ItsJustMeHeather

Prom

2011-06-05T06:09:00.005+09:00

Prom was supposed to be last week, but Typhoon Songda crashed that party. Thankfully the school was able to reschedule for this week, before they graduate. Chris took Ashley (on the left in blue) and Megan (on the right in white). He made me promise not to put pictures on facebook until he could see them, but he said nothing about the blog!

Since prom was being held at a Marine base on island that none of us had been to before, Lyle, Steph and I drove with Chris and his girls following behind in his car. While at a stop light we heard Japanese girls talking and giggling. It was two girls on a scooter, stopped at Chris' car and talking to him. When the light turned green they took off:

But I think it is safe to say that Chris enjoyed the trip to prom! He has yet to crawl out of bed, so I am not sure how the rest of the night went.

Next week - Graduation!

A day with Tanya

2011-05-15T09:42:00.006+09:00

I finally took some me time. Since I had finished my classes and had a full day off, I asked Tanya if she wanted to come over to play. She had to cancel out of a field trip (who really wants to visit the landfill anyway?) and came over right after dropping the girls at school.

We enjoyed a little breakfast

Took a little time to empty our bags of stuff (okay, almost an hour... but we had forgotten how fun it was just to look at what we had!)

by the end of the day, we had laughed, talked and even found time to create these:

Who's going to join us next time?

I should have known...

2011-02-13T19:44:00.002+09:00

that something was up when Stephanie said she had to pick something up at the BX and she would meet us at the commissary.

Or maybe when she answered, "two rolls of duct tape" to the question, "What did you buy?"

Imagine my suprise when I went up stairs and saw this:

2011-02-08T06:23:00.002+09:00

Lyle and I both had Monday off and the kids had school, so we decided to forgo the Superbowl festivities and head up to Nago to see the cherry blossoms.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful view. Unfortunately, due to construction at the park we visited, we were unable to get to the official "cherry blossom viewing area". Enjoy:

Time flies!

2011-01-07T20:03:00.003+09:00

Can you believe it has been 9 months since I last wrote anything on this blog?

Actually I am only using it now to share a few recipes, but maybe I will have to get back into writing about our life here on Okinawa. Especially since we will be here for another 18 months.

Okay, now to the reason for the post.

Pizza in a crockpot Two different ways -

Crock Pot Pizza

1 1/2 Pound Ground Beef
16 Ounces Mozzarella Cheese
3 Ounces Pepperoni
16 Ounces Macaroni
10 3/4 Ounce Cream of Mushroom Soup
30 Ounces Pizza or spaghetti Sauce

Brown and drain hamburger. Cook and drain pasta. Using about 1/2 of each ingredient alternate layers in a 4-quart crock-pot in the following order: Hamburger, Pasta, Cheese Soup, Pizza Sauce, and Pepperoni. Repeat layers with remaining ingredients. Heat for at least 4 hours on low heat. *You can add anything you would like on a Pizza*

Hint to make it better - Add sauce and soup to meat, or at least put a small layer of sauce on bottom layer in crockpot to prevent meat from burning.

Pizza in a pot

1 ½ lbs hamburger
1 green pepper chopped
1 can cheddar cheese soup
2 Tablespoons oregano
1 medium onion chopped
4 oz sliced pepperoni
1 can tomato soup
4 cups cooked spaghetti
8 oz package of mozzarella cheese

Brown and drain beef. Add all ingredients except mozzarella cheese and mix lightly but well. Cook on low for 4-6 hours. Top with mozzarella during last 15 minutes of cooking.

Both are good and each is a bit unique which is why I kept them both. Also, it is good to have a back up for when you are out of Cream of Mushroom soup!

Bobbi - this one is just for you

Tex Mex Chicken - Spring style

1 bag of Individually Quick Frozen Chicken Breast Tenderloins
1 Jar Pace Picante Sauce
1 envelope Taco Seasoning Mix
1 Can of Fiesta corn (regular corn will do in a pinch), drained
1 Can Black Beans, drained

Dump the frozen chicken in the crock pot, sprinkle with the taco seasoning mix. Pour the picante sauce, corn and black beans over the top. cover and cook on low for 8 hours, stirring once or twice during the day.

Serve over white rice sprinkled with cheddar cheese and a dollop of sour cream. If, like me, you are watching the amount of rice you eat, it is almost as good on top of a bed of lettuce, no cheese, just fresh chopped onions and a bit of Fat free Sour cream.

This recipe was originally on Kraft foods website, but I modified it for my family and it turned out YUMMY!

Spring Sunday Scoop

2010-03-07T19:48:00.003+09:00

I know I have been awful about updating. Mostly because I catch up on what everyone else is doing through facebook and never think about filling anyone in on happenings here.

I am going to try to remedy that with a once a week update. We will see how that goes :)

This week Lyle got his promotion results. He is a Senior Master Sergeant Selectee. His line number is 150, which means he will sew on (and more importantly get a raise) in a couple of months. This also means we are going to start looking into building our house a little sooner (YEAAA!) I will post the official pictures after I get them off the AF site. My camera didn't cooperate the night of the promotion party.... probably a good thing LOL.

I also got a line number this week. I picked up my race number for the Okinawa Marathon on Saturday. Before you think I am too crazy, I only signed on for the 10K portion of the race.

Sunday (today) was race day and I was a little apprehensive. I had a few worries, but first and foremost was finishing in the allotted 1 1/2 hours. I shouldn't have worried, because even with the inchworm start I got an official finish time of 63 minutes!

Next year I will do even better!
Me before the race:
The final stretch: Crossing the finish line:
Me with my medal:

Earthquake

2010-02-28T08:49:00.003+09:00

This is what I woke up to on Saturday morning at 5:30 am. It immediately brought to mind the Big One on Guam, and I jumped out of bed to get the kids. Lyle stayed in bed :) Fortunately there was no damage in our house, but we did have a bit UNDER our house: The guy from housing said we had about 60,000 gallons of water under the building. They turned off the water, pumped the crawlspace and repaired the broken pipes.

The broken pipe gave us some fun. Check out how much pressure the water under the house was putting on the manhole covers:

I'm going to Disneyland

2010-01-28T11:44:00.002+09:00

Actually I already did. I learned that Disneyland is just a very small version of Disneyworld. I walked the whole thing, rode a few rides and did my shopping. Finished it all before 3 in the afternoon.

I am sure I would have stayed longer, if I had someone else to share it with. Even the happiest place on earth isn't that happy without your family or friends!

I am very happy that I am getting back on a plane to head home. The show was incredible, and it was nice to get away for a bit. But I am ready to go back to my busy, hectic and wonderful life!

See you all when I get back to Okinawa!

Where did the time go?

2010-01-26T00:49:00.003+09:00

Today in Okinawa (tomorrow for the rest of us) is my baby's birthday. He is 17. 17! How did this happen? One day he was my little boy, now all of a sudden he is all grown up.

Happy Birthday Chris. I love you so much, and wish I could be there today. Stephanie, you have my permission to give him 17 birthday swats from me!

Day two

2010-01-24T14:28:00.005+09:00

The second day of the Craft Fair was just as much fun as the first day. I didn't get to do as many make n takes since it was Saturday and there were so many more people. But I did get some goodies:

And I spent an hour knitting with Deborah Norville:

But I guess my greatest achievement today is this photo:

(according to my rubber addicted friends anyhoo!)

What a day!

2010-01-23T15:35:00.006+09:00

After yesterday, any day would be a good one, but today was the whipped cream on my hot fudge sundae.

I started with a call from my store Director, Ray. He had arrived on Wednesday, had the rental car and wanted to know if I wanted to get breakfast. Um, YEAH! So I showered quick, ran my fingers through my hair (no brush), popped a piece of gum (no toothbrush either), and headed out to IHOP! Pancakes, YUM.

After breakfast Ray dropped me off at the Target store so I could pick up a few necessaties:

Then he took me back to my hotel so I could get ready for the CHA Craft Show starting at noon.

CHA was heaven.

I blissfully wandered from booth to booth, taking part in Make & Takes, making notes for future purchases for the store and reveling in the feeling of being around other people as crazy as me. Only crafters can get high on beads and glitter, tape runners make us quiver and don't even talk about *new* or *just release* products!

Here is today's bounty:

Best part, I get to do it all again tomorrow!

Did I mention I got to meet Carol Duvall?

Back in the U. S. of A!!!

2010-01-23T15:11:00.004+09:00

Have I said lately that I love my job? Due to the manager's impending first child, I had to take her place and go the the CHA in Santa Ana California this week.

Of course, nothing is perfect and this trip is no exception. Thursday was the LONGEST day of my life. I started at 4am Okinawa time with a quick trip to the gym. I didn't do my normal workout group (sorry, Jeanette, you know I love you) as they were doing "The Centurion" and I just couldn't do that knowing I would be on a plane, immovable, for the next day. So I ran the track and steps with Chris, while Lyle ran his 1 1/2 mile. Then I headed home to finish packing.

At 9 Lyle and I headed down to Naha Airport. We enjoyed a Family Mart lunch at the airport while waiting for my boarding time to get a little closer. I boarded my plane at 12:15 and enjoyed a turbulent 2+ hour ride to Tokyo. After disembarking at Tokyo, I walked to my next gate, found the Starbucks and enjoyed a coffee and a Pumpkin Veggie wrap (WAY yummy!)

We boarded at quarter to 5, after going through a second carryon bag check, any people also received a quick pat down from the Japanese version of TSA. I was disappointed to learn the flight was full and I was in a center seat. I did meet a very nice airman, heading home after doing his first tour, a remote to Korea. I couldn't help but notice on his Customs form that his year of birth was 1988....I am so old!

Fortunately, since my morning started early, I was able to fall asleep shortly after dinner service and slept just over half of the flight away. We landed in San Francisco at 9:38, according to my boarding pass my next flight, the one to Santa Ana, was boarding at 10:15. In that short amount of time, I had to claim my bags, go through customs, recheck my bags, go through the security again and find my gate. I found my bags pretty quickly and stood in the customs line for almost 10 minutes, checking my watch CONSTANTLY, knowing I was never going to make my flight. Customs was a breeze, and I was beginning to think I might possibly make it. As I rushed to recheck my bags, I was told my flight was cancelled. So I waited in line with a bunch of other passengers whose flights were also not leaving on time. The lady at the United counter was able to get me on a 12:30 flight to Santa Ana. I rechecked my bags, went through security and found my gate with plenty of time to spare.

I took the opportunity to grab some lunch at a sandwich shop. This was probably the BEST sandwich I have had in a while, Turkey with Avocado on authentic San Francisco Sourdough. YUM!

I finished my lunch and headed back over to my gate, just in time to hear the announcement that this flight has been cancelled due to weather. I got in line with everyone else to try to book a different flight. I was told that the earliest flight to Santa Ana that they had seats for was at 8:45 PM, but if I wanted to fly into Los Angeles I could leave earlier. Since I already knew that LA had a shuttle to Santa Ana, I agreed to go to LA. I was confirmed for a 4 PM flight, and put on standby for the earlier 3 pm flight.

