Brayden Hanging Christmas Ornaments

Christmas Time!

We've got our little Christmas tree up. This is the first year we've put up a tree since Brayden was born, so he had fun helping put the ornaments on the tree. He put several ornaments in the same spot, since it was an easy place for him to reach. It was cute, but later on I moved them around.



Putting the star on top




Brayden's decorating



Recent pregnant picture



So far it feels like Christmas in Japan. It is cold, and the malls and stores have Christmas music and Christmas decorations. Many people here also give gifts on Christmas and do Santa Clause. They don't know what the season is actually about though, so it will be fun to tell them about Christmas's meaning once we can speak better and have developed our relationships further. This friday, Mike's mom is coming to visit for 2 weeks! I am so glad she is coming to spend Christmas with us. I know we will have a great time. Brayden talks with her on Skype often, so he should remember who she is. Hope your enjoying the season as well!

Thanksgiving

We had a quite a feast on Thanksgiving! We invited some Japanese friends that we wanted to express thanks to for helping us and being our friends over this past year (almost!) that we've been here. This made for 20 adults and 8 kids at our dinner. We ordered a Turkey, Ham, and a few other items we needed to make all the food from a company called Foreign Buyers Club of Japan. Then us girls divided up the menu items and cooked our little buns off the day before and of in order to make it happen. The dinner went so smoothly, and I think our Japanese friends really enjoyed it. Andy, our teammate, gave a speech he had pre-written in Japanese to explain to them what Thanksgiving was and that we had invited them because we were thankful for them.

Here's our big Turkey!



Some of the food.



The people.



Here is Andy giving his speech.



We had so much desert! 2 apple pies, a pecan pie, chocolate cream pie, 2 pumpkin pies and fudge. None of our friends had tried any of these pies before, so they were taking pictures of all the food.




After we had eaten, one of the guys got out his guitar and started singing songs by the Beatles and Elton John. He didn't know all of the words, and neither did we, but it was still fun and entertaining. The kids enjoyed it too.




We are all so glad the day went so well and that somehow we got all the food cooked, served and eaten without any major catastrophes. (Cooking all that food in little ovens and then transporting it all an hour away to Rachel's took quite a lot of planning!) But it went so well and we truly are thankful for our new friends, each other, God's grace and so much more! Hope yours was great too.

November is already gone?!

I can't believe November is gone just like that. I think time has been flying by lately. It has been a month since I have posted anything, but November has been somewhat eventful. So I'm going to try and do a quick November catch-all without making this a huge long post! Ah, maybe someday I will get better at posting more regularly...we'll see about that. :) First, here are a few pictures of when we we went to the Okazaki Zoo one Saturday. The zoo is very small, and it only takes about 30 minutes to see all the animals, but because its small (and free!) it makes for a perfect and fun little outing. Especially for Brayden. He loves it.







And here are the Mickey Mouse pancakes he helped me make one morning. (He stirred the dry pancake mix and thought its was great).



Lately, he has loved helping me in the kitchen. Here we're making cookies.



Last week we went "Momiji Viewing." This is a custom many Japanese people do, in which they go to a pretty park and take in the beautiful fall leaves that have changed. ("Momiji" means "Maple leaf.") We drove to a special park that we heard was especially great for seeing these trees. It was so beautiful! We went at night, but they had all the trees lit up so they looked so pretty. It was like walking through a magical forest! It was a cool, crisp evening, so after we had walked around a bit we ate hot noodles at a little restaurant where we had a great view of the trees. It was so fun. Because it was dark, it was extremely hard to take pictures, so the few that I have do not do it justice. Next year, we'll try to go when there's still daylight to get some better pictures.





Now, I know that this November catch-all post would not be complete without writing about our Thanksgiving, but I realized its 12:40am, and I should really get to sleep. So, I will finish up November tomorrow with the delicious Thanksgiving dinner we had with our team and Japanese friends. I hope everyone/anyone out there who still reads this is enjoying the Christmas season!

Happy Halloween!

This year for Halloween we celebrated Rachel's son's birthday with a birthday/costume party. If Japanese people did trick or treating, we would have taken Brayden to do it for the first time, but since they don't, we all had a nice Halloween/birthday/fall party all mixed into one with our team. Most all of us got dressed up. It was a great party. We had chilli, hotdogs and an assortment of desserts! Here we are in our costumes:


Since I am pregnant and getting rounder, I thought it fitting to be a pumpkin. I found a cheap orange shirt and then sewed a pumpkin face on it. Mike has been growing out his beard for a while, so we decided he could be a lumberjack. (Yes, we decided that for him-it took much convincing to get him to put any kind of costume on). And Brayden went as a little Samurai. His outfit is not really what a Samurai would wear, but we made him look Japnaese-y, gave him a sword and called it "Samurai." He had a Japanese head band tied around his forehead earlier, which made the outfit better, but he wouldn't wear it for very long. :)

Here are all of us girls at the party-


Rachel, me, our tutor, Caitlin, Rachel's neighbor, and Kacie.

Here are the guys-


They all dressed up to some degree, except at this point Jay had taken off his "robot arm."

Here is my tutor and her kids-



This was Rachel's friend's daughter, Erena. She was so cute!



Here are the boys eating their pumpkin cupcakes-



Here are all the kiddos-

Birthday and Peace Signs

My 25th birthday was a couple of days ago. It was a fun-packed day and I have some great memories from it. My tutor had invited us and a couple of other families on our team over to her house for the afternoon. 3 of us 4 girls on the team are studying with her, so we are all getting to know her and her family. All of our birthdays are in October, so she gave each of us a little gift. It was really sweet.

