Looking Forward

    
     The time has come to pack up/sell/get rid of all of our possessions here. We leave in one week. Cash and Cosette are so excited. Fox and I are super anxious and will give a sigh of relief once we get on the final leg of our journey. We are flying from Osaka to Beijing with a 2-hr. layover there and then on to L.A. This past year has had its ups and downs. We came out here expecting to be here for a long time, and here we are: returning to the U.S. with no job, no car, no apartment. It is definitely a scary time, but I know we will get where we are going soon!

   I am so grateful for the opportunity our children have had to be able to experience Japan this past year. They have learned so much. They can navigate a playground and chit-chat in Japanese. They ask for miso soup over pancakes and onigiri over pizza. They have learned origami, chopstick eating, and have been relished with attention by all the many adults they have come in contact with. Cash has his best friends here, but we're hoping they can come visit us in the U.S. soon.

   Although it did cause me some anxiety, I am so grateful that I was able to give birth in a culture that supports natural childbirth and takes very good care of mothers. I am so beyond blessed that the members of our church fed my family for two weeks! Quincy has a super cool birth certificate and blessing certificate and hopefully those won't be his only reminders of life here.

  I know this is getting long, but I thought it would be good to do another looking forward post! We are looking forward to everything on that list, plus:

--Real butter.  Yep, we've been using margarine. And powdered milk.  And artificial cheese.  Japan just does not have the grazing land to produce many real dairy products.

--Grape Nuts!  I have been craving them for 8 months!

--Greek Yogurt

--Sweet Potatoes.  Parsnips.  I love my root vegetables!

--Cottage Cheese

--Turkey sandwiches on wheat bread.

-- Visiting/Home Teaching/Teachers--it just doesn't get done here.

-- Good lotion, baby products, and make-up!  Asian skin is much different than American skin, and all of the products are watery. I paid over $10 for a small tube of lotion that was thick.

--Movies and books we've not had access to here.  I've got a long list of movies and books to check out. 

--And magazines--I am a magazine junkie and have not picked up an English magazine for over 6 months, which is a record!  Our first time here, I splurged and had a magazine subscription.

--Grass! The occasional park here will have grass, but my kids have not felt grass under their feet for about a year.

So, yes, we will miss Japan, but we are looking forward to our next adventure!

Quincy's Blessing

We blessed Quincy on Sunday, April 1st. We wanted to do it in our branch with the many members who helped us after his birth.

This is the best picture we could get.  It was naptime for everyone!

The night before his blessing, I made him this little white romper with bullet-train buttons. It was a tight fit!

  Several members of our branch came up and expressed appreciation and joy over hearing his middle name Makoto. They said it made them so happy!

I can't believe our time here is winding down. We leave for the U.S. on April 19th!!!

2 Months

Look who is 2 Months Old already!!

A funny thing about QP is that he loves having his hair washed and brushed. He gets very calm. His hair is long enough to get tangled in back! The big smiles have just started, and we are loving every one of them!

Boys' Day Out

   A few weeks ago, Fox took Cash for individual time. Cash had been asking to go hiking, so they made the hourlong hike uphill on local Mt. Yashima, which we first visited four years ago.

Cash on the trail.  This boy loves being outside!

At the top near the shrine

There is an aquarium on top, and the boys got there just in time to see the dolphin show!

Cash got to feed the sea otters, which are Mommy's absolute favorite!

Can you tell which otter is the friendly one?

After the aquarium, the boys went to the onsen (you know, the popular public naked bath house), which they love to do. The girls in this family stayed home fully clothed and painted our nails :) Yay for individual time!

1 Month

Quincy is 1 Month Old! (plus 10 days, because I forgot to blog this).


Here's a little glimpse of our little almost 6-week old:

Remove the clothes and voila! His first smile, captured excitedly, hence the blurriness!:

   We sure love this little baby and can't wait to get to know him as he gets bigger. So far, he is pretty mellow and just loves to be cuddled. Fox and I have been able to spend a lot of time cuddling this boy, since Cash and Cosette play together and are more independent.  It sure is nice to have only one baby in diapers this time around!