Once again I walked to find my standby gate and settled into a knitting project and a book on tape. I noticed the marquee listing the confirmed and standby passengers and was a bit disheartened to notice I was number 45 of 77 standby passengers, but you never know what might happen, so I waited. At 2 they announced the flight was delayed and wouldn’t be leaving until 4:30. That was okay with me, since I was already confirmed at 4 on a separate flight. I packed up my knitting and walked the terminal to get to my other gate.

When I reached my “confirmed” flight gate I was surprised by the red cancelled sign. I doubled checked the info, sure enough, this flight was cancelled. So I hoofed it back to my standby flight and settled in to wait. At 4 they announced the flight was cancelled, so I headed back over to the customer service counter.
I was given another confirmed seat for Santa Ana at 8:45, but was told I could go on Standby for the 7:15 flight, also to Santa Ana. I agreed, got myself a coffee and a scone, and went to my next standby gate.

I was beginning to wonder if I would ever leave San Francisco. At 6:30 it was announced that the 8:45 flight to Santa Ana was cancelled…. Of course, since this was my confirmed seat! I went up to the check in counter and asked the attendant what my real chances were of getting on this flight. According to the marquee I was standby number 31 and there were 0 seats available. She told me it didn’t look good. I asked about my bags, thinking I would just get a hotel room and try again in the morning. That is when I found out my bags were sent to LA on a separate flight (why wasn’t I on standby for that one? It actually left the airport!). By this time I had been traveling for 26 hours and my face must have shown it. She told me to have a seat, and not leave the gate. They started calling names of people that hadn’t confirmed their seats. At the end, they had 5 seats available. She started calling names. My name was the fourth one called. You KNOW I was on my feet and running before she finished my last name!

I got on the flight and we waited… and waited. We had to wait for the mechanics to finish something up. We were told that unless we received clearance in the next 15 minutes we would NOT be flying into Santa Ana. Fortunately, we got our clearance and got underway. We landed at Santa Ana at 10:15 PM. Since I didn’t have any bags to claim, I filed my missing luggage voucher and grabbed a taxi to my hotel.

I got my room, dropped off my backpack, and walked up the block to the 7-11. I bought water, and some trail mix for breakfast, was a bit upset that they didn’t sell Febreze, then headed back to my room. I rinsed my clothes the best I could, laid them in front of the heater and turned it on High.

Maybe tomorrow will be better!

Winners!

2009-11-09T12:48:00.003+09:00

This is me (in the back) with most of my Extreme Fitness Challenge group. This was taken just after we finished our 3rd and final group challenge. I have to brag a bit when I say, we won all three group challenges.... and our team took 3 of the 5 individual challenges. Kelly (the man with the goatee) won for most weight lost with 20.5 pounds. I was runner up with 16. The other teams didn't even come close to our results!

We loved our trainer, Jeanette, so much that we forced her to sign up to teach a group fitness class for us until the next EFC starts in January. I will be seeing her and 9 more of my teammates for the next 6 weeks!

On Saturday, Lyle and I went out to Monte Carlo night at the club. My favorite chief, Rita was dealing blackjack, so that is where I stayed all evening. Lyle wandered and played a couple hands of Texas Hold 'em. We each started the night with $3000 of funny money, and I ended the evening with $30,000. We didn't want to stay for the prize giveaway at the end, so our cash was donated to a friend. It was a fun night, and I have to say, Rita is the best BlackJack dealer EVER!

Just Cleaning out the camera

2009-10-20T08:55:00.003+09:00

It has been forever since I did a real update post. Mostly because I have been working full-time, taking 3 college classes, taking a cake decorating class, enjoying my Extreme Fitness Challenge workouts for an hour a day 5 days a week, and then trying to recover on the occasional minute off.

But I don't have quite so many excuses now, 2 of my three classes are finished, I have a week before my new face to face class starts, so instead of writing my business final paper, I decided to update you with pictures from September to today!

I put them on the slide browser, just because Blogger has been difficult about pictures the last couple of weeks.

Enjoy the show

Update!

2009-10-17T18:53:00.003+09:00

I have a lot of things to post about, but have decided to hold all that for something more newsworthy.... Tonight's dinner.

My BFF (Best Foodie Friend) Susan posted a recipe yesterday that sounded yummy. She gave the link and some advice about trying to add a can of black beans. I checked the pantry and noticed we had all 6 ingredients needed, so I dropped them in the crockpot for tonight's dinner.

The recipe: Slow Cooker Tex Mex Chicken

I added the 1 can of black beans, drained and I used a can of corn, rather than frozen.

The result:
And for dessert: Cherry Almond Angel Roll

I substituted Strawberry Pie Filling for the Cherry, since Lyle doesn't care for cooked (aka Mushy) cherries. It was incredible!

And it even looked pretty:

Thank you again Susan, for an incredible dinner suggestion!

A Winner and A Loser

2009-10-02T07:41:00.002+09:00

I am usually up early to exercise, but it has always been on my own, or with my workout buddy, Rita. After a year (yes a year!) of seeing the ads for "Extreme Fitness Challenge" I decided to give it a try. I paid my fee, decided on the 5 - 6 am class, and waited nervously for the first day.

That day was September 14th. I met my trainer, Jeanette, and the rest of my group. We all got our Blue Team t-shirts and started with a bang. Jeanette is very motivating and always full of energy, even when we aren't quite there. I love every workout even when I am dripping with sweat and every muscle in my body is screaming STOP!

Yesterday we had our first challenge against all of the other teams. The challenge was a dead hang from a pull up bar. I held on for 1 minute and 42 seconds, the average for our whole team was 1:54, and that was enough to declare Blue Team the winners! My prize: A brand new workout towel, embroidered with the fact that I am a winner!
Today was our first official weigh in, which also made me a Loser. Since our start 3 weeks ago, I have lost 7 pounds, but that wasn't the surprising number, I also lost 1 inch off my hips, and 5 (yes FIVE) inches from my waistline. I credit that to Jeanette and her evil "waist-shapers". Those numbers were enough of an incentive for me to get down the box of size 12 jeans I have had in my closet since we arrived on Okinawa. The result:

They fit!

I still have 5 weeks to go, and I am sure Jeanette has more in store for the Blue Team.

On a sadder note, today I had to say goodbye to an old friend:My first "biggest loser" win, with my good friend Tanya, has come to the end of it's usefulness. My favorite shirt lost it's battle with the sweat monster and had to be put down. It was for its own good, but it will be sorely missed.

I do have more updates to do, but homework beckons. Writing a paper a week has really put a damper on my "fun" writing, but I only have one more paper to go for writing class and one final paper for Business Management, then I will be back.

Nutter Butter Banana Pudding Trifle

2009-09-07T20:11:00.005+09:00

All I can says is YUMMMMMMM! I saved this recipe, because it sounded like it would be good. Nutter butters in banana pudding? Why didn't someone think of this sooner? But then I made it and it was OOOOOOHHHH so good! Unfortunately, everyone else thought it was good too, so there wasn't any to bring back home after the picnic.

The recipe:
Nutter Butter Banana Pudding Trifle
Southern Living Magazine
February 2009 (page 86 if you have the mag) or use the link

Prep: 35 min., Cook: 20 min., Stand: 30 min., Chill: 2 hr. This homemade pudding is divine, economical, and uses on-hand ingredients. The pudding has thickened enough when a distinct trail is left in the mixture when you stir with a spoon. The cookies will soften the longer the dessert chills.

Yield
Makes 8 to 10 servings

Ingredients
3 cups milk
3 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 medium-size ripe bananas
1 (1-lb.) package peanut butter sandwich cookies
2 cups sweetened whipped cream

1. Whisk together first 4 ingredients in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook, whisking constantly, 15 to 20 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat; stir in butter and vanilla until butter is melted. 2. Fill a large bowl with ice. Place saucepan in ice, and let stand, stirring occasionally, 30 minutes or until mixture is thoroughly chilled.

3. Meanwhile, cut bananas into 1/4-inch slices. Break cookies into thirds.

4. Spoon half of pudding mixture into a 3-qt. bowl or pitcher. Top with bananas and cookies. Spoon remaining pudding mixture over bananas and cookies.
Top with sweetened whipped cream. Cover and chill 2 to 24 hours. Garnish, if desired.

Shortcut Nutter Butter®-Banana Pudding Trifle: Omit eggs, sugar, flour, and butter. Substitute thawed extra creamy whipped topping for sweetened whipped cream. Reduce vanilla to 1 tsp. Place 3 cups milk and vanilla in large bowl; add 2 (3.4-oz.) packages vanilla instant pudding mix. Beat with an electric mixer at medium speed 2 minutes or until thickened; let stand 5 minutes. Stir in 1 (8-oz.) container sour cream. Proceed with recipe as directed in Steps 2 through 4.

My notes on this recipe: This will serve more than 8-10 people as it is pretty rich. I made the full-fledged, make-your-own pudding version. It tasted much like a vanilla custard. I think the quick version would also taste good, but not nearly as rich and creamy. When I make this again, I will layer the cookies and bananas differently as it was a bit too much mass in the middle. Next time: 1/2 the pudding, 1/2 cookies and bananas, remaining pudding, remaining cookies and bananas, then the sweetened whipped cream. I sweetened my heavy whipping cream with powdered sugar. No measurements, I just kept sprinkling in spoonfuls, until it was thick.

Back to school

2009-08-27T07:57:00.002+09:00

It took me a while but I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up! I enrolled in college and have finished my first week back to school. Granted I am only taking 2 real classes (and 1 one credit "required" class)but I am still a little worried about how well I will do.

I am already having a little anxiety about my writing class. I like to write, and I don't think I totally suck at it. I also have opinions, and I am usually good at sharing them. So why is it that as soon as my writing teacher handed out our course list and I saw that we had 4 papers to do, my mind went blank. And it still is...totally and utterly blank. What do I know? What should I write about? Can I actually convince anyone to see my point of view in 600 words?

My business class is an online class, and the instructor just posted our first information this morning. I glanced at it, printed out and am getting ready to actually look at it, but I am a bit afraid. Do I really have what it takes to be a college student? Am I putting to much pressure on myself?

I guess only time will tell. I have already enrolled for my next term classes, so I have commited myself until the end of December. Maybe by then I will be more confident that I am doing what I need to do.

Off to study.... wish me luck!

Ohayo Gozaimasu

2009-08-24T05:30:00.002+09:00

....means Good Morning in Japanese, but on Okinawa it means Nice to see you. And after such a long time it is nice to see you!

My computer troubles were a bit more than I thought and we ended up having to dump my whole computer and start it from fresh, so I have busy updating software, reinstalling programs, trying to figure out why my CM Software quadrupled my photo bank, and resigning myself to spend the time deleting said photos!

These last few weeks have been extremely full. Stephanie participated in the DEFY program (Drug Education For Youth), spending a week touring jails, climbing walls, visiting parks and having fun.

Chris went to a Survival Camp (called NIKO, but I have no idea what that stands for) for 4 days. He camped in the jungle on the northern end of the island. The highlight of the trip for him was roasting a whole pig in a ground pit. He came home battered, bruised, dirty and stinky. He can't wait to do it again next year!

