Fun packed few weeks

The past few weeks have been jam packed with fun and activities.  Our unit hosted a trunk or treat and we all dressed as characters from Frozen by request of 3 small people.  When I told the girls I was thinking of dressing like the mean snowman or Sven the reindeer I was continually told I was a girl so that meant I had to dress as a princess/queen but the night of I got away with dressing in one of my favorite brown vests and became Sven.  At the event they had a face painter and the girls enjoyed getting butterflies painted on their faces.  They also had a contest with all the people dressed in frozen characters and Kelly won as Olaf.

I also got to be part of a team that hosted a murder mystery party for the ladies in our unit.  We had a blast planning the event and pulling it off.  It was a Pageant Murder Mystery and it was so fun to go around just goofing off and having a great time hanging out with ladies laughing and being silly.  I was the person who got killed off so I had to dress in a disguise so I could come back for the rest of the night so embraced my inner Texan.  To do that I borrowed some boots, threw on some big hear and my best southern accent and came up with my catch phrase - KonicY'all (a play on konichiwa which is a greeting in Japan).  We all enjoyed the night - or at least I did!

My girls personalities have been coming out more and more these past few weeks.

Molly - Loves running club but only if she can wear a dress.  She loves to help with projects and is a great sander and is an enthusiast spray painter (pretty sure she is going to go crazy when she sees Papa's workshop next time we are in the states).  She is able to read simple books now which is CRAZY to me.  Her teacher is an ex-marine and regularly has then to exercises in class and she likes to teach me them.  In PE this week they did Zumba and she is a big fan.  Her favorite classes are PE and Art.  She tells me how she is a big girl and doesn't draw stick characters anymore (I let her know that BertBurt is a world class stick person drawer)

Riley - Loves to make people laugh but not being the center of attention.  She will catch you off guard and same something funny or throw you a crazy big smile just to get a reaction out of you. When I start to count in Japanese she corrects me and then goes on and on in Japanese.  One of best things is she always finds ways to include others make them feel part of the group.  Oh and she loves the stroller like nobodies business.  She was not a fan of school performances any more this year than last year.  Her gymnastics performance was one of a kind as she would look at the obstacle then the teacher and then walk around it to inspect the next obstacle only to decide it was too easy for her and skip to the end or really just get out of the center of attention.

Kelly - She loves to talk and it is hard to get her to stop.  She decided to join her sisters in nighttime panties for a few days then looked at me and said - I baby I diaper at night, please.  I guess it was too much pressure.  She loved being in a school performance and having people clap for her.  The kid is an extrovert beyond belief - she doesn't like to do anything without an audience/ crowd.  She got marshmallows from our neighbor's dad just by looking at him and asking.

Kristoff and his girls.
Riley - Anna, Molly - Elsa, Kelly- Olaf

 

Nightly walk

Molly and her school buddy

This kid loves her Japanese pants

Some sisterly bonding over fanta

All the Frozen characters at Trunk or Treat

Murder Mystery Pagent

Some treats

The best UMT wives ever!

She killed me!

I don't want to die!

UMT fight
Good thing Thomas is Jon's body guard!

Snow cones!

Peek a boo

The closest we will get to snow around here

Sanding our new kid room furniture

She takes after her papa

Sushi go round

Japanese preschool hallelujah parade

Molly helped pass out candy to her sisters school

The school (plus some alumni)

Rode the Ferris wheel

Performing for school

 A few thing we have noticed is that the girls all have a few Japanese type mannerisms that randomly come out.  When they say Hello it comes out more like HerrrrrO.  Also Kelly loves curry jerky.

the sled race

Our finished project

The girls got some money in the mail and had some in savings.
The big 2 got dolls and Kelly bought a shirt and stripped down in the store to put it on.

Molly and her running buddies.

Firepit and marshmallows.

