Teppanyaki

 Also over the long weekend we went to this awesome restaurant that does Teppanyaki.  It is called Jack's Place.  It was SO MUCH FUN!  They cook the food in front of you (like at Kyoto's Steak House for those who have been there) and Olivia was in HEAVEN.

 The guy kept playing the whole thing to Olivia because she was in such obvious joy over it.  She kept exclaiming "MOM!! This is just like a cooking show!!!".  I ordered her a kids meal but she ended up hoovering most of my steak!  The food was so freaking good.   Light and delicious but SO full of flavor!  We are totally going back again, and soon!

We also went with our friends Seth and Shauni and of course Murphy.  Marcus works with Seth and Murphy and we have been having a blast hanging out together.  We had a Settlers of Catan night at our house and Seth and Shauni have had us over for game nights too.  So fun to have other couples that love to play games!  The girls LOVE when we do things with these three, they are pretty much their favorite people and our Army Family.  We are having Thanksgiving Dinner with them and we already have our Christmas Dinner/White Elephant night in the works.  SO EXCITED!!

I was just practicing!

This was bound to happen at some point.  Olivia decided to practice cutting her own hair today (and a little on sister but it was only one piece and not as noticeable).  She also decided to do this during my basket weaving class at church in the toy room.  A little boy joined in on the action with her, but beings as his hair is so short you can't really tell.

It is really chunky all over and she just looks mangy now.  I am pretty sad because she had been wanting to grow it out and didn't want me to give her any haircuts anymore until it was really long, so the aftermath is all hitting her right now I am pretty sure she fell into depression about it!

It was also QUITE the mess to clean up in the toy room, hair was EVERYWHERE.  The pieces around her face were her longest hair and that is what she cut the most of.  I now need to find a good hairdresser that can even it out (one side is three inches shorter than the other side).  Sigh.  I am surprised we have made it this long without something big like this happening beings how we have two girls!

Biker Gang

 The girls got their first ever bikes this past weekend.  Marcus had a 4 day weekend with the holiday so at the beginning of it he took the girls to the PX to buy some sweet wheels we had been eyeing for them.  

 They are pretty girl-tastic and they LOVE them.  Bianca has a Barbie bike with tassels, a front basket for her babies and a removable barbie sized bike on the handle bars (she was riding around with a topless Tiana this day).  He helmet is Barbie too and she thinks she is the coolest ever, which she totally is.

 Olivia's is a Disney Princess bike with tassels and then a basket on the front that looks like a carriage.  It has a little seat in the front part of the carriage for a baby if she wants to take one along and a flip lid for her treasures in the back of the carriage.

 We live at the end of a little dead street.  The only people that live down our lane are the families in our 4-plex and the families that live in the 4-plex directly across from us.  Everyone has like 2-4 kids and they are all elementary school aged.  Another family on our side has two girls similar in age to mine and they all play together really good.

So pretty much all weekend there was different variations of the kids running around oustide and playing on their bikes while parents talked to neighbors or sat and read a book.  We all know to drive into our lane really slowly because there is almost always someone outside playing.  It is a really fun vibe and everyone is really nice to each other.  It is like family heaven!  Our lane doesn't have a name, that I know of, but it should be something like "Family Fun Lane".

My Marcus, bless his heart, took the girls outside anytime they asked and kept an eye on them so I could try and rest.  He also took them to go see Wreck It Ralph (with every other family we knew on the island).  I wanted to go and see it too but it is so sucky to get a cough attack and try and stop and I didn't want to go and then be missing the movie because I couldn't stop coughing.  Wreck It Ralph was only playing on our base for the weekend so that is pretty much what all the families did.  Movies here come and go really quick so you have to be on top of the movie schedule or else you have to wait for them to come out to rent.  Plus the movies are cheaper so our whole brood can go and not break the bank, which is AWESOME!!

Sickies

 I just love this picture of Konks.  It is like she is in a book hangover!  We always let the girls read books to themselves before bed for like 15-20 min and Bianca insists on hauling over a hurculean pile of them.  After she is asleep, I will go and gather up all her hoards of books and tuck her in.  One night she fell asleep with the light on and a book propped open on her belly.  Olivia was still in the tub and she had just got started on her reading time early.

**disclaimer:  they do not ACTUALLY read.  They make up their own stories that have to do with the pictures or point things out.  Olivia knows what a lot of the books sound like so she will just say it from her memory or make up her own parallel story.  They are learning how magical books are and it is a nice quiet time before they fall asleep.

Pretty much for the past three weeks we have been a huge pile of sickies over here.  I got hit with it last week (hence the lack of blogging) and I almost feel back to normal now but it was brutal!   It started with colds with the girls, then ear infections and fevers and just when I think we are past it, one of them will wake up in the night with a spiked fever and it starts all over again.  In between the colds we had the actual flu (fever, chills and general crappiness).

I just got hit with their cold last week and it was rough.  I have never been sick this far along in a pregnancy and the coughing felt like it was wrecking my tummy.  My already over worked and stretched out stomach muscles were really put through the ringer!

I guess it is normally to have forever colds right when you move here.  Something about the climate and the humidity makes the colds stay around forever.  Just hoping we are over it by the time baby brother gets here!  I am at 35 weeks this week!

Little Momma

 Bianca is about all things domestic.  She takes care of her babies, she makes food in the play kitchen and she irons her clothes.  FOR HOURS.  We have this little cleaning set thing that I got a couple of Christmas's ago and there is an iron in it.  She will pull out her shirts and pants and iron them, then fold them up and put them back in her drawers.

