Let's catch up! : )

Let's catch up, some shall we? : ) What have we been up to this past week? Let's find out (not much of anything though, you guys). : ) Well last Friday after Branden got home, I was surprised when he hopped in my car, after school, with a tooth in his hand. He told me his tooth fell out while at school last Friday. So now he has 2 missing teeth, ha ha ha. He played for about an hour after we got home from ichinensei last Friday and then came in. The boys watched cartoons and munched popcorn, while I prepared dinner. We also shared another bowl of popcorn the next night while watching a good DVD with the family. : )

There is my boy, minus 2 teeth! Hmm, if he loses anymore, he will start to look like a Jack O Lantern, ha ha ha! : ) No more wobbly teeth though for now, so I think this will be it for a while. Phew! And yup the tooth Fairy reappeared again to give some money for exchange of his tooth. Good tooth fairy, good good tooth fairy! *winks* : )

Saturday it rained, so no playing with the neighborhood kids for my kiddos that day! : (

Anyway the boys and I baked a pumpkin pie together that day anyway, so that was nice. : )

Funny, when I first started making pies, my crusts looked so rough. Something that Frankenstein might have put together. LOL. But now after about a billion mistakes and many many pies later, I find I can whip out a crust in my sleep almost. How that happened, I'll never know. It's a mystery to me even. : ) Still not perfect but good enough for me. : )

Go into the oven... you little pie, you!!!! : )

I know, I know, for many of you not from America or Canada, this whole pumpkin pie thing is a bit of a head scratcher! Ha ha ha. But, I think because I grew up with this pumpkin pie stuff, I will always love this pie. Ahhhh, pumpkin pie! Ha ha ha. : )

My Saturday dessert after supper! A nice slice of homemade pumpkin pie, with homemade butter crust and hot caramel machiatto to go with. And with the thought of no school until Wednesday, I was on a real relax mode at our house Saturday night.

Sunday was our tiny towns undokai! And within our town, all of the districts competed against each other. All of the districts showed up and ready to compete. See the different color flags? Our district was the green flag. So we rooted for green all day long! : )

The rival school about to put on their musical performance. Our elementary school went on afterwards. I thought the rival school actually did a great job. The music they did was a lot of Disney! I clapped for the other team. Because well, I figured they are all just kids, we should clap for both teams!

Next was our school! I had seen this little dance number at our real undokai a month or so ago, but it was still cute and I clapped all over again! Nerd that I am! Ha ha ha. : )

The first graders in the yellow shirts, the second graders in the green shirts.

For the town undokai we did not need to make an obento because well honestly the towns so small, the town just made obento for everyone who showed up. And yes we all passed around the booklet from house to house how many would be attending so the town made exactly the right amount of obento's, ha ha ha. : )

This was inside.

After our obento's, we went to the stands and bought some dessert. I chose a choco banana.

The boys shared a great big shave ice! : )

Noboru and Branden even had time to take themselves a little after lunch cat nap. Ha ha ha.

Monkey see, monkey do! Of course after daddy and older brother napped, he wanted to try and nap exactly how they did, as well.

There was dancing between all districts.

And now was the 2pm, big relay race. Only the fastest of each class were chosen. We went district against district, school against school! Now, there was also 1 relay race before we broke for lunch and there was some talking going on, some mom said, she could not tell which one was her daughter when they were racing. So all through lunch there was a buzz, between us mom's, how could we distinguish our team or our school from the other. So, for our first graders relay race team, we decided to have them switch into their dance shirts. That way we could find which kid was ours. It was such a brilliant idea, that the other mom thought of! In this pic was Keita and Kouki and B. : )

Our schools ichinensei racing team! Go Branden! This undokai was held at a junior high school, this is not our elementary school, if you can remember our school does looks different and is new, where this one is old. Ha ha ha. : ) Oh yeah they each picked their own names for their team. Branden's team was the "Super Team" LOL! : )

That does sound like a name a group of 6 year olds would pick, huh? Ha ha ha. How adorable! : )

Aha, see, all other districts wore white shirts, our "Super team" was far left, thanks to the yellow shirts! Phew. That was Kouiki-kun right there in the yellow, he kicked it off and then it passed to Keita!

