Miscellaneous Oddities (better known as "Life")

This week has been a fairly standard week for us in Yokohama, which is saying a lot when you're t-minus 5 days from Christmas. There have been some happenings though and I thought I'd share! (Sorry, this will be a pictureless blog post!)

Monday - My friend Lauren takes her little girl to the library fairly frequently, so we decided to join them. This is a great idea! We can borrow books in Japanese and in English and get out of the house. I did not choose my shoes very wisely. I chose some kind of old shoes from when I was teaching. On our way there, which entails climbing a pretty steep hill with a jogging stroller, I realize my shoe feels loose. I look down and the strap is nearly busted. I walk gingerly on it for a bit until it does completely bust! Yay! Boo! :-( I pop in to a 100yen shop and get some tape. I hobbled around until we headed home. When I realized there was no good fix, I just wrapped take around my shoe until we made it home. It was ghetto-fabulous. And now I have an excuse to buy a new pair of shoes!

Tuesday - Decided to make a short Costco run. Yeah, that doesn't sound right, SHORT and Costo don't really coexist in the same universe. However, since I went last week, I could totally pull of a shorter run. Got baby in the car. No crying! (score!) Go out of the parking space. Got nearly around the corner and.. CRUNCH! Dang! I crunched the front right side of the car on a pole. BOO! I couldn't believe it. I hadn't ever come that close before and now I'd crunched the nose. Well, that put me off my A-game and made me pretty grumpy. Especially when I arrived at Costco and encountered the tons of people who don't know how to drive a cart! (Yeah, carts get stashed everywhere and are always in the way. AND they have food samples during the week too!) But, I did manage to get all the things I wanted AND get Shimon's Christmas present at the outlets and get back home in one piece.

Wednesday - Finished Christmas shopping! Yay! Found out that smaller stroller is great for getting around Yokohama station area. Must use smaller stroller when possible.

Thursday - Went to play group. Found that Touma refused all food that I prepared in favor of udon noodles. Which was fine because I was willing to share! Went to find out how much it will cost to fix the light (it busted in the encounter with the pole!) on the car. Luckily, it is far cheaper than expected (about $100!) Also, found out that the baby will eat apples. As long as they are not served up to him looking anything like an apple. Tiny, bitten off pieces of mommies apple will do fine thank you! At least I know he doesn't hate them anymore, but I'm not sure I can always feed him apples that way.

And the rest of our week is bound to be exciting... with a fun play group tomorrow, Christmas party on Saturday, and then Christmas Eve potluck lunch followed by candlelight service at church! What more fun could be in store!! :-)

Merry Christmas everyone!!

How did we get here? (an overdue catch-up)

The last thing I remember is it being November... and now we're nearly 2 weeks into December. How the heck did that happen? Ack! There's so much to do and so little time to do it!

This past month has been very busy. In November, we went and visited my mother-in-law in Shimonoseki. The trip was really nice and Touma got to be spoiled a lot! He also got to try a lot of new foods including udon (noodles) and shirasu (little tiny fish!). They are both long and skinny so he enjoyed slurping them down. We also went to a hot spring with Grandma and Auntie Chikako. It was right on the ocean, so we took Touma down to the beach to feel the sand. Not sure what he thought of that...

Looking unsure of the sand.

A little while after taking this picture, Touma decided that two feet in the sand was just too much. SO he changed it up!

One baby foot in the sand was plenty!

After getting back, it started getting pretty cold here in Yokohama and it definitely started to feel like the holidays were upon us. We got our tree... it is a total Charlie Brown tree, but it's still our first REAL tree in Japan.

Touma and our tree - pre-decorating!

Everyone knows that a tree always improves with lights and decorations! And luckily that was totally true of our little tree.

The finished product. Even though it's not nearly as full as trees back home, it's our tree and I love it!

Last week I got to meet up with a friend that I haven't seen in over 5 years. We were both studying Japanese at Waseda when I first came back to Japan in 2006. After that one year program finished, she went back to Taiwan and I stayed on in Japan. It was really nice to see her and meet her husband. I have a feeling that we'll have to take a family trip to Taiwan one of these days...

In front of the Christmas tree at Akarenga. It is huge, but we couldn't get the whole thing in!

That catches us up to this week. We are officially in winter. Overnight lows hover around or just below 0C and it's too cold to really have play group outside. Since that is the case, it's actually nice to do a bit of shopping. We met up with Lauren and her little girl Gwen on Tuesday and did a bit of shopping. And at one point we let the kids run around near the big Christmas tree. But did I get a picture of the tree? No! Just the kids. :-)

Touma is working on his standing, while Gwen lurks in the background!

So, no promises about many more posts before we ring in the new year. Here's to a great 2013 and maybe even more blogging!