4th of July week

This week the rain returned, but it has been ok...not super rainy. Emma started her Japanese culture class at school, one hour a day everyday. And she started swimming lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a month, or longer if we choose. She wasn’t sure about them at first, but now she loves swimming lessons...which I feel like is half the battle. The week started slow, but ended much better. 

Playing with Daddy under her umbrella.

Napping before the Celebrate America event...on the 3rd. We were both tired.

We made chocolate muffins 

Daddy was working on the 3rd, and so didnt get to come to the event. But it was right by the station, so we walked over and watched the fireworks with him. Emma had a nice view from his shoulders. Since the sun goes down early, the fireworks were at 8, so not too late.

On Monday Emma will get to walk home from Culture Class all by herself because I have a meeting, in our building. So today we practiced, and I met her at the corner instead of picking her up by the door. She ran all the way to me. Independent girl, but she still loves her momma. It was sweet. 

Macarons

So....Emma has been wanting to make French Macarons. We have watched little kids make them on TV, and we found a recipe on Pinterest, so how hard could it be? 😔 or so I thought. Today we made them. Right before we got started I read a note that said that making them in humid climates is not a good idea, but the dehumidifier said 65, so thought we would be ok. My first clue that something was wrong was that our dry mixture wouldn’t even sift because when running it through the food processor, it started to clump. We were using a mesh strainer, so I thought maybe we needed a real sifter, which we went and bought at the BX. Nope, same problem. After what seems like forever to Emma, we finally got it sifted. (And it did take forever, but partly because we not only went to the Bx, but also we went off base by ourselves for the first time! We didn’t buy anything though...the grocery store didn’t have grapes☹️)  Anyway, making macrons will probably not happen in our house for a very long time. There was food coloring all over the place (somehow even on the couch???), bowls of water spilled all over the floor, and a little girl who doesn’t like to follow directions and was constantly hungry all day asking me what she could eat while I was busy (until I made her dinner of course), and a mom who was not very patient. We tried. We Pinterest failed. They are edible, but not presentable. I am sure that I have never used so many bowls and appliances for once recipe before. For some reason we picked a recipe that had 2 colors, because you know, one was too easy. One color looked good going in, but flopped. The other looked bad going in, came out looking good. Cooking can be very humbling...seriously, little kids on TV made these!!! Oh well. They are done, the dishes are done, and we survived. I won’t say we had fun, but we definitely made memories. Thankfully we went to church after all of this, and we are in much better spirits. :) 

Stirring trying to keep it from forming lumps in the humidity 

5 hours and a wardrobe or two later...piping. This batch didnt look good at first. And Emma didn’t get the memo about doing them the same size, or circles. I tried to help after this, but it didn’t t help much. 

Her favorite part of course.

Going in red looked like it had more volume, but was lumpy. Blue looked flat, I didn’t think they would turn out. 

When they came out, the blue had shiny tops, and the ridges at the bottom, but still flat.  A couple were cracked, but since they were different sizes they didn’t cook evenly. 

The red ones flattened out and were gooey. Not baked long enough? I have no idea, again, Same batter as the blue ones. 

Girl loves piping, but she needs a lot of help! 

The filling was a cheesecake like thing, and I made a quick raspberry jame to go in the center. 

All done!

Not a total flop, since we can eat them and they tasted good. But not something I would give to someone I’m not related to either. She wanted to eat them for dinner. I’m just glad it’s over, I will now go back to making muffins. 

Emma’s newest concoction

Finally, Daddy was here to try one of Emma’s concoctions. I have been waiting for this day. He was a good sport.  When we were at the commissary, she picked out some lemons, apparently they were in her recipe. ;) I let her get them, and then she came home and “cooked with her daughter.” I know there were lemons, a banana, lots of her expensive milk, and later pepper, peanut butter and cheese, of course. She chilled it, and set the table for everyone, ladled it with a spoon and brought it out for us to try.  Daddy said it wasn’t as bad as he expected, very lemony. I just had the pb. I would have tried it before the last few ingredients, but she got me with the pepper and cheese. Daddy started his Keto diet again,  so maybe he was just that hungry. I was not. 

This is mine. And it’s the only picture I got. I was cooking dinner so I didn’t take anymore. I see nuts in there, too, so they must have been another late addition. I wonder if she is playing chopped or something where she has to cook with weird ingredients?

Lake Okutama

Today we went hiking at Lake Okutama. We ended up on what was apparently the more challenging trail. Emma did great...more enthusiastic about it than me at times. It was pretty vertical, more than I expected, but she did great. Steven said we did 3 miles. On the way down she said her pinky toe was bothering her, and when we took her show off to check it, we realized she didn’t put socks on. 🤦‍♀️  we tried a bandaid, which helped, but then she ended up getting big a piggy back from Daddy. Next time we will make sure we wear socks. 

Lake Okutama

It wasn’t busy when we started, but it was much busier when we came down. 

Japanese ladybug? It was twice the size of ours.

Lake/dam from higher up.

This girl would do anything with Daddy.

Including climb a mountain 

This was the more difficult part, they had ropes to help though.

Daddy got her a walking stick. I found one, too, my legs were shaky on the way down!

Taking a break.

She was all smiles today. At one point we asked her if she liked hiking. “This is hiking? It’s weird but kinda fun.”  She was also afraid at one point because we saw a snake and there was a sign that said to watch out for bears. She kept thinking every noise she heard was a bear at the beginning.

We could not have done this without Daddy. 

Just a good view.

Heading back to the car.

We climbed that first one, maybe the second?

Hiking is exhausting.

Emma’s table

Emma has been setting the table. Most parents, I imagine, have trouble getting kids to do chores the right way or at all. We have the opposite problem. Emma sometimes gets a little too into her chores. She is very thorough, sometimes overboard and to an unnecessary level. (Note, not all her chores are like this, some she still needs help with.) Setting the table involves cleaning EVERYTHING off the table except placement/plates, and flowers...and food, which she arranges. This means she just puts everything else on the floor, and I may or may not know where my stuff is after dinner. We are still working out some of this, but it does look nice. She was apparently very proud of herself , because I found about 12 pictures of the table on my phone. 😏

She even tries to take away the extra chair since she is now sitting out the bench. A little overkill if you ask me...and since I’m the mom, it stays, sorry kid. 

Daddy’s rock

Steven has been working very hard learning Japanese, and carving a rock he found on the highest mountain in Korea. Today he finished it. 

All done!

His name in Japanese.

Emma wanted a picture with it.

Busy weekend

Last Saturday I went to PWOC training at Camp Zama with 7 other ladies from Yokota, about half our board. It was good to. Get away, but something sinus related (?) is bothering me and I came home feeling like I should never go away past lunch time again. I seem to develop headaches and even motion sickness in the afternoons or even when I’m out of the house for an extended period of time. I did NOT feel good, which is unfortunate because after the last couple years, I should have felt refreshed after that kind of day. But I have a doctors appointment for tomorrow, hopefully they will listen and be able to figure out what is wrong.  Anyway, Steven and Emma spent the whole day together on Saturday. And we have been enjoying having him home. And the sun is finally out, so we might even get to go swimming soon! This week we don’t have too much going on, but we seem to find things to do...maybe even a hike?  We will see!

Half our our ladies, the other half came from elsewhere in Japan.

All ready for church!

Steven has been renting games from the library. Emma has loved it! This one is nice because she can play with it for a while and when she gets bored we can take it back! I helped build this one.



Daddy made an egg salad sandwich. Emma is telling me thatnits good and I really should try some.

One thing I have missed about California, other than the sun and strawberries, is the sunsets. We finally had a good one the other night!

Oh playing with Daddy.

He was ‘sleeping.’

She put him to bed again...even turned out the light.


She and Daddy made this while I was shopping.