Koi Nobori

Children's Day in Japan is approaching (May 5th) and that means carp windsocks (or koi nobori in Japanese) can be seen all around our neighborhood. Matthew admires some of them.

Children's Day celebrates children of course, and the joy and happiness that comes with childhood. People hang the carp windsocks at their homes around Children's Day and each fish represents a family member. The big black one is the father, the bid red one is the mother and then there are smaller blue or pink (or other colored) fish to represent the children. I bought a little blue and pink fish at the market, but I didn't get the black and red mom and dad fish. Our poor koi nobori are orphans. Oh well. Here is a picture of some of the windsocks hanging at a neighbors house: Dad fish, Mom fish, little boy fish. :)
There is a little preschool by our house that has about twenty little koi nobori of all different colors strung up across their play area. It was so cute - like the twenty little ones who play there. I wish I had gotten a picture.

BIG koi nobori hang across this river near our neighborhood. From far away they don't look very big.

Even the close up pictures can't really capture the scale, but they are big. Trust me.

When the wind blows it looks like they are swimming.

So many of them!

We made some of our own at home a few days ago.
I got the printable to make them HERE.

Anna's fish never got streamers since she went and hid it somewhere in the house after it got to this point and I didn't find it for a few days. I think they had fun coloring them though.

Shooting Hoops

Matthew got this basketball hoop for his birthday. He loves trying to make baskets and always wants it at the highest possible setting, which isn't really very high at all. Here he is shooting a few baskets. He stops in the middle to tell me we should write names on the basketballs. I was impressed he made all his baskets. This was taken with my OLD point and shoot camera (my new one broke...sad) so the quality isn't the greatest. Enjoy.

Where are we moving?

OK everyone, here's your chance to take bets on where we are moving next year. Here is a list based on the available jobs that we were given for Scott's career field last week. Take your bets (or votes)!!

1. Florida
2. Washington DC
3. California
4. Boston
5. Ohio
6. Other??

Related

I think kids just come with their own little personalities and it's so fun (most of the time) to get to know their likes, dislikes and quirks. Mostly I think Matthew is just his own person, but he does have some qualities like his dad. He's observant, kind hearted and tidy, like dad. He's also become very talkative lately. We don't know where that comes from.

Here are a few recent Matthew-isms that reminded me of Scott.

Matthew: It's kind of dirty in the kitchen, mommy. I need to vacuum the floor in there.
Me: No, you don't need to do that. You can go play with your trains.
Matthew (starting to cry): But I just NEED to clean the floor in there. It's too dirty!
*Disclaimer: Scott never cries about our house being dirty, but he is always eager to vacuum if needed.

Matthew: Thank you mommy for making this nice dinner for us.

(while I was cleaning up a potty training accident of Anna's from the bathroom floor)
Matthew: That is just making my stomach kind of hurt. I think I have to go away.

And one that reminded me of ME as a kid:
Matthew: My name is Peter Pan. Call me Peter Pan now.

Anna is her own woman and always seems to know what she wants. She was happy to kick the soccer ball around for a while, which made me happy since I also like soccer. She doesn't like getting her hair done, which I never did as a kid either, but I think that might be a pretty common thing. She is also very strong willed, which I think is just her. Sometimes I find this quality a bit exhausting, but overall I think it's good she knows what she wants. I'm hoping it will serve her well later in life.

Just like Dad

Matthew wanted to do some push ups after he saw Scott do some this morning.

He found it a little difficult.

And wanted me to get down and show him how to do them.
I tried to show him, but didn't do quite as well as Scott did.

Then he wanted to try some sit ups.
Good workout buddy.