I am loving my new job. I should have started up in the craft section to begin with! I am in crafters heaven! I love the people I work with and am so much happier than I was in the frame shop. I also took a giant step and enrolled in school. That's right, at 38 I am a freshman! Today is my first day of school and I am more than a little nervous.

Lyle is still Lyle. He has been busy working as well as helping me with the regular house stuff and running kids from here to there. He plans on taking some time off in September, but we will see.

That is about all the news that's fit to print. I didn't want you thinking we fell of the face of the earth!

Tang Dynasty Dinner Show

2009-07-30T07:56:00.005+09:00

I really am trying to finish the China posts and move on to real life, but some minor technological difficulties seem to be preventing that. I think I have the final kinks out of my internet troubles (thanks, Rick!) but you are all going to have to make do with pictures of our Dinner Theater rather than a video (someday you will see the video and thank me for sparing you now).

Anyhoo, We landed in Xi'an, which is remarkable like the central US. It was flat, a little more brown than green and the bus ride from the airport seemed to take forever!

Some of the sights on the street included more motorcycles than in Beijing. It has something to do with the additional taxes on motorcycles in Beijing (thieves tend to prefer motorcycles, this cut down on crime, supposedly).

We enjoyed watermelon with EVERY meal we had in China. In case I hadn't mentioned it, watermelons run about $20 each here on Okinawa, so it is a very rare treat. In China, this forbidden fruit was plentiful:In Xi'an each street seemed to sell it's own specialty. This street was filled with pet shops: But just like Beijing, the traffic was horrible. So bad that they had traffic cops in intersections WITH stoplights! Unfortunately, I was unable to get the picture of the police car with lights and sirens going that was hood to hood with oncoming traffic. The oncoming traffic refused to move out of the cops way!

After arriving at our hotel, we had just enough time to get our room keys, check out the room, then climb back on the bus to head to dinner. This is when the duck for lunch started to catch up with Lyle. He missed most of the dinner and all of the show :(

The food was incredible, and the dancers were very good. The musicians were everything you would expect from a Chinese dinner theater, specializing in instruments that are no longer played by anyone..... except at this theater. Again, you will thank me for not posting the video! Even Lyle could hear the final performance from where he was sitting!

Beijing, the final day

2009-07-22T15:40:00.005+09:00

We started our final day in Beijing with only three stops planned - The Lama Temple, Lunch and the Airport. No shopping, so Lyle went out to haggle with the "One Dolla" guy for some final souveniers.

We boarded our bus and were on our way to the Lama Temple. We had seen this sign a few times, but I was finally able to get it on camera:

The Lama Temple:

The Shisa Dogs of China are very similar to the Shisa Dogs on Okinawa with one difference. On Okinawa the male and female are different only in how they hold their mouth, open versus closed (no comment necessary). In China the Male Shisa always had a decorated ball under his paw, while the Female was always holding down a cub. I think I prefer the Chinese Shisas!

After Lama Temple we were on our way to lunch. No trip to China would be complete without a meal of Peking Duck. We stopped at this restaurant with a duck outside.

While we started in on the dishes at our table, a waiter brought in the cart with the duck. Our tour guide said" You will want to get your cameras out for the demonstration on how to carve the Peking Duck" All of the men (and Sharjuan) got out their video cameras, stood for a better view and readied themselves for what we thought would be a wonderful display. We were all VERY disappointed when he just carved it as we would a turkey. No talented knife show, just a man carving a duck..... We all tried it and agreed that it wasn't spectacular, but it was good.

After lunch we were off to the airport, where I was able to get one last Beijing sign:

See you all in Xi'an

We interupt this vacation

2009-07-15T08:45:00.005+09:00

for a special announcement (or 3)

Just so I don't fall incredibly behind on real life, I wanted to update the last week. We have all gone back to work (except Stephanie, who lives a life of leisure) so not much to post about except:

Chris got his braces removed

My remaining friends in North Dakota (all 2 of you) sent me a care package (including returning a shawl I forgot I lent you LOL)

We immediately had to try the new popcorn seasoning (the parmesan garlic is YUMMMMY)

And last, but definitely most important. Stephanie turns 12 today!

Birthday pictures will be coming soon!

Day Two, continued

2009-07-14T16:25:00.005+09:00

Our drive to Badaling was very interesting. Our big bus, on a curvy road, covered with tourists, both walking and on buses. I don't think our horn stopped honking the entire drive up. The scariest point was our drop spot. Our bus went through the small tunnel pictured below. This is an actual road, not just a tourist drop, but the tunnel is only one car wide. The traffic through didn't care if people were also trying to use the tunnel, they just honked a couple times while driving through.

The wall was definitely the highlight of our trip. It was after all the main reason we wanted to go to China! Our guide gave us an hour and we were off. Chris chose out goal of the high tower to the East. We stopped for a quick photo, then got to hiking. It got gradually steeper as we neared the peak, eventually becoming uneven stairs. Once we reached the top reality set in for me. I don't like heights and we were WAYYY up there. Not only that I had to climb back down! Going down was harder than climbing up! On our way down a Chinese woman tapped Stephanie's shoulder and motioned to her kids and her camera. We had been warned that this may happen, so Stephanie just nodded and gave her best American Blond smile.

Once we reached our starting point we did a little shopping at the souvenier shops and found the best thing ever - Cold water and Ice Cream. We each picked a treat and sat down for a rest. Before we knew it, it was time to board the bus and head back to Beijing.

On our way back we stopped for lunch. Imagine our suprise to find these tiny cups

And this small bottle

We were informed it was the local moonshine and it was included in the lunch! All of the adults has a sample (or two)!

We did buy a bottle to bring home, not because it was particularly good (imagine watered down nail polish) but because it was only $2 and a GREAT conversation piece.

After lunch we headed to the Summer Palace. It was here we decided that if you have seen one palace, you have seen them all. The Summer Palace's claim to fame: it is home to the world's longest corridor (730 meters).

Another quick ride on the bus to see our final scheduled spot of the day. The Olympic Stadium - The Water Cube and the Bird's Nest.

Since there was no dinner planned for this evening, we all decided to check out Wafujing Street. For any of you that watch any of those Strange Food shows, you might recognize the name. For the locals it is just known as the Barbecue street. Here street vendors sell everything, and I mean EVERYTHING on a stick. The first "food" I saw when we walked up was a Starfish Skewer. Rick, I thought of you the whole time we were here! We each ate something strange, Lyle had Sea Snake, Chris tried Fried Silk Worm Larva, Stephanie had a frothy drink, and I had spicy noodles (I know, the girls wimped out, but we had nothing to prove!) We all enjoyed skewered chicken, steamed dumplings and for dessert - Fried Ice Cream!

Afterwards we all caught our own taxi's back to the hotel to get some Tums and Immodium AD! Tomorrow, final day in Beijing and off to Xi'an

Trip to the wall

2009-07-14T10:49:00.003+09:00

I am going to try to get all of our second day in Beijing into one post. We started out our day driving out of Beijing. It was interesting to see the architecture. Corporate Buildings all had their own style, with each showing a different flair, but the apartments buildngs were all EXACTLY the same. Later we saw the same designs in Xi'an and in Shanghai! We made a brief stop at the Jade Factory, but since that was just a shopping stop, I don't have any pictures.

After the Jade factory we were on our way to the main reason we took this trip, The Great Wall. It was an hour long drive out to Badaling, our starting point for the wall. Our tour guide showed us the site of what was supposed to be a Disneyland type Amusement park. However, just before it was complete, construction stopped and it was never opened. There were various theories on why it wasn't completed, all of them focus around money. Soon after this site, we got our first glimpse of the wall.

After 3 hours of fighting with blogger and slide, I am giving up...for now. Stay tuned later for the rest of the story

Beijing Day One, Part 3 (aka the end of the day)

2009-07-11T07:41:00.006+09:00

Our next sightseeing stop was The Forbidden City. If you have seen the movie, "The Last Emperor" then this site is already familiar to you. This was where the emperor lived and ruled. This site is huge, over 150 acres. Unfortunately, my camera battery died on our way in the gate. The following pictures are courtesy of Lyle
(via the digital camcorder) and Stephanie (who remembered her camera!)

Just a word of explanation, The Escape Tree is a tree that reached the second floor of the emperor's concubine. In case he (or someone else) needed to leave in a hurry, the tree was there and ready! The changing of the guards was a bit of a let down. We saw 4 guards marching toward the 4 guards on duty and got out the cameras. They were looking VERY offical, marching in formation toward the standing guards. But once they reached their post, they just started talking and milling around the guards they were relieving. Not what I was expecting at all.

We left the Forbidden City by way of the "gate of heavenly peace" This is the large red building with Chairman Mao's picture on it. This gate is where the Chairman stood and declared Communism was the future for China. Ironically this is also directly across the street from Tianamen Square

Tianamen square was a very solemn place. I think everyone in our group (children excluded) took a minute to absorb what actually happened here years ago. There were guards everywhere we looked. This was the first of many times on this trip, I was glad to have been born in America.

We all boarded the tour bus and were on our way to visit the Silk Factory. We learned about silk worms, how the silk is taken off the pods, and the different uses for the different type of pods (single or double wormed). I will spare you the few silk factory pictures I took, as they aren't very interesting compared to the video I took. Our factory guide explained that the silk worm larva is edible and a favorite snack. She asked if anyone wanted to try one, and Sharjuan volunteered, closely followed by Stephanie! That is right, my daughter that doesn't eat anything strange, VOLUNTEERED to eat a silk worm! Check it out:

Of course the silk worm was just an appetizer before dinner. We stopped to do some shopping at a local flea market for an hour (not nearly long enough) then went to a dinner show. Dinner was the first of many round table, lazy susan meals. The table starts with rice, tea and soup, but quickly grows to so many foods, you can't remember which you liked and which you haven't even tried. At this meal we were entertained by Chinese dancers:

I don't remember how the conversation started, but somewhere along dinner, Lyle made the statement that the dancers were busy cooking rice between each dance. And Chris said, with a dreaminess in his voice, "I need to get a girl like that"!

After dinner, it was back to our hotel. We each went to our rooms, exhausted after a long day, but looking forward to doing it again the next day!

Beijing, Day One, Part Two

2009-07-09T18:16:00.003+09:00

After touring the Temple of Heaven it was another quick ride on the bus. Now we were headed to one of the Hutong Districts of Beijing.

The Hutong, or back alley, is one place we could see what life might have truly been like in old China. These small alleys are a maze of walls and buildings. We took a Rickshaw bike tour to one of the family homes in this district. Our ride was held up by a traffic jam. Two Chinese mail vans were competing for space on a VERY narrow road.

Each family unit living in the Hutong may have multiple relations living with them in their "family home" The homes are smaller walled areas, containing multiple rooms such as bedrooms, living quarters and a kitchen. These areas are so old that there is no plumbing and bathrooms are communal between multiple families. There is electricity running to the homes, but you can see in the pictures, it isn't neat and tidy.