There's B in the yellow shirt waiting for the stick to be passed along...Keita passed it to B!

Keita had a bit of trouble as he ran into the far right lane, ha ha ha and tried to pass it to someone else. Poor kiddo. He might have been nervous. Sensei had to come and take him to B. By now everyone had already left. Ha ha ha. Branden ran his heart out trying to catch up! Sadly the "Super team" superly lost! Ha ha ha. Ah well, they had fun and they did try their best! We were proud of everyone on the "Super team" : )

Noah being a total goof ball nerd! All hopping and skipping around the big country field!

See this food dangling on a stick with string? Breads only though! Well, this was the last race of the day and I can only tell you.... it was the best race I ever saw! It was a race by kids and adults. But adults were in the JA team. Our adult team was the JA, Japan agriculture. You know the rice farmers for our area! They were so fast and so genki they were like grease lightning! Ha ha ha. Anyway, it was a triathlon of sorts. First you had to race round the big dirt track, then you had to jump rope around the field and then at the end you had to catch the sweet bread with your *teeth* It was so hilarious. And the running, those farmers run freaking fast and are in such fantastic shape! Gym memberships they do NOT need! Ha ha ha! We were all screaming and shouting. we wanted the farmers and people from the green teams to win!We were screaming, run, go, go go go!!! Whole crowd went wild! It was amazing. And this one lady could not catch the bread with her teeth, she was trying, hard to reposition herself and still no bread! Ha ha ha. She finally got it! But man, it was a hoot! A hilarious Sunday afternoon. spent in the countryside, shouting and cheering on the JA and the kids! Ha ha ha! And I didn't even have to make obento, that was a plus! : ) We went home and quietly enjoyed our Sunday! We went out in the backyard. Chatted with our neighbors, while we were in our backyard and they were in theirs. Kids played in the backyard a bit and then we went inside. And I fixed dinner.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday went by in our house without pics. Sorry guys, I just honestly enjoyed the heck out of myself. I relaxed and rested and enjoyed time with the boys. Watched B and his friends play. We watched lots of TV. Read lots of books together as well. Just really enjoyed the couple day break. On Tuesday though, I went to the store to do my weekly shopping. Loaded up the back of my minivan with drinks galore, bags of meats, bags of veggies and other things. These are the drinks we bought. Not very exciting. Ha ha ha. For the most part we drink a case of jasmine tea (no sugar added) and a case of bottled water. During meal time I might have a sweetened lemon or peach tea but that's it really. Also during meal time, I might give the kids a glass/cup of Qoo or Calpis (this week it's grape) but mostly they drink iced jasmine tea or water. And 1 soda a week for us adults, my one guilty pleasure once a week, ahhhh! Oh yes we do drink a lot, but with boys they always work up quite the sweat running and playing so much. Also I always want a few extras in case we get the big earthquake and all. Ha ha ha. : )

Wednesday from 8am to 9am, I cleaned the downstairs. And then I baked some cookies. Oatmeal and raisin. The pumpkin pie was long gone. : ( So we needed something to last us the week. : )

Plenty of oats and a whole cup of raisins.

About to go in the oven.

Hot out of the oven! : )

A full plate of oatmeal raisin cookies cooling off!

Too many cookies to fit inside my airtight lame canister. Hmm, you know, I really have to find a proper cookie jar you guys! : )

Barely 9:45 am, and cookies are now done for the week! : ) Throw cookies pans in dishwasher, start beef stew and finish house. Phew! : )

Please don't laugh but, you know how Wednesdays are my busy days. And we are at swimming so late, and if we have any chance of eating a nice home cooked meal, I have to make it before B gets out of elementary that day. So, Wednesday again and knowing full well, today is a busy Wednesday, so I said, why the heck not. And I fried up my beef and then I started boiling the beef. It boiled from 10:15 am until 2pm, when I finally turned the stove off and went to get myself ready to pick up B from school. And get the swimming bag packed and ready to go.

By the time it was done, it was fall apart tender! And so yummy! : ) I had the rice and everything ready, so when we got back from swim school, finishing up dinner would be easy.

After swim club, Branden unpacked his swimming bag, Noah colored in his Wall-E coloring book and I reheated the beef and broth, and added my already diced veg, that I diced up earlier in the day. In about 8-10 minutes in was crazy boiling again veggies getting nicely boiled by now and cooked and in a bit the veggies were tender, put the fire off, split the curry into 2 pans, one mild and 1 hot. Noah had the mild, and the 3 of us had the hot. It was a nice simple dinner that was nice to actually eat within 20-25 minutes of arriving home. Basically by the time we had switched clothes and put things away and stuff, we were eating supper with the family.

Right after our curry dinner, we set the bath and everyone got all nice and clean, hubby and the boys went first and I went in afterwards. I threw in a Halloween DVD after we all had our jammies on, "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" Gosh I remember watching this when I was a little kid, now I get to enjoy this stuff all over again, because having a kid means you get to enjoy this stuff all over and twice, right? Ha ha ha! See Sally? This is the part where she is pretty mad because she felt she wasted her whole Halloween with Linus waiting for the great pumpkin instead of getting candy! Ha ha ha. She was awfully upset! Ha ha ha. : )

Oh my gosh! Remember Charlie Brown's ghost sheet had holes all over the darn sheet! He had a little trouble with the scissors, ha ha ha! Branden laughed and he laughed at the holey costume. And Noah meanwhile chuckled a good one, because all the kids got candy but poor dear, Charlie brown only got rocks. That funny ol' Charlie Brown! What a wonderful movie and a nice way to end Wednesday! : )

Here's a pic of B watching the Halloween DVD, but both boys were all cozied on the couch, Noah was on the other side. And they really enjoyed watching the Charlie Bown Halloween DVD. They said they wanna watch it again tomorrow night, oh my! Ha ha ha. But in a nut shell, this week was a very nice restful week. Our week didn't start until Wednesday, was a tad busy but not too crazy either. We aren't going on vacation anytime soon. We are not planning on a Costco run for a long while either. Nothing really is going on over here. Just hanging home as usual. Enjoying the simple life, I guess. It's been quiet but really good. Today is now Thursday and things are going really smooth. We just got back from Noah's yochien interview. It went very well. I will try to blog about that sometime soon. Noah also has swimming today, as well. Anyway, I hope all of you, are also doing well and that life is treating you guys good as always. : )

Bits and pieces!!! : )

On Monday morning after Branden went to school and I had managed to get the house in tip top shape after the weekend. I thought baking some brownies with Noah would be a good idea. It gives us something to do together, sort of mixes up the day and come on....who didn't grow up loving to lick the spoon or whatnot, when they were little! Ha ha ha. : ) Just an instant box for the brownies, not homemade which is okay. We're just a typical normal family and we don't mind from a box at all, at all. : ) And yumm what a good dessert this will make! : )

Picked up Branden and he did his 5 minutes of ichinensei homework and then he relaxed. Meanwhile I got dinner started. Monday night's dinner fried chicken with some yummy Japanese type sauce. White skinless breasts for the kids and I and thighs for the hubby. : )

Very nicely golden brown and crunchy, by now the hubby just got home. And he was starving and said he could smell many different dinner smells outside on our quiet little street, when he came in this chilly willy night. : )

What my meal looked like Monday evening. See how the color of the chicken is darker now? It is the sauce that made it darker because the chicken was actually golden brown as you could see in the pic above. But wow that sauce is delicious. Oh yeah what is for dinner here. Oven roasted potatoes and carrots and steamed green beans and rice and crunchy fried chicken with this yummy sauce on top. It was a good and simple meal for Monday night and an iced tea went with it. : )

Brownies with walnuts. These lasted for 2 days and nights at our house, but good to have a nice dessert during the week. : )

Boy was B happy to find these on the green counter when he got home from school on Monday. He had one right away that day.: )

Tuesday was cream stew night. While B was at school and after my house was clean and done for the day and I had a good rest as well, I started on dinner. Fried up the chicken to a nice golden brown and then added the onions made sure they got nice and soft.

