Owen's New Love

reindeer!

Owen's love of giraffes continue, but since Christmas he now has 2 reindeer that come with us everywhere. I just love his little obsessions. 

Way to Use Your Head

A first of many I am sure....

After I pick Will up from school we stay after with some friends and the kids play at the school playground for awhile. Will came over crying saying he hit his head and I was comforting him and realized his hand was bloody and said did you cut your hand too? We looked and couldn't find anything and then someone said his head! And this is what we found. Luckily a friend was still there and kept Cal and Owen for me and I took Will over (panicing inside and shaking all over) to the emergency room/urgent care-only a few parking lots over from the school.

And this is what he ended up with...two staples! He was very brave and didn't even flinch for the first one, but cried for the second. The guy doing it expressed a multiple times that he had never done staples on a kid this young before-FREAKING OUT-but later Ryan told me the guy was the EMT so at least after the fact I realized he knew what he was doing. But there was a helper in there that talked Will all the way through it and reassured him that she would some how get that EMT back. And maybe Chip our elf could help.

The next day we got this picture! Hilarious and it totally made Will's day.

They got a lot of hair stuck in Will's staples (we had been planning on cutting all the boys hair soon, but not soon enough I guess) and so a doctor friend of ours so kindly let Will come in and pulled out some of the hair so we could make sure it was closing.

It was so relaxing Will fell asleep!

The staples are out and all is well. And I hope we never have to do that again!

Good Times with Chip

Here are some fun things Chip did this year:

He got caught by the boys toys, 

we found him in the pantry upside down drinking sprinkles,

Chip likes to hang out in our stockings,

one morning we found him in the freezer eating marshmallows,

Chip made us elf donuts (cheerios with icing and sprinkles)

Chip made a copy of himself, silly elf

one time Chip was cruising with his friends

another time Chip took a walk on the dark side, riding on a bad Star Wars ship

and the craziest thing Chip did was toilet paper Will and Owen's room,

Callan's room,

and our Christmas tree!

Chip also went fishing in our toilet too!

And Chip liked playing the PS3 with Bunny,

and so did Will and Owen.

Thanks for another great and exciting "before Christmas time" Chip! See you next year!

Ome Roller Slide (Kabokuen Park)

Saturday was overcast, not really sure when it would rain if it did rain type of day and it was cold. But we needed to get out so we bundled up and headed out to Ome.

My pictures of on our way out there:

This picture doesn't do it justice, taken from inside our car, but can you tell how incredibly close the car is parked to the wall? We can not get over how Japanese can park their cars perfectly-backed in-and in the tightest places.

We started getting closer to the mountains. 

It was about a 30 minute drive there and it felt like we were in mountain country getting closer to the mountains.

We were almost there and our GPS said make a sharp right turn. It was a sharp right turn up onto this small road (yes its a two way road).

So at this park there is a 300 meter long roller slide. Roller slides are common at Japanese parks. Here are the boys checking it out...we brought cardboard boxes to slide down.

The slide continues and wraps around these trees.

Ryan tried it out first...checking safety of course.

Here is a video of Ryan and Will going down. Can you hear Will laughing? Hilarious...our bums were pretty sore afterwards.

click here to watch the video

Can you see Will and Ryan down there? In that area you kind of get stuck and have to push yourself down.

Just some pretty views, up top near the slide.

This is the obstacle course at the park. The boys had so much fun!

Another view

The boys conquering the obstacles

Owen is very much into "take a picture of me doing this" and then "I want to see it"

And isn't Cal the cutest 2 year old you have ever seen!!!

These words were on the side of a hill, not sure what they say. I thought it was flowers at first, but

closer up it was like cabbage or something.

A cute store with toys and snacks nearby. We of coursed stopped to see what fun things we could find.

On our drive home:

I love Asian rooftops.

Japanese don't celebrate Christmas, so its always fun to find Christmas decorations....

Santa climbing up the ladder

A hair salon

It's always great to get off base and see sights in Japan. Even just driving we see some really cool things.

Christmas Happenings

So more Christmas happenings lately,

Ryan had a work Christmas party with a reindeer and elf. There was a Santa Claus but Will said he's not real-I saw him in the bathroom, and Owen took one look and said that's not Santa, but Cal was freaked out anyway. Sorry Dental Santa!

and we went to Will's Candy Cane Lane at school. There were a lot of crafts, games, cookie decorating, and of course Santa! Will was the only one that would go near Santa Claus. 

love love love Christmas time!