Merry Christmas 2015

Well I can safely say that our second Christmas in Japan was much better than our first.  Having Daddy home to help/share in all the festivities certainly makes a difference.

We had Leyton's BFF Ava over for some playtime and Frozen cookie making.

Fun in the Family Gym on base

Before school Tea Ceremony.  LC was in charge and she closely monitored the correct order of the ceremony they practice in school (it's a Japanese thing).

Modeling their new Mimi (Elf on the Shelf) jammies

We ran into Santa one day while shopping, so E hopped on his lap for a quick photo and candy cane.

New clothes from Grammy.  Love it!

Ah, another post about E's hair.  So they had their first ballet recital, and we were instructed to have their hair in a 'tight bun.'  The other mom's smiled and wished me luck.  I started by blowing it back the night before with the hair dryer.   It made her hair super fluffy.

After straightening, pomade, mousse, and a LOT of hairspray

My beautiful ballerinas did awesome.

E with straight hair.  Leyton said she looked like a whole new sister.  She was correct.

I cheated and let Ms. Minori, their ballet teacher, do the actual buns.  I just did ponytails.

Backstage -awaiting rehearsal 

They performed on an actual theater stage.  E was not a fan of the very bright lights.

The older girls performed songs from The Nutcracker.  Leyton and Ellis were mesmerized. 

So fun to watch our big girls perform

Christmas Eve we went to our friends, the Baker's, for dinner.  The girls LOVE 'Baby Madeline'.

Eh, as usual, these are all out of order.... I'll explain this one in a bit

Christmas morning!  Intentionally, the girls got very few toys.  Santa brings 3 things and puts a few things in their stockings.  Don't let this picture fool you, though.  There are plenty of gifts under the tree from family.

After opening presents all morning, we headed to the mountains to 'an amusement park by day and light show by night'.

The theme was London and Paddington Bear.

LC going down one of the many very fun/dangerous slides in Japan.  

Finally, at 5pm, they turned on the 5.5 million Christmas lights

It was amazing

Nothing says Christmas, like an LED fish and turtle.  We are in the land of pagan Christmas celebrations.  So we had to make sure to read the true Christmas story and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.

Merry Christmas to all our family and friends!!

Busy busy busy

We have been pretty busy over these past few weeks with preps for Christmas, parties, school, trips and deployment. Yeah, you heard it correctly. Ill be headed out again in January. They say this will be my last one, but they also said that the last 2 times. haha. We are all doing good. The weather hasn't been cold so we have been able to get out of the house and have some fun. Here are a few pics from the past few weeks.

I think Shannon already posted some pictures of the girls' Art show at school, but here are some pix that I downloaded off my camera. The theme of all the art was "Space" 

E still can't quite get the peace sign, but it doenst stop her from trying. this is her space rock that she made. 

All the art in her class was art the kids made. 

The moon in the back is what LC's class made. It has a rabbit pounding mochi. Pounding kochi you ask... keep reading to find out what that means. 

E showing us her alien on the board. 

One of the classes made this rainbow slide. 

The Christmas boxes have been trickling in for the past few weeks and it takes every ounce of patience for the girls to leave the presents alone. Luckily, some of the gifts had "open now" tags on them. \

I don't think E was that into opening gifts last year. But I think she has it down pretty well now.

Showing off their elf on the shelf pajamas (and slippers).  The name their elf on the shelf has is Mimi. They both love waking up in the morning and finding where mimi is hiding.


Last weekend we drove down to Yokohama to visit the Red Brick Warehouse. It is a mall area down by the water that was all decked out for Christmas. The building was an old trade post where ships would come in from around the world to sell their goods.    

They had a cool vendor area as well where they sold really good food. 

But what we really came for was the ice skating. The original thought was that LC and would lace up the skates but E insisted on joining. So everyone ended up skating. For me, it was the first time I have skated in probably 5-6 years. It came back pretty quick and I was able to hold each girl on each arm and take them around the rink. They both actually seemed to love it! 

LC by a nutcracker. 

Right on the Tokyo bay.

Red Brick Warehouse in the background. 

Last night we went Mochi pounding. Mochi is rice that is smashed into a jelly like substance. It is coated with sugar, or sauce and eaten by a lot of Japanese. They typically have festivals where everyone gets a chance to pound the Mochi. The girls had a mochi pounding day at school and they seemed to really enjoy it. They both also love to eat it. When Shannon and I first tried it when we first arrived to Japan, we weren't huge fans. But it has since grown on us.  

So last night on base, they had a big festival, so of course we went. That is all the girls have been talking about. They had food, drinks, dancing and a kids area to play in. All pretty impressive. LC knew exactly what to do.

And so did E. 

The dancing came later in the night and the kids all joined in. 

Mochi. This was dusted in a powered sugar. Oishi! 

Mochi Pounding 2015!

Lastly, we had some pictures taken of us. Will post more later...