Confessions of a Guilty Mother

Confessions of a guilty mom:  We recently moved Bub and Pants into a room together because Bub’s bed broke.  We had a lot of things stashed under his bed and the new bed we found is a loft bed, therefore no room to store things.  We had to rearrange three storage closets, move the kids in together and create a playroom in the room that was Pants’s.  We did this to free up the closet space and I have been missing a playroom since we moved to Japan.  This house is small, and I am tired of the kids toys all over the place because they have no where to play.  Since this shift though, there has been nothing but tears.  Bub and Pants do not get along well as it is so to put them together is asking for it.  We have heard from Bub, “There are too many sisters,” “Her music is so loud,” “She reads out loud when I am trying to read,” “I had plans for my space,” and a valid one, “I have no where to change in private.”  This all just tugs at my heart.  I realize that many kids share rooms and we just have the unfortunate girl, boy, girl situation.   I also have a very dramatic little boy whose sister knows how to push his buttons.  I am having a hard time getting over my guilt and am ready for the kids to realize a new routine and the benefits of having a play area. 

Next area of guilt: I do not know how to deal with the roller coaster emotions of a tween.  I am a person who will just say what I feel, sometimes to the unfortunate result of hurting tender feelings of those around me.  My poor mother is a saint and I am sure she saw all this coming as she knows my personality all to well.  My husband is so much better at just stepping back and realizing that sometimes Bear is not going to be rational.  He is so unfailingly kind.  So far, I have had no patience for the dramatics and I need to figure out a way to deal with these tender budding emotions before I ruin the relationship I have with my sweet, changing, daughter.  All I seem to be able to do lately is pray for forgiveness at my actions and the patience to listen better.  

Why am I staying all this?  Because today I find myself feeling tired of being fake.  For instance, I have a love hate relationship with Facebook.  I realize it's benefits but for me, it sets up an unrealistic expectation.  I seem to just post our big events and our fun times.  This is not the real day to day life that I lead.  I am feeling the mundane life today and I want to express my real emotions.  I do not find joy in posting on Facebook and I seem to compare myself to others who do.  This is not fair to me or them.  People should do what brings them joy and this does not steal joy from me.  So, I will, in joy, post my strange feelings today.  I will try to make this blog a little more then just a travel log today.  I will not seek for any recognition and I hope that this just goes out into the ether for me to stumble upon one day when I need to remember that life it real.  

Here are some fun things that we did this winter, shared here so that I can remember the joy.

New Years Eve at a Shinto Shrine in Misawa

Too much Valentine love for Mochi

Iwate Snow Festival

Trying to have fun in the blizzard

All the snow sculptures were covered in snow!!

Tokyo Sumo Tour

We decided when we moved to Japan that there were a few things we should experience before we left and one of those things was Sumo wrestling.  We took and ITT tour for the weekend to Tokyo to experience this.  We love ITT and do a trip with them a month.  Josh enjoys napping on the bus, I read lots of books, and the kids watch the movies that they show.  It is nice to stay in the New Sanno hotel in Tokyo as it centrally located.  We found an excellent gyoza place called Tiger Gyoza and then ended the night with the Japanese Baskin Robbins, our favorite! 

We spent our first day at the Sumo Tournament.  Josh was so excited to attend, and the kids had a fun time but did lose interest eventually.  There was a lot of ceremony before each match that Josh and I enjoyed.  We liked seeing them parade in with their colorful robes on and I enjoyed the ritual stretches that they did before the matches.  As the night progressed, the wrestlers were greater ranked, so they had sponsorship flags that would follow them into the ring.  I find it fascinating to watch an event that has ancient cultural significance.  Since the US is a melting pot, we don’t have some of these ancient traditions.  Josh got some amazing action shots on his nice camera and he picked up some souvenirs.  There were even collecting cards of the wrestlers.  Pants and Bub each purchased a pack and then it was fun to watch for their wrestlers.  This was truly a unique event.

Flying Sumo!

Ritual stretches and kicks

Parade of participants.  Their robes were beautiful!

More rituals- all of the ceremony has symbolism 

Sword skill show

Ritual stretches

Too bad we could not get a picture with the real contenders. 