Here are the kids playing and getting all dirty for church!

Megumi and her students-who are all pregnant!

Settling in for a cartoon.

We had planned on going to an international church in Nagoya (where she lives) after spending the afternoon at her house, so we had invited her to come along. I was so glad that her whole family came. After church me and the girls on our team (minus one who was sick that day) found a little Mexican restaurant to eat at. I was so excited! It was a little expensive and had some weird options-like octopus mexican stew, etc. At first I was worried it wasn't going to be a good birthday dinner after all. But then we found the good stuff and it ended up being delicious. Here we are at the restaurant:



Then we went to Starbucks for dessert and hot chocolate. It was a great birthday and I had a great time!

As for the peace signs...its something new that Brayden has started! He wanted me to tie this ribbon on his head, so after I did, I went to take a picture of him. We told him to say "Cheese" and when he did he threw out the peace sign! He did it over and over again. If you did not know this already, this is a very Japanese thing to do. He must have learned it at his daycare or from one of the Japanese kids shows he watches. Most (younger) Japanese people do the peace sign in every picture. Check it out:



His peace sign might not be clearly recognizable because he's only 2 and doesn't quite have the manual dexterity yet, but, you get the idea he is aiming for!

It's a boy!

We found out today that we are going to have another boy! The doctor said he was 90% sure it was a boy. During the ultrasound, we also were able to see what looked like a boy "part", so we're pretty sure thats what its going to be. They do an ultrasound every month here, and each ultrasound is recorded onto a video for you so that at the end, you have an ultrasound video from every month of your pregnancy! Its really cool! The Dr. said he would check the sex again next month, just to be sure. We are both really excited. I'm glad we'll be able to use all of Brayden's old clothes, and I'm also glad Brayden will have a brother to be buddies with. We also found out recently that another one of our teammates is pregnant. So, out of 4 girls on our team, 3 of us are pregnant. One is due in Jan., I'm due in Feb., and the third is due in May. Mike joked and said we could write our own book on church growth...haha. It will be fun to go through our pregnancies together, and to have babies so close in age!

Yogurt MESS!

Here is Brayden after he ate some yogurt:




And here is Brayden after he found out he had to take a bath because of the yogurt mess:

August

This last month has flown by! I know it was partly because I went home to Kansas for a couple of weeks, which made the time really fly. Now, a little over a week after returning to Japan, August is coming to an end already! I can't believe it. My trip home was really really good. It was great to see the family again, and most of all for them to see and interact with Brayden. He had changed a lot, and I'm so glad they got to see more of his personality. He also got to know them more, and I know he remembers them when we talk about them now. Now that I'm back, I feel rejuvinated. I feel like the trip home was refreshing, and it has helped me to feel ready to hunker down and get back into life here once again.

Brayden did a lot swinging...he would sing, or he would say "Bid, high," (Big, high), which translates, "Push me really high!"

Helping Grandma water the flowers.

My grandmother, Mudgie, sat Brayden next to her one day as she cooked. He was very fascinated and even got to help a little.

Brayden loves his Papa.

We also did a lot of walking the dog. Brayden says "wat, dod." (Walk dog). He could have done this 5 times a day he loved it so much.

This is Brayden and Micah, on Brayden's actual birthday. The day after we arrived in Kansas was Aug. 1st, and my sister Emeri made these little pastries for him. When it came time to blow out the candles, Brayden got shy again. However, this time he did manage a little puff that blew out the candles.

Emeri, Brayden and Micah. (My sister and brother). Snuggling before bedtime.

We also swam in the pool a lot. Brayden liked to use the hose to "get" people. He also at times would turn it into a guitar.

Helping Papa water the flowers.

Brayden's 2nd Birthday Party

Tonight we had a party for Brayden's 2nd birthday. We had the party a few days early (his birthday isn't until Aug. 1st) because him and I are going to America on Thursday, the 31st! (I am so excited by the way). We wanted to celebrate with our friends for his birthday before we left. We went to the park and ate banana cupcakes. The boys played ball and the kids and girls hung out and we all had a really fun time. It was a great night out too, no rain or sweltering heat. But the mosquitos were relentless! Even with our bug spray, we all got a ton of bites! A new friend of ours, (Keiko and her son Kengo) came, and later my friend Akemi showed up, but unfortunately she missed the party. Her daughter was sick, so she came late, but I was surprised that she came at all. I think she wanted to show us that she cared, and wished she could have been there. It was good to see her, if only for a minute.
So, tomorrow I leave for America! I just decided to go a couple of weeks ago. It seemed like this was a good chance for me to go, because my family won't be able to come visit before we go visit them next year. This visit will give us an opportunity to see each other before Brayden is almost 3 years old! It will be just Brayden and I going this time. I keep telling Brayden he will see PaPa soon, and while he doesn't understand, he says "Papa" and thinks about it.

Oh by the way, I'm pregnant! Due Feb. 8th!



This was so funny-previously, I had shown Brayden a little video on Youtube of a little girl blowing out her birthday candles. I even let him practice a few times at home, and each time he loved blowing out the candle. But at the party, when everyone started singing to him, his lip started quivering and he reached for my hand. He was scared! And he didn't want to blow out his candle at all. He just kept saying "No" again and again. I was so surprised! The wind ended up blowing out his candle.

This is is Keiko and her son, Kengo. They were so much fun.



We got Brayden a little toy guitar since he loves to play air guitar. He just loved it! He calls it his "Tar."