Reagan’s on the Road

We celebrated Sean’s birthday a little early, so that Jeff could be here for the party. Sean is absolutely convinced that that was his birthday and he is now 5. We tried to explain the dates to him, but to no avail. That was his birthday.
We had his party at a bowling alley, one of his favorite places to go with Dad. They have a special bowling alley with neon and black lites where they hold parties for the kids.

And of course we had to have a cake. After much deliberation with Sean, we settled on an icecream cake. Sean wanted a train cake like I had made for his last 2 birthdays, but he only eats the candy decorations and not the cake, so I said no. We went to Baskin Robin’s to order the cake, and he picked out this one…

I asked if he wanted the cake to be a different color with the cat on it, but he wanted it just like the picture in the book.

He picked chocolate cake with chocolate icecream. After it was done, he had eaten the icecream and left the cake portion. But now he is (almost) five.

Well, the battalion had another family day last Friday. They weren’t really planning on it, but the USO kind of insisted on doing something before the battalion left. It was a hot sunny day, it took forever to get the charbroiled on the outside, raw on the inside food. Did I remember to say it was hot? But Sean and Catie had some fun (sorry honey, I’m just not one of those family day lover’s).
Catie had her face painted. It matched her festival summer yukata perfectly.

They also had a firetruck there for the kids. Here they are waiting for their turn

Sean taking a try

and Catie had her first time spraying the hose!

They also had a bouncy house for the kids,

but the highlight of the day was definitely the dunk tank,

especially when Dad was in it!

Sean and Catie had a great time dunking Jeff, and of course the Marines were right there to help them!

We are trying to enjoy ourselves while Jeff is still here. Yesterday we took the kids to Uken beach. It’s a japanese beach close to home, the same beach where Sean’s school had their Father’s day party. It’s a really nice manmade beach, with nets to keep the jellyfish out. Jeff and the kids had a great time…

Here is Sean with his ’swimming boshi’ for some reason the Japanese are big on swim caps when water is involved, and Sean has picked this up from school…

and Catie could spend nearly all day in the water except for the fact that she gets hungry (the way she’s been eating the past few days, she’s getting ready to grow, again)

since we went to the zoo, so we took our new neighbors there last week (okay, it’s been awhile since I posted too). A great time was had by all the kids (of course)

They got to play dress up

and pose animal statues. But having company to show around the zoo is what made it really fun for them. I’m sure the petting zoo animals weren’t thinking the same thing after an hour of their attention, but the little humans did have fun.
Oh and I did get one picture on our Okuma trip of the cabin we stayed in

We went to Okuma, a military recreation center for the weekend. This place is on a little penisula, so they have a north and south beach. We stayed in a little log cabin, which was just like camping except we had airconditioning. The bathrooms and showers were across the street. Besides swimming, there was snorkeling, boating, mini-golf, and a variety of bikes we didn’t have time to try. the kids had a great time. They spent hours at the beach, most of it in the water. So there isn’t one picture! We spent so much time in or on the water. We took a glass bottom boat ride and saw some incredible coral and tropical fish. I took a snorkeling trip and the coral here is amazing. Neon blues and greens, huge yellow and purple corals, and all the tropical fish to go with it, even the occasional Nemo. So for anyone who comes to visit in the summer, we’ll definitly take you there for a few days. I will probably take the Sean and Catie back myself this fall if I can get a room with it’s own bathroom. I just can’t see the trek across the street, and seperate mens and womens bathrooms with just myself.

We made it to Disney!!!

We were able to catch an evening flight which took us to a base about 20 miles outside Tokyo, but on the other side from Disney. We spent the night at the base, then took a series of trains to get us to where we needed to be. We then spent THREE days between Tokyo Disney and Disney Sea. The kids had a great time, and we stayed close enough that we could take a bus to the hotel for naptime, then return to the park for the evening. We all had a great time. The teacups were a hit for everyone

and had many repeat visits, as did Small World.

Jeff and I agreed that this was a much better small world than Disney World or Land and we rode it three times, and would have ridden many more if Sean had his way!

Here’s Catie jumping up and down going “Whee hooo!” after her first little roller coaster ride. She was tall enough, but I lied and said she was three years old so she could get on (shhh).