We enjoyed a lunch inside the family home we were visiting. This family opens their home up everyday for tour groups and feeds them an authentic Chinese dinner. All for a fee of course. We ate a TON of food and even got to try making our own dumplings. Their kitchen area was small, yet they were able to feed all 16 in our tour group with plenty left over! We were left to wonder though. Were the ducklings in the cage pets, or next months dinner?

And just because I know someone will ask... The Tomatoes and Eggs were suprisingly good. Tasted very much like scrambled eggs with a bit too much catsup on them.

After lunch it was back to the bus which offered a couple more photos for you to enjoy:

See you all tomorrow for the final photos of Day one.

Beijing, the first day part one

2009-07-07T08:10:00.003+09:00

When we walked out of our hotel the first morning we were greeted by salespeople. These salesmen were soon known to our group as the "One Dolla" guys. The prices for various souveniers started at $10 for hats and shirts, $5 for postcards. As we walked to the bus the prices dropped. By the time we reached the bus everything was $1. We encountered these people EVERYWHERE!

After boarding the bus we started on our way to our first tour stop of the day: Temple of Heaven. I don't think there was a single person on our bus that wasn't staring out the window or taking pictures! The streets of Beijing are a mixture of old and new. The cars and people are everwhere, and traffic rules are mere suggestions. I am so glad I didn't have to drive anywhere!

Once we got to Temple of Heaven, we had to walk through Ti'an Tan park, also known as Temple of Heaven park. This is the gathering place for old and new every morning for daily exercise. The Chinese seem to feel that exercise and games go hand in hand, so there were many different activities going on: Card games, ring toss, Tai Chi, kite flying and a strange, almost Beany bag type game using a badminton birdie type toy.

We made it to the the gate for the Temple of Heaven. This huge complex has more temple buildings than we could visit in the short time we were there. But we hit the big ones, The Temple of Heaven and the Hall of Prayer for good harvest looked very much like the architecture we see here on Okinawa. The Chinese influence was amazing.

Lili, our guide, explained the gates for us. There are three doors in each gate. The left and the right were for imperial staff,cabinet members and for the emperor (I dont remember which got right and which got left) But the center door was only for Spirits.

We learned about the Heavenly Center Stone. If you stood upon this stone, your normal voice was supposed to be louder, therefore the spirits can hear your wishes better. All the kids wanted was for the bus to appear and a chance to rest!

We also visited the Imperial Vault of Heaven. The wall surrounding this temple has a special quality, giving it it's name, Echo Wall. If it is quiet, you can talk to the wall and your voice will echo around the entire wall, allowing the spirits to hear you. It didn't work for us.... too many people saying too many different things.

We left the Temple of Heaven area and were greeted by a throng of peddlars. They even hit up our tour guides! We passed on the parasols, but did buy a couple of folding straw hats for the kids.

Next stop, the Hutong district and Lunch! Are you tired yet?

Signs you are in China

2009-07-06T20:09:00.004+09:00

You know I couldn't even get through the airports without finding a sign or two that needed sharing. I will have more, but from the pictures I went through this morning I have these:Virgin Cola was found in the Okinawa Airport.

Ease Hotel - rented out in 30 minute increments for only 58 Yuan (less than $10)The parking lot Restaurant - Cars on Level 2, Drinks on Level 3

Ni Hao

2009-07-06T07:27:00.007+09:00

That is the general greeting in China, and one of the few phrases I actually learned (and used) while in China. I also used Xie Xie (sounds like Shi Shi) which is Thank You. But the most important phrase I learned was pronounced Boo Shi, and was best used in an angry or annoyed tone. I don't know it's exact meaning, but when told to the local peddlers it got them to leave us alone. But more about that later.

Our trip to China was incredible and amazing. We left with one expectation of what it would be like, but came back with a whole different understanding of their life, culture and history. I am planning on posting our trip over the next few days, but you need to be patient with me as I don't think I have totally processed everything we saw yet.

We started off on Sunday morning. Since I had done most of the packing and prepping on Saturday, the morning went smoothly. We even had time to stop off for our favorite Okinawan beverage - Cold Coffee:

Then we all boarded our shuttle bus to Naha International Airport. The kids were excited to finally be on our way.We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Since the International gate is so small, the check in process can't be started until you are 1 hour from boarding, so we waited.We boarded our plane on time and were soon in the air, on our way to Shanghai. We were served lunch on the plane. From lower left corner, clockwise: Azuki bean dessert, cantaloupe, peanuts, water, fried tofu and chicken with rice and veggies.

Our first view of China was over the skies of Shanghai.

Once we landed we had to go through Swine Flu testing. First test was a thermal scan of our forehead (the black object in the first masked tester's hand). If you failed the scan (Steph did) then you got a digital thermometer in the mouth. If you failed that one (the guy with the back of his head showing failed) you got an old fashioned thermometer. After 5 minutes he passed that one, so I am not sure what step would have been next.

I learned something in the Swine Flu testing process - LIE. I marked the boxes truthfully on our health questionaire for Chris, Stephanie and I. We were pulled out of the immigration line and subjected to another round of temperature testing and questioning. At the end of our interrogation I was told to fill out new forms for all three of us and NOT to check ANY boxes.

After getting through the gates we were met by Fiona, our escort through the airport. I loved that her greeting flag said "Spring Tour" You might wonder why we needed a guide through the airport, as we did until we saw the actual terminalFiona guided us through the Domestic Check in procedure, then started walking us to our gate area. This is a hotel sandwiched between the International and Domestic terminalsAgain let me point out how huge this airport is:After we got to our gate area we took a moment to look around. We thought it was a little funny that the big Ping Pong tournament was being shown on EVERY tv:This is an indoor wall of water:

After a short look, Lyle located ice cream and got a couple scoops for everyone. This was our first purchase using our Chinese money, Yuan. After spending over 200 Yuan on 3 bowls of ice cream we did the math and found that we spent almost $30. Then we learned that ANYTHING with an American brand was going to cost you 3-5 times more than if you buy a Chinese brand. But it was REALLY good ice cream :)We spotted these in the snack bar, Dried Chicken Feet:There were also Duck bills, Chicken necks and other assorted poultry parts. We passed.

Another short flight took us to our destination for the night - Beijing. This is the International terminal building, built just for the olympics. It is shaped after a turtle, which promises Long Life and Longevity.

We boarded our bus and made it to our hotel. We were all tired, and there was a full day planned for us so we hit the beds. Stay tuned for Beijing, Day One!

We're Back

2009-07-05T14:56:00.002+09:00

We have literally just gotten back home from our China trip. It was a VERY full week of touring, shopping, picture taking and eating. I have about 1000 photos to go through, a full video camera, four FULL baskets of laundry, about 200 email messages to check and a ton of updated blogs to read.

Don't worry, you will get the full tour details as soon as I get life back to normal (or as close as it gets).

To all the men in my life...

2009-06-21T16:57:00.005+09:00

To all of you that are Husbands, Fathers, Brothers, Uncles, Nephews and Sons.

Today is your day to do what makes you happy. Take a nap:

Go fishing:

Go out for a little ice cream:

BBQ:

Or just spend the day with those you love:

Happy Father's day to each of you, wherever you are!

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a sign

2009-06-20T07:43:00.006+09:00

I promised you some of the signs we saw while at Neo park. Other than the bird droppings sign (see yesterday's post) we saw this one:And this one:

I am not sure if this is for information or a warning:But the highlight of my day was to see Lyle walking hand in hand with the kids:When I asked why they were laughing they said, "Didn't you see the sign?" You mean I missed one? So I back tracked and saw this one:For those that don't have a magnifying glass handy, my kids had noticed the last line:

Neo Park

2009-06-19T09:12:00.005+09:00

We took a trip to Neo Park, which is a Nature park/Zoo. It was a neat experience. We started in the Bird sanctuary, and were greeted by this sign:

As you watch the slide show, you will see Stephanie feeding a Lemur. This was NOT something she was supposed to be doing. She and Lyle went up a set of steps, into an screened area and spent about 15 minutes up close and personal with these creatures, until a park worker came and told them they were in an Employee only area. OOPS

I will have to post some of the fun signs from there another time. Enjoy the animals :)

Fun Food Find

2009-06-18T06:57:00.003+09:00

Poor Chris...He hasn't been able to eat popcorn for quite a while now. In North Dakota it was because of the headgear brackets, here, it is because of the actual braces. In ND we were able to buy Old Dutch Puff Corn, like popcorn, but no hulls so it is dental friendly. Here on Okinawa he has had to do without (when we are watching anyway)

Imagine my suprise when I stumbled upon the Japanese version of hull-less popcorn:

I have no idea what the actual name is, we call it Ninja Popcorn (<--insert bad japanese accent here).

I have since found it in a few other flavors, each has a different cartoon on the back, featuring our favorite popcorn ninja in a different predicament. I wonder how he will make it out of this one:

Sunset on the Seawall

2009-06-17T05:29:00.002+09:00

Lyle and I went out without the kids a few weeks back. We didn't plan anything special. Just a little shopping at the yen store then we planned on getting dinner out.

After we finished shopping though, we decided to check out the park behind Kadena Marina shopping center. After walking through a nice athletic park we ended up at the seawall and the "famous" Kadena Steps we kept hearing about. It was dusk and the way the diminishing sunlight was illuminating the concrete made it almost beautiful. These photos don't do it justice:

food for thought

2009-06-16T16:46:00.004+09:00

Stephanie made these cookies a while ago, but I am trying to clean out my camera (Again). Lucky for you!

Java Cream Drops

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons instant coffee granules
1 tablespoon half-and-half cream
1 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup baking cocoa
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

Directions: In a small bowl, combine coffee granules and cream; set aside. In a large bowl, cream the butter, sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, vanilla and reserved coffee mixture. Combine flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Divide dough in half. To one portion, add cocoa and walnuts. Stir chocolate chips into remaining dough. To form cookies, place 1 teaspoon of each dough on an ungreased baking sheet; lightly press doughs together. Flatten slightly. Repeat with remaining doughs. Bake at 375° for 8-10 minutes. Cool for 1 minute before removing from pans to wire racks. Yield: 5 dozen. http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Java-Cream-Drops.aspx

And since I have started a food post for today, I will add another photo from the camera:

To Die For Pot Roast I made mine using Zesty Italian dressing mix. The first time I made it I added carrots and potatoes in with the roast. It was good, but the meat was SOOOOO good, next time I increased the meat in the crock and left the veggies on the stove :)

The results are in

2009-06-07T13:45:00.002+09:00

Today was the annual dessert auction at church. This fundraiser is held to benefit Women's Ministry. The cakes usually go for high dollar amounts, then after the bidding has ended, the cakes are passed around for all to sample and enjoy. Last year I made my Lemon Meringue Cake and it did well despite no one knowing whether I could cook or not.

