So what have we been up to, since last I blogged? I'll tell ya.. : ) Let me get you all caught up real quick. Last Monday, Branden had told me that he needed to bring his bicycle to school on Wednesday. Because his grade is learning bike safety. Okay fair enough. So, I went and wrote that on the calender. And so last Wednesday, Noboru loaded up Branden's bicycle into the minivan. Meanwhile the granny next door was also loading "the boy next doors" bike into her minivan as well, since his mom's car is too small" my car is too small too, so I get that..... we good morning-ed with the neighbors, same as usual last Wednesday while we all loaded bikes into our minivans. I meanwhile went back in the house preparing Noah for yochien. In the afternoon, I prepped for the BBQ. And then after that but still in the afternoon, I swung around picked up Noah at the new time of 2pm. And then switched to the minivan from my red car, so we could pick up Branden and his bike from school. Loaded the bike up and off we went home. Noboru was getting the grill lit. 
Fresh veggies to be thrown on the grill. 
Meat that marinated all day. 
Both Branden and Noah played in the backyard. 
Side note that extra sod/grass. Noboru says, he is watering it every other day but he says he will fill it...in certain areas. So.... 
They played. 
Noboru BBQ-ed. 
Then Branden remembered he had a last bit of homework he could finish up while waiting for dinner, so since the weather was so nice, he did his last bits of homework on the play gym. 
It was really nice to just relax and enjoy some yakiniku. Everyone relaxed. Comfy clothes. Just enjoying our meal. 
We heard every detail of the bike safety class. How 2 kids didn't bring their bikes. But everyone else did. @_@. Who had small bikes and who had very big bikes. We heard the whole bike run down. ; ) It was fun. Meanwhile we heard from Noah how school went, how the new red badges are adjusting. How he's helping them. Dinner was nice. 
It was so nice, we decided to do it again the next day. So Thursday evening we fired up the grill one more time for some burgers.
Both Branden and Noah played soccer while waiting for some burgers. 
Another apple crisp. I was going to make it on Friday but I made it Thursday instead after I got out of my drivers class. 
Burgers were all done and fries. The boys came inside and washed their hands before dinner. 
Chargrilled cheeseburger and fries. And apple crumble/crisp for dessert. 
Friday ran to the store. Spring time every one's eating lighter. More fruits, more salads. And smoothie season starts for many of us. 
Says to just add milk. The kids like theirs that way. And also, thanks to my smoothie "cookbook" we've had for years...we mix things up and make all sorts of interesting ones....sometimes we use fruit juice, frozen berries and fresh bananas and make all sorts of types. It's fun. 
They have some really cute napkins and for pretty cheap, 98 yen a pack. Figured never know when we could use one. So, bought these. They even had different styles too. But I just picked 3. 
Saturday, Branden had school. So all the kids would need an obento and a thermos since no lunch lady is there over the weekend. So, I sent him to school Saturday with this. Karaage, rice balls, fries and veggies. And cake. 
Saturday at 1:20pm parents were to be there for an hour of observation day followed by a meeting. Noboru had to work. So it was just Noah and I who showed up for Branden. They gave speeches on rice fields, and country life, agriculture etc. And bugs found in the countryside. The kids worked on their speeches for 2 days. Branden practiced that speech to us many many many @_@ many times. : ) he knew it by heart and I think we knew it by heart too.: ) So Saturday afternoon rolls around and the class starts with the speeches. We (Noah and I) heard 20 kids give basically the same speech. I ohhed and ahhed every child's speech and made sure I clapped loudly. And so did all the other parents. We cheered them all on! Noah stood next to me the whole time. However there were 2 other little boys. One is a little boy same age as Noah and they'll both be ichinensei next year. The other little boy looked a little older and a whole lot taller. Anyway, K-kun's little brother went over to the bigger kid to play and the bigger kid punched K-kun's little brother square in the chest area. @_@ K-kun's parents didn't look too pleased. And the other mother apologized and stuff. but, yeah that was the stuff going on while the speeches were going on. Finally the speeches were done. Followed by a very short meeting and we were done. Phew. The weather Saturday? So warm, almost dare I say...hot. We were honestly roasting in that classroom. As soon as we got home, the boys changed clothes. And they got their bikes out and played in the backyard. 
See the lady in the rice fields behind our house? Rice planting season is on it's way and every evening we hear that nice sound of frogs. I love that sound. Very peaceful. 
Noah pulling his bike up to the terrace. And wearing shorts and feeling much better then wearing that fleece and jeans he was wearing at observation an hour earlier. : ( Sorry Noah. Poor little guy was so hot. Noah's also wearing his brothers old flip flops in the pic. It was such a nice day Saturday. 