Park FAIL

On Saturday we tried to go to a park we've been meaning to visit that has a big roller slide. We knew where it was but had a really hard time finding out how to get IN to the park. We drove past it four times and couldn't figure it out. It's on a busy divided highway type street so you have to get off at just the right exit otherwise you have to do a freeway turn around to go back past. There was a lot of traffic so it took forever to turn around. It was a huge pain. After the fifth pass we finally figured out how to get in. Unfortunately we still missed the turn that time and we saw that the big roller slide was closed. So we just decided to go to a different park and try that one another day. On the way home we passed a park we'd never been to and decided to check it out. Everyone got hurt, except Scott, so it wasn't the greatest park for us, but we still had some fun.

They had a little roller slide. Not as big as the other park, but maybe that's for the best.
The kids both loved this slide and didn't get hurt on it. Hooray!

Matthew fell off a zip line and hit his head. He had gone on zip lines like that before, so I thought it would be ok, but he got nervous in the middle and let go. Poor Matthew. I felt really bad.
Anna went down a fast cement slide and got scared, but not hurt. Then she ran into a metal pole and bonked her head.
I skinned both knees taking Anna down the fast cement slide.
Here's Anna waiting at the top of the cement slide. She was nervous about going down, and rightly so. It was very fast.

Scott caught her at the bottom, so she didn't get hurt, but she was pretty scared. :(
I tried to go on it with her the next time and went flying off the bottom of the slide, scraping my knees. Ouch.

A little Japanese girl came and gave me this four leaf clover. Maybe she felt bad for me.

After too many bonks we just let the kids run around. Matthew loved it.

And Anna wanted to do just what Matthew did, which somehow resulted in her running into a pole.

This pole.
We decided to go home soon after that. Too much park excitement for one day. Maybe next time.

Holidays, Happy Days

It's been a crazy couple of weeks here, especially this last one, and things keep sneaking up on me. My usual routines of things like laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping and making dinner have really gotten away from me. Even with all the chaos, we still managed to celebrate a few holidays...we didn't always celebrate them on the right day, but we got pretty close. And we had fun. That's what matters, right? Here are a few pictures.

April Fool's Day

We made these mini fake hamburgers for April Fool's Day this year. I wasn't actually planning to make them - I had planned to make this fake sushi instead - but mid-day I realized we had all the stuff to make it, so we went for it. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I never got to the sushi, but I still have all the stuff, so maybe we'll get to it one of these days.

Here are our little burgers.

Anna licked all the sesame seeds off first thing. It was probably the healthiest thing in there.

She ate the rest of it too.

Another of our April Fool's Day treats. Juice cups of jello. Anna was determined to drink it through the straw. Read a little more about it HERE.

This had nothing to do with April Fool's Day. Anna was just playing with her umbrella in the house. I've since had to ban the umbrellas from the house, but it was cute while it lasted.

Buh bye
I love that umbrella, and I loved it even more when Matthew insisted on carrying it around, all by himself, at the park last week since we forgot his (much manlier) Buzz Lightyear one.

Easter

Here are the kids checking out their baskets on Easter morning. They were having a great time.

We had a little Easter egg hunt - indoors since it was a little rainy.
Matthew was super excited to go find the eggs.

Anna worked at a more leisurely pace, finding a few other things along the way (Oh look, Piglet). At the end of it, they were both very happy with what they got. Success! We also had a nice Easter dinner complete with Scott's buttermilk rolls, but we ate it the next day since I wasn't feeling well on Sunday. We still have lots of ham, which helps with my dinner planning problem.

Happy Birthday

Here are the kids singing happy birthday. Anna was really into it. I love how she looks like she's in a musical - jazz hands! My birthday was on Easter this year and I also ended up getting sick that day, but we ended up doing birthday stuff the next day and it was a lot of fun. Scott made strawberry shortcake for me, which I love. He's so sweet. The kids were really excited for the birthday festivities, or possibly just the promise of cake. I got lots of nice b-day greetings from friends and family (thanks everyone) and that really made my day...and week!

From the potty training files

Anna was telling me a few things regarding potty training and I tried to get her to repeat them for the camera. My favorite part of this is when Matthew says he uses the potty all the tiiiiime.