She will be working on this project off and on all day. It is so cute.  She takes it VERY seriously and will iron and iron until it is just how she wants it.  Do you notice she was in the middle of combing her hair and stopped mid combing to iron her clothes.....and the comb in still stuck in her hair!  She is so fun, I don't know what we would do if she wasn't in our family.

Crafts and Things

 I have been nesting through my oven.  I still really need to get our pictures up on the wall and then our house will be good to go, but I keep putting it off to bake something or make something new for dinner.  I am happy as a clam right now if I am elbow deep in all purpose flour!  I made this home made bread earlier in the week to go with the home made chicken noodle soup.  The recipe makes four loaves and we pretty much finished off one loaf with our dinner that night.  We have had sick girls and sick Daddy this past week and a half so I felt like a steaming pot of soup would help clear out the yuckies.  It was so good!

 I also have been getting crafty.  Every Thursday they have a basket weaving class at the church.  For 500 Yen (and bringing your own wood clue and clothes pins) you can make yourself a sweet purse/tote bag.  I love it because all the supplies are there (like all the wood weaving stuff) and the directions are there as well as people who know what they are doing.  It is an ongoing class so I can make as many of these as I want!

I am pretty numbers/math dumb so trying to figure out what I need for crafts and how to get started pretty much keep me from doing a project.  But if someone can do the leg work (and the math work) for me, then I am good to go!

 Here is one of the two quilt squares I have done for the Memory Quilt.  My friend Jessica helped me to figure out how much I needed of all the fabrics and my general design (see again with the numbers??) and now that I have that all figured out I am good to go!  So I have two done, I only need to do 23 more before the baby arrives!

I finished weaving the side pieces of my bag this morning.  There are different colors you can choose as your accent colors and I chose red/white for this one.  Now when I go next week I can finish off with the handles and the top and then I shellack it and it is ready to go!  Some of the gals here use them as their purses or church bags or scripture bags.  You can make it any size you want, but I am starting with this size.  It is pretty fun so far and it has been great in getting to make new friends.  The kids just play with toys while the women craft.

Also I am loving listening to Dario Marianelli station on Pandora.  He composed the music for Pride and Prejudice (with Keira Knightly) so the station has a lot of film scores and nice quiet music.  I can have it on all day and it is quiet and relaxing for our home atmosphere.  Plus I will recognize music from somewhere so I will play a game with myself of which movie the music came from.  I highly suggest this station for anyone!

Halloween Happenings.

 The girls got all dressed up the week before Halloween for a party at the church for the Japanese/English classes taught by the missionaries.

 The girls loved getting all fancy!  Before we left WA we stopped at Costco to get Halloween costumes.  They both picked Princess Ariel mermaid costumes.  Costumes from Costco seriously rock.

 Bianca all dolled up!

 Olivia all dolled up!

 The missionaries had the kids do a parade around the room to show off their super cool costumes.  The girls loved it.

 Bianca needed some help though.  They got to eat candy, play games and have yummy food.  The Americans that came brought American party food and the Japanese people that came brought Japanese party food, it was pretty fun.

 Actual Halloween day was very rainy.  We had gone to the PX earlier in the day to run errands and got soaked getting back to the car (gotta love tropical rains!).  It gets dark here early and I did not think the girls would do fun trick or treating in the dark and rain.  So I gave them another option.  When we were at the PX earlier, the girls saw the new Tinkerbell movie (Secret of the Wings) and wanted me to get it.  I told them no (it was 19.00, it was NOT their birthday or a special occasion and I only spontaneously buy movies when they are 7.00 or less).

I told them, if they wanted, we could go back and buy the Tinkerbell movie and some candy and they could watch the movie and eat candy instead.  They jumped all over it and it saved me the dilemma of having crying kids out in the rain.  So we went back to the PX and the girls were SO excited to get the movie.  Then I saw that all the regular DVD's of the movie had sold out.  Out front of the DVD section they had a display of the movie, in a BLU RAY combo pack.  I told the girls it was sold out but they ran over and grabbed a blu ray and were like "NO MOM! IT IS HERE!".  I had already sold them on the movie idea and they had their hearts set on it and they do not understand why some movies are more expensive than others.  So after deliberating over it, I went and got them the blu ray.  So I now had paid 35.00 for a movie that wasn't even a feature length movie (75 min).  We have a blu ray player with our new TV so at least we would be able to watch the fancier version, but holy choke!

I warned Marcus about the whole DVD debacle and he was like "You spent how much??"  but he would have done the same thing in my position.

 Anyway we came home, put on their costumes and had a movie/candy night.  This was our first Tinkerbell movie and it was SO GOOD.  It took some of the sting of the price away that the movie was so good (plus it had a bonus short movie in it).  The movie was all about sisters and it was pretty special, the girls LOVED it.  We have been pretty big into the Barbie movies for a long time, but I am thinking I need to be on the lookout for the other Tinkerbell movies as this one was such a huge hit.

Bianca got some snuggle time in with her Daddy while we watched the movie.  Olivia was in the other chair, totally enrapt and hardly breathing so was so excited.  We have watched it like 3 times since that night (the girls have been sick so it has been movie central around here).  I love when they chose it because I love to watch it too!

So yay for plan B's on rainy days!  Yay for spending WAY too much money on a 75 min movie!  Now it is time to get the rest of the house set up the way that I want and get ready for this little guy to join our family (7 weeks folks!!).