If they're out in the front yard or riding around the neighborhood they have to wear a helmet. But for just being in the backyard and going in a circle, I don't enforce it. 
Hi Noah! 
Smiling faces running throughout the backyard on a Saturday afternoon. 
While the boys were enjoying themselves in the backyard. I went inside to start dinner. Chicken chow mein/ sara udon. I like veggies and lots of them. 
A nice quiet dinner for us Saturday evening. We watched one movie of course and popped popcorn as usual. 
Sunday and both the boys uniforms outside drying. But if you look close you'll see some granny types in the rice field. 
Three ladies chatting before starting on some very hard work. 
After breakfast, we decided what to do. We decided to make it a lazy Sunday. The boys brushed their teeth but didn't even comb their hair or get a fresh change of clothes in the am like they usually do. I let them have a lazy day, especially considering we only had 1 weekend day, since B went to school the day before... we sorta could use it. I had a pony tail on and hanging round the house clothes too. So we opened the Monopoly game. 
The game was fun. ; ) We each had property with houses on them and some of us even switched to hotels after. We winced when we landed on the others property. We loved playing this. It was a great relaxing way to spend a Sunday. 
After the game was finished. Branden and Noah started playing Wii. I did some treadmill. And then I decided to get dinner in the oven. That seasoning packet for herb chicken is really inexpensive and I get that at my local Cainz. 
About to go in the oven. While the chickens roasted, I went back on the treadmill again to try and catch up with some of the ladies on there. 
A heaping amount of mashed potatoes. 
Roasted chickens, stuffing, gravy and green beans. 
Sunday family dinner at our house yesterday evening. 
The kids and I decided to make choco bananas after our roast chicken dinner. 
We had so much fun making those last night. 
And I was happy the boys each ate 2 bananas each. All in all, it was a pretty good week. Good bbq's. Nice days spent outside in the backyard. A nice observation day. And Sunday was nice with a family game of Monopoly and a nice chicken dinner, then winding down with some choco bananas. The boys went up to shower. And I showered after. They went to dreamland and snoozeland. And I went back downstairs after tucking them in. 
With 2 good sized pork roasts, I thinly sliced them last night around 10pm, and then fried them and then put them in the crock pot over night. Tonight we're having niku jaga. After I put them in the crock pot, I channel surfed and watched some stuff until 11pm. Before heading to dreamland myself.What else....Oh yes my drivers renewal class. I went to that Thursday morning. It was really good. It wasn't bad at all. There were 9 other people in there, if you count me, 10 of us total. Everyone awake, no sleepers or nappers like Noboru mentioned. ; ) We listened, the man showed slides and we flipped through the booklet. He'd say, turn to page 5, and so we did. And he'd go over that. And then after that, we watched a movie. About 5 minutes long film. Then he said we had a 10 minute break. I went to pee but I came right back anyways because I didn't wanna risk being late or anything. Then we flipped through some more pages. Completed a survey about what "type" of driver are we. Just simply circled the one matching our driving style. And we didn't turn the surveys in. And that was it. It was 2 hours long. It was painless. It was really really not bad at all. For many of them, there license was ready right on the spot. But I went and got my appointment right away, a bit early so, my license will be ready first week of May, I'll just go to the police station in the city nearest us and pick it up.
I'm thinking about starting on the garden soon. Trying to decide to start it before Golden Week or after GW. Hmmm.
TV Talk: Dexter season 5 started for us in Japan. I've been happy that has started. What else. I am loving the new season of America's Next Top Model on Fox Life. Still watching House MD and Bones. Law and Order SVU is also getting interesting. Also was happy the new (to us) season of the Ghost Whisperer has started.
As for what the boys are watching. Branden and Noah are still really into Ben 10 on Cartoon Network. The Pink Panther, Tom and Jerry. And they are also loving Phinneas and Ferb on The Disney Channel.
Music, I've downloaded lately...
E.T.....Katy Perry (featuring Kanye West)
Perfect, by Pink.
Yeah x3...by Chris Brown
Price Tag...Jessie J (ft B.O.B)
I'm sure there are other songs, I've downloaded recently but those are the songs that come to mind right now.
I'm turning Noah's bedroom inside out sometime this week. I want to get a jump on the Spring cleaning. So, will start with 1 room at a time. And will start with his room first since Branden's room is fairly clean and so is mine. Also baking that cheesecake this week too.
