Leo's 4!

Happy 4th birthday to our funny man, Leo!

Leo loves music and has shown some interest in playing the guitar like Dad. Our first event for his birthday was a trip to the ginza to pick out his very own guitar. He had about ten guitars to choose from and ended up going with the bright orange and black one - the giants fan in the family was pleased :)

We came back home and had Leo's special request for dinner - rainbow pancakes.

Grandma Shirley sent some cool guitar decorations for the party. Leo loved them and his guitar cake!

We spent the rest of the night partying with Leo's birthday loot.

Leo and his special party guests :)

Leo had his birthday event at school and it was very fun to see. The five December birthday kids got to dress up, sit in front of the group, participate in a play with Anpaman and then were interviewed about their favorite things. In the video below, Leo's teacher interviews him about his age, favorite food and what he wants to be when he grows up. He nailed them all answering four, cake and superman. Good job, Leo!

Happy birthday, Leo! We love you very much!

Archie's 1!

Happy 1st Birthday, sweet baby Archie!

It's been a great year with this little guy, and we can't believe he's already one! Archie has been the most wonderful and sweet guy since he made his debut a year ago. He's quick to laugh, loves giving hugs and is a genuine joy to be around. He had a great time at his birthday party. Balloons are pretty much his favorite thing ever and he loved his cake. 

Wilson and Leo were, of course, eager to help him out with it!

We all had fun celebrating with him this year and look forward to another year with our little ball of joy!

Happy Birthday, Archie! We love you.

Children's Day

We celebrated another Tango no Sekku, or Children's Day, here this May. The Japanese holiday is celebrated for a few weeks by hanging koinobari fish banners around town. We found this large one flying at one of our favorite parks in town. Some banners get even larger than that! The carp fish is celebrated at children's day because it is thought of as a very strong fish that swims upstream. Japanese parents hope their sons also are strong and healthy like the carp. We hung some koinobari at our house, too. You're supposed to have a fish for each child in the home and the color and size signify their birth order. I dropped the ball and only had two fish, but will hunt down another for next year. Luckily, Archie wasn't too offended!

The base held a children's day event again this year. The samurai statue behind the boys is supposed to symbolize strength and bravery that the boys should strive for. Last year, only Wilson got to dress up at the event so this year we were excited to get all three boys in on the fun. Leo loved getting in the samurai outfit and was highly covetous of the sword they gave Wilson to pose with.

When it was his turn, Leo was ready and struck a very fierce pose.

Archie opted for a little friendlier warrior look.

The boys had a few vacation days from school and came home with koi bags that they decorated. Their sensei filled the bags with toys and treats for the boys to celebrate with during Golden Week.

 For Golden Week, a celebration that goes along with Children's Day, most of the country has more than a week off of work. It is great time of year for weather in Japan and many people travel during the week. Around us, pottery making is very famous so there are a few towns that shut down and have street fairs with their pottery. There are usually some really good deals. A friend and I went to Arita for an afternoon. This was my first year going and I thought I would spend a few hours there. After six hours, I was overwhelmed and exhausted and had only bought a few small things. Next year, I will for sure be coming home with some nice pottery!

Happy Children's Day and Golden Week!

Wilson's 5!

Hard to believe this big guy is 5 now, but it's true!

Grandma sent all the party supplies so he could have his Star Wars birthday. Here are the boys checking out the cool party stuff. Wilson was excited to decorate and set up his own cupcakes to make a light saber. 

Happy birthday, Wilson!

Shoji

One of our favorite rooms in this house is our tatami room with rice paper windows. In most newer Japanese homes, there are mostly modern features but still a few traditional tatami rooms. These rooms are usually furnished pretty sparingly with ceremonial items and art. They are considered formal rooms and kept very nice. Our big tatami room is off of our living room and since we don't have many ceremonial or artsy items to display, we've made ours into a playroom for the kids. While this works perfectly for our family, we've realized that the rice paper window coverings, or shoji, are not meant to be used in close proximity to a young boy... or three of them!

Here are some boys playing nice and calmly in our beautiful tatami room.

Unfortunately for the windows, this isn't always the scene! While I didn't capture a picture of the windows during or after the massacre, let's just say Leo the very fierce ninja won.

The result wasn't pretty for our lovely shoji.

After a short google search, I discovered that rice paper windows get ripped all the time. Most Japanese homeowners replace there shoji once a year around New Years so they will be fresh for the beginning of a new year. If you're not wanting to replace the whole screen, there are shoji stickers that can patch the holes. They come in different shapes, and I chose the sakura, or cherry blossom, shaped ones.

The stickers did cover the rip, but they didn't look as good as I thought they might.

After another quick google search, I found out that replacing the shoji isn't very difficult. I was a little nervous to tackle the project on my own, so I had a Japanese friend come over to help me. There were rips in four of our six window panels in the room, so it was quite the job. We found all the materials at our trusty O store for less that 2000 yen or about 20 dollars.

Our first step was taking the wooden panel off.

The glue used on shoji is water based, so we sprayed the paper with water to dissolve it.

After a few minutes, we pulled the rice paper off of the panel.

Then we cleaned off the remaining glue and let the panel dry off for about ten minutes.

Next, we applied some new water based glue to every part of the wood panel,

rolled the new rice paper over the glue,

and trimmed off the excess paper.

 After about 20 minutes to make sure all the glue was dry...

Banzai! The beautiful shoji windows were back. The whole process took about three hours total to complete. It was a lot of fun learning about it and replacing the rice paper. Best of all, we had our tatami room looking good again.

You will never believe what happened the very next day.

I'll give you a hint...

Happy Easter!

We had a great Easter here in Sasebo!

I'm celebrating by resurrecting the blog.

The boys spent the day giggling...

 

hunting for eggs...

...and devouring their loot.

Wilson was pretty happy he got the golden egg this year.

We hope you had a great Easter, too! 

More to come with the blog - I've really missed updating it and I've got a few months backlog that I'm excited to post. I'd like to say people have been hounding me about it, but that wasn't really the case. My dad did ask about it once - thanks, Dad :) See you back here soon!

Merii Kurisumasu

Merry Christmas from Japan! 

 Last year, our little family was apart on the 25th, so this year we were happy to all be together in Sasebo. We celebrated by getting the largest tree the base had to offer - it is about 8 feet tall! Nathan promised it would fit on our raised tatami area and after a little trimming to fit the angel on top, he was right.

The Japanese celebrate Christmas for fun here. Wilson's school had a pool party with Santa and they sent home gifts with the boys. Here is Wilson singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in Japanese.

We spent the month chasing Santa around town. The boys were really into Santa this year, so it was sweet watching them react to all of our sightings. Only Archie was a little underwhelmed. 

I got a few pictures of the more exotic places we saw him.

Christmas Eve was our most exciting Santa day as we saw Skinny Santa scuba diving at the aquarium and then on the way home we passed some Biker Santas out for a ride.

It was Archie's first Christmas this year. In typical Archie fashion, he smiled his way through the day.

We had a big ham dinner all ready to cook and enjoy but at the last minute decided to go to our favorite sushi place down the street. Who likes doing dishes on Christmas anyway??

We had a wonderful, low-key Christmas here in Japan. Of course we also spent time thinking about loved ones across the globe. We put in a lot of time on Skype trying to celebrate with family in the States.

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday!