Mark Turns 3!

One of the advantages of having Mark’s birthday on Dec. 28th is that most years, everyone in the family will have a day off to celebrate. Robert had the whole week off from work, and kids were on there Christmas vacation.

In the morning, of Mark’s THIRD birthday, this is what we found in the fridge. Another one of Robert’s masterpieces. This time featuring Ukrainian “Bubliki” as the wheels. If any of you in Ukraine is ever wondering what to send us, send us bubliki:)

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Here is another shot of the cake “in action”.

We had a fabulous quick birthday party for Mark. He invited his four friends to celebrate, and everyone had a great time. We played train games…and not train games, ate lunch and had cake.

If any of you are wondering why the kids are wearing “carrot hats”, I’ll explain. Yes, they could be train conductor hats, but I saw these carrot hats on Oriental Trading Company and decided that they would be perfect since Mark is also our Markovka (meaning carrot). Here, you have the story now.

The “not train” game that everyone loved! Katya was my helper.

We are glad that babushka (that is not her name by the way, she does have a real name, just to clarify:) was able to be part of this celebration. I think this is the first time she was with us at one of our kids’ birthdays.

We opened presents before cake. The beauty of giving gifts to a three year old is that he is happy with ANYTHING!

Now—cake time! Mark loved his train. Cream cheese frosting is the best!

We all know exactly what Mark is thinking, right?

Our birthday boy!

After our guests left, everyone decided to go sledding. We found a new favorite hill on the golf course next to our house, as I mentioned before. Everyone had a great time. Here is Mark fresh from the outside—rosy cheeks and everything.

For dinner, we decided to be adventurous and try a new place for yakisoba. Honestly, it was not our favorite—Cheese Roll is still the best. 

Mark playing with his new airplane that you can take apart and put back together with tools. Here he looks like he’s had a long day and is very tired of any pictures or attention.

Overall, the day turned out great. It was so good to spend it all together.

For journaling purposes, I must record that Mark is 39 inches and weighs about 38 lbs. He is a great talker and singer. One of his latest obsessions is Raffi’s song “Joshua Giraffe”. If you are not familiar with it, search for it in YouTube. It’s a 5 minute song and he knows it by heart. What’s funny is that when Alex was 4 years old, that’s exactly the song that he memorized and “performed” wherever he could.
Mark loves to play outside and play with his friends. His favorite toys are cars, trains and dinosaurs. He especially loves Magna Tiles and wooden blocks (that my cousin Katya gave as part of the game sort of like Jenga, but kids use them for building things). Mark still loves his green smoothies and eats bell peppers and “huge Japanese carrots” while watching TV. He stopped taking naps about three-four months ago, unfortunately…He still sleeps in the crib, since he doesn’t really climb out of it and new beds are hard to come by in Misawa. When we do transfer him to a big boy bed, he’ll probably just have a box spring and a mattress until we move. And the biggest achievement of all this last couple months is that Mark is completely potty trained. It seriously happened in one day, just because I was very diligent at taking him to the restroom (yes, most of the credit goes to me for this one). I never had to deliberately stay home to potty train or clean up numerous accidents. It was magic and I know I am very-very lucky. Thank you, Markovka:)
We love you!!!!

Christmas Parties-2011

Oh, the festivities around Misawa are endless! Christmas celebration, it seemed, had dragged on for two weeks because until Dec. 10th, our base was tied up in a very important inspection. So then all parties were planned between Dec. 10th and 23rd.
Don’t worry, I will account for all the events we went to, just the ones to which I brought my camera (hehehe).
On Dec. 19th, our dental squadron organized a family Christmas Party. It was held at a new location, building on base called the GRID. It used to be sort of like an entertainment center for single airmen but now everyone on base can use it for parties. It has different table games, huge screen TV, “blow up sumo wrestlers’ costumes” and stuff like that.
Since it was a potluck, everyone brought an appetizer style food or dessert. Food was great…wish we had more salads. And no bottled water!:) Dental party with only soda and juice is kind of crazy-hahaha.
The biggest attraction (besides seeing our many friends and their kids) was, of course, the appearance of Santa Claus. Parents were supposed to wrap up a book as a gift to have Santa give it to each child (it makes it so real when Santa actually gives you a gift rather than just takes a picture with you). I liked that book idea, books are always a great gift in our house.

Here is Mark meeting Santa for the first time that he remembers.

Unfortunately, this one is a bit blurry because I couldn’t figure out how to deal with bad lighting at first.

And Alex—he still believes in Santa Claus and was the only one of my kids who actually wanted a picture with Santa at the Med. Group’s children’s party from my previous post.

And here is Katya, who got a set of books by Beatrix Potter. Trying to get her to read all sorts of genres, not just modern type stuff like “Secrets of Droon” or Percy Jackson books-haha. 

Katya is beginning to struggle with the idea that Santa Claus is real. So I told her as long as she believes he is real, he is real.

Kids had a great time with their older friends too—babysitters and friends who are visiting their families back from college:).

And then…

WHOA!!! Who is that!???? Unbelievable! Japanese ramen noodles must have done wonders for hair! Robert looks like he is sixteen again.

Continuing the tradition of Doctor Ws’ singing at the dental parties, Robert and our friend Tom, prepared a Christmas medley, so to speak. Of course, to understand all the inside jokes, you must be in the military (many references to the exercise that they’d survived in December).

Robert and Tom singing at the dental party.

Here is Robert again! Sorry, cannot get over the fact how different he looks with long hair. His coworkers were taking pictures of him as well—it was hilarious!

Okay, okay, back to reality. So after that Dec. 19th party, we had a bit of a break and only one huge birthday party to go to. That was great fun too since we knew most of the people that were invited. The party was so huge that the whole Weasel's Den (our inside playground on base) was rented out for the evening, so we could use all additional entertainment there, such as bouncy house, miniature golf, etc.

Then on Thursday, Dec. 22nd, we finally did it! We went to the Med. Group Christmas Party for the first time ever! Robert was very surprised, apparently.

We went mostly to see what all the hype was about, but we made sure we had some good company with us. We convinced the other W’s to come, which made the party a lot more fun that it would have been without them.

I know dates get in the way, but I just love dates! So easy to keep my thousands of pictures organized…

Here is Ms. Bridget and I….possibly trying to decide what dessert to choose—an apple or peach cobbler.

Food was not so great at all. For what we paid it was not worth it. The party was held at the club, with Hollywood theme, well decorated, but did I mention that the food was not great? haha

All right, honestly, I am glad we went because I do love all sorts of parties, socializing, just meeting new people, an dressing up of course. Therefore, I do not regret going. My next year’s goal is to go to Air Force Ball….

As you can see, I am trying to catch up on my pre-Christmas posts. My mom is here visiting, so I am a bit “off schedule” and scatterbrained. Hope you are enjoying your Christmas and all other holidays

Field trip to Omagari

This was one of the days in Misawa when it truly hit me again how extraordinary it is for my kids to experience life in Japan. This was also a milestone of its own for me—my first time EVER to chaperone a fieldtrip for any of my kids. I know..Katya is in third grade, but somehow I never had the opportunity before.

This time (Dec. 9th) third graders were heading to a local Japanese elementary school—Omagari. It was only a twenty minute ride. This is who met us in the front of the school.

Japanese kids, same age as our third graders, were divided into several groups of six students. Each one was paired up with one American kid. I was in charge of group “D”.

Everyone had to take off shoes right at the entrance to the school. We changed into slippers or clean PE shoes. All kids had to hold hands.

Then we were led to a game room, I assume. We were able to do three activities here—learn how to play with Japanese spinning tops. They are not simple spinning tops that you put on the flat surface and spin with your fingers or pump the handle to make it move. Theirs look like this:

They have a string that you attach to the top and then wrap around it. Then you spin/throw it with on the floor with a “very complex movement”, keeping the string in your hand, but the top spinning. Katya succeeded several times in making it work. I wasn’t as lucky.

Next we were shown how to do more origami. This was not the first time, of course, for kids to fold papers since their culture classes at school give them numerous opportunity to do that. Still kids enjoyed it. We can buy everywhere these small books of different levels of difficulty that teach us how to do different shapes with origami paper (special square paper in different sizes and colors).

Some other Japanese kids were attempting to teach us how to play with kendama, another traditional toy. The first video is of a girl showing us (after a couple of failed attempts how to properly use it). The next video is of me trying to do the same.

After this entertaining part, we were supposed to gather all together to eat lunch at their gym. I took this picture passing this classroom on the way to the gym.

I must mention that the school’s floors were immaculate. Apparently, students themselves clean their school as part of their day. That’s why no one wants to make a mess—they are all responsible for cleaning.

Okay, we got to the gym and this is what we saw. All students gathered by class, sitting on tarps waiting for lunch. 

This was a big event for this school—American visitors. Therefore, many Japanese parents came too.

After all introductory speeches and thanks, we were all set on those tarps as well, mingled with the students. This is when we realized that each group would be also pounding mochi! Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous  rice that is pounded into paste.

Pretty soon, the women brought out big bowls of rice and cold water. Male parent (I assume it was a parent or maybe teacher), started pounding rice in the bucket, periodically, wiping with cold water, so that the rice doesn’t stick. After a while, all kids took turns pounding that mass of rice.

It is harder than you think

After rice achieved the right consistency, it was quickly formed into shapes. Then we were served lunch of soup and mochi. We had a choice of plain or “sweet bean” mochi. My verdict—mochi still taste strange to me, although they are not untolerable. I like the sweet ones better than plain ones.

This is what we all looked like eating our soup and mochi with chopsticks on the tarp.  This manner of eating still doesn’t come natural to me. My legs were tired after 15 minutes.

The best part of lunch were those sweet delicious mikons—mandarin oranges. We love those things!!

Japanese kids were very always very polite and interested in us. It was great to see our kids playing with them although the language barrier was definitely there. It’s great to see that our base schools give such great opportunities for all students to learn more about their peers in this foreign country.

Well, hopefully, this wasn’t my last field trip this year. I promised to go as a chaperone with Alex’s class somewhere. So we’ll see.

Merry Christmas!

First Really Good Snow Day

My friend told me that her Japanese friend heard from her Japanese friend that this winter in Misawa is going to be very cold and snowy. Something tells me they must be right. Last year, it didn’t snow until New Year’s Eve! We were waiting and waiting…kids were out of school for nothing. Well, this year, it snowed for the first time in the middle of November and it has been consistently chilly. We shall see how the rest of the winter goes.
Last Friday night, we got a really good amount of snow! Coincidently, it was a weekend and Robert was home. So first thing in the morning, after digging our car and parking spot out of layers of snow, Robert took all the kids to the Ski Lodge hill. They had a blast, although powdery snow at the bottom of the hill made everyone’s face frozen.

Then we rushed to the Med. Group’s Children’s Christmas Party which was held at the base elementary school. We did some crafts, played games, ate pizza and found Santa. But---Alex was the only one who really wanted to take a picture with Santa. So here he is.

After the party, we grabbed our friends' kids and took them up to our house to go sledding. At first, Robert served as a cushion at the bottom of the hill-haha.

The little ones—Mark and Becca—did such a great job! Not a peep from them even when they would roll over going downhill or get their whole face covered with snow.

Finally, I got dressed in my snow gear (not my favorite thing to do….possibly because after making sure that all three kids are dressed for winter, I am exhausted). We took them all to our new favorite hill—just down the street on the area of the golf course. It was quite a hike through the deep snow, but well worth. Good exercise.

Mark and Becca.

Katya—modeling in the snow. She is a seasoned  “sledder” who is not afraid of anything.

Close second is Alex. He does a whole bunch of tricks on our snow tube.

Oh, the weather was so wintery and so beautiful! I actually love to go sledding while it’s snowing although I prefer doing it with a scarf around my neck and face-haha. Hopefully, we’ll get a good use of our many sleds this year. 

This morning, kids spent several hours playing outside on our street. No school till January 3rd! We love our neighborhood and our friends here.

Okay, it’s time for me to go get ready for one last Christmas party—our Dental Christmas party. Maybe I’ll get pictures with Santa there:).