As part of our Tokyo weekend, we got a free day to do what we wanted.  We decided to spend the day at Disney Seas.  We were so excited to go to a Disney park.  It is a bit of a journey from the New Sannot to the park.  We got up at 5:00am to get ready and then take the three train transfers to the park.  Our travels took us about an hour and half.  Unfortunately, we had to come on a Saturday which I normally try to avoid.  There were a lot of people lined up for the opening.  We made it in and then it was just trying to find our way around.  We do not know the park of course, so I just made my best guess about where to go first. 

            

Disney Seas is a very unique park with only a few rides that are repeats from parks in the US.  The architecture is beautiful and each of the lands are related to water.  The day was very cold, and I think this hampered some of our enjoyment.  We did not figure out where the parades were and did not really want to sit in the cold waiting for them.  Some of the magic was not quite there.  We found it amusing to see the different merchandise in a Japanese park.  We were excited to see characters out roaming that are never found in the US parks.  We were disappointed that pin trading does not exist in the park, but we did buy a popcorn tub that we could refill at various stations around the park.  We found some amazing little mochi balls- three green aliens from Toy Story filled with chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry custard.  So good!  The food at the park in general was a welcome change as it all had an Asian flair.  The kids really liked the ride, “Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage.”  It was a dark ride in a boat, like Small World.  It was very long and told a cute story with a catchy song.  All the rides were narrated in Japanese and so we decided to forego the shows as we did not want to sit through something that we would not understand.  I was just worried that we would not be able to see everything as I did not know the lay of the park.  As it turned out, the cold drove us away from the park.  I think we still had fun though.  There was a lot of great new fun to discover.  

Our new favorite treats!!

These rides sparked interest in my kids to watch 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth.

We never see Uncle Scrooge in the US Disney locations!

Beautiful architecture and design throughout the park.  This is Venice in Japan!

We were freezing by this point

Bear's first time on a loop d loop roller coaster- Raging Spirits

Inside Ariel's Grotto- it was really nice to come inside on this cold day

Cultural Night- Thailand

Cultural Night: Thailand

Date: 2/4/18

Food: Leftover's from Josh's Major Promotion from Phada's in Misawa.  We had fried rice, sweet and sour beef, and pad thai.  I made some mango sticky rice http://allrecipes.com/recipe/150313/thai-sweet-sticky-rice-with-mango-khao-neeo-mamuang/

Music:  My favorite part of the night.  I found a YouTube channel of authentic Thai music

Flag and Geography:  The kids enjoy coloring the flag of each country.  I use: http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/print/thailand-coloring-page/.  It is also fun to look at a map of the world so that we can see where the county is in relation to where we are now (Japan.)

Animals: Our google search taught us that Thailand is full of tigers, elephants, many types of primates, etc.

Language: https://www.loecsen.com/en/learn-thai

Architecture: I enjoy looking at the architecture of the country.  Having seen some areas of Japan and Korea now in Asia, I am fascinated with the shape and style of the roofs. 

I love the colors in this image and the detail of the roof.  Lots of turrets were pictures in the architecture.

Folk Tale: The Speech of Parrots http://www.uexpress.com/tell-me-a-story/2007/1/14/the-speech-of-parrots-a-folktale

Art: The art seems to be characterized by images of their gods, largely Buddist and Hindu.  The only one I am really familiar is Ganesh, the elephant God. 

Traditional Clothing of Thailand:

Introducing Major Turner

In July of 2017, Josh was selected to become a Major in the Air Force.  His coworkers decorated his office and pinned paper oak leaves on his uniform.

On January 31st of this year, we held his promotion ceremony in the expansion bay of the Misawa Med Group.  It is not a fancy room, but it is large and convenient for those who work there.  Josh had the official party wear the blue uniform instead of the every day working uniform.  It is more formal which I like.   I had purchased a blue table cloth, Congratulations banner, and Air Force paper products.  I dyed rice in red, white, and blue and put it in jars with an American Flag for centerpieces.  I also wrapped water bottles in Air Force paper.  The decorations at least showed some extra effort. We served Phada's Thai to the guests after the ceremony.
 

Major Waggoner and Major Farnsworth, officators

I sang the National Anthem, the kids and I helped pin on his actual oak leaves. Major Waggoner, Josh's flight commander, presented Josh with his rank advancement and gave a nice speech about Josh and all of his accomplishments thus far in the military.  Josh spoke about all the people that had helped him along his way to Major.  On February 1st, 2018, Josh officially held the rank of Major.  We are all proud of him and this was a thrilling day for us all.