Adorable

Jinbei Boy

My Little Swimmer

A Very Happy Boy

Precious

About Me

I'm just your basic, all-American girl from Denver, Colorado, except for now, I live half way around the world in Japan.: ) I met my husband in university in Denver. College sweethearts. We have been happily married since 1997. And have been together for way longer, about 16 years total. He's originally from Osaka, Japan. We lived for a couple of years in Honolulu Hawaii, where our beautiful first born son, Branden was born. We were sent there by the company my husband works for. He works for an airline by the way. After living in Honolulu, my husband's employer, wanted us to move to Japan. We live in Chiba, Japan. Where we just built our dream home, an import "all American" house! Which means a big GE oven, big GE dishwasher and yes, central heating and central air conditioning, yay! We also have a beautiful second son, named Noah. Since my husband works for an airline like I said, we travel a lot and I really do appreciate the flight benefits. Other then that, I just love spending time with my family and friends and enjoy back yard BBQ's.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Gobble gobble gobble, Thanksgiving 2011

How our family spent Thanksgiving 2011. Branden and Noah first went to school, regular elementary and yochien (not Kumon). I let them miss Kumon however, I sent them to Kumon Monday, with a note asking for extra homework (Thursday's amount) since they'd be missing Thursday for Thanksgiving and she said that was absolutely fine and gave the extra work. So, Noah got out at 2pm from yochien and Branden got out at 3pm. So all relatively early. During the day, we cooked... I put the turkey in the oven while the boys were having breakfast that morning. My dad peeled potatoes around noon and we half boiled them to get a jump start on them for later. We all worked and did something to prepare and get ready for Thanksgiving. Around 4pm we started to sit down to eat. Here's a pic of Noah and Branden right before we started putting the food on the table. I think the table came out really nice. : ) Very festive. Just about to sit down all of us. We had, a fabulous roasted turkey. Heaping amounts of mashed potatoes from scratch, we also had a very nice salad in the big wooden bowl, we also had black olives so the kids could put their fingers inside the olives (fun thing American kids like to do, I know I did that growing up ; ). Whole cranberry sauce, croutons for the salad, stuffing, green beans and crescent rolls. Huge amounts of potatoes, huge amounts of everything. Beautifully decorated table to boot. Two homemade from scratch pumpkin pies, and cute little gravy boat with gravy inside, we had extra gravy on the stove ready to refill at a moments notice. Why is everyone looking at Noah and he laughing? Well, we are doing the..."what are you most thankful for this year?" family questions we always ask. We started with Branden and worked our way around the table, I went last but Noah was taking his turn during this picture. My dad was smiling as he answered. Very adorable answer he gave by the way. Noah did put thought into it, I could tell. My serving. Noboru had picked the music we'd listen to and he picked Christmas music, so he streamed music from his laptop while we ate. So, it was fun, we ate and enjoyed Thanksgiving. And the Christmas music was fun to listen to during our meal and the volume was quiet so it was very light background music. We were even joined by 2 Pilgrims. : ) The little ones on the table of course. ; ) Branden getting extra mashed potatoes and gravy. Noboru munching a cresent roll. Homemade pumpkin pie, oh my! So good and the whipped cream on top yumm. And afterwards, a very cleaned up and wiped down table. The following day/Friday was trash day, so we decided to slice up the turkey so the carcass could be thrown away the next day. Sliced white meat all on the plate on the right. And sliced dark meat on the plate on the left. Leftovers and sandwiches a plenty.

We had a very quiet, peaceful Thanksgiving. Just family. My dad wore normal/regular clothes but the rest of us all wore sweatpants and dressed for comfort. ; ) It was an amazing Thanksgiving holiday. I am thankful that you could join us dad.

My dad's visit was amazing he stayed until Saturday morning. We talked a lot and enjoyed our time from Tuesday evening-Saturday morning. He went with me and did my yochien and elementary school runs back and forth Thursday and Friday. We watched a lot of good TV and even enjoyed the Macy's day parade together on TV the whole family.

I hope for those of you that celebrate it, also had a lovely and wonderful Thanksgiving. And for those of you that don't, I hope you still had a lovely Thursday and weekend with your family. : )

Surfer Boy

My Prepster

Studious and Smart

An Excellent Swimmer

About the Blog

This blog was started for everybody I care about and love back home, it sorta helps my family and friends feel more connected to me and my life. It's also a place to make new friendships, support one another, laugh our butts off at times, and just be kind to one another and hang out! So please join me, while I try living my life in Japan, all the good, the bad and yes even the embarrassing blunders that I will probably be making along the way! : )