Not a whole heck of a lot going on over here!!! Just regular daily living type of stuff! But that's okay, right?! : ) Sunday evening, my husband made us dinner! He made us ebi chili!!! It was so good and I enjoyed sitting in the kitchen talking with Noboru as he cooked. A very good way to end the weekend. : )
Can you believe, I am still at it, you guys? I almost don't want to mention it in fear of ruining my current exercise *mojo* that I have lately. Ha ha ha. : ) : )
Monday hubby took me out to lunch. Since there are no restaurants or anything like that in our tiny town, we settled for the small city-ish type place where Noah goes to yochien at, and we went to Coco's. I had the quesadilla and fries and drink bar. It was good.
Hubby had the hamburg lunch combo. : )
After lunch, we stopped off at the "mom and pop" type grocery store in the smallish city and Noboru bought some small type of eels? Errr or are these fish. Look like eels though to me. Good grief they're ugly though, (shudders) I do know that. LOL. Sorry little fellas!!! :P Anyway he uses these as bait. He saved them for Tuesday when he went fishing for sea bass! : )
After picking up Noah from yochien we swung by a local little canal, this is where Noboru has been keeping his crawfish trap. Now I am not really into the whole fishing and catching stuff category myself, but my husband loves this sorta stuff and so do the boys. Usually I just have one of these types of faces @_@. But no complaints from me though. : )
Yup 2 were caught that day! @_@
Last week when I went to Noah's observation day thing, everyone in the "games group" was handed this.It says the meeting/get together is this coming Friday. So, I will indeed be there this coming Friday at 9:20am to help put some prizes together. Marked on the ol' calendar already. Check, check, check!!! : )
Also Branden's ensoku/tiny country type field trip to the back of our yard. LOL. The rice fields back there is coming up next week, so I picked up some stuff that Branden might be needing for that day. Just some things for the field trip is all. : ) I bought him a nice metal handled net at Beisia/Cainz Home. He has a bamboo one now, but I thought he might need a stronger sturdier one. This was only 250 yen, so it was a great deal. And I know since we live in the inaka, he will get a lot of usage from this, so I am happy about the purchase.: ) Also picked up a see through type plastic bucket for whatever he catches. For the ol' catch of the day!!! : ) This was just 99 yen. And a straw hat, this was right near the fishing and nets. I think this will be good for him to wear. :D
Just the basics. : ) Keeping it simple as always! : )
The hat was a great deal at that price. That's $3.00 for you in America. : ) And with all his playing in the fields they do anyway, he'll get good usage from it anyway. : )
Good to get things crossed off the list!!! Am I right, or am I right?! : ) : ) Let me see, I had Noah's umbrella and Branden's rainboots on my list, right? Well, I bought Noah this basic for school yellow umbrella. It has reflectors and a great place to put his name. And the size is small enough for yochien age.
The price was fantastic at only 498 yen. I felt really smart with this purchase. : )
I pulled out one of my computer made name stickers and stuck his name on the umbrella in 2 places. This place where the name tags go was the first spot. : )
And the handle part was the 2nd place, I placed a name sticker. That way when his umbrella is facing down in the umbrella stand with heaps of other kid umbrellas, it will be easy peasy for me or the other parents to tell which umbrella is which. Anyway, may sound like peanuts to some, but I was pretty glad to get this crossed off my list.: ) Just in time for rainy season! Yay!!! : )
Monday after both the boys came home. I made some cookies and started in on Monday nights dinner.
Branden helped make the Rice a Roni! He actually made this 90% himself. He is such a great kid. Very very helpful. : )
Cookies now done. And oven turned off. Meanwhile I am steaming the broccoli and getting plates served up when I clicked this pic. I made 8 pork chops total. : )
Monday nights simple easy dinner. Again no bells and whistles here. Just simple basic meals. What did we have? Fried pork chops, chicken rice a roni, and broccoli. Some iced mango tea and that was that. Oh yeah and homemade chocolate chip pecan cookies for dessert. : )
Tuesday morning after B left walking to school with friends, and I waved him good bye from the front porch, I went inside, and started in on obento. Leftover city for Noah-chan. And that's okay because it was great. Rice a roni, a fried pork chop that I cut into bite sized pieces, some steamed and buttered and salt and peppered broccoli and some diced up apple and 2 jelly's. The rice a roni I microwaved and placed in there and from start to finish, it was done pretty fast.
I make weekly menu's and sometimes I let the kids choose from the already chosen menu what they would like. Monday night they both agreed the next night we should have..... tacos. So, I said, okay Tuesday night will be taco night then. Tuesday after school, Branden played at Saya-chan's house until 5pm Tuesday. Meanwhile I got dinner all made. Noah meanwhile napped after yochien. At 5pm, Branden came home and we four all had supper.
Beef for the hubby and the boys. And chicken for me and the boys. : )
Dinner at our house last night. Tuesday night's taco night. We have so much leftover that we will be having tacos tonight as well. This is actually a great thing though, because tonight is swim night for the boys. So tacos again will take a load off my mind "dinner wise" tonight. Phew! : )Any other random bits? Well, we purchased Branden's rain boots online they should be here this week. He got bright yellow Crocs rainboots. They're called, Crocs Georgie. LOL. Anyway glad to have gotten his rain boots crossed off my list as well.
Umm Observation family day for us this coming Saturday at Noah's yochien.
My Friday "games gathering" is this coming Friday.
The Terminator 4, starts for us in Japan this coming Saturday!!! We *love* the Terminator at our house. The whole family does. Branden's whole class at ninensei has been gabbing about Terminator 4, for weeks now too. Anyway our family will be going to see it opening day. So this Saturday we will be spending it at the movies watching the Terminator!!! I think they said The Governator wasn't going to be in this movie. Ahhh no....no Arnold! LOL! But that they used computer graphics and added him in a few scenes. I will be curious to see if that's true or not. : ) We will be buying our movie tickets this evening on our way home from swimming. So we have the tickets in our hands and that way we will know we will be able to see the movie opening day. Yay.
Anyway that's basically what our family has been up to over here! Just normal basic, every day type stuff! Nothing too major or anything, but just wanted to touch bases with you all anyway!!! : )
Have a fantastic week all of you!!! : )
You know you live in the countryside when..... on observation day a few people actually show up to visit their kids in their trusty farming equipment!!! Ha ha ha! Isn't this cute? I love living in the inaka, so this just made me smile!!!! This pic was taken at Branden's elementary school!!!
We went inside the school and walked to his classroom. All set to hear music, there was a sign at the door, because of "observation day" they switched all the classes around. @_@ Lucky for us though, we didn't let that stop us from enjoying watching Branden for PE though! : )
Go kids go!!! : )
And their team won and they cheered and threw up their jersey's in the air!!! It was pretty cool. We enjoyed Branden's observation class a lot on Wednesday. : )
Wednesday evening we BBQ'ed. Not a big fancy thing at all, just a small super simple easy thing. I was set to make curry since it was Wednesday and knew we'd be getting home late because it being swim night and all. But hubby suggested yakiniku. And I agreed. Geeze, I sure am agreeable. :P We prepped all the meats after getting back from B's observation and it marinated all the time we were at swim school with the boys. And when we got home, Noboru just kicked on the BBQ, got it started and we fried up the meat. A real easy peasy meal. : )
The chicken went on first. And yup that's Noah about to ride his bike on the back terrace. : )
Like I said, it was very simple. Just chicken, lots of beef and a bit of pork. We had lettuce leaves that we wrapped our meat and rice with. Also had some kimchi but other then that....that's it. It was pretty basic, but pretty good all in the same. : )
Thursday was observation day for Noah. And this was his lunch. This was the same beef from the BBQ the night before. Leftovers are great, aren't they? : ) So, I made Noah, a beef bowl and steamed broccoli, some peaches and I threw in some red cherries since I knew the other yochien mom's would be eyeballing my obento. :P Since it was observation day. But no, I didn't do anything extra special or anything, just the same type of normal simple lunches they always take. : ) Some mother's went way out and made faces on their rice balls, faces on their eggs, faces on everything in their entire lunches, ha ha ha. And some mom's just kept things simple but really nice. It was interesting and fun to see the differences. : )
Noah playing with a pal! : )
And then Noah going down the slide with another friend.
Last pic from Noah's observation day. It was 3 hours of observation and then a 30 minute PTA meeting after that. The meeting went pretty good. First we separated into groups by class. Red badge, pink badge, blue badge etc. Then they asked do we want to work the games, for the summer festival? Or perhaps, work the craft area during the festival or work the food stand during the festival? Your choice out of the 3. I knew what my choice was since a week or so ago. I signed up for the games though officially yesterday. After that, we all split into 3 groups, games, crafts or food. And all badges were mixed this time. I got myself into the games group. Rieko-san, Mayuko-san, Jogo-san and a bunch of others and myself. We talked about what games we will be doing. And then we talked about the prizes we will give away. We will be making the prizes. The example was a purse made from a little plastic pep bottle. Kids really do like stuff like that. So, we will be getting together our "game group" sometime and making those prizes. It looks like a lot of work ahead to get this summer festival in order. But in the end it's going to be a lot of fun and totally worth it. : )
A few of the misc. things I had to get at the store. 2 hankies for Noah. Branden has like 12, just because he's been getting them since his yochien days (you know, a few here, a few there they really do add up through the years). And Noah's been only using 4. Either he would reuse one that I rewashed again during the week or he'd borrow a clean one of Branden's. So, last week, I just bought Noah 2 more and now I don't have to worry anymore about it. Load off my mind. LOL. What else? B needed some new summer inner shirts in 130cm. And 2 toothbrushes for Branden, 1 for home use and 1 for school use. Orange Dove face wash for me. I usually use the green tea one but wanted to give this one a shot. And VHS tapes. I have been getting ready to send off some video tapes of the boys. 1 video to my dad, 1 video to my mom in California and 1 video to grandma Mitsuko. I have taped all sorts of stuff, just the kids singing, talking, meal time, running in the backyard is on tape. I also brought the video cam to swim school, so that way even though they can't be here in person they can at least see them swim and sorta feel like they are here. : ( I should make DVD's, they'd be better and send them instead but I am sorta too lazy for it. Whoops, ah well the VHS are good enough, they enjoy them and that's what counts. : )
Cheap price, I love the price. : ) I sewed his name on these already. : )
Last week the boys each passed a new level in swimming. They each worked really really hard at it, and they really did deserve to pass. : )
Noah, you're improving, keep it up kiddo!!! : )
And Branden, you wanted SO badly to pass to become a level 6! I know firsthand how badly you wanted this honey! Each week I watch you swim the butterfly! Going in and out of the water like you do, working so hard at this! Well done, you earned this!
This time table sheet was attached to your certificate Branden. Your time is for the 8 years and under category on the left, since you're only 7 years old. Good luck baby!!!! I know you can do it. Good luck in level 6 today. You can make the time, I have faith in you! : )
Last Friday, Noah got out of school at his regular 1:50pm time. And we picked up Branden at 2:30pm. We picked him up 20 minutes early. And headed to Narita. Friday was Noah's every 6 month's teeth cleaning. Like most kids, both of the boy's get their teeth cleaned every 6 month's at the dentist office and get a thorough checkup. The boys dentist is awesome because she's a specialized children's dentist. Though there's nothing wrong with a general dentist I am sure, but we just like that kids are her specialty, the mini kid's size door the kids go through to go in the back to get their check ups is cute. Her happy yellow waiting room that's filled with as many kids books and magazines as there are "mama type magazines", and the waiting room even has an electric car and mini kids sized chairs as well as normal sized chairs for us adults.: ) She's also really really good. Besides her waiting room, she also has state of the art dental equipment. Like for example she doesn't even have a drill because she feels the noise scares kids so, she has a laser (not that the boy's have ever had any cavities needing to be filled but she's just really modern like that, really up to date with everything and this puts my mind at ease a lot). I remember when we first saw her a few years back. When she first saw both the kids for the first time. Like she said to both B and Noah, this is what I am going to do and squirted the water on their hand with her weird water squirting instrument and she said "now I will squirt this water in your mouth, is that okay?" And then she said, this is a suction and it just sucks up excess moisture in your mouth and she suction cupped their hands first with it and said now I will do this inside your mouth. She was very detailed and her care for the kids was amazing. Her whole philosophy is she doesn't want the kids to have a bad dental visit or to grow up hating the dentist. I admit, when we first met her I thought, okay she has a philosophy?@_@ I almost did an eye roll. But then after seeing her with the boys and how excellent she is and also how gentle and kind she is. I totally like her! Trust her. All of my husbands coworkers go to her too for their kids dental check ups too. She's like the best in this area. Sure there's about 50 other dentsits about 10 times closer to our house but the quality of her care and the way she is with kids is amazing. So yeah for us it's worth the drive. Noah got a big thumbs up from the dentist for his check up last week and loved his cleaning, he will see her again in December. And Branden's cleaning is at the end of this week. Neither of the boys have ever had a cavity or anything yet. Knock on wood they won't. : ) Anyway as soon as B gets his cleaning this week we won't have to think about the dentist until the end of the year, phew. : )
The pic above this pic, was of us at Don Quijote, we went there after Noah's Friday dentist appointment. And then after that we went and had Chinese food for supper. Friday's are awesome because I feel like I was busy during the week. Doing whatever I did, whether I cleaned, or visited with friends, went to swim club or whatever. I feel like Friday, I feel relief, relieved in that I survived another week and now my weekend is my reward sorta, dykwim? I don't have to wake up early the next day. The kids don't have to go to school. Everyone can sorta take a load off for a while. Let our hair down so to speak. So yeah, I really look forward to Fridays. Okay now I feel like a giant nerd for just saying that, but it's honestly how I feel.
Oh and we didn't really buy anything at Don Quijote, we walked around. Don't they always have some of the coolest stuff? Anyway we just bought, these curry senbais and I bought a bottle of my favorite lemon water, called French Kiss. I really don't drink water as much as I should (shame on me!!!) but I drink this a lot. I *really* like it.
Do you know what this is? In America growing up, after I'd see the dentist, my dentist would always let me pick a toy from the treasure chest and he'd always give me a new toothbrush with a mini toothpaste and it had a few of these tablets that if your teeth weren't brushed properly they'd show a darker pink color. Anyway at the boy's dentist, they also get toys and you have a choice of the red tablets or this red liquid, it's the same stuff but this bottle lasts longer. Meaning this tiny bottle of red/pink stuff last a full 6 month's, much longer then the tablets do. And I let the boy's do this once a week. It makes them aware of, IF they are brushing properly or not. They love this stuff. Go figure. Actually every night they ask, "can we use the red stuff?" I am kidding you not, they love that stuff. @_@ Ha ha ha.
Saturday, was a chilly day, so why not make chili??!! It also rained off and on in bits. So we stayed home and just enjoyed the weekend. Saturday, I made cornbread and chili. Toppings of red cheddar, and sour cream. Hubby likes his with sour cream and I just like mine with cheese. :P
A pic of the cut up corn bread and the cake the boys and I made Saturday. : )
I really like Jamie Oliver's cooking shows a lot. I don't think I have seen them all granted, but I have seen most of the older "The naked Chef" series he did. Then the other newerish ones, forget what that show was called. Was it called, "Oliver's Twist"? Anyway I watched that one too and really enjoyed it. Also caught the show where he trained some kids to cook. And lately, thanks to satellite TV here in Japan, I am now catching the newer show called...."Jamie at Home" I like his simple way of cooking, simple is definitely more my style. I watched him the other night, make a dressing with just olive oil, fresh squeezed lemon, salt and pepper. His simple non fancy shmancy way in the kitchen inspires me a lot.
Jamie at Home. Watched episode #7 and #8 on Saturday evening. Before throwing the boys into the shower and tucking them into bed. And hubby and I meanwhile got ourselves ready to enjoy American Idol.
A little blinded by the sun, he was! But sure enough June 1st, summer uniform was ready to go!!!!
Also, June 1st, I made niku jaga, it was just a great simple meat and potatoes kinda dinner. : )
Posts
