Cocok's - CocoIchibanya - Starbucks :

A Girl's Night Out

Tonight I got to go out with a new friend of mine, Sarah, and her cousin who is visiting, Megan. We had so much fun! First we went to Cocok's for pedicures...the best pedicures ever! (I've only been to 3 places to have pedicures though) After we were done there we drove back to my house so I could nurse Tara and get her into bed. By the way, Jeff is babysitting 4 kids, our 3 and Sarah's 11 month old...thanks a bunch honey! After I got her into bed we 3 girls take of to CocoIchibanya for some super yummy curry, the best ever! On our way out of there we decide to go get some Starbucks on the way home, I call Jeff first to make sure Sarah's daughter is doing ok for him since it was getting late. She is fine, except that my phone call just woke her up...oops, so we have some delicous frappucino's before coming back home. I had so much fun. I can't tell you the last time I went out for a girl's night out AND got to stay out so late! I'm a mommy to 3 (wonderful kids) so I usually am home by 7 every night! So tonight was so much fun and so needed!
Again, I'm so thankful to him, he is such a great husband! He babysat to help out our friend, but mainly for me so I could go out and enjoy myself with some other women. He is such a thoughtful husband who mainly wants to put me first, what a guy! Not many ladies can say their hubby's would babysit 4 kids, 2 of which are babies, so that his wife can go spend money on her toes and eat at his favorite place and he not get to go!
I don't have any pictures of my night out, but I do have some of Jeff's night in with the kids. Here are a few:

Cassidy and Tara playing...see the yellow phone...Jeff said Tara did not like sharing that with Cassidy...maybe she was waiting for a call? :c) Oh, and this is Tara's first time to have a friend over! :c)

Tara playing in Chloe's kennel. Jeff said that Cassidy had shut the door on her once...lol. This is the first time she's ever gotten in there!
So the night went pretty well for Jeff. He said that Tara squealed once loudly, which she does often, and scared Cassidy so Cassidy started crying which scared Tara and got Tara crying. I guess this went on for about 15 minutes. As soon as one would start to calm down the other one would get her going again! He finally had to put Tara in her crib so that they could calm down and then he was able to bring Tara down to play some more. I think that was the only problem he had.
Well, it was a fun night, I'm still up from the frappucino I got...to much caffeine for me! So its 12:20 am and I'm wide awake! That's ok though b/c I've gotten all 153 photos uploaded to my computer, put some on my picasa site, done some facebook and now blogged! Notice I didn't use my time wisely by like cleaning...that would just be crazy! ha ha
Well, thats it, had a great time out this evening!

A Hot Fun Friday

Today I took the kids to a park that is off base with a friend of mine from church. I was a little hesitant about going b/c of the heat but I decided the boys would have fun and they needed to get out. In my opinion, Japanese parks are so much more fun than American parks! They have so much more design and uniqueness, instead of the old "plastic parks" that we all know of. The one we went to today is in the design of a dolphin. It had bridges, roller slides, spiral slides and much more! The boys had so much fun, even in the heat! Yes, the faces were red and sweet was rolling down those cute cheeks of theirs, but I don't think they cared. I sat in the nice shaded area with Sara and our babies just chatting and sipping on some yummy Japanese sports drink. :c) Oh, and another opinion of mine, the Japanese vending machines, which can be found every 50 feet or less, are a collection of strange but sometimes delicious drinks, cold or hot, and sometimes a kit-kat bar thrown in there with the drinks. :c) It really is fun just trying to decide what drink to buy...which one will earn your 110 Yen, which one will you dare take a chance on!? Oh believe me, it is a chance...you never know what you will get. Sara said once her drink had little grapes in it! Mine once had weird little yogurt balls in it...strange it was. But they are strangely so much fun and usually pretty good! Ok, so that was our fun hot Friday, now we are sitting inside our nicely cooled base house, which is ugly...but I am thankful for it (the house, not the ugliness!), and we are waiting for daddy to get home.
I hope all of you have a fun, hopefully not hot, Friday too!

Right Now

Right now I am ignoring Tara crying in her crib

Right now I sent Josiah upstairs to give her a passy

Right now I am so tired

Right now its only 11:23 a.m. so why am I so tired!?

Right now I'm hungry

Right now it is 12:49, I've been away for awhile.

Right now I"m eating a roast beef sandwich, chips and drinking some apple juice

Right now I've accomplished feeding Tara lunch and I've cleaned the boys' bathroom

Right now I miss my family

Right now I wonder if I'll take Tara to church tonight, she's really cranky.

Right now I am so thankful for my salvation

Right now I am so thankful for my friends!

Right now...mmm, took another bite of my sandwich :c)

Right now I wish Jeff could be home, he just left for work again

Right now I am wondering how many "right nows" I can come up with.

Right now I am listening to the secadas outside, those noisy bugs that come every so often.

Right now I'm wondering if Tara is teething...a possibility since she is so cranky!

Right now I'm wondering how many calories my lunch is...yikes!

Right now I wish I were 10 lbs lighter

Right now I'm overwhelmed by all the stuff to do around here.

Right now I miss Cindee and Katie! I wish we could hang out like the old days.

Right now I wish I could call Alicia, but I think she's in bed by now.

Right now I took my last bite of my sandwich

And...

Right now I'm done!

