Happy Birthday, Cash!

Cash turned 4 on Sunday! To celebrate, he and Daddy made a castle cake. Then, we went to a cool park that has huge rolly slides. Afterwards, Cash got to go to Toys 'R Us to pick out a special toy. He chose a Transformer. He had a fun and busy day!
Cash is such a fun kid. He loves playing with Coco and is so sweet to her most of the time. He spends a lot of his time playing "school" or "workshop" or just entertaining himself by making random objects have conversations. The other day, his red playdough and his yellow playdough got into quite an argument! He is always eager to help, loves having friends over, loves learning new words, and is excited to go to preschool starting in April.
We love our Cashy boy!

A Few Pics

Okay, we are going to try blogging once a week! It's been hard, because my camera zoom is broken, so I haven't been taking many pictures. Here are a few from last month.

Our first week here, our landlord came over and brought us dishes, a heater, and then asked Coco if she liked cake (Strawberry shortcake suki?). Of course, she said yes, and he dashed out the door. Little did we know that he was going to the awesome cake shop across the street to bring us back one of these beauties:

We were so thrilled! Japanese shortcake is really moist with tons of whipped cream and strawberries. Yummy!

Coco lounging on our futon:

We have since upgraded to a bed. Yep, we are wusses, but mommy is the devil when she has to sleep on the floor next to kicking toddlers. My sanity has been preserved!

Church is now a 45 minute drive away, in our old city of Marugame. Not too bad, and we have gotten to church on time pretty much every week. Yay! Here are the kids getting ready to go:

This picture pretty much sums up their personality--Cash is happy, and Coco is Ms. Mischief.


Things have been going great! I have picked up a couple of adult classes, which I love teaching. I have also finally got myself in gear and have kept us in or under our grocery budget, which seems like a little thing but I am completely thrilled! The secret is simple: shop at 5 different stores on their sale days and cook almost everything from scratch. Easy, right?