Now, of course, those that know me, know I make good food, and wouldn't bring anything to a potluck that doesn't impress. That being said, I was worried today. There were only twelve desserts being auctioned off. One was made by Chris - he made Snickers Cake:
Some of you might remember this one. German Chocolate cake with a ribbon of melted caramel and chocolate chips, topped (usually) with Cool Whip to serve. He included a can of Redi Whip Topping, as he didn't want the cool whip to ruin the cake before anyone got a chance to bid on it. Stephanie made Triple Treat Torte:

She even stood up in front of everyone to describe it: A peanutty shortbread crust, topped with a layer of peanut butter, cream cheese and cool whip, covered with blended vanilla and chocolate pudding, spread with cool whip then sprinkled with chocolate and crushed peanuts. Then there was mine:

My Dulce De Leche Cake. I KNOW it is delicious, I KNOW everyone will love it, but it is not even close to pretty. Both kids have better looking cakes than I made, so I started to worry that their cakes might make more than mine (my pride and reputation is at stake).

But in the end, my cake sold for $55, Stephanie's and Chris' each made $45. And the best part was hearing everyone compliment my kids on doing such a great job!

Don't worry, people commented on my cake too. My ego is doing okay, but thanks for worrying :)

Summer travel

2009-06-06T09:25:00.002+09:00

When Lyle first got the orders to Okinawa, we started talking about what our vacation plans might be while here. Being a smaller island the local attractions, while interesting, will NOT take the four years we are here to explore.

We made our ultimate dream list: Austalia, New Zealand, Tokyo, Mt Fuji, Kyoto, Thailand, China. Of course the reality is we cannot afford to do it all, but we planned out our budget and knew we would be able to do at least a couple of places on our dream list.

This year's trip was supposed to be Tokyo. We were going to go over Stephanie's birthday and do Disney at the same time. Unfortunately, my work schedule and Lyle's work schedule didn't fit with the hotel's availability. Combine that with school, Chris' summer job and a base inspection, it looked like we wouldn't leave the island ths summer.

But I happened to see the dates on a China tour through the Marine's Travel Center, MCCS. The timing was perfect and the price was in our budget, so we signed up. The tour group does almost everything, except Lyle's official paperwork. He finished the last of it last night, so it looks like we are good to go!

Our EIGHT day trip is going to take us to three cities, Beijing, Xian and Shanghai. Our list of sites to visit includes the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen square, the Forbidden City, Great Wall, a rickshaw tour, Tang Dynasty dinner show, Terra Cotta Warrior museum, Summer Palace, Winter Palace, quite a few temples, silk fatory, jade factory and a couple flea markets. The tour includes almost all of our meals so we don't have to worry about anything!

We leave in three weeks and I cannot wait!

For those that asked

2009-06-04T19:26:00.005+09:00

First off let me tell each one of you that I miss cooking. I still cook for my family, but it isn't quite the same as trying to come up with meals to wow 10+ women. I barely cook desserts anymore, since we can't (shouldn't) eat them, and I haven't made a single appetizer since I moved to Okinawa.

I have piles of fun sounding recipes that I know you all would love, but my family wouldn't touch if you paid them. Of course, wrap it in seaweed and rice, call it sushi and they eat anything LOL

But back to the reason for a second post today (two days in a row I might add). Many of you on Facebook commented that you would like the recipe. Anyone that received a CD of Scrapping Recipes from me has it already (Rebecca, you get extra dessert for noticing!). It is from my favorite cooking website Recipezaar. But I will post it here too, with pictures to whet your appetite. I only made two changes, I replaced the ground beef with one package of Morningstar Farms Crumbles (I love my soy!) and I used a whole 8 ounce can of tomato sauce (didn't want to waste half a can). I served on a bed of shredded lettuce, with Fat Free Sour Cream.

Taco Casserole for the crockpot
8 servings
Recipezaar.com #154912

1 ½ lbs Ground Beef
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 package taco seasoning mix
1 teaspoon Salt
½ teaspoon pepper
9 corn tortillas (5 ½ inch)
½ Cup Chicken Broth
½ Cup Tomato Sauce
10 ounce Enchilada Sauce
6 ounces Cheddar, shredded
30 ounces black beans
11 ounce Mexicorn
4 ½ ounce chopped green chilies
2 ¼ ounce Black olives, sliced

Spray the inside of a 3-4 quart slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray. In large skillet brown ground beef with onion and garlic over medium high heat for 8-10 minutes or until thoroughly cooked, stirring frequently. Drain well. Stir in taco seasoning mix, salt and pepper. Place 3 tortillas in bottom of crock-pot. Top with beef mixture, broth, tomato sauce and enchilada sauce. Sprinkle with ½ cup of cheese. Layer 3 more tortillas. Top with the beans, corn, green chilies, half the olives and ½ cup cheese. Top with remaining 3 tortillas. Sprinkle with reaming cheese and olives. Cook on high setting for 2 ½ to 3 hours or on low for 6-7 hours. Uncover crock-pot for last 30 minutes of cooking time. Top individual servings with sour cream

A good day to Dye

2009-06-04T07:56:00.008+09:00

You are already aware that I am addicted to yarn. Much like my previous addictions to rubber, paper and stickers, it has consumed every craft cell in my brain.

I spend much of my free time knitting, and when I am not knitting I am browsing knitting forums on the web looking for new patterns and techniques.

While browsing one day I started reading about people dying their own yarn with things like food coloring, Wilton cake dyes and Kool Aid. I was intrigued so I decided to give it a shot. I bought my yarn, got some food coloring and found a tutorial online. I even read *most* of the instructions!
I wound the yarn around two dining room chairs and tied string through to keep it from tangling during the dyeing process:
I then twisted it into a hank and let it soak overnight in a vinegar solution:

The next morning I put it into my crockpot with some water and mixed up the colors I wanted:

Then I poured them over the yarn in the crock pot. The tutorial I was using said it would take 1-2 hours then the water would be clear and my yarn would by beautiful. So I put the cover on and went to take my shower. I came down 30 minutes later to find all my colors had run together and my yarn was still cream colored. I assumed the kids stirred it or something, so I added new dye and waited. Again the water muddied, but I left it and let it cook in the crock pot for the better part of the day. I rinsed it, like instructed and watched ALL of the color rinse right off. I ended up with this:
I compained to one of my local knitting buddies, Charlotte, about my wasted day and wasted yarn. She asked what kind of wool I used...... WOOL? I used cotton, I said. That is when I learned that food based dyes only work on animal fibers. Plant fibers need acid dyes (like Rit dye). I reread my tutorial and that information was in the very last paragraph. Who reads the end of a tutorial before they start? Not me!

So I ordered myself some wool and started the process again. AMAZING! As I added each color it immediately soaked into the yarn! I had to remix dyes 4 times and stir the yarn in the crockpot to get as much coverage as possible. Four hours later I was rinsing my cooled yarn:

And wound my very colorful ball of sock yarn.... Now to learn to knit socks :)

Am I old or are they too young

2009-06-03T08:02:00.003+09:00

This was more common than not at Stephanie's last band concert:

I might be getting older, maybe I am just too straight-laced. But I REALLY, TRULY believe that at 11-12 years old, girls should NOT be wearing 3 inch heels.

My views of the concert: It was incredible. Stephanie's band director is wonderful. She led this group of middle schoolers and turned them into a REAL band. Parents were smiling, toes were tapping and every song sounded perfect!

Stephanie got a certificate of recognition for playing in both the beginning band and the advanced band this year, one of only 4 to do so.

Shameless self promotion

2009-06-03T07:47:00.003+09:00

I was going to email this out and then update my blog, but decided I could wipe two things off my to do list with one task!

The deal: Go to my Creative Memories website here and spend $100, then CM will send you 50 (that's right FIVE ZERO) sheets of 10 x 12 cardstock FREE

The fine print: This is only While Supplies Last, Good June 1 - 30, and only one free paper deal per order, BUT you can place as many orders as you want!

The bonus deal: Every order that goes in will be entered into a drawing. I will draw from these entries on July 7th. The winner will receive a bunch of other CM stuff, some yummy (or not) Japanese treats, and a special other suprise from me!

This is also a great time to bring your Memory Manager software into the next generation. You can download the newest Memory Manager to replace your old Memory Manager for only $9.95. This is only good in the month of June so time is ticking. This will deactivate your old Memory Manager, but the upgrades are well worth it (including the option of deleting duplicate files! for me this alone was worth $10!)

Ma Yo Ma Ni A

2009-05-24T21:09:00.004+09:00

The title represents the 5 Katakana symbols inside the circle on the front of this snack ring bag. Had I had my handy dandy cheat sheet with me at the time I would have known "for sure" that I was buying Mayonnaise flavored funyon type snacks. I was intrigued just off the picture of the kid on the front.

Turns out Mayo flavored snack chips aren't too bad.... in fact they are almost addictive. Kind of like dill pickle chips or salt and vinegar chips :)

See what the family thought:

100 Yen find

2009-05-23T07:05:00.002+09:00

You already know my favorite store is the 100 Yen store. I love this place because you never know what you will find. The stock is constantly rotating and each 100 yen store has a different "specialty" item. Naval Kadena's 100 yen shop has the best selection of storage containers, the big 100 yen store by the convention center has the best food selection, etc.

While browsing the big yen store for fun foods I ran accross this: I decided that for 100 yen we would try it out. I "read" the directions:

Opened the package:

And mixed it up in my saute pan:

As with american prepackaged foods, mine didn't look ANYTHING like the package said it would. Turns out this was a shrimp flavored pasta and it was very, very shrimpy tasting. Stephanie enjoyed it more than the rest of us did. Someday I am going to have to sit down and finish learning my Japanese phonetics so I can decipher these packages in the store!

Lucky?

2009-05-21T17:01:00.003+09:00

We wanted to try out another new restaurant (Yes, we are trying to eat our way across the island!). This was an All You Can Eat Yakiniku place called King Kong's. We found the building, but the parking lot was full, so we had to find a spot on the street. Not an easy task here where cars outnumber parking spots by at least 2 to 1. We found one pretty quickly and pretty close by.... Lucky

Then upon getting out of the car Chris spotted something:

LUCKY again.

Then we got to King Kong's front door, only to find that a private group had booked the ENTIRE restaurant until 3 pm (this was at 12:30.) Our luck ran out. We ended up grabbing a quick lunch at a not so spectacular burger chain called MOS burger. It wasn't even worth taking pictures of, but this sign on the wall was interesting:

Can we park here? (AKA Update #2)

2009-05-20T06:14:00.002+09:00

Lyle and I went to dinner at a place we had been hearing about - Dragon's Chinese. It is a tiny (and I mean small) place with limited decor and a not so clean feeling about it. But let me tell you the food was yummy and very cheap. I didn't take pictures because there wasn't a lot to take pictures of, it looked like a typical old diner.

The parking lot did offer a photo opportunity tho. We weren't sure if we parked in the correct area or not. This sign did nothing to reassure us that our car would be there when we finished eating.

Catch Up Post #1

2009-05-19T07:51:00.002+09:00

I have fallen behind..... AGAIN! Now, in my defense, I have been busy with work, home, kids and a hubby that has been working weird shifts over the last week. But in the end it comes down to one thing... FACEBOOK.