Added the rest of the veggies, potatoes, carrots and mushrooms. After they got a nice good stir fry, I boiled it all up, for about a good 25 minutes. Then turned off the stove and went to go pick up B from school.

No after school classes on Tuesday (or Friday for that matter) Branden came home, did his whole whopping 5 minutes of homework and then next thing you know, I had quite a few boys ringing my bell asking if "Branden can come out and play" Ha ha ha. And Branden emerged and rode bikes and then they eventually made it back to my backyard to play. Genki-kun, Keita-kun, Koiki-kun and B and Noah all played boy games in the backyard. The oni game and more, ha ha ha. : ) Meanwhile I got the stew back to boiling like crazy. And at 5pm the bell and song played throughout the neighborhood, and next thing you know, All the boys scattered and ran and jumped on their bikes and headed home!!! Shouts to Branden with...matta ne....and such (sp?)!!! And other phrases all filled the air. All heading back to their homes to see what their own mom's prepared for dinner. : ) Meanwhile we had cream stew at our house that night. : )

A basic and simple but nice hot pot of nice Hokkaido cream stew for a chilly, can certainly feel Fall's in the air, type Tuesday night. : )

It has been raining off and on this week too. Just like last week. That is obviously my son Branden in the pic with the yellow umbrella. This was taken on Wednesday and I just dropped my son off right in front of the school, he had maybe a 30 second walk to the front door. I drove B to school Monday through Thursday, this week because of the rain. And I pick him up every day after school anyways. I am a mom on the go from the very early AM with the start of my dropping off B.

Wednesday, I cleaned for an hour that morning but I really gave myself the day off because I had to watch the 2nd debate between Mc Can't, whoops I meant Mc Cain, har har har! *winks* And Obama!!!! Yes, I have spoken about politics on here quite a bit, but sort of stopped when Hil gave in. But with the election coming so close to an end, I feel I have to voice my own opinion once more. I am a democrat. I certainly make no apologies about being a democrat. I also think the fact America has been having such problems with regards to the economy, is because we've had a Republican in office!!! So time to get the dems back in office hopefully and hope they can undo all this damage by the Republicans! Also, anyone catch the debate last week between Sarah Palin and Biden??? I hadn't seen such good comedy like that, in a long time, that was a real hoot that Sarah Palin, lol!!!