Shots

Jeff and I took the boys to get their shots today. I hate giving my kids shots, I really REALLY do! But we needed it done so we could get our orders to PCS. Poor Gabriel, he cried the whole way to the clinic. He was SO NOT a willing participant, unlike Josiah who thought this would be no big deal. While in the waiting room Jeff did a great job of distracting Gaber with a game of paper-rock-scissors...but then we were called in and Gaber's spirits dropped! Jeff almost had to drag the boy in! The tears started to flow as we lifted him to the table, and there right beside him laid 5 shots, YES I said FIVE shots!!! My eyes got huge, I couldn't believe he needed that many! Poor child! Jeff held his arms down and it started...I never knew Gaber could scream like that! I think he screamed more getting shots than when he broke both bones in his arm!!! Seriously! Next up, Josiah. He was calm, cool and collected. He hopped up there, pulled up his shirt and held up his arm. I was really starting to think that he would be a breeze. As soon as the needle touched Josiah's arm he leaped over and the look on his face was like, OH....NO, THIS IS NOT COOL!!! Luckily Josiah only needed two! He barely cried, thankfully, and off we were. All done for another 6 months. *sigh* Oh wait, Tara gets some in 2 weeks...OH MAN!!!
Shots...I hate 'em!

Our Spitter Upper

Tar-Bear is our spitter-upper! At 7 months old she still does it, A LOT. So, if any of you moms out there have had this problem with their baby let me know, I'm kinda concerned. Any advice, please share! I'm probably just worried over nothing but I know the boys were done with this by now. So it worries me when she is still spitting up a lot right after eating and even 2 hours after eating. She also spits up her baby food, green bean, peas, squash, apple sauce...anything that goes in will come out eventually. In two weeks at her well baby appointment I will be able to ask the doctor, which I'm sure he'll say she's fine. Its nice to hear from other mom's too!

Other than that, we've been doing good. Had a great day out with the kids. We had our WIC appointment today. Tara is up to 17 lbs, Gaber went down 1 lb and I lost another 6 lbs! Woohooo!
After the appointment we went to BK for a late lunch and then off to the always over crowded commissary for some much needed groceries.
Had to make some more appointments today so we can get our orders to PCS. We have to take the boys in for some shots and I gotta get Chloe into the vet to see what she needs...I'm behind on all of them! I think Jeff and I are the only ones good to go for this PCS! Only a little over 3 months until we move! :c)

The 4th

Well, we had a great 4th of July this year! The weather was nice, not to hot or humid and that evening there was a nice breeze. We took the kids to America Fest which was on Kadena A.B. We got there a little after 5pm, and it was already very crowded! I heard from someone that around 50,000 attended, maybe not all at once but you get the picture! So after finding a spot to park, on the runway, we took the kids to look at the firetrucks, planes, helicopters and all that military stuff. Next we went to the bouncy castle play land area, the part the boys really wanted to go for. They really like the one that is like a maze and it has a hill to climb and then a slide at the end, this one...



See Josiah climbing up? I think they did this one about a hundred times! Josiah and Gaber were usually together, but once Gaber didn't come out of the maze part, I stood looking and looking...getting a little nervous. Finally here he came, smiling ear to ear, and yelled, "I got squish-ED". :c) After all the bouncy stuff and sno-cones we headed over to a less crowded area to find a place to sit for the fireworks. The fireworks were awesome this year and the best part was Tara didn't freak out during them like I thought she may, especially since we forgot her passy. Well, the cost of so much fun was the trip home. We had to walk about 1-2 miles back to our car, sit in a line of cars for 40 minutes w/out moving an inch and taking 1 1/2 hours to get home! We finally had all 3 kids in bed by 11 pm, but it was worth it!
Here are a few more pictures from the day...

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Last night Jeff and I went to bed at about 10 pm, Jeff drifted off to sleep quickly and I lay there for a little bit when I hear some weird noise coming from our window. I really can't even explain what it sounded like, it wasn't just a bump noise...more like a clanking noise, that is the best way I can think to explain it. Maybe I can ask Jeff later how he would describe it then I'll let y'all know. So anyways, the noise was pretty loud and it did frighten me a little bit! I didn't know if a mouse was in our window or our vent so I woke up Jeff. Of course the noise stopped right after I woke him up, Jeff being a kind soul, got up and looked around our blinds and moved the curtains around a little bit and then came back to bed. He fell back to sleep and I finally drifted back to sleep when it happened again. This time Jeff heard it too! So he got up and stood on top of our desk and looked in the blinds and all around the window area. He opened the blinds, closed the blinds, wiggled them around to see if anything would fall out...but nothing happened. The noise had stopped again so he came back to bed. So we get all covered up again and we both drift off to sleep when the clanky noise wakes us again. I hear Jeff sigh and sit up. At this point I was happy that he is hearing it too so that I don't have to wake him up! So again he goes to the window, inspects everything he can think of but there is nothing there! So now we are thinking some kind of bug or gecko is in our blinds or window...somewhere. Again the noise stopped so we go back to bed and again, and drift off to sleep. So now it is around midnight when we are awoke again by this annoying strange sound. We sit up in bed and Jeff says that he might go sleep downstairs...uh...NO! NO WAY was I going to let him leave me alone with this creepy noise and be woke up all night. So Jeff had no other choice b/c I'm not letting him leave me alone, so he gets the ant/roach/spider spray. We turn on the lights, I scoot to the other side of the bed just in case whatever this thing is decides to make a dash for it when Jeff starts spraying. Jeff inspects the window and blinds again, not seeing anything but decides that whatever it is, is hiding out in the top part of the blinds. So he starts spraying in there as best as he could when out comes a HUGE SPIDER! Just kidding! No, out came a gecko, a fat one at that! I guess he had made a nice home for himself in our blinds. A huge sigh of relief, at last we had figured out what was behind all the creepy noises! Oh, and I can deal with geckos, I would much rather have a house full of geckos than spiders, ants, mice or roaches. So off ran the gecko and off to la-la land went Jeff and I. Thank God!