You all know what I mean, I sign on my computer with the intent of updating my blog, answering email, posting items for sale on Okinawayardsales.com, but first I have to check Facebook, then just a minute to try to beat Susan's score on Bejeweled Blitz, a second to escape from my latest kidnapper, one quick game of FARKLE. Next thing I know, my day is gone and nothing has been updated, answered or posted.

Enough excuses, on with the update. I took Chris out for a "mom and son" evening, while Lyle and Stephanie went to a Girl Scout function. Both of us had been wanting to try out a place called Gordy's. We had both heard, from different sources, that this was THE place for homemade burgers on island. So we picked up some yen and headed out.

It is a quiet and cozy little place, only a few tables inside and a few more outside. I was a little worried since it was a Friday night and we were one of two small groups choosing to dine there, but we were already committed since the waitress had brought us menus and water. Chris opted for the traditional Cheeseburger set, I went with a Teriyaki Burger, we decided to share an extra side of Onion Rings.

Our meal came with a cup of soup:
It was very similar to a French Onion Soup, without the cheesy, crusty slice of french bread on top.

Our onion rings were super good, with a light beer batter type breading and fresh sliced onion underneath:

Chris with his Cheeseburger. Notice the size of that burger!

My Teriyaki burger came wrapped in it's own paper. Good thing too as it was the juiciest, sloppiest best burger I have ever had (other than my own... of course):
The only thing Gordy's was missing was Malts. These burgers would have been over the top if we had had chocolate malts to chase them down with.

Since there wasn't a dessert menu, we chose to go to our family favorite: Family Mart.

I got the chocolate eclair, Chris got the parfait all for under 400 yen (about $4).

I have since tried to go back to Gordy's on a date with my husband. Once for lunch on a Thursday.... they are closed on Thursday's. And then again on Friday night. Unfortunately we got there at 7:55 and they close for the night at 8 pm. We will be trying again.... soon!

I did warn you

2009-04-30T10:20:00.003+09:00

I told you I would subject you to pictures of my knitting... Again.

When I saw this sweater on a knitting forum (http://www.ravelry.com/) I fell in love. I HAD to make one. I browsed a few websites looking for just the right yarn, took suggestions from both Ravelry and my local knitting buddies. Audrey was the one that showed me the yarn I decided to use, Knitpicks.com Shine Sport. I chose a green called LeapFrog.

I knit up a sample swatch as soon as I received my yarn and needles. Counted my stitches and compared it against the pattern. I cast on for the first time on February 23rd. I say first time, because I had to tear it out twice, due to new knitter mistakes and miscounts. But the third time was the charm.

I finally finished on Saturday April 25th. It still needs buttons, but plan on shopping for those this afternoon. My sweater has a couple of small mistakes, but it was my first and they aren't really noticable. What do you think?

Today in History

2009-04-23T19:01:00.005+09:00

My favorite brother was born on this day in 1975.

Why does he look scared in this picture? He didn't even know me yet!

Also on this day in 1987 (do the math....22 years!) I started dating the "hot"guy at work.

This is the earliest picture I have of the two of us together from September 1987. Notice the young hot chick in the mini skirt! I wonder where she went?

I give up

2009-04-21T08:41:00.003+09:00

I cannot do it all. Okay, honestly I have known that since I had kids, but I continued to try.

Last week I decided enough was enough, I had to let something go. I decided that the thing I liked least was the thing I should quit doing. Number one on my list: HOUSEWORK!

So after asking around I called Good Housekeeping Okinawa and asked about their services. They asked me a few simple questions (number of bedrooms, bathrooms, how much tile vs carpet, etc) then gave me a quote. They sent me a list of the services they include in their "regular" twice monthly cleaning service. I have to admit, it was more than I did once a month, so I signed up.

Yesterday I had two lovely Japanese ladies show up at my door, cleaning supplies in hand, at 8:30. My local cohort Rita and my hubby both said I shouldn't be home while the ladies were there, something about being a control freak (I know, right?) so I packed up my knitting and left to meet a friend for coffee. I stopped back at home around 11 to meet Lyle for lunch then headed out again to take a meal to another friend that just had surgery. I was back home by 12:30 and they were finishing up.

My house looked incredible! All the windows - washed. The floors - vacuumed and mopped. The bathrooms - sparkled! My kitchen - they even cleaned the stove and fridge! Not a speck of dust (or Haru hair) was in sight.

The best part was that my day off was a REAL day off! Definitely worth every Yenny :)

I know you understand

2009-04-21T08:31:00.002+09:00

I haven't been blogging. You haven't been blogging. My counterpart in Germany posted just a few days ago and said it all " *SIGH* "

I know I should be writing, I have things to write about. I keep pictures on my camera until I blog about them....my camera is complaining that it is full.

I keep telling myself I will get to it, right after this or right after that, but like every other thing, if I procrastinate long enough it gets to be too much.

So I have downloaded the camera into my photo software and I am not looking back. I will visit those restaurants again (maybe) the sun will set again tonight (and the next night and the next), Chris may find another four leaf clover (okay maybe I will post that pic, someday), and none of you really want to see my latest knit creation (although you will be forced to look at my sweater once I finish it). Today is a new day and the camera is empty, waiting for what excitement may come!

Happy Easter

2009-04-12T16:52:00.001+09:00

Today Stephanie took part in her 3rd drama production at church. This one was special because it was only going to be her and one other girl from the drama team, Hannah, and because it was going to be featured during the Easter service.

Unfortunately my video camera was catching nothing but the backs of heads. But the Drama team leader, Aly, was able to record and post it on YouTube. The sound is in the background so to get the full feeling of the drama you will need to turn your sound WAY up, just make sure you turn it down again after you are done :)

The video is below as Blogger and YouTube don't want to cooperate today.

"Feel The Nails" By: Ray Boltz

2009-04-12T16:51:00.001+09:00

The Barrel Restaurant

2009-04-09T14:32:00.005+09:00

We heard of a place that was shaped like a beer barrel, inside and out, so we headed out to try if for dinner one night. We followed the directions we found online and it took us forever to find it. I now know a much faster (and easier) route from Kadena. We will be going back!

As we came in we were shown where to put our shoes (yep one of THOSE places) and then shown a sign that said we would receive an appetizer of their choosing and it would be on our bill. We had already heard that so we were prepared. We were then shown to our table. The table was low to the floor in traditional Japanese style, but the floor was sunken in under the table to let us dangle our legs.

We spent some time looking over the menu before picking up the telephone on the wall next to us. The telephone is just a variation of the BEST idea anyone ever came up with; most Japanese restaurants have a buzzer at the table that rings to a sign in the back, signaling your server that you would like something. The server will NOT come by your table unless he is bringing you your food, or you rang the bell. No nosy waiter coming over just as you put a bite of food in your mouth asking if you need anything else!

We each chose two menu items (no set meals here) and planned on sharing the bounty. Our waiter started us with our appetizer:

It tasted like a version of curry soup. Chris was the only one that didn't finish. He said it was just okay, but the rest of us enjoyed it.

A short while later our server brought out our food, one at a time:

Chris and I enjoying our food:

When we had finished, we rang for our bill and packed up to leave. As we were putting on our shoes, the hostess handed us a foil wrapped package to take home. I forgot to take a picture, but it was a small loaf of sweet bread drizzled in a chocolate syrup. It was a nice treat to end a nice night

New Recruits

2009-04-05T20:34:00.001+09:00

I know the Marine Corp is having to change their recruiting habits, but the other day when I saw this on the road in front of me, I started to wonder if it is a good thing?

Kokusai Street

2009-04-04T18:08:00.006+09:00

We had heard about Kokusai Street from EVERYONE! This is a popular shopping district for both locals and tourists alike. It is so popular that on Sundays they shut down the entire street to motorized traffic, and turn it into a giant outdoor market.

We finally had a Sunday free a few weekends back and decided to head down and check it out. We soon discovered that this street is a major artery from highway to highway on Okinawa. So shutting it down meant that it wasn't easy to find our way there. We took a few small side streets that might not have been streets, and were informed at one point that we were going the wrong way down a one way. This helpful taxi driver ended his bit of wisdom with the word, "dummy". Like we were supposed to know.... there weren't any signs, and doesn't our American only Y numbered license plate give us the right to screw up now and again?

AnyHoo, we finally found our way close to the street, found a pay-by-the-hour lot and parked.

This parking lot didn't need an attendant since it had these handy devices:

As you pull into the parking space you have to drive over this "speed bump" About 30 seconds later it raises itself up to the frame of your car, booting you in place:

When you are ready to leave, you pump your yen coins into the parking meter and it lowers the boot, allowing you to back out of your spot!

Because we could park on Kokusai street itself and since we can't read any Japanese (okay I understand a few symbols, but not enough to "read" it), when we walked out from our side street onto the main drag I snapped a picture of the building on the corner just so we could find our way back to our car!We spent the afternoon browsing through little shops, including a maze of alleys that were all covered to create an indoor shopping feel. We enjoyed watching the street performers and even stopped for a little snack (at McDonalds - McFlurries for all!)

It was a nice way to spend a lazy afternoon and have added it to the places to take visitors (sorry you missed this one Dave)

Letting Go

2009-04-03T06:49:00.002+09:00

Yesterday I did the hardest thing I have ever done in my life...... I handed my son my car keys and let him go, by himself, to the store. When I realized, halfway through my dinner prep, that I was out of flour, Chris jumped at the chance to run to the commissary for me.

I, of course, hesitated. It was after 4, base traffic is heavy, the commissary lot will be full. A million reasons to say NO, but the biggest reason, the most important reason and the most irrational reason is I don't want to let go. As much as I joke about him leaving, I don't think I am even close to accepting the fact that he will. But I handed him the keys, warned him to be careful and let him go.

He was only gone for 20 minutes, but I KNOW I heard sirens at least twice, and I stood by the window the whole time waiting for him to drive into the parking lot. Ducking away from the window when he did, I didn't want him to think I was watching for him. He walked in with my flour and joked, "I only hit two cars!"

After dinner he announced he was taking the dog for a walk with his friend, Megan. Doesn't he know I can only handle so much in one day?

April Fools

2009-04-01T10:06:00.003+09:00

Not for me. I thought long and hard about what kind of joke to play, but in the end decided I was too far away from everyone and someone would end up taking things seriously.

On a serious note (really no joke) Our phone lines are a bit wonky. Okay they always have been iffy at best, but the military has taken away our free DSN line and have forced us to switch over to Verizon Business. This was as of yesterday. We can call out, and we can get calls in, but they are echo-y. Also if I don't answer the phone in the first couple of rings it auto transfers to our Voice Mail. Not our answering machine.... Voice Mail.... Of course we haven't set up a voice mail account and have no idea how to retreive any messages.

Rumors are that we will be charged per call from the house, and I haven't found any info to prove otherwise. We may be switching over to just cell phones yet (they kids vote YES). So I will hold off on sending out our new phone number just in case it will be changing again soon.

Another Sign for you all to enjoy. We did NOT eat at this diner, but I have seen Gristle on many menus here. All I can say is EWWWW

Goodbye SOTW

2009-03-28T06:56:00.005+09:00

I have pulled the Sign of the Week off the sidebar of my blog.