I watched the vice presidential debate here in Japan on CNN. And I found her winking her eye about every 2 seconds a bit weird. At first I thought she did it once, but after about 10 minutes (and about 10,000 winks later) I thought she either had a nervous tick or perhaps she thought she was trying to be cute. Key word on the *thought* but I just didn't "get it." And for her pronunciations, that have by now even been mocked on SNL, yeah you know, that sort of got to me too, after a while. Sure, like most Americans I don't mind the occasional, 'ya'll" or an "ol" once in a while, at all. But the way she made herself look with the constant and never ending "gonnas, watchas" and such, was just plain old, over kill.. Bill Clinton on the other hand, was a master at adding just a pinch of that old southern country charm and it clearly was a brilliant move, as it won him the White House twice!!! So there is a smart and savvy way about speaking that way, but she clearly way over did that, as well. I also thought Mc Can't deliberately brought her in to sway and try to steal that undecided Hillary vote. Which the move would have been true genius, *if* he wouldn't have picked such an absolute lame brain as his running mate! And that whole her daughter being pregnant issue and the other issue of the...did she or didn't she, try to get her ex brother in law or whoever, fired by using her power as Governor? Yikes just so many unanswered questions. And yes, by running for politcal public office, like this, you do open yourself up for the hard questions and the scrutiny. Just so you know and I didn't know until I heard it from Tokyo Rosa but, Sarah Palin passed law in Alaska to have rape victims pay for their own rape kits (to gather evidence and such).Yes, when Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the city billed sexual assault victims and their insurance companies for the cost of rape kits. I'm sorry but, directly shifting the cost of the rape kits from the police department to the actual **victims** I find that as an American woman completely outrageous. I also find her a terrible public speaker and after watching the debate myself, I found she never really answered a lot of the questions asked of her. Instead just gave some hokey pokey, story that had really nothing to do with the topic asked or answer. And I loved watching Tina Fey play her on SNL, I caught it on TV and have watched it on Youtube quite a few times since then, because well, Sarah Palin's always good for a few laughs, if you ask me! : ) I ask the question that was brought of Hillary (could she handle the job from day 1). If McCain died by some freak accident. Could Sarah Palin handle being the next president in line? I think absolutely not. Oh and as for the 2nd debate between Obama and Mc Cain. Mc Cain is so obviously loathing Obama with every ounce of his body, because he came off really bad. Obama was the clear winner of that town hall debate. Mc Cain seemed to try and talk down to Obama. He seemed to take pot shots at Obama every chance he got, by calling him..."that one".... god was that not the freaking pot shot heard around the world or what??? That phrase made practically everyone I know cringe, me included! After he said that. He just seemed really holding a lot of anger towards my main man Obama. Obama meanwhile remained calm and as cool as a cucumber. I loved it and enjoyed this second debate very much!

Anyway those are my 2 cents worth on the election so far! : )

Branden, on Wednesday's swim class. I was sitting here with Noah and my good friend Rieko-san and her duaghter. And then my other friend came after and next thing you know, there were us 3 mom's all talking upstairs with our younger kids with us, while our older kids were in the pool. I had a good chat with friends and since Wednesday was a late day and we came back home so late. We had leftover cream stew and rice for supper and I also made grilled cheese sandwiches. So grilled cheese sandwiches and leftover cream stew was for dinner on Wednesday night.

No smoke and mirrors here! : ) It is, what it is. And sometimes it's leftovers and you know that's okay. : )

Thursday morning, See the time? Says 6:03 am. Yes, this mommy wakes up at 5:30 am every morning, has cup of hot cofee right away. Gets changed, checks email before starting breakfast for Branden. Weekdays, I usually make eggs and bacon or sausage twice a week, Mon-Fri. Can be scrambled, over easy, or whatever. Another day is always French toast sticks with sausage or bacon. So that's 3 days of the week and the 4th day is always Japanese breakfast, can be some Japanese soup or miso and rice. And 1 day every week is cereal with toast, can be hot cereal, like oatmeal or Cream of Wheat or cold, but I always mix it up that way. This day, I gave B his choice and he went with eggs and bacon. So the bacon was done at 6:03 am. And he was eating by 6:05 am.

A very simple breakfast, but enough fuel in his body to keep him going throughout the day until lunch. : )

Vacuumed under the couch and everywhere else. Did 2 loads of laundry. Washed toilets yet again for billionth time. And since hubby was off today, he asked me to go to lunch with him. : )

My lunch at Coco's. I had pasta, salad, bread with butter and dessert. It was quite good. : )

Noboru had the trio lunch, hamburg, pork slices and karaage with fries and veggie. : )

I like the pic of Noah but Noboru came out blurry because he was moving. Noah had fries and hamburg and some of my pasta. We talked in there for over an hour. Closer to about 1 hour and about 20 minutes. I love staying in tune with my husband and hearing every story he has to share with me. : )

Thursday Noah's swimming class! He usually goes on Saturday's but the A course can go any day of the week and so since B is playing with his friends this Saturday, we took Noah to swim club on Thursday. This is our favorite coach of the entire school, she rocks! : )

She bows to them and they in return bow to her. : )

Wetting your ears!!!! All of the kids have to do that. : )

Is Noah jumping mid air or what? This is like the Matrix, ha ha ha! : )

I love the expression on the coaches kind face! She is so in love with our little Noah Noah!!! : )

He trusts her, he has fun with her! His swimming has grown 10 fold, in the little time he's started coming here!

