Thanksgiving weekend

We picked Ben up from school on Black Friday and headed down to the Sasebo train station and base to do a few things. We needed to get our train tickets for our trip on Sunday to Yokosuka!!!

The pictures below were all taken at the main train station in Sasebo.

Sasebo is famous for the "Sasebo Burger." It is their way of trying to be more American. It is basically a cheeseburger with everything on it as well as bacon and egg and maybe a few other things. I have had one and that was enough. The Sasebo burger though is everywhere! You can get them in a lot of restaurants as well as get little trinkets with the burger on them.

Look! There are more hanging Santas! Santa be careful!! Don't fall off the burger!

Sasebo has a type of mascot called the Sasebo top. It is a traditional craft famous in the area and you see them everywhere. I think that every so often they have a parade where the top is carried around and I think it is also the mascot of the local baseball team. Not sure about that but I'm sure I'll figure it out one of these days.

Japanese gingerbread house. It looked like it was made of out of crackers decorated by people.

The next pictures are from the base.

Grant took Ben on the ship for the first time! Ben was so excited!

Ben in the well deck.

Ben enjoying a juice where daddy eats on the ship.

Up on the flight deck.

In daddy's bed!

When we got home that night I found a centipede by our front door. There were centipedes in Hawaii but I never had to deal with them. Here they are all over the place. Disgusting! Ben of course thought it was the greatest thing!

Yuck!

While we were putting up our tree over the weekend I pulled out this ornament. I just had to take a picture of it. I got this last year when I was pregnant. As you can see, we only thought one baby was on the way at the time. Such a weird thought now! I still can't believe that for 13 weeks I only thought I was carrying one baby and suddenly one day in January our whole world was rocked (in a great way!)

Awhile back I posted about nature v. nurture. Well here is another one. Ben came up to me with some sort of strange bug and was very proud of it. The next thing I know he is telling me to look and he has done his thing with it. Sorry poor bug...

Boys will be boys...

Putting up our tree. We decided to leave our big tree in storage because we didn't know what kind of space we would have here. I miss the tree but am glad we did it, I don't know where we would have put it here. We purchased a four footer from the exchange. It is small but still pretty.

This was Saturday and on Sunday we were leaving for Yokosuka. Do you think I had a few things to take care of before we left...

I'm not sure if you can tell or not but Daddy dressed Piper. If you look really closely, her buttons are on the front. Poor Grant, I need to reteach him on dressing the babies.

The Japanese are famous for charms that they put on their cell phones, Nintendo DS's, backpacks, etc. These are a few I picked up at the train station. The first is the Sasebo top, the next is Hello Kitty with a baby on her back, and the third is the Sasebo burger.

Here is the Sasebo burger one. It says: "Hi, I'm Koma-Kun. I am very happy to meet you. I can have a good relation with you." Hmmmm

Black Friday

Grant and I decided to spend our Black Friday in a non-traditional way! The only place out here with sales of course was the exchange and there was nothing I really wanted there. Ben had school and Grant had the day off so I thought it would be fun to explore a park he hadn't seen before. We headed off to Peacock park.

There were lots of beautiful trees there!

I believe this one is a Japanese maple.

Look at how dainty the leaves are.

I wish I could save a few, but then again,

what would I do with dried, dead leaves!

Pinecones everywhere!

Freshly planted flowers. When the Japanese decide to

garden, they really get into it.

The peacocks

More beautiful trees.

The flamingoes

Us doing the zipline. I have figured out the timer function on the camera so I was able to get an action shot of us!

These trees had little red berries on them. They reminded me of holly berries.

The koi pond

This tree is blooming all over town right now. They are neat looking bright pink flowers.

Grant in the tomato car.

Me

The cars - my car timed out way before Grant's did...

Thanksgiving 2009

This year we had a few of Grant's fellow sailors over for Thanksgiving. They were either single or unaccompanied and it was fun to cook for them. The only thing was that I took on the whole meal by myself. Boy was I tired by the end. I am so glad I won't be cooking Christmas dinner this year. I don't even feel like doing any Christmas baking right now!

I cooked several traditional dishes - turkey, broccoli casserole, pretzel salad, etc. but I also decided to make a Japanese sweet potato dish. I had tried these on our field trip to Omura Dream farm and really liked them. When I looked up the recipe it actually classifies them as a dessert but I served them as a main dish. It was basically browned sweet potato bites with soy sauce, sugar and sesame seed on them. They actually turned out pretty well.

The flowers that were brought to me! Thank you!! They were very nice!

Ben and Piper chillin out watching tv while we ate.

Nate stuffed and ready for bed. I guess he partied too hard...

Getting back to normal

Grant was home on the Monday after he got back in time to pick Ben up from off of the bus. It was so cool to see Ben's face light up when he saw daddy! I think it was also neat for Grant to finally see him get off of the bus. Ben started school after Grant left so this is a new experience for daddy!

Hi Daddy!!! I love the school bus!

I posted earlier about issues we were having with Nate's head. Our Dr. asked me to take pictures of his head to send to a doc in Hawaii. Some of the pics were pretty cute of Nate so I decided to post them! He has the big bedroom eyes like his big brother. Ben's are dark brown though, not bright blue. I asked Grant if it was weird to see Nate's blue eyes and he said a little. Grant's eyes are very dark as well so he isn't used to bright blue! It would be really neat if Nate's stay this way.

Whatcha talkin bout Willis?

Huis Ten Bosch Christmas

We live right next to a Dutch theme park named Huis Ten Bosch. When we first arrived in Sasebo, Grant and I ventured over there and bought season passes. I'm not sure if it was worth it or not but it does allow us to go over for certain events we probably wouldn't go to otherwise. The park is filled with restaurants and several family friendly activities. We went over this time to see the beautiful Christmas lights.

It is starting to get cold here! Notice the flowers in the background. They try to keep their flowers looking very nice. I have heard that in the spring it is quite beautiful.

Ben showing off his new froggy hat and new froggy shoes. Gotta love Japanese clothing!

They went all out for Christmas. They had Santa's climbing things everywhere. It was pretty funny.

Oh no Santa - don't fall!

Kindergym inside the park.

Kindergym

Ben made a new friend there.

There were these huge Santa shoes and outfit sitting right outside Kindergym. They encouraged us to put it on Ben and take a picture next to the Christmas tree.

This was some sort of lighting ceremony they had. I'm guessing they do it every night? Santa came out through the crowd and greeted the Children and then he went on the stage to help turn on the lights. It was so loud and so cold!

Ben and Grace seemed to like it though.

After the show we went and had some yummy warm curry. I think Nate wanted some of daddy's water!

Grant and the kids being silly on the carousel.

Some of the beautiful lights.

It wasn't too cold for ice cream! Ben chose grape which tasted just like grape bubble gum - if you ask me it was pretty gross but he finished the whole thing!