Why? Mostly because I didn't update it every week like I originally intended, but also because some pictures needed to be bigger or have longer comments to go with them. So I am just going to post the occasional item here.

Like this one:

Gum with a liquid-y center. We thought it should have been called SPLASH, but then we tasted it and decided it was named after the sound you make spitting it out - SPASH

Or this sign:

I don't know where the Japanese go when they are feeling sick, but I know where they go when they are UN-sick and Healthy!

One more before I head off to work:

For those that don't want to take the road less traveled!

I missed it!

2009-03-27T07:05:00.002+09:00

I keep track of my miles on a sticky note in front of my computer. Whenever I think of it (or feel like it) I will go in and update, but it isn't something I do every day. I guess I should have been tho, since I missed the big 1000 mile marker :(

Of course I am never going to make it from here to Michigan, unless we extend our tour here by another 3 years (never gonna happen)

On another note, I meant to blog on Wednesday, but my day got thrown into a tailspin pretty early. I ALWAYS take off my rings and string them on my watch band. I put the watch either next to my computer or on the hook near the sink. But Wednesday when I saw my watch next to the computer only my sapphire ring was on my watch, my wedding ring was gone. I glanced around the desk, but didn't see it.

Don't panic.... just think.... I remembered having it the night before at knitting group. We were talking about local jewelers and I mentioned that I needed my ring repaired, since it was cracking. But I slipped it back on my finger.... Right?... I know I did. But then the mind started working. Did I really put it back on? Did I hand it to someone to look at? Did I drop it into my knitting bag by mistake? Could it have fallen into the bag that had my trash from dinner?

I called Lyle first, maybe he took it planning on suprising me by getting it fixed. NOPE, he didn't have it. My stomach started churning, my mind was racing. Where could it be? I emptied my knitting bag, my purse, my desk. I pulled out the fridge, the stove, the microwave. I called up to the USO, where we met Tuesday night. I searched my car. I drove up to the USO, searched the trash can, the parking lot, the room we sat in. All with no luck.

Lyle met me for lunch before I had to leave for work. He reassured me that it was somewhere and "it is just a ring".... Men don't understand.

My whole day at work was preoccupied with thoughts of the ring. At 7:30, before I left work, I called home to see if anyone needed anything before I came home. Then I was told, they found it! Lyle promised the kids Baskin Robbins Ice Cream if they could find my ring! It took them 5 minutes to see it on my computer chair, between the cushion and the back rails. Relief!

When in Japan...

2009-03-21T07:10:00.003+09:00

I am amazed at the variety of food here on Okinawa. There are so many places to eat, foods to try and ethnicities to explore. Recently Lyle and I went out on a date night and ended up at an Indian restaraunt called Krishna's.

Neither of us had EVER had true Indian food before, so we were unsure as to what we should order. Fortunately, for us, they had sampler sets. Lyle ordered the traditional set meal, while I ordered the seafood set.

My meal is pictured above. It included Naan (flat bread), Tandoori shrimp, fried fish, salad, seafood curry (the red stuff) and fresh yogurt with mango puree. There was also a crispy flat chip type thing, but I don't know what it was since it wasn't listed in my menu. Lyle's plate looked just like mine except he got two currys (one chicken, one vegetable), Tandoori chicken, and a "Sheek Kebab". The Kebab was ground chicken, seasoned to spicy perfection then pressed onto a stick and roasted. I loved it, Lyle just thought it was okay. But we both agreed the food was wonderful. I even spent some time searching Recipezaar.com trying to find recipes to recreate the meal.

We love set meals because they always feature a restaraunts best dishes, but also for the dessert factor, After we stuffed ourselves on our huge dinner our waitress brought out this:

The clear bowl is Lychee gelatin (YUMMMMM) served with a small bowl of fruit. The red fruit at the bottom is a Lychee. Of course we didn't know that until we got home and looked it up. It has a tough outer skin, but the fruit inside is soft, like a Kiwi.

It was a wonderful night without the kids, and I look forward to doing it again!

Tenkaipen

2009-03-20T11:00:00.000+09:00

I thought about posting all of my food related updates together, but there were too many. Food is definitely a major cultural experience for us here. Whether we are going out shopping or site-seeing we always end up trying a new food, drink or restaraunt.

One Sunday after church we met up with Audrey and her husband. They wanted to take us to one of their favorite places.

Tenkaipen is a ramen restaraunt. Their menu is only one page long, and half of that is beverages. You really only need to decide what size you want and how thick you want your broth! The set meal came with ramen soup, rice (fried or white), gyoza, and a drink. We ordered medium bowls with the signature thick sauce, based on Audrey's recommendation.

It was incredible! The broth was delicious, my mouth is watering right now just thinking about it. We will be heading back there someday!

What have I been doing?

2009-03-19T19:18:00.004+09:00

Not blogging! I got a reminder from my German counterpart that it has been a while so I looked at my camera to see what I still had to write about.

I ended up with a notebook full potential blog material.

I will start with this: I have been knitting. This seems to be my new passion here. I still scrapbook and have a small group of ladies that gather once a month (or so) and I think about stamping quite a bit. But that is something that requires more than 10-15 minutes of my time at once and I just don't seem to have more than that to give right now. I even started working on small projects during my lunch break at work. I don't have pictures of everything but I do have these:

Helmet liner to keep Lyle's Chem Gear from hurting his noggin. It started life as a regular hat, but I didn't make it long enough to cover his ears. Fortunately he had already asked for a helmet liner!

Lace Shawl, my first big project. This was a learning experience the whole way through, but I love it!

My "learn to keep your mouth shut" scarf. A lady in my knitting group was making a beautiful sweater from this yarn. I mentioned how pretty it was and she said when she finished she would give me whatever yarn she had left, because she never wanted to see it again. After knitting this scarf I understand why. I have one small skein left, if anyone is interested :)

This still needs to be blocked to stiffen the teeth on Chris' Chain Chomp hat. I had seen this on a knitters blog. When my knitting buddy Audrey said a young airman wanted to learn to knit just to make this hat I agreed to accompany her when they got together. I finished mine, Justin is still working on his. Personally I think he enjoys the knitting nights, 22 years old surrounded by 15 women every Tuesday night!

I am currently working on my very first sweater (for myself, in case it looks horrible) and have gotten about 1/4 of the way finished so far. I will post pictures once I make enough progress that it resembles a clothing item!

And the winner is:

2009-03-09T16:28:00.002+09:00

#6

That means Ellen. Just goes to prove that honesty is the best policy.

When we bought the kit kat we knew it was potato from the picture, but we didn't expect it to taste SO GOOD! The flavor is much like taking a sugar wafer cookie (ya know the layered pink, white and chocolate cookies) and coating them in white chocolate. But since it is sweet potato, it must be healthy :)

Here is a shot at the box Ellen will be receiving once she emails me her current addy (wouldja quit moving already?)
From upper left (clockwise) Ume potato chips (pickled plum - very good), Sweet Potato Kit Kat, Banana Powder (for flavoring milk), Snack nut assortment, Apple Pie Crackers, Roasted Corn snack stick, Watermelon Kit Kat, Berry Kit Kat, Mystery flavor snack stick and the best of the best, Chocolate filled Marshmallows.

Enjoy!

Crazy Kit Kat

2009-03-07T11:49:00.003+09:00

While walking through Family Mart one day we found these:

We made a few guesses on the flavor based on the packaging, but then asked one of our Japanese friends to translate for us.

I would love to tell you the flavor, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun as letting you all guess! From the guesses I will pick a random winner to receive this flavor Kit Kat, as well as a few other Japanese goodies.

Just leave your guess as a comment, I will pick a winner Monday 5 pm Okinawa time!

And just to let you know : This Kit Kat is YUMMY!

Gomen Nasai

2009-03-06T04:41:00.002+09:00

means "I'm sorry" in Japanese. Unfortunately, that is what the higher ups are telling Lyle.

He hasn't looked up the scores yet. I don't blame him after last year's decimal point miss.

"Maybe next year" seems like the thing to say, but for today all I can say is Gomen Nasai.

I hate waiting

2009-03-05T07:07:00.003+09:00

I am not a very patient person. The last couple of days have caused my anxiety level to rise slowly, but I have about reached the limit.

Rita, being the chief at Lyle's squadron, knows by now whether he made Senior or not. She conveniently skipped our work out session this morning. That just made the nervous factor increase: Did she skip because she wouldn't be able to hide the good news? or did she skip because she didn't want me to see the bad news on her face?

Official results are due out at 11 PM Okinawa time, but knowing that the list is here on island already is slowly driving me insane (no comments needed, TYVM)

I know the Erne clan is sitting in the same position. I just wish we could be sitting on the edge of our seats together, drowning our nerves in coffee, ink and cardstock.

I know, I know

2009-03-03T06:46:00.002+09:00

I have been a very bad blogger.

It all started a month and a half ago when we won a free trip to a Japanese Tea Ceremony. This was just a day or two before Lyle's step-dad came to visit, but I didn't get it on the blog. Then our days were filled with our adventures with Dave, then work happened.

I just never got the pictures of the tea ceremony up on the blog, and it made me stuck. Now, just so I can get past it, are the pictures of our tea ceremony:

Sad news from North Dakota

2009-02-18T10:34:00.002+09:00

I was suprised to find this article on my Yahoo headlines tody.

What a sad day for those of us that knew and loved Mr Winky :(

Forest Adventure Park

2009-02-16T17:20:00.003+09:00

I know it has been awhile since I updated (dang job..) but this is well worth it!

The kids wanted to go with the church youth group to Forest Adventure Park. I had heard about this place about 6 months ago and said I wanted to go someday so we went along for the fun.

Forest Adventure Park is a Zip Line course through the jungle hills in Onna village. I thought it sounded like fun, gliding gently through the treetops, enjoying the view. Little did I know there was nothing gentle about it! We climbed up rope ladders, clipped onto zip lines, shot like a speeding bullet down each line, only to come to an abrupt stop at the bottom! It was incredible fun, but I will definitely be sore tomorrow!

But like they say a picture is worth a thousand words:

and video is worth even more! This was my first trip down a zip line:

Family Mart

2009-02-09T08:54:00.002+09:00

I LOVE FAMILY MART!!!

This is my choice snack shopping destination on island, by far ! Everytime we go in there is a new something to try out. This time it was new Doritoes.

Of Course I don't read Kanji (it wouldn't be as fun if I did) so I was guessing this was supposed to be Fried Chicken flavored Doritos. Seeing it I had to buy it to go with our lunch snack.

Turns out they were chicken flavored, but tasted more like the "chicken" flavor that comes with the cheap ramen noodles at Wal-Mart.

Don't get me wrong, they were yummy, and we ate the whole bag, but The Colonel would not be proud!

Blue Man

2009-02-07T07:24:00.004+09:00

This past week was "Class week" at the high school. Chris' class color is blue, so he has spent the entire week in blue and has tried to dress for every special day. He especially liked Celebrity Day and went as a member of the Blue Man Group.