 To build our first fire I left Amber in charge and came home with our neighbors dad over in our yard starting the fire.  Turns out making a fire takes a little finesse and effort but luckily the dad was totally willing to help.  Once we had the fire started the girls talked about fires and marshmallows In North Carolina and how fun that was.  After I burst their bubble telling them I didn't have any Grandpa walked away and came back with a bag for the girls.  He made friends for life with that one simple move.  Kelly has been walking to their door since then looking for grandpa - Riley reminds her that BertBurt will be here in a few weeks and just to wait.

Fun ways I passed the time while Jon was gone to school

They wanted a slumber party and so I delivered.
They slept in the study.

The littlest couldn't handle the day after a long slumber party.

Typhoon Vongfong

We survived Typhoon Vongfong!  The news reports said it would be a super typhoon which to us means have lots of food and entertainment on hand because lockdown is coming.  The nice/bad thing about living overseas is that the govt tells us when lockdown is and its not really a suggestion so we know its coming and we just prepare for some mandatory family fun.  Let me just say there is something about being locked in the house that makes people hungry - I think we ate the entire 36 hours away.

While on Storm Watch we made one last outing to the zoo with a few of the locals.  The girls and I got there a few minutes before our friends so we headed over to the cars they can drive and I let them take a few laps.  Once our friends arrived we bypassed all the rest of the outdoor activities at the zoo and headed into the Wonder Museum.  It is a hands on science like center for the kids and it was 3 hours of non stop fun.  The girls built things, destroyed things, laughed and played.  Afterwards we went to our friends for a grill in and game night and played until they lost power and they declared lockdown was coming in an hour.

While on TCCOR 1C (which means you have one hour to get your kids and get home and then the front gate is locked down)  we drove home and were happy to see we had power and slept through the first night of crazy winds and rain.   When the girls woke up the next morning the fun began.  In my mind I had decided every hour or two I would give them something new to distract them and hopefully help them continue to play but first I needed coffee so we turned on the tv and watched some cartoons.  There are a few reasons I love pinterst and typhoon distractions are one of them.  I know some people try and make it perfect but I just like taking the idea and transforming it into something I have enough energy to recreate.  So we made some pumpkin spice playdough.  The pinterst lady wanted us to find leaves and color our dough to match it BUT I just said who really cares as long as the girls have fun so we had blue, green, yellow, pink, red and brown pumpkin playdough.  The girls played with this for a long time especially since we moved their play kitchen into the dining room and gave them cups, bowls and chopsticks along with all their play kitchen toys.   

Once playdough time was in whine mode we moved one!  Next up was water fun.  We needed to fill our tubs up in case we lost power and water so why not make it splashtastic.  Again we let the girls bring some of their play kitchen toys along with a few real ones to the tub.  Jon and I removed all things that we didn't want to get soaked like the shower curtain, toilet paper and towels then let the girls play.  I had a more hands off approach (ie shut the door) and Jon had a more hands on (lifeguard).  No one was majorly injured but there was a lot of water everywhere!!!  One by one they got bored with that so it was time for lunch.

After lunch I was ready for a break so we had NAPTIME!!  Every one was sent to a room and Jon and I watched part of the Hobbitt.  The littlest people slept for a pretty good amount of time but Molly was up and ready for more after her hour of quiet time.  So we baked some cookies and once everyone was awake we decorated the cookies.  Jon and Molly had a yoga session where she explained if he didn't get old he could still do the moves. 

The afternoon consisted of game time lead by Jon and then color the cardboard lead by me.  Each of these filled up hours of fun and got us ready for the grand finale of day one - MOVIE NIGHT.  When we moved here we kept a few boxes for typhoon fun and they have come in handy!!  We set the boxes up for each girl to have her own space for Monster University and sat back for a good 30 minutes until Kelly got bored of the movie and just came and jumped on me and talked to me for the remainder of the movie.  After the movie we played a few rounds of hide and go seek.  Some people are better at that than others.   The girls love to hide and then scream out their location as you say here I come.