What else....anything else to say...(racking brain) oh yes, I'm going to lunch twice this week with my girlfriends. I'm really looking forward to that. Okay...I think that's all I have to say for now. : )
Ever since the earthquake, at least once a week if not more, I get a question from someone asking where our family lives compared to the Fukushima power plant or what's the air like where we are. One of my cousin's even asked me, for my town name so he could look at it on google earth the other week. @_@ I know this comes from...just a lot of folks being honestly worried. And so I took this picture this morning from the Geiger counter, I check every morning that shows the readings of the radiation particles found in the air. Now if you live in Japan, you probably can figure this map out easy peasy. But for those of you not in Japan. I'll explain some. Now if you look at the bottom left area you'll see Yokohama on the left side of the bay and then on the other side of that bay it says Chiba. I do not live around those areas at all. We used to. Okay...so now look back at the picture up above and go towards the right you'll see 3 names...Narita...Sanmu and Katori. We live someplace (not gonna say exactly) but we live someplace between those areas. On the bright green countryside colored area on the map up above. Our area has been testing same as everywhere else and does daily readings but our air is so clean it isn't even registering. Why our air is coming out so clean, you know. I don't even question it anymore, I just am thankful it is, what it is. And breeze wise we seem to be located in a very good spot because nothing has gone our way (knock on wood it stays that way) and we do check daily. We check the Geiger counter every morning. So, anyway hopefully this will give my family a sigh of relief at least, reduce some of their worry and stress about us here.: ( But hopefully the visual up above will ease my family's worry even by a little. Hopefuly Tepco can get a better handle of the reactor soon and then everyone can breath a huge sigh of relief as well. 
Nope not even registering a thing down here. We don't live on the light green area but on the dark bright green area. Anyway, in other news. The city nearest us, they got their water turned back on last Wednesday. That was the happy talk last Wednesday during Noah's swim class. So that's a positive good thing. Also the roads in the city nearest us are now about 50% fixed, so while they're not totally done, they're really working hard to get things back to normal. Life is pretty much back to normal here in our part of Chiba. The cherry blossoms are blooming everywhere and me seeing them this year..... gives me hope. That Japan will recover and rebuild and be better then ever! 
Last Friday, I baked an apple crisp/apple crumble. 
It came out pretty good. I'm planning to bake one this Friday as well. 
Last Saturday we had family movie night. 
This Monday, after I sent both Branden and Noah to school. I ran to the laundry mat. I did everyone's bedding from our house. 
I was the only one in there. yep, just me, myself and I. 30 minutes for the wash and 8 minutes for the dryer. I read a magazine while I waited. 
Hmm, half day at Noah's school. He gets/got out at 11:40am. And I just threw the laundry into the dryer, glanced at the clock and realized. I was really pushing it.... time wise. After they dried, I went directly with blankets in the car and everything to the yochien. I was right on time. Phew. Took Noah to Mc D's afterwards for 1 shaka shaka chicken (100 yen) and 1 cheeseburger. He ate watching cartoons while I went upstairs and made the beds. I came down and boiled 2 eggs for myself and I had an egg salad sandwich for lunch. 
I haven't blogged about my healthier 2011 lately. Or weight loss. I've not stopped with the exercising at all. Have been going strong since January 10th is when I started Spark. I have lost a total of 13 pounds since January. I am in a few groups on there and spend a lot of my free time (if I get any) on Spark. One group I belong to, keeps track of their "fitness minutes" sort of compete against one another in the group, who logs more fitness minutes. We're all friends, so we are obviously actually not enemies or rivals, we're actually motivating each other. I was in 4th place when I took the picture a few dyas ago, at 465 fitness minutes for April. And right now, I have about 550, this pic was taken a day or so ago. 
Here it says I am ranked #4 for my group. So, it keeps me motivated a lot. And I actually feel happy waking up in the morning and see...OMG! So many of my friends worked out while I was asleep, they knocked me to 6th place! A couple of the girls will leave me an email or a PM (private message) saying....catch up! And so all day if I get bits of free time here and there, I will be treadmilling or Doing the Wii, or Jillian Michaels. and then by the time we're winding down here at night in Japan. I'll leave a little cheeky note saying....I caught up and passed ya! Now it's your turn. And so we sort of feed off each other and motivate each other in a positive way. Last night before I went to sleep I was in the #2 spot. But this morning I was knocked back to #4 again. ; ) Anyway...enough talk about that. Nutshell on that...my exercising is going great, my portions are doing great too. 
These are yummy. I've been on a yuzu eating kick lately. Noboru doesn't care for these so much. But I love these. They've been my 1 guilty pleasure. I'll find myself go to Yacs drugstore and get a pack or two once a week. 
At the first day of school. Noah brought home a sakura. Because now he is in the final year and the final class, the sakura (cherry blossom) class. 