5 Years Old!

   Cash is 5 Years Old! He let us know yesterday at 4 a.m., and 6 a.m., and just about every hour since! He had a very relaxed birthday as he has plans with friends this weekend and got to do things he usually doesn't get to do, like watch an entire movie in one sitting in the middle of the day (Kung Fu Panda 2, thanks Grandpa Rick!).


His good buddy Tamara-sensei gave him an Optimus Prime!

He wanted to make his cake and decorate himself, as big boys do:

Blowing out the candles!  Not sure what's going on with his floppy hair :)

Here are some other things 5 year olds do, according to Cash:
--protect their sisters on the playground ("Get back here, I'm a 5 year old!")
-- eat red peppers (only 6 year olds are big enough to eat tomatoes)
--flip their own pancakes
--stand on stools to reach tall things
--no longer pick their noses
--use a lighter (sorry, bud, not this year!)

Cash is so fun, and we are so excited that he is 5 years old now!  He loves to color, read out loud, play outside, and snuggle his brother.  He loves the show Wild Kratts and really likes when I show him old shows that I used to watch, like Rescue Rangers and Inspector Gadget.
  Cash still eats a banana every morning, just as he has since he was 1.  He loves fish, meat, and curry rice.  This boy will not eat string cheese, flavored yogurt, or pizza!
   It is really fun to have Cash around.  He is a great helper and is eager to please.  He loves to count the members of our little family and proudly announce, "The boys are winning!"
  Cash is a great big brother and almost never hits back when he is being bullied (sadly) by Coco.  We have to tell him to stick up for himself with her!
   He has just started asking a TON of questions--"Why does soap make use clean?" "Who is Heavenly Father's Father?" "How does your body make milk?"  Keeps us on our toes!
  I remember very clearly what my little brother David was like growing up, and Cash reminds me a lot of him.  Very sensitive, active, and curious.

We really love our Cashy boy and look forward to what this next year brings for him!

In an alley in Osaka...

    Yesterday, we made the trip to the U.S. Consulate in Osaka to put in applications for Quincy's birth certificate and social security number.  I'm a bit let down with the U.S. Consulate--I thought we would be greeted with a welcome basket of Grape Nuts and US Weekly--hey, I can hope :).  They did have a T.V. playing a Bulls vs. Celtics basketball game, though, so I guess that was something!
 
Anyways, afterwards we took an alley to get back to the station.  Alleys here are actually little outdoor malls (some shadier than others) behind bigger buildings, and it's our experience that going down these alleys yields really awesome surprises.  We were not disappointed!

 First, we found  a really cool shrine nestled between two skyscrapers.  I really loved this wishing wall:

  Then, we found a little hole-in-the-wall Okonomiyaki restaurant.  I forgot to mention this earlier but the ferry we took to Osaka left at 1 a.m.  We realized this at 11 pm when I re-read the kanji on the ferry website.  So, we were running on literally zero sleep, and the kids got maybe about 4 hours.

  There are 2 styles of Okonomiyaki in Japan: Hiroshima and Osaka.  I love Hiroshima-style, but Osaka-style is good, too.

This is a shrimp okonomiyaki--they place a large shrimp on top for looks--you don't actually eat it whole.

And finally, we found the most awesome pet shop!  It had monkeys, a meerkat, and a crazy groundhog for sale!

This meerkat can be yours for a mere 600,000 yen--that's about $7500!

   After exploring a while, we were literally so dead on our feet, which is sad because Osaka has really cool shopping areas. We explored as much as we could! The kids were thrilled, because they got to ride a ferry, bus, and train in one day!  Our return ferry home got us back at 1:30 a.m., so it was a quick and exhausting trip--but the paperwork is in and Quincy's passport is on its way!