Use of Space.

I got invited to go on a picnic with some gals for church, which we ended up getting rained out on (hence no pictures) but we did a back up picnic at one of the gals house after the rain hit.  She lives off base in a darling house.  All the houses off base have names, which is so fun!  Like her house was Shukiwara House and my other friends is The House of Delight.  Feels so fancy.  I want to have a formal name for my house too!   

Anyway I was blown away when I went to use her bathroom.  The space was very small and I was impressed with how the Japanese made the best use of the teeny tiny toilet room.  

 The sink for washing your hands is on the BACK of the toilet!!  I couldn't believe it!  I have never seen anything like this!

When you flush the toilet, the water automatically starts coming out of the faucet and then that water goes into the toilet tank to fill up for the next flush.  Then when the tank is full the water automatically shuts off.  I totally grabbed my camera to take a picture.  I was cracking up over it all day!

Pumpkin Time!

 I hadn't really planned on carving pumpkins this year, but I saw them at the Commissary at threw them in the cart.  One turned out to be a little on the mushy side, but I guess that is bound to happen when they ship them overseas to us!  The girls picked out the designs they wanted for the pumpkins.

 Marcus did one before he had to leave for work yesterday morning.  Olivia drew the design and he carved it on her face.  Her only complaint was he didn't make it look girly enough.   I guess it was supposed to be a girl pumpkin face or something.

 We did the second one after dinner when he got home.  Bianca's request was for a Hello Kitty face.  Marcus had each of the girls help scoop out the guts.

 "Eeeeeeew! MOM!! These are like boogers!"  The girls were a tad, well, uh, GIRLY about putting their hands in the pumpkins.

 Bianca kept waving he hand around saying "No!! Boogies!!!!".  So funny!

 Finally we compromised and let them use spoons.

 They each did like one scoop and then they were done.

 Here is how they turned out!  Marcus just freestyled the Hello Kitty one.  I think they turned out really good!  That Kitty one took FOREVER to carve out!

 Here are our little pumpkins right outside our place.  The girls loved seeing them all lit up!

 My body was casting quite the silhouette with the street lamp.  My body is being taken over by BABY!!!

Here are the pumpkin seeds I baked, per Marcus request.  The girls kept calling them "boogie snacks"  because the seeds came from the guts of the pumpkin.
We are going to a Halloween Party at church tonight so the girls get to wear their costumes for the first time!  Yay for Halloween!

Blessings

I have been so overwhelmed by how many blessing we have received in our lives.  Especially since we have started in on our Army adventure.  From our very first move, we moved into the most wonderful Ward (our church congregation) with such a great group of people that were truly there for each other and friends to each other.  When it came time to move I thought "Well I had better prepare myself that the next place might not be as magical as this place has been."  Then we move and THAT Ward proves to be even nicer and caring than the last!

The same has held true for our move to Japan.  Such a wonderful group of people!  It is the smallest congregation we have been a part of, but everyone is so aware of each other.  Truly wishing to help each other and be there for each other.  I had barely sat down the first Sunday when three different ladies came up to introduce themselves and welcome us to Japan!  I am a firm believer in that you need to be a friend to get a friend.  Good friends don't always just magically present themselves to you, that sometimes you need to work and put yourself out there.  So I am always prepared to do this when we move to a new place and it has been so wonderful that everyone is so outgoing and kind that it has been so easy and wonderful to make new friends!

I have had a few chances to interact with the sisters of the Ward when there have been activities and I have had SO much fun making new friends and getting to know them better.  I am so excited for our time here and I know that I will make friends here I will cherish my whole life.

Sometimes when I go to church on Sunday it is because I am in desperate need of spiritual uplifting in my life.  I can feel myself struggling keeping it all together and the peace and comfort I feel attending church gives me the boost I need to keep on trying and know that Heaven Father loves me, knows I am doing my best and is proud of me.  Other times I am feeling like I have everything under control and I go to keep my life on the right track.

On Sunday as I was sitting during Sacrament meeting (the first hour of church services) I had the most wonderful experience.   We were singing an hymn called Because I Have Been Given Much.  Bianca was sitting with me and I was just enjoying being at church.  It wasn't like I was looking to have some magical spiritual experience during the service, I was just happy to be there with my family and to learn and grow.  Then we got to the last verse of the hymn, which goes...

