Box of Castles

Not much going on this weekend. The girls have gone to sleepovers tonight, Megan to her friend Sarah's house and Gabi to Danielle's.

Ethan is down with a bad cold, his fever was up to 104 today. He's got a nasty nose going on and he came up to me last night saying "I need a castle". I had no idea what he meant so I kept asking him again and again what he wanted; he was starting to get upset that I wasn't understanding so I finally told him to show me a "castle". He ran over and grabbed the box of tissues! I have no idea how he's getting castle from tissue but he's adamant that it's "castle". If you tell him to get a castle, he runs to get a tissue.

Megan and I are starting Karate on Sunday, they have a class at her school with a Japanese sensei. If we like it I'm going to start Ethan in a month or two.

Wax On, Wax Off

I had my first Japanese eyebrow wax today. OMG! It was so awesome! I've never been a fan of waxing, it's a necessary EVIL as far as I'm concerned; but after today's experience, I can't wait to go back!

First I got a little mini-massage around my eyes and forehead, then she got a little comb and scissors for a trim, she was very meticulous. Next she wiped all around my brows with witch hazel, then she used a Q-tip to apply powder around the edges of my brows. Next she traced around the edges my brows with some kind of oil. She was very gentle with the waxing. She did more trimming with the little comb and scissors and finished with more warm oil and another mini-massage. The whole thing took nearly half and hour!

Although I don't see much difference in the end result than what I always got with the "wham-bam-rip-off-three-layers-of-flesh" waxes I always got in the U.S. it was so much more pleasant, almost relaxing! And all that for only $5.00!!! I'm hooked!

Snow Day

Woo hoo! It snowed all day! We had a few flurries starting around 6:30a, but by 7:30a (as Meg was leaving to walk to school for the first time) it really started coming down hard! Now, at 2:00p, it's finally turned to slushy rain. I think we ended up with about 3 inches. Megan came home completely soaked, changed her shoes and headed right back out. She's settling in well and has made lots of friends already; Just in our building and the one behind us (we all share a big backyard) there are 9 girls between 4 and 10 years old. Here are a few pix I took around our neighborhood today.

Pix

I'm trying to figure out how to create a link to my Flickr photo album, I've gotten lots of pictures uploaded there. Hopefully there will be a link on the left side of this page that says Flickr which will take you to all my photos, and I also hope that I can figure out how to put a link in a blog entry to take you to certain pictures sets related to that entry.

Fussa

It was a beautiful, sunny day on Saturday, a little windy, but not too cold, so we decided to walk around Fussa for a while. For those of you who don't know, Fussa-shi is where our base is located. If we drive around to the north/west side of the base we can walk to the Fussa train station about 6-7 blocks away; also in that area are Seiyu, McDonald's, KFC and our ultimate favorite: a hundred-yen store! The Tama River is about 2 miles away, I think, we've walked there a bunch of times, but have never taken a direct route and never driven it, so I'm not sure exactly how far it is.

In the photo: The blue, wavy line at the top of the map is the Tama River, the airplane at the bottom (just above the row of photos) is the base, the red box in the center is where we were, at the train station.

My Little Hannah Fannah

Ethan LOVES Hannah Montana! He's so funny singing and dancing along with her videos!

Seiyu

This weekend we took Meg on her first trip to Seiyu, the Japanese Wal-Mart. It's really owned by Wal-Mart, they have the Great Value generic line and everything, except it's all Japanese stuff, of course.

All Japanese stores are awesome about kid-friendly accomodations, big department stores all have really neat entertainment areas with arcade games and rides. Japanese arcades are really different from the typical dark American arcades where you're sure all the creepy guys hang out; they're really bright and colorful and there are attendants walking around all the time wiping down game controls and ride seats. Most stores also have free toddler play areas too, which make for a nice diversion on a rainy day.

I've Created a Monster!

Now that I'm blogging, I keep finding bigger, better blog sites! Which of course makes me want to move from the site I'm currently on, so I did! I actually tried this site first, but whenever we go online, the internet detects that we're connecting from Japan, so if there's a Japanese version of a site available, it automatically routes us there, I couldn't get the stupid thing to let me get to the English site for the longest time! I'm sure there's some kind of regional setting somewhere to tell my computer to always route me to English pages, but I haven't figured it out yet. I'm going to move my other entries over here, there's no way I'm re-typing that 101 Things list!

So, again with the tweaking and figuring things out. Trust me, once I get it all together it will be great!

Oooo, I love the automatic draft save feature on this site! I just accidentally navigated away from this page w/out saving and was able to pull this entry back up! Nice!

I'm still figuring all of this out, making changes, so the blog will probably look different every day until I end up with a layout I'm happy with.

We're about to start a three-day weekend. We'll probably take the kids somewhere on the train, Meg hasn't taken a train ride yet, so it should be fun. Depends on the weather though, we've had snow flurries the last two nights, it's cold and we still have that thin south Florida blood. Ethan hugs himself saying "I'm freezing, I'm freezing!". The girls love jumping on the neighbor's trampoline, but they have to take their shoes off, which of course leads to their toes freezing. I bought them some nifty little hand warmers for their cold, cold walks to school in the morning, so they stuff the hand warmers in the bottom of their socks when they want to go jumping.

I did my volunteer orientation at the American Red Cross this week, the position I hope to get is an AA slot in the Public Relations/Marketing office here on the base. They had lots of positions at the hospital, but I really wanted to try something different, expand my horizons a little. Not to mention the fact that working in the hospital would mean being around Otis all day, I'm not sure how well we'd tolerate so much time together!

101 Things in 1001 Days

This project was actually the catalyst for this blog. I'm hoping the blog will lend some accountability towards keeping me on track. The 101 Things project was developed by triplux, I found it on a friend's blog (Thanks Jen Pack!) When I saw it I knew it was exactly what I needed to give my life a much needed kick in the ass!

UPDATE 02.03.08: I created a new blog for this list: My 101 List

My Bold Step into the 21st Century!

I guess I should start with some sort of introduction just in case I'm lucky enough to have some lurkers! I'm a 30-something stay-at-home-mom (I'm sure some clueless husband must have come up with this label; as any mom can attest, I'm never actually at home) and proud military wife. My family and I are new residents of Yokota AB, Japan, having arrived here in Aug 07 from Tampa, FL (Riverview to be exact). Yokota is located in the Kanto Plain region, in Fussa-shi, about 25 miles northwest of Tokyo.

I grew up on Yokota, my dad did two tours here when I was a kid. Needless to say I was ECSTATIC to be returning with my own kids!! Lots of things have changed, as you would expect, but suprisingly a lot has also stayed the same in the 27 years since I lived here. Unbelieveably, we live on the same street that I grew up on! I can actually see my old house from my new backporch; my youngest daughter is attending my old elementary school and my oldest will be attending her aunts' alma mater. Another cool twist, my daughter's first and now best friend here (who was also born on the exact same day!!) lives in my old building!! Is that weird, or what?

I have hopes to make this blog a regular update of our lives in Japan, both for us and for our families and friends. I'll have learn how to post pictures and all that jazz. My techie skills are ridiculously outdated. We'll see how it goes....