A belly flop or a leap of faith?! : )

Noah, cruising with the ladies! Ha ha ha! : )

I love this picture of my little guy! He's really grown to be a really sweet soul, a very kind hearted kid who listens extremely well to his coach and gets along with the others in his class.

Dinner Thursday night. Thursday was an extremely busy day, between cleaning the house, going to lunch with the hubster. Swimming class with Noah. And then racing to go get B from school, to drop him off at Kumon and then I ran straight home to prepare dinner. : ) Chicken enchiladas and rice Thursday night. I made plenty so we will have these both Thursday night for dinner and for Friday night for dinner as well. And I like that we mix things up and keep things diverse, some nights, it's Japanese, some nights Chinese, some night's are as American as apple pie and cheeseburgers and some nights are a tray full of enchiladas. Yumm! : )

My meal Thursday night and basically what my meal will be looking tonight, this Friday evening as well. : ) With nice glass of iced tea. After dinner, Noboru showered and bathed with the boys and I showered alone and soaked in the tub for quite a while. I came out steaming hot. And put on jammies. Boys were 90% already falling asleep and went to sleep right away. So, the hubby and I watched TV. And my feet had been tired lately and so he gave me a really nice foot massage with shea butter and everything. I then put socks on my feet and just relaxed under the fuzzy blanket. It has been a really long week around here, but honestly a really lovely week too though. It is now Friday afternoon and the house is done and I am on relax mode now. : ) I am looking forward to this weekend for some rest and relaxation for myself and the family. Umm, this weekend is a 4 day weekend in Japan, however ours for our town is a bit weird since we have our town undokai on Sunday. So B is off Saturday, Undokai is this Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday is no school for Branden. So he will get plenty and plenty of play days in!!! : ) Noboru meanwhile is working this Saturday and Monday and that's okay, so the boys and I will just have a nice quiet weekend here at the house. I imagine the kids in the neighborhood will come to play here of course. Which is fine. : ) Umm what else? Leftover enchildas tonight, yay! So don't have to even make dinner tonight. : )

TV Talk! What shows has everyone gotten into these days? As for me, I am really really into the shows, Cold Case, I really dig that detective Rush. She's quite a character! : ) And I really am deeply into the Ghost Whisperer. I am also into Veronica Marrs but have missed a few episodes lately. I am also deeply into Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives. Thanks to the new Fox Life channel, I have been catching old episodes of the American Idol that I already saw, but so funny to watch again anyway. And have been watching, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I am also into House and Bones as well. Oh yeah and I am really into Prison Break! I love Prison Break! : )

Baking: : This weekend, I am planning to bake 1 dessert for our family to enjoy over the weekend, I am deciding if it should be oatmeal raisin cookies or pumpkin pie! Whatever I don't make, I can make next week anyway so I am not like too worried, ha ha ha. : )

Yochien interview: Noah has his yochien interview with the principal October 16th! Yup talk about coming full circle, just when we thought..."see ya, later yochien!" Ha ha ha, now we are back again for round two? Ha ha ha. : )

Disneyland: We will of course be heading to Disneyland before October 31st to enjoy all of the splendor and fun and decorations they do for Halloween, as you know we indeed go there every single Fall for Halloween and this year is no different. So that has already been set and the day we will go has already been decided! We can't wait! And since we aren't throwing a party for B like I wanted at first, yup, I tried to talk the hubby into doing one you guys, but he's really not a birthday party type hubby, so I guess small quiet family birthdays will always be the way, we do things for our household. No worries about that though at all. : ) But part of B's present is we always take him to Disneyland or Disney Sea, his choice for part of his birthday present. And same for Noah except every time it's Noah's birthday, we seem to go to Guam, lol. Shakes head and wonders why. Oh well, we are looking forward to going to Disneyland sometime before the 31st, yay! : ) Alrighty, I think I did my best to get everyone caught up with us around here. And as always, please have a lovely weekend you guys! : )