Day 2 of lockdown was similar to Day 1 with nonstop eating and giving the girls ideas to fill up their time.  We made an obstacle course with bubble wrap, streamers, tables and balloons and had the girls rescue Jon from the mean trolls over and over and over and over.  Then I could not hold them back from their costumes for the upcoming harvest fest so they got to play around in costumes and played "frozen."  We finished this night with MOVIE NIGHT also this time with Frozen.

After we got off of lockdown we went outside to the track and ran a few laps, played in puddles and soaked up the fresh air! 

The only damage we had was the license plate was ripped off Jon's car which he rescued and the 2 loads of towel laundry I had to do because water was leaking into our dining room.

Driving at the zoo

Playing in the wonder museum

Dancing in the wind

My hero - rescued the license

Playdough

She kept telling Jon not to eat it!

Playing happily!!!

Tub is filled!

J -"We can't take them to the ER if they get hurt"
A - "they are fine"

Sprinkles makes everything better

Eating

Game time

More eating

Coloring with a little eating

Yep more food

Yoga session

Decorating cookies- oh and more eating

Up to no good

Movie night
Boxes make everything more fun

They can't move

Hide and go seek - she doesn't really understand

Preparing for and epic adventure to save daddy from the trolls

To the rescue

I'm coming

We could do this for hours - oh wait we have hours to kill

Costume time

We are never taking these off!!

School Fall Festival

Molly's school had a fall festival today and the girls had a blast.  We had pizza and played games and ate tons of candy.  Since this was one of our first school festivals I had no idea what to expect but had each of the girls bring a purse to stash their chips and goodies in.  This was a great idea because they were all responsible for their own treasures.  The girls played all the games and ate most of their goodies before we even left the school.  Each of the girls got to have their face painted and they were so excited about this.  The art club kids who were probably in 2nd grade were the painters and each girl got a beautiful butterfly.  The best goodie we came home with was sticky hands.  The girls threw those at the wall for an hour after we got home and then they had Jon & I throw them. 

All in all it was a fun night and well put together event.

 

Getting ready for face painting

Blue Butterfly

Waiting for her butterfly

She had a hard time sitting still but she did

But couldn't stay still for the picture

She loved hers

And she loved hers

She asked to go to another game while I waited with her sisters

Eating candy

Getting ready to play another game

Molly and one of her best friends Aya playing with their sticky hands.
 

Some of my favorite things

This post is about some of my favorite things in life right now.
Last year a friend asked me to join her on her Saturday morning workouts and I hesitated a few weeks then decided why not try it.  Since then I have been hooked and love getting up and hanging out with the Saturday Morning Workout Nerds.  The great thing about small people is they don't know if its a school day or weekend so we are up at 6:30 everyday anyway so I don't even have to set an alarm.

AWANA - Again a few years ago a friend asked me to join her Sparks team and I got hooked.  I have been hanging out with Sparks (k-2) for the past 4 years.  The crazy thing is this year our oldest is now a Spark - WHAT??  These kids are awesome and so much fun to hang out with and learn scripture with. 

My Family - Jon and I are finding that each of the girls have something that brings joy to our life.  Molly was upset for a few days about running club until we got to the bottom of it - she just wanted to wear a dress.  Riley is constantly smiling and making random faces and her new thing is to  pick her nose look at you and say "I picked my nose and am going to put it on my butt" then belly laugh.  Kelly's favorite thing is to go to the bathroom not only to get our full attention but because it means she can wash her hands which she does probably about 3 hours every day.

Sat mornings - before Saturday Morning Workout Nerds unite!

Hanging out with the nerds.

Now its not the only day I workout even:)

A friend with knowledge who shares her skills - AWESOME!!

AWANA!!!

The 3 amigos

Loves running but mainly in a dress

The joy that these moments bring Jon and I as we sit and laugh at the things in our life

Getting to experience other cultures with my family!