My day off

2009-02-05T15:43:00.002+09:00

Today is my day off from my new job. I have finally finished running all of the errands I normally space out over the whole week. It's quarter to four in the afternoon and I have a bit before I have to start preping dinner, so I will fill you in on this new development.

I mentioned a while back that I filled out a job application for the base craft store. I did this on a bit of a whim, as I was told that cashiers there are unhappy because they only get 10-15 hours a week. Sound like the perfect job to me!

Two weeks ago I got a call for an interview, went in and discovered I was being interviewed for a framing position. The frame shop manager didn't care that I had NO experience with framing, other than matting pictures. I started on Monday with a quick orientation, then Tuesday with my on the job training. I was hired with one other lady, Mary. We both quickly learned that "flex scheduling" didn't mean less than part time. I have a 32 hour schedule for the next 6 weeks!

My family will learn to adjust to having to fend for themselves (again) and I will remember how to juggle home, work, church and friends (again). I know I am only 2 days into this job, but so far I really enjoy it. I missed talking with customers everyday and figuring out how to get them what they need.

I will have to try to snap a couple pictures tomorrow to show you my new "office"!

Today's laugh

2009-02-04T06:27:00.004+09:00

I was originally going to post about my new job (yes, it's true, I got a J O B !) but then while browsing my knitters forum I ran across a link to this video.

It is only 6 am and I have already laughed hard enough to cry... it's going to be a good day!

VIEWER ALERT: Do not, I repeat DO NOT attempt to drink anything while watching this clip

Posse members: Do you think we could add this to our money making website?

Cars

2009-02-03T08:39:00.002+09:00

I am sure one of the reasons for car accidents on Okinawa is other drivers trying to read the messages on the sides of vehicles. The Japanese **love** english phrases, even when they don't really make sense (see kissing shirt to your right!). They include long phrases on shirts, coffee mugs and yes, even on their cars.

I finally got a chance to take a picture of one such vehicle, when no one else was around to see me do it!

Enjoy:

So many posts.... So little time

2009-02-02T18:19:00.002+09:00

I made a list of the things I have yet to blog about. Condensing Dave's entire week down into one single post helped but I still have 6 things on my "to blog" list. I guess I will start with the most frightening.

Chris has started to drive. He passed his Base/Japanese permit test and has taken a couple trips out with Lyle. He starts his classroom and official behind the wheel training tonight. Lyle has informed me that I am not ready to take Chris out driving yet, not that I was in any hurry :)

I guess that is a perk to living here on Okinawa tho. Chris will only be allowed to drive on military installations until after he turns 18. The minimum driving age for Japanese is 18.

Time to catch up

2009-02-01T17:05:00.005+09:00

Dave left yesterday morning to head back to the frozen tundra of Minnesota. We treated him to some wonderful weather (mid 70's) and lots of sightseeing! It was interesting to watch his reaction to many of the things that have become "common" to us.

The only thing on his to do list when he landed was the Ryukyu Glass Works. Not surprising since glass blowing and lampworking are his side job (hobby that pays for itself!) We filled up the rest of the list with trips to beaches on each side of the island, Shuri Castle, the aquarium, Okinawa Cave, the salt factory and every restaurant we had time for! We also made Family Mart his favorite spot for a little snack :) He was very adventurous when it came to trying new foods :

Don't worry about the face he was making....apple and honey tea turned out to be pretty tasty!

Dave even got to enjoy our tradition of Blue Seal ice cream at the end of every journey.

I am glad he got a chance to visit us on Okinawa! Remember, the invitation is open to one and all!

Grandpa's Here

2009-01-27T07:06:00.003+09:00

Like I said below, Grandpa Dave is here on Okinawa. I am about 6 days behind on posting our little adventures, but I thought I should jump ahead to wish Chris a Happy Birthday and share that Dave is here!

His trip was long and tiring, but he has adapted to the 14 hour time difference VERY well. I hope that it is as easy for him to adjust heading back the other way :)

Birthday boy

2009-01-27T07:01:00.003+09:00

My baby boy has turned 16! Grandpa Dave is here to help celebrate so that made this special milestone even more special.

Just TRY it!

2009-01-25T20:58:00.004+09:00

WE drive past this place almost every day and I was intrigued by the name, Viking TRY. What kind of restaurant calls itself TRY? This one does and it called to me on our way home from all that sightseeing, so we stopped in for a late lunch.

Viking TRY is a Yakiniku restaurant, so it has small grills imbedded in the center of each table. It is also a buffet, so we went up to the meat cases, picked the meat we wanted to cook and took it back to our table.

In addition to the grilled food we had our choice of curry, rice, potatoes, a few prepared meats and salads, as well as desserts!

Chris enjoyed cooking our food, Lyle enjoyed eating it :) The little grilled cubes of frozen teriyaki hamburger were everyone's favorites.

For dessert we each had mini bowls of ice cream, two different cakes, shaved ice and make it yourself cotton candy (yep, Chris did that one too). A fun place to try and since our other Yakiniku joint closed down, this might have to become the place to take visitors!

The Haunted Hotel

2009-01-24T07:04:00.004+09:00

From the main gate at Nakagusuku Ruins you can see one of Okinawa's strangest landmarks, The Royal Hotel. While there are many version of this story, some of the "facts" are consistent.

In the 1970's a Naha businessman saw an opportunity to make some money off the tourists coming to visit Okinawa. He thought a luxury hotel, casino and waterpark was exactly what people needed. He acquired some land and hired some workers, despite the warnings from a nearby monastary that the site was sacred.

He began construction without any blueprints, which is pretty obvious upon walking into the building. There are staircases and hallways that don't go anywhere and rooms that don't seem to have any purpose. Soon after starting this building the workmen began having accidents and dying. Eventually the business man fell ill, went bankrupt and eventually insane.

The building was never finished or inhabited. One version of the story says one of the monks from the monastary lives in the building to maintain a shrine, easing the angry spirits.

This has definitely become the spot for local kids to hangout, with graffiti covering almost every surface. There is even the body of a rusted out car on the second floor!

Lyle and the kids made it to the top, I refused to go down the dark hallway, littered with trash (rats, ya know!). They say I was scared, I say I was safety conscious :)

After the hotel, we headed off for a late lunch.

Nakagusuku Castle Ruins

2009-01-23T03:59:00.003+09:00

After finishing up at the Nakamura house we headed just a little ways up the road to our original destination, Nakagusuku Castle (or what is left of it)

We parked in the lot at the bottom of the hill and paid our admission fee at the gate. There was the traditional Japanese music playing over loud speakers at the start of our hike up to the top. Chris and Stephanie hammed it up and "danced" their way up the hill. The first view of the ruins was breathtaking. We had never heard of these ruins (you really only hear about Shuri Castle) so we weren't expecting much, but they were incredible. Okinawa is trying to preserve this historical landmark, and there were some signs missing or unreadable, as well as a few pieces of construction equipment, but overall it was a great place to see.

The highlight of the ruins was definitely the Ufugaa well. We were able to walk the slippery steps down to the bottom. Chris slipped on the last few steps and joked that they called it Ufugaa well because that was the last thing heard for the person that fell in.

Here are the pictures:

From the top of the ruins we spotted a landmark we had only heard about:

The Haunted Hotel, but that is another post :)

Tourist Stop #1

2009-01-21T06:25:00.002+09:00

On Monday I gave Chris the Okinawa Guide book and asked him to pick a spot to go see. He chose the Nakagusuku Castle ruins, but on our way there we saw the sign for the Nakamura house and decided to take a small detour.

I am glad we did! The house and the grounds were beautiful. It was a nice walk around the original home and the inside of the house was incredible. At the end of our tour we stopped in to the gift shop to buy some fish food and were suprised to find that our tour included a small snack - Hot tea, to be sweetened with Okinawan brown sugar, and Brown Sugar gelatin dessert. Both were definitely an experience, but good :) Okinawan brown sugar is sweet, but VERY rich, a little goes a long way.

After our treat, we feed the fish then were off to find the castle grounds.

200th post

2009-01-20T16:07:00.002+09:00

This is my 200th post on blogger.

This was supposed to be a view of the first of four stops we made on our Martin Luther King Jr Day holiday. But like blogger, slide.com is having a slow upload day. Maybe it is our wonderful server here on Okinawa.

I am off to my knitting group at Starbucks so this is gonna be it for today.

Maybe you will get lucky with two posts tomorrow (if slide ever finished loading my photos)

Just a quick trip

2009-01-19T17:09:00.007+09:00

Saturday was a busy day. Stephanie has taken over Chris' paper route and had to deliver the base paper to everyone in our housing area (253 papers in all). Right after that she had to go sell Girl Scout cookies. So when we asked if she wanted to go to a new shopping area off base, we weren't suprised when she said no.

Chris, Lyle and I decided to go without her. We have driven by the Plaza House shopping area many times, since it is on the way from Kadena to Camp Foster (the big Marine base on island), but have never stopped. We were going mainly because we had heard of an Italian Ice Cream shop there called GelloBello that was supposed to be yummy.

We found a spot to park in the garage under the open air mall and decided to start at the top (3rd floor) and work our way down.

The top floor had a few restaurants and an arcade. We wandered to each menu poster and decided we definitely need to go back to try the Indian place. We watched one of the chefs making bread against the sides of a pit oven - very cool! The other places didn't grab our attention (and the arcade was calling "Chris... oh Chris..."). We went to the arcade and tried our luck at the skill games. I was thrilled to find the 10 yen games, there were also slot machines, but since I can't read Kanji, I didn't try them.... yet! Chris won a couple of trinkets for me, then we moved on. After tourning the second floor (mostly clothing stores) we hit the main floor. Before going through these tho, Lyle wanted his ice cream.

We went in search of GelloBello, and found it in the strip mall portion of the shopping center. Unfortunately it was closed, with an official looking sign on it's door. I wonder what it said? Lyle was bummed until we realized there was a small grocery store in the mall. We went in, looked around and found the ice cream freezer:

Chris chose the treat on the top. It was plain vanilla ice cream in a funky bottle type plastic container:

I chose the middle ice cream since it looked like a Toffee bar - I wasn't disappointed, dark chocolate over yummy vanilla ice cream:

Lyle opted for one that looked like it would be a Dreamsicle (the one on the bottom in the picture above):

Turns out it was a Peanut Butter type flavor (very faint) but the big suprise was the Mochi center (gelatinous rice paste). He liked my ice cream better!

Tune in tomorrow for more of our weekend, I am tired of fighting with blogger for today!

Scrappy day

2009-01-14T16:20:00.002+09:00

I have been neglecting my family scrapbooks. I keep taking pictures, but have not had any motivation to do anything with them. So I planned today as a scrapday. As soon as I kicked the kids off to school I got out all of my stuff.

I started by finding an 80's station on the computer, set my goal for 20 pages and got to work.

I finished the 20th page as the kids were walking in from a long day at school, I even made them help clean up LOL

I thought I got pictures of all of the pages, but I missed a South Dakota layout and on other (can't figure out which since it's all put away)

I missed all of my scrapping friends today, and thought of each one of you while I was dancing around my living room