would wait no more! We went from the morning until the evening. We went to 6 different furniture shops in Narita. All the big name ones. We went to Nitori in this pic, twice. So many different colors of desks. But the thing I liked was the usefulness of the desks.

So many chairs to choose from, so many colors of desks to choose from. Geeze, it was a tough call!It was a desk overload. A desk extravaganza. How would we ever choose. Geeze. I brought a pic of B's bedroom set on my digi cam, so I could match the color the best I could.

We saw this one, have seen it on all the TV commercials, here in Japan and it really looks like a very useful desk! We went to Nitori twice today, we went there first and last, with 4 other shops in between. And with the desk in this pic, the 3 pieces can be arranged all these sorta different ways. We did not get this desk but.... I loved this desk, but the color was not right for B's room, unfortunately! Bummer! : ) But the price was so good. Around $400.00 US. The one we ultimately got was more, darn it! ha ha ha! : ( I really loved this desk though.

So much room for books. So much storage space, for homework, etc. Bummer they didn't have a color that we needed. Because this desk was cool!

This is the desk we ultimately got. This is the chair we ultimately got as well. After having B sit on about 20 chairs, ha ha ha. I actually wheeled this chair from 3 rows away myself to see it paired with the desk, lol. The color was a brighter blue on this chair. And it was more comfy. We also got the "world map" place mat type thing for his desk as well, after trying 3 other mats as well, phew. I tell ya, after looking at one desk that was too dark and one that was too light (colored) and then hundreds in between. This was the one, we opened up the camera, looked at the pic of the bedroom set and sure enough it's pretty much a dead match in color! And the different slots and sections for his books, was amazing. I asked myself and Noboru, is this a useful desk? We both said, yes! There's even a locked drawer for his private things. The second time we were in Nitori, we were in there for about an hour and a half. Going through every drawer, sliding each shelf divider, to see if they moved easily. We were there so long, it was insane! And we liked the book shelves that were on top of eachother. And the highest shelf can come off, If he wants just one row of shelving. But this, way, we have a lot of space for his books. It's a very useful desk. The lamp came with it, it's a whole set. But the chair was extra because we didn't want the cheaper chair that was gratis with the set. All of this, was a gift from grandma Mitsuko. Afterwards we all called her in the car on Noboru's cell and we thanked her for the desk. As, I said in an earlier post, in Japan, typically the grandparents buy the grandchild a study desk when they enter the first grade. It's sorta a tradition. It will be delivered in a few weeks from now. We are just happy, we finally found a desk that fit our needs best. Like I said with the backpack, it's whatever fits a particular family and child best. There is no right or wrong. So, we were just happy we found the right desk for our son. And that it matched Branden's existing bedroom set as well. Phew. We are getting really ready for Branden to start elementary school in April now. Not much left to do now, except order name tags and get the suit for the entrance day. We are right on track, it seems. : )

After all that desk stuff was finally knocked out of the way. We went and had dinner, because by now it was dinner time! Geeze, it was a whole day thing. I had the pasta. Oh man, it was so delicious!

Noboru had spaghetti and meat sauce. Branden had a pizza. And Noah had pizza and pasta. We all had unlimited drink bar.

We drove home, took showers and long hot baths. It was bitterly cold outside. We stayed home. In our jammies, popped a big bowl of popcorn and also had some icecream. We watched some DVD's we already had at home. I picked "Something About Mary", my god that is such a funny movie. And then it was Noboru's choice and we watched "V for Vendetta", with his A-#1 crush, Natalie Portman, lol. Stayed up much too late tonight. But it was a good day, we got a lot accomplished, shoot! Getting that desked knocked off the list, is a huge accomplisment in itself. Phew. Hope everyone is also having a wonderful weekend as well! : )