Spring Break, 2009

It is the night before Easter and I am suddenly realizing that our Spring Break is coming to the end. I have not posted anything about our Spring Break, except for celebrating Erika's birthday (which was the first night!) We have had a good, relaxing break. We have taken the kids swimming at Camp Hansen's 50 meter pool twice during this break. We managed to get lots of boring, but necessary errands done.

We applied for our tourist passports so we can actually go places outside of Japan for pleasure (our passports that got us here are military passports and can only be used for official purposes.) $450 later, we should recieve them in approximately 6 weeks. Good grief! Oh well, at least they are good for 5 years!

Michael had his doctor's appointment to meet with the developmental pediatrician as a portion of the special education initial assessment. With some weight taken off my shoulders, I was assured that his learning difficulties would have occurred regardless of whether we would have let him wait for another year before starting Kindergarten (since he has a summer birthday and will always be one of the youngest in his class.) She also assurred me that the difficulties that he has paying attention in class directly relates with the fact that the school work is hard, so he just thinks about other things that interest him. No meds required. Now, it is up to the school to decide what services he will recieve. The doctor speculated that from the reports she has, he will qualify for speech (articulation) and academic support for reading and writing. I will keep you posted on what happens with this.

We also got our Spring cleaning done. We rearranged the furniture in our living room and cleaned all floors, counters, and walls. It is nice to have a clean, organized home (even if we know it will not last long). :)

We also went to Naha for the day to attend a pottery festival. After getting lost and much walking (which caused tired legs and a major drop in Marsha's blood sugar--and a trip to McDonald's to treat said blood sugar level. It was lunch time anyway, it just meant that we had to eat prior to actually enjoying the festival.) We found lots of vendors selling wonderful pottery. We bought a small flower vase and a small shisa figure that was unique because he is playing a taiko drum. After meandering through lots of pottery shops, we found a small candle making shop. We got to make our own candles. When you come visit me, I will definately take you here. It was loads of fun! We started by adding either colored sand or small gems to the bottom of the votive. Then, we got to chose little glass objects to personalize our candle (amongst thousands of choices!) They were 200 yen per glass object, so we limited the kids to no more than 4.

Here we are getting the creative juices flowing.

Here is Michael with his finished product. I know it is hard to see the details of what is inside his candle. He made a farm. His has a small yellow chick, a rabbit, and a raccoon (not quite a farm animal--but it is his creation.)

Erika's is supposed to be a "night" theme. She has an owl, a raccoon, a fox and a moon that floats above the rest. She put more sand when she floated the moon. I don't think it worked out quite how she had imagined, but it is cute.

I decided to make mine in honor of the oceans surrounding Okinawa. Mine has a fish, some shells, coral, a sting ray swimming, and a jellyfish floating (it was supposed to float above the coral, but it sank more than expected, so it is resting on the coral instead.) Not quite what I had envisioned, but fun, none-the-less.

Today, Erika became a step closer to woman-hood. She had her first period. For all of you that put up with me over the years, have your laugh now! I'm sure I will be getting it in spades. While you spend your time laughing at me, feel sorry for Greg, now he has 2 he has to deal with! We already knew he was something special, but he may be a saint to survive this!

We are making our final preparations for Easter. So, tonight, we dyed our Easter eggs. This is our favorite Easter tradition. With the kids getting older, the eggs actually have discernable colors (not mixed to a lovely shade of brown!) Enjoy our pictures!

Getting ready to color the first eggs.

Artists at work.

The final products:

I hope your family has as much fun coloring eggs as we did! We can't wait for tomorrow morning. Baskets and eggs to be hidden and found. What fun! One more day to enjoy, then back to work for us. The final push before summer when we get to visit with all of you (almost) in person.