Disney Sea was beautiful, recreating different seaport areas of the world, but it was much larger than Disney, more difficult to get around because of the water, and more distance between rides. We were able to pack more rides and shows in at Disney than Disney Sea. But there was a cool and airconditioned indoor kids area at Disney Sea…

After 3 days of Disney, we did a local aquarium in the morning, then an evening ride on a giant ferris wheel and a trip to a sushi go round for dinner. It’s the one place where we can count on the kids to eat something when we are traveling. That day we had been calling around looking for flights for the next 2 days (Mon & Tues) both bases had flights going out Monday morning, but they were earlier than we would be able to make it there. Monday morning I called around again and was told no flights for the next 72 hours, but on one of my calls they mentioned that there might be an evening flight, but it was having difficulty getting there. Since it was the best (and apparently only) possiblility, we headed to that base. On the way there, I called and apparently the plane was indeed on it’s way, and we were told to call back later to get roll call times. So we continued on our way. Once at the base we checked our bags at base lodging, grabbed some lunch, let Catie take a cat nap in the lobby on the couches and waited. When we called at the appointed time, the roll call had been moved up, so we grabbed some food for dinner and headed to the terminal. We were loaded on to the plane, a HUGE C-5 galaxy for the ride home. Sean was unhappy that there were no windows, but it did the job to get us home! This weekend we are off on a trip to the beach, then Jeff gets back to work

Okay, all the photo’s are in the gallery from the summer festival.

As I said, there was alot of dancing, and Sean was a little tired by the end of the night! But he had a great time and was asking when the next summer festival is the same night.
We weren’t able to catch a flight yesterday, so we’ll try again today. You literally go down the the terminal with all your bags before a flight leaves and wait. They have a tentative number of seats, and there are different levels of priority for travelers. Yesterday’s flight that we wanted only had 16 seats, and 30+ people wanting to fly. So we’ll try again today, flying into a base a little farther away from Tokyo, but we will still be able to take a series of trains into the city. Our fingers are crossed!

Sorry life has been busy, almost too busy for pictures. Jeff is back and we are going to try to get a space available flight up to Tokyo to go visit the mouse with the kids. But check out the gallery to see pictures from the summer festival at Sean’s school. All the kids were in their summer kimonos, called yukatas, there was much dancing and eating, and even fireworks. Not all the pictures are in there, they will probably have to wait for after vacation, sorry. Now it’s back to last minute packing!

We have been really blessed with some new, great, next door neighbors. They have 3 kids, 2 girls and a boy. Sean is almost obsessed with them. If I make a dinner he likes, he says we should make some of it for the new neighbors. If we’re going out to eat, we should take them out to eat too. Their dad is always mowing my lawn now, so Catie and I baked brownies to say thank you and Sean delivered them today. Which got us invited in to play, which Sean was thrilled about, and very disappointed to go home for nap time. This evening, after eating dinner (which Sean didn’t think was neighbor worthy), he got to go outside and play with the boys. Daniel is 10 yo, and was excellent with Sean and the other boys out playing. Sean was by far the youngest and the goofiest, and he just played along with him. Plus, somebody lent him a skateboard (!), so Sean was on cloud nine to be included.

And here is Sean chasing after Daniel, somehow it was determined that Sean was an alligator and catching and eating all the boys.

Like I said, Sean was goofy, and they played along.

And does this girl need a pink helmet or what

And here is a picture that Sean wanted taken as they were procrastinating going upstairs for bed. It’s so nice I can still get pictures like this, we have so many of them when they were little like this…

And I have to say, they have really been pretty good lately. Catie has her moments when she puts the terrible in two, but overall they have both been fabulous. Sean has been good helping with Catie when I really need it. And this morning I took them to the opening brunch at a newly renovated restaurant on base. It was really crowded and busy, but they both behaved quite well. Their eyes were bigger than their stomachs, Catie only ate 1/2 a donut, but Sean had a cheese omelet, an apple crepe (which he though was good but too messy) and1 1/2 brownies. He was excited to try the fried chicken, but you could tell it was japanese cooks, because it had NO flavor and was overcooked. So was the prime rib. Hopefully they will improve, but it’s nice to have a Sunday brunch option close to home now.

Sean had a sleep over with his school on Friday/Saturday. Friday morning the 4 yo class and the 5 yo class went to a park and played in the water fountains and a stream. They also picnicked there. Afterwards they went to another school for nap time. It was uncomfortable, according to Sean, because they only had tatami mats to sleep on, not their sleep sets, which showed up for bed time.
That evening the lunch ladies made dinner and the children made mochi dango which they had for dessert, then they had a campfire. Sean said they told a scary story for bedtime, but he couldn’t tell me what it was about because it was in Japanese. In the morning they had a breakfast buffet “We could eat anything we wanted to! I had little hotdogs (sausages), tamago, bread, grapes and cherries!” Then it was playtime, clean up time and back to their own school for pickup. Sean had a wonderful time. This is certainly something that an American preschool would never do. But the flyer came that came home from school said that “The purpose of stay over care is to nurture children’s spirit of independence through a life experience that differs from day care or home life. It also give the children memories at kindergarten that they will never forget”. Sean had a great time and is looking forward to next year’s sleep over already. Of course, at any big event that the school does, the kids get sent home with a little gift, usually just something from the 100Yen store, but that doesn’t matter to Sean, he just loves that he gets a gift. Yesterdays was bubbles and a little ball blower…