Cooper William Ackerman

I'm finally updating my blog! I thought I could get back on the bandwagon by introducing the newest member of our family, Cooper. Cooper surprised us and came 12 days early. I went to the Dr. for a regular checkup last week, (my 38 week checkup) and he told me I was already 5 centimeters dialated! The night before, I had had a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions that were happening every minute for about an hour. I wondered if it meant labor was going to be really soon, but I ended up falling asleep for the night, and when I woke up in the morning, everything seemed normal. I thought it was just a false alarm. So I went to my appointment, and the contractions started again while I was there. My Dr. suggested I either check into the hospital or stay close by (I live an hour away from the hosptial). I chose to check in, and it was a good thing I did because my labor really started to progress that afternoon. Cooper ended up being born that night, Jan. 27th at 7:08pm. He weighed 7lbs. 14oz and was 20.3 inches long. With this birth I did it naturally, which is something I never really thought I could do in this day and age with epidurals, but because they are very uncommonly used here I went without it. I'm so happy to be able to say that I did it, and I didn't die or completely go bizerk (only a little). I thought maybe I would do both! My whole experience of giving birth and recovering here in Japan was a great one. My Dr. and nurses were great, and the facility I stayed in was great. We have been home now for a few days, and Cooper is eating, sleeping and pooping well. :) Brayden is also adjusting well. He likes to hold the baby and is very sweet and gentle with him. He has been acting up a little bit, which I think is his way of dealing with the new addition, but for the most part everything is going great. We could not be happier! Here are some pics:
(Some of the pictures are out of order and turned sideways-I'm sorry, I don't know how to use blogger well enough to know how to fix it!)













This was one of the meals I ate while in the hospital. All of the food was different Japanese dishes and it was so fun to try all of them. I was surprised how delicious it was for being hospital food!


My tutor and her family were so sweet and came to visit.

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!