These little things I am saving into Noah's yochien box. So he can see when he's older. : ) 
Friendship letters. Noah gets so many of these at yochien. Which means he is also writing many of these in return. @_@ Many trips to the Daiso for me, to buy paper sets for both the boys. The funny things is watching the progress of these letters. When they were red badges, they wrote mostly pictures and no words. Then last year they wrote crazy (just learning to write type words; ) And now this year, they all seem to write beautifully. I do save all these letters for him in his yochien box. Same as I saved Branden's. Though now Branden likes to keep his locked in his desk. ; ) 
Noah was selected to be one of the guardian angels yesterday (that's what it says on this paper) for today if he could show up early at school by 8:30am so he can help the new kids get adjusted at yochien. He's a sweet kid, Noah is. Very kind and very helpful. So anyway he will be doing that this morning. Only a handful of kids were chosen for the job. He was so proud being asked. And I recall when it was Noah who was the little one with a guardian angel a few years back. Anyway what else.....anything last minute to add or throw in here, hmmm. (thinking) Oh yes, I nearly forgot.....
You know, one phrase that I often heard growing up is, "children grow in a blink of an eye". Sure I heard it often but I never really understood the true meaning of it, until I was a mother myself and had kids of my own. It really does seem on some level Branden was just a babe yesterday. And Noah too. Don't get me wrong, I don't long for them to be tiny babies, and I am enjoying the age they are and all the tiny steps of independence they get as they grow older. And now...it seems like just the other day I was at the computer and writing about Noah's very first day as a yellow badge (pre-nensho). Then red badge and last years pink badge. Wow it's been quite a fun ride. ; ) On Wednesday of this week, a yochien meeting and then everyone were given a new packet/envelop with new badges inside. I knew the color that would be inside. I mean of course.... my older son went to this school too, I know the drill. However it still slightly took my breath away opening the envelop. To see those 2 blue badges. All brand new, smelling of brand new plastic. You know the smell. ; ) We made new name labels for the badges. And also washed all his school stuff. And put name labels on all of Noah's new crayons and wow he gets to use markers this year! How exciting. Last year they used only crayons. A marker milestone at the yochien! ; ) New name stickers on the glue and last minute whatnots. And he was ready. Noboru had the dates wrong. Noah's first day of school would be April 8th, so Friday, yesterday. 
Oh my lovely Noah. How ever did you get so big, so fast?! Bittersweet I tell you. So Friday morning, we were ready. Branden nicely sent to school first. All of Noah's things all nicely packed up in the gekan. All his school supplies etc. He had a ham and cheese omelet, a small scoop of rice and a slice of toast and a chocolate milk. It was just the start of the school year ceremony day. So he got off at 11:40am (for the blue badges/sakura class) 11:20 for the bargumi and 11:30 for the yurigumi (what Noah used to be). I took him to school. Same sensei as the red badge year, and pink badge year (nensho and nenchu). The Yayoi (sp?) sensei/ We love her! And I think the feelings mutual. ; ) Remember the cupcakes I gave her the same ones from the school bazaar bake sale. ; ) So yeah we're happy she's going to be the final yochien sensei for Noah. 
An update on us. The day after we got back. I had to go to the police station. My license needs renewing and since I've never had a ticket, I just needed to take an eye exam and fill out a form at the police station in the city Noah's yochien is in. So, I did that and I now have a drivers ed class to take mid April some time. What else. Branden needed to get new glasses his old ones looked like they were getting a bit too small. Also, do you recall how Noboru took big hunks of grass off the back yard? How when I was hanging clothes I nearly tripped fell and killed myself because of those lovely missing grass areas. Well he said since Spring has Sprung. He wanted to get some sod/grass. So, we went to the local DIY. The one with the horrible crack in the base structure of the building. Anyway it was being sold for 50 yen each pack. @_@ Why? I asked the lady. She said, because the city doesn't have water yet still and the grass is basically dying. So instead of just throwing it away...if they can sell it to someone who can take care of it. That would be best. I said...wow sounds like a sad way to buy grass...I don't think we should. I scrunched my face looking at Noboru asking what he thought. She interrupted and said just one more time....if it doesn't get bought it will be thrown away. Hmmm. Fair enough. So we bought it. And will promise to give it a good home. Weird way to end up with grass, I know. But yeah that's the story. 
We took it home. 
Our town has it's own water well, so we watered it and it's growing now and thriving. So I guess nice story afterall. ; ) 
We took Branden to the eye doctor. The exam itself took about an hour. Then we went to the glass store. His frames pretty much look exactly the same but they're for adults now. 
This canal in that small city nearest us. They used to have little boats all up and around but now the canals have all but dried up. 
The yogurt has returned to the stores for us here in the countryside in Chiba. 
Have been buying lots of frozen veg or veg grown in far far away places. ; ) 
As you can see no limit 1 milk signs. The milk shortage has lifted where I live. But then we live in the countryside. Foods pretty much back to normal here. 
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