Birthday Boy

Our baby boy turned six years old yesterday!

His big day started with his kindergarten birthday celebration.  He had really been looking forward to this.  I went to school to join the party.  It was very sweet.  I was really impressed by how special they make the birthday child feel and with how they incorporate kindergarten curriculum into the event.

Before we could get to the birthday party, however, we met for morning assembly to celebrate Setsubun, or the bean-throwing festival.  The whole lower school went out on the field to throw beans at the grade six students, who were wearing oni (demon) masks.

Back in montessori, Beaver takes his place up front as the honored child.

When he got home after school, I had filled the living room with balloons.  This has become Beaver's birthday tradition over the past couple of years.

He requested spaghetti and meatballs for his birthday dinner, but he just couldn't wait any longer after dinner to open his presents, so we took a present-opening break before birthday cake.

He asked for chocolate cake, which I made, but I thought it would be fun to surprise him with a ninjago cake.  I should have asked.  He was initially disappointed because "it's not all chocolately!"  I think he liked the cake well enough after he had some time to adjust.  

Happy happy birthday darling boy!

In lieu of a party with friends, I decided that we would do a special fun family activity the day after Beaver's birthday, since it fell on a Friday this year.  I'll try to follow up with a post about our activity today, but I'm emotionally spent, and just not up to writing about it tonight.  Suffice to say, it was a total bust!

Pocket Art

I am all the time finding little papers like this around the house - usually folded up into tiny squares because they have been in someone's pocket.  Depicting anything from stick men to epic battle scenes.  I don't dare throw them out, since the resident artist remembers and asks for them from time to time and I've made that mistake before.  Perhaps I'll get a container of some sort and start a collection.

Oshogatsu

Oshogatsu is the Japanese New Year.  One way that Japanese celebrate New Year is making and eating mochi.  We've recently joined up with the Kobe ward, and yesterday they were making mochi for oshogatsu.  We've always been curious about it, so we went to the church to join in the fun.

First you have a wooden bowl and mallets that are heated with scalding hot water to keep them at a constant temperature while pounding the rice, and also to keep them from sticking to the rice, I imagine.  A special kind of extra-sticky rice is cooked and then placed in the bowl.

Mike wielding his mallet

The rice is then pounded with mallets into a sticky, somewhat gelatinous mass.  We were told it is good for couples to pound together, so Mike and I went at it.

Then the kids took a turn.

After the rice is sufficiently pounded, it is coated in corn or potato starch and formed into soft little cakes - often filled with sweet bean or some other filling.  The ones at the church were filled with sweet bean and strawberries.  (We requested some with only strawberries for the kids!)  There was also mochi with ginger, some coated with a soybean powder and sugar, and some wrapped around cheese, dipped in soy sauce and wrapped in seaweed.  We actually liked it plain, but the Japanese people thought that was strange!

The really good mochi pounders get into a nice pounding rhythm.  Mike, Chris, and Bro. Mizuno give us a nice demonstration:

Happy New Year

Some school/work breaks are better than others.  Sometimes it is so pleasant to have all of my family home all day, to sleep in, to have no definite responsibilities or plans for each day.  I have to say that this break has not been one of our best.  The kids have been picking at each other.  Bear, at almost 11 years, has been acting like a pre-teen.  The last couple of days have been highly unproductive.  It's possible that I have even gotten on Mike's nerves, although he isn't the type to say so.  I'm not dreading the return to school tomorrow.

I've been particularly challenged lately to get my elder child to just be nice to his younger brother.  He gets irritated by Beaver's immaturity and eagerly jumps on any opportunity to assert his authority, and then feels offended and misunderstood when I come to Beaver's defense.  It's a delicate balance beam I am walking on!  What Bear doesn't understand is that, unfortunately for him (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the tenor of their relationship rests more heavily on his shoulders, simply by virtue of being the oldest.  It is certainly true that Beaver is not always the innocent victim, but I'm sure that if Bear made an effort to be nice, Beaver would generally follow suit.  