Because I have been blessed by thy great love, dear Lord,
I'll share thy love again, according to thy word.
I shall give love to those in need; I'll show that love by word and deed:
Thus shall my thanks be thanks indeed.

I have sung this hymn for as long as I can remember.  I have it memorized and can sing it by heart, so it's not like these lyrics were new to me.  I often go on auto pilot during this song because I don't really have to think about the lyrics, I just KNOW them.  But when that last verse came, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  An overwhelming feeling of warmth and love washed over me.  I could just feel that Heaven Father knew ME.  He loves me SO much and is so aware of the desires of my heart.  I just felt like everything was going to be okay, that He was watching out for me... that I am not alone.  I could not even finish singing the song, I was so overcome with emotion.

Anytime I think back on it, I feel those same feelings.  He loves me, He knows me and everything will be okay.  I did not go into my church meetings on Sunday desperate for something spiritual to happen, but Heaven Father KNEW that was what I needed, right then.  At that moment.  I continue to be in awe of the way our lives have been blessed.  We are not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but we try hard...together as a family to grow in faith and love.

House of 66 and Okinawa Memory Quilt

I love this picture of the girls!  Such little Diva's!

 So the girls and I went to a local fabric store, called House of 66, with a new friend to get some fabric for a project I am working on.  It is called an Okinawa Memory Quilt.  If you want an idea what they look like then just google it and a few examples pop up for you to see.  In the group that I am in, I think there are like 25 of us, each one of us does the same square (25 times).  Then when all the squares are due, we bring our squares we worked on and swap with the other women.  Then you have 25 different squares to make up your quilt.

Each of the squares represents something special to do specifically with Okinawa/Japan.  One gal is doing the ferris wheel at American Village, another is doing a Torii gate, another sushi... you get the idea.  The square I am doing is a Taiko Drum.  This was on my "HAVE TO DO list" for while we are here and the timing worked out perfectly that a group of gals from church were just starting one up so I jumped at the chance to participate.

We meet every Tuesday at my friend Jessica's house and we can work on them all together.  Especially great for someone like me who doesn't have sewing supplies, I can go and use theirs and get help when I am stuck on something.  The squares aren't due until February, but I am going to balls to the walls mine so I can get it done before the baby is done cooking so I am not having to worry about getting my squares done with a newborn and two busy girls.

Once I have all the squares, it will be up to me to finish them off altogether into the actual quilt.  Which I can work on here if I want or I can save to work on for later.  I just LOVE this idea because in the end I will have this quilt where each square is done by one of my new friends.  What a treasure to have!

 So this is my fabric look that I ended up with.  The khaki colored fabric will be my background, the red with flowers will be the body of the drum, the white will be the tops of the drum and the brown will be the drumsticks.  I had SO MUCH FUN looking around at all the wonderful fabrics.  They had some really beautiful Japanese fabrics that made me want to find more projects to do!

Luckily my friend that came and helped me, Jessica, was great with numbers and helping me to figure out how much I needed of what.  I am pretty numbers retarded so it was SO helpful to have someone there to bounce everything off of.

 These receipts just crack me up because seeing money in yen makes me feel like I am spending millions of dollars.  Like my one total was 1,223 and my other one was 3,800.  They had the fabric split up between two stores that are by each other so you kinda had to bop between the two to figure out what you wanted, then get the stuff you wanted at the one store and then back to the first store.

 I just love this bag "shop with confidence".  I guess the House of 66 Cents name has something to do with the yen-dollars conversion rate from WAY long time ago and even though the conversion rate is totally different, this is still the name of the store.

 These are the two drums that I basing my design off of.  I like the boldness of the color of the first drum, but liked the finishing and the drumsticks of the second drum.  So I am kinda combing the two styles to come up with my own print.

Tomorrow I plan on getting the background squares cut out and the design figured out for the drum and then next week I can start sewing my brains out for reals.  I am so excited for this opportunity and the chance to help be a part of something that will be truly beautiful.

Quiet Mornings

 Bianca has really benefited from having some routine back to her day.  I am sure Olivia has benefited from it too but I see the results the most with Bianca.  She is normally the first one to wake up and she picks out a movie to start watching.  Then she quietly tinkers around and watches the movie while I shower.

 By the time I am out of the shower Olivia was wandered out and I pause the movie for breakfast all together.  Depending on if the girls had baths at night or not we will do baths after breakfast, get dressed and brush our teeth.

 Then the girls either just started playing for the day or sometimes they finish watching the movie that was started earlier.  Bianca is loving having all her babies back and she drags them around with her everywhere.  They are her little harem and she lovingly tends to them.  They have blankets and bottles and get shushed to sleep.

 Sometimes if she has to go potty or do something than she will bring them to me so I can watch them for her and keep them safe.

 She has never been much of a TV watcher (like two minute intervals at a time due to her busy busy nature) but she has just started to get into it the last few weeks.  She will sit and actually pay attention to a movie for a good 30 min in a stretch now which has been so fun.  Not that my kids watch TV all day, because they don't.  They watch a little in the morning when they are waking up and sometimes a little after naps or if we have a family movie in the evening.

Family movie times would always be NOT relaxing because Bianca didn't want to watch anything ever and would just run around and do things to sabotage the movie or whatever.  It has been fun to actually all settle in after a long day and watch a movie all together.  She gets that there is a story line and a point to them and it has been fun watching her get excited about what she sees.

Both girls are now totally in love with Barbie Movies.  Olivia is getting a new Barbie movie for her birthday and I know it will be a huge hit!

Lately we have been watching this movie or parts of it every morning.  It is Bianca's choice, she chooses this same movie every time.  I LOVE it because this was one of my favorite movies growing up.  Do you know what it is??

Food Files

 One of the upsides (one of MANY!!) of visiting with friends and family is that I can see what other people eat.  There are always favorite foods you make for your own family and it is easy to get stuck in a rut.  I was able to see favorite meals from a lot of my favorite people and it has really jazzed up my food repertoire.

Like this wrap, for instance.  While I was at Helen's I saw how she would take leftovers and throw them into a wrap for a tasty lunch the next day.  Like leftover chicken or pork would get chopped up with some veg and VOILA!  Now did she invent the wrap, no.  But I totally never thought of it as lunch food ideas for myself until I saw her doing it.

So last night we had Chili's (which is the only American sit down food chain around these parts) and I had some left over chicken strips from my meal.  I re heated them, put them in a wrap with lettuce, ranch dressing, parsley, carrot stripes, shredded cheese and thinly sliced cucumber.  It tasted SO good and I am not normally totally keen on left over restaurant food, but this was the bomb.  Light and fresh and satisfying.  Thanks Helen for the inspiration!

 Like I mentioned earlier, I have been baking my brains out.  Two nights ago I made some Banana Nut Bran muffins, recipe HERE and they turned out SO good.  I couldn't even find some of my regular products (like I had to use All Bran Cereal for the bran and dried buttermilk powder for the buttermilk) and I left out the raisins and added some cinnamon.  Pretty much can't go wrong with a barefoot contessa recipe!  Then today I made some Molasses Cookies, recipe HERE.  I love these cookies, they are SO good!  Can you tell I have been on a molasses kick lately?  Rachel has the best recipes and I love trying what she puts on her blog.  Her Double Chocolate Cherry Chunk Cookies (find the recipe where through the link to the Molasses Cookies) are also another big time Radder Favorite.  And I may or may not have already made those earlier this week too.  Sigh.  Does it count that I am giving some of them away?  I mean.... It's not like I am sitting there eating batch after batch myself right?

Next up on the baking menu is making these cookies.  They are SO FREAKING GOOD.  Like seriously so amazing.  I got this cookie recipe book from my Mom when I was in high school and this was the first recipe that I made from them.   If you want to make them make sure to toast your almond slivers, really gives in a great nutty flavor and you bake them at 375 for 9-10 min.  The 2 TBS of Almond Flavoring seemed a bit much when I first made them, but they taste so awesome so make sure not to skimp on it.

The girls think they have died and gone to heaven because every time they turn around, I am pulling something hot and incredible smelling out of the oven.  I have been so excited to get my cooking binder and books back that when I flip through them I just keep thinking of more and more things that I want to make, so bake away I do ;)

Two Cars Baby

 Ever want to feel like a drug dealer?  Just pay for a car in cash... in twenties... and have that money in your purse for a week.   Then do it all over again when you buy your second car!  It was pretty crazy having that big of a stash of cash on me Eeeeeeeeek!

We are now a two car family again and I can't tell you enough how MAGICAL that is!!  Pure Heaven!   We bought our first car the second or third week that we got here.  It is a Daihatsu Classic and she is a real beaut!  I seriously freaking love this car and it makes me so happy every time I see it!  So cute and little and just like all the other Japanese cars we see driving around.

 It doesn't look like it has a trunk, but it is a total Mary Poppins carpet bag thing because there is a trunk door on it's teeny tiny end and the trunk kinda goes into the back of the car.  I have been able to fit a full cart load of groceries in the back of that sucker, and another time a vacuum box and cleaning supplies from a PX run.  It is like the magically expanding trunk and it rocks my world.  This is Marcus' commuter car and some of the guys have given him a hard time for getting something so little and kinda purple color, but we just tell them they are jealous they don't have a sick whip like ours.

This car is also awesome for navigating the teeny tiny little streets in Japan.  It turns on a dime and the roads are so narrow I don't ever have to worry about hitting into anything with this little gem.

 Then last week we got this Momma the dream car of my LIFE!  Well not my total dream car (which is a Honda Odyssey... FOR REALS) but dream in that it is a minivan!   Ever since we have started our family we have had small little cars and I have so longed to be a minivan Mom.  Like I wanted a minivan before we even had kids.  SUV's are great and all but in my mind they just can't stack up to the glorious majesty that is a minivan.  Say what you will to sway me, but it will be to no avail.

Like our very first car when we had Olivia was a two door Toyota Celica ('89) and then it got even dicer when we had Bianca and were fitting two girls in the back of that sucker.  Then we got our Hyundai Accent which I LOVED and seriously felt like the hugest car ever with it having four doors and more space than the Celica (and that is saying something about the Celica, it's not like Accent's are big by any stretch of the imagination).

Our Hyundai is now lovingly being taken care of by Michelle and the closer it got to coming here the more and more excited I have been about finally, FINALLY owning my very own Libby Ban!  (As Olivia calls them).

This van is a Mazda MVP, which had the most things to suit our needs with the dealership that we were working with.  It is a used car, but the used car market is SO freaking awesome here and the cars are in such excellent condition!  I love that it has the captain seats as opposed to a middle bench because the girls are in the way back and I didn't want them crawling over the seats to get to their seats.

They totally wanted to ride in the very back right from the start which was awesome because that is what I was going to have them do when the baby came anyway.  We are all in heaven with this car!  Except Olivia was pushing for a white van (like Blainey's van) or pink because she loves pink but this silver one was the best deal for us.

It has been magical driving it around, except when out in actually Japan.  I am painfully aware of how huge it is when I am trying to navigate the teeny tiny side streets and it makes me extra nervous when driving off base but I will get the hang of it.  It definitely does NOT have the turning radius of our Daihatsu!  Car rides have been so much easier too because the girls aren't right up in my face, they are all the way in the back.  They are in their own world and I am in my own world and it has been so much easier driving places.  Plus they have so many windows they can look out of, they are totally in heaven the whole time.

Yesterday we were gone literally ALL DAY, which was a first for me since being here.   We had the bug guys come to spray our house for ants.  I saw some ants coming in by the front window and even though I only saw them in that one spot I was not taking any chances so I had the house sprayed totally inside and out and VOILA!  No more ants!

So the bug guys come and 8 and they tell me we can't come back until 11, so I loaded the girls to a Cafe for hot chocolate until the PX opened (it has been stormy so playing at the park was out) then we went to the Commissary to kill more time.  We came home just to eat lunch and then Bianca had a well child check with turned into immunizations and flu shots for everyone, plus some running around in the hospital getting things all set up.  It was crazy to be out of the house that much in one day and I was so wiped we ended up taking the girls out for dinner and dessert for getting their shots.

I kinda surprise attacked Olivia on the shots thing, she didn't think she was getting any and she was NOT impressed with me when the time came.  It took a Marine (who was administering the shot) and myself to pin her down to give it to her.  He may or may not have gotten kicked in the business (he was holding down her legs).  I was simultaneously impressed with her defensive skills and strength and horrified for the poor guy all at the same time.  Pretty much the whole hospital heard her.

Bianca on the other hand jumped right up on the table, got her shot, had one solitary tear (for reals) and was ready to go.  The both of us had to help Olivia out to the car as she was hobbling quite dramatically, exclaiming the whole way that her leg would never be the same again.   Seriously love both of my girls so much!