This morning I sent Bear to take a shower.  After a satisfactory amount of resistance and stinkerlyness, he declared that he wanted to take a bath instead.  Fine with me.  I got Beaver dressed, with plans to bathe him before bed, and then got in the shower myself.  Before I even made it into the shower, I heard Beaver knock, knock, knocking at the bathroom door.
"I changed my mind that I want to take a bath with Bear."  He declared.
Of course he did.  And of course Bear didn't want him to.
"What did Bear say?" I asked.
"He said no!  But I want to take a bath right now!"
"I'm taking a shower, sweetie.  I'll talk to Bear when I get out, but maybe he wants to take a bath by himself."
"But I already have my shirt off!"
"Beaver, I'm already in the shower.  We'll talk about it when I get out!"

So, I continue with my shower, and when I turn the water off, Beaver is still knocking on the door.  Probably has been the entire time I've been washing my hair.

He responds to my inquiry with hope in his voice. "This time Bear said 'Maybe'!"
I hear him running back to the kid's bathroom, and then returning. "He said if I know what is one times one, then I can come in!"
"One times one is one."
Swift footsteps down the hall.  Angry footsteps coming back.
"He says I can't come in because you told me!"

I slip on my bathrobe and open the door to discuss to situation.  Beaver is outside the door, already stripped of clothing, ready to get in the bath.

"Listen, honey.  You just stay in here and leave Bear alone for a few minutes while I dry my hair.  By the time I'm done, maybe he will be ready to let you in."

Beaver complies, and once I'm done with my hair, I go to ask Bear if Beaver can come in the bath now.  "I guess." he responds, very unenthusiastically.

Beaver happily climbs in the tub, but it isn't long before the drama starts again.  He wants the robot that Bear is playing with.  This time I'm squarely on Bear's side.

"Beaver, Bear was already playing with the robot.  You can't come into his bath and then take the toy he has."

Angry protests, angry defenses.  Beaver declares that he doesn't want to take a bath if he can't have the robot.  I offer to get him out.  No, he doesn't want that either.  He just wants to sit in the bath and be angry.  Bear is snapping back at him with derision.  I sigh and go back to my room.  Why can't they just get along?  As I put away laundry, I am formulating the lecture Bear is going to get later.  Not an angry lecture, just a discussion of how he has more responsibility and he sets the example, and friends will come and go in his life, but his brother will be his brother always, and all those things that I'm sure he doesn't want to hear.

Then I hear Beaver laughing.  Bear is playing with the soap - letting it slip out of his hands and then making a big show of trying to find it and catch it in the soapy water, but it always slips away again.  Beaver is laughing harder.  For the next hour and a half, they remain in the bathtub, having a fabulous time.  When they finally get out, I have two clean and happy boys.  A magical combination.

Maybe it was just that Bear started the game with the soap for himself.  Or maybe it was an actual attempt to cheer his brother up.  Whatever it was, I am proud of him, and you can be sure he escaped a lecture of any kind.  We'll save that for another day.  Or maybe, just maybe, he doesn't really need it at all.

Palau

Many years ago, I read an article in National Geographic, or some such magazine, or perhaps it was a show I watched on Discovery or some such channel.  It told of an isolated lake on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean with jellyfish that, in the absence of predators, had evolved without stinging tentacles.  Because of this evolution, visitors to the island could snorkel in the lake - perhaps the only place on earth where one can safely swim with jellyfish!  It must have made an impression on me, because I have remembered it all these years.  I never imagined I would be in a position to actually visit that place.  Now here I am in Japan, and it turns out I am not so far from that tropical island chain.  We were reintroduced to the idea of visiting Palau by one of Mike's colleagues, and so we boarded a plane last Wednesday to take us to Palau and the Rock Islands.

First morning in Palau

Kayaking and snorkeling in Nikko Bay

The water in Milky Way is this beautiful, milky blue color because of the limestone clay beneath it.

Rumor has it that the clay is good for your skin.  Our boat driver dove down to scoop some into a bucket for us to try out.  He said that clay is the reason he always looks 19. :)

The main event: Jellyfish Lake!

It actually creeped me out a little.  I didn't like the feeling of brushing up against jellyfish as I swam.

The Drop-Off!  It's a real place!

"Hey, I know what that is!  Sandy Plankton told me!"

 You think I look good in snorkeling gear?  Well just wait until you see me...

with salt-water drenched riding in a speed boat hair!  

Mike took Bear scuba diving...

with black-tip sharks!

Mike also went diving by himself.

Palau isn't actually a beach destination, but the one beach on the main island is lovely.

Our final activity.  Beaver was nervous to shake flippers with the dolphin, but Bear was happy to get right down there.

So, along with the monkey onsen in Nagano, I have now visited two of what I refer to as "National Geographic Places".  Palau was great, but I actually felt a little tropiced out by the time we left, and I'm happy to be back in temperate (currently cold!) Japan. 

We love being able to take our kids on trips like this, but feeding Beaver is enough of a challenge at home.  He pretty much ate nothing but french fries all week.  Once I forced him to eat a piece of pineapple from our Hawaiian pizza.  ("Not cooked pineapple!  It tastes like ham!")  That may be the only bit of fruit he had the whole trip.  Thankfully, the hotel had french toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast, so at least he started the days off right.  I'm also glad to be back home where I feel like he is getting a bit of nourishment.

Merry Christmas!

It was an unusual Christmas for us this year, since we departed Palau at 3:00 am Christmas morning.  Christmas Eve we read the Christmas story and sang songs in our hotel room, and then went to bed about 9:00 for a couple hour nap before getting up to go to the airport at 12:30.  We arrived back home about noon.  At one point I had suggested emailing to see if Santa could come a day late, so the kids were happy to find that he had already made his delivery!

It was a lego ninjago Christmas at our house this year!  And Bear, who has always been a cuddler, got the sheepskin rug he has been coveting.  We spent the rest of the day doing not much of anything - except the boys built all their lego sets and Bear has already finished one of his books.  They must have been running on Christmas adrenaline and sugar, but Mike and I were pretty beat.  We had a great vacation, but we're glad to be back home!

Thanksgiving Day, Thanksgiving Day! Oh what a wonderful, wonderful day!

Remember that song, my siblings?  Where did it come from?

It's been a whirlwind couple of months.  Mom and Dad were here for six wonderful weeks.  We feel like we barely scratched the surface of things to see and do in Japan, but they got a good taste of my life here, and that was what I wanted for them.  Mom kept a record of their visit that I'm not going to duplicate, but you can see all our adventures on their blog.  

Besides having Mom and Dad here, I was busy with preparation for the PTA food fair at the kids' school.  I helped coordinate the annual garage sale, which was huge project, but we pulled it off and made over 900,000 yen for the school.  Hooray!

Just after Mom and Dad left, we made a kind of spur-of-the-moment decision to invite people over for Thanksgiving dinner on the 30th.  Since it was rather late notice, I didn't really think everyone would be able to come, but they all accepted and suddenly I had a Thanksgiving dinner for 28 people to plan!  So, I spent all of last week shopping, cleaning, cooking, and preparing for Thanksgiving - except for Friday when I spent all day at the school serving a barbecue for a futsal (soccer) tournament.  I made my pumpkin pies Friday evening and wrote up my schedule for the next day.  With the help of our guests, everything came together nicely, and we had a lovely Thanksgiving, complete with the BYU/Notre Dame game playing in the background after dinner.  I didn't take any pictures of the food, but it was all absolutely delicious.  I even passed out the words to "Come Ye Thankful People, Come" and entreated my friends to humor me by singing it before our meal. 

I was perhaps overly proud of my centerpieces.  I took Mike and the kids with me around the neighborhood to poach branches from maple trees.  I planned to just have them alone in the glass vase, but they weren't staying put, so I added popcorn to hold them in place, and I think it turned out very autumn-like!

I decided it is high time I start investing in entertaining ware, so I bought table cloths, three serving platters, three serving spoons, and commercial grade, stainless steel cutlery to serve 36!  We should never need to buy plastic utensils again.

The extra maple leaves went in little vases on the kid tables, so none were wasted!

I neglected to take any pictures of our guests, but I was pleasantly surprised when I downloaded the pictures to find that Mike took some!

Bear must have ducked under the table when Mike showed up with the camera.

I thought that once Thanksgiving was over, I would be able to relax a little.  But now there are all sorts of Christmasy things that need to be done, plus a trip to Palau to prepare for, in the next 16 days!  So far all the time I thought I would have once Beaver started school has failed to materialize.

Still, it was a happy Thanksgiving, and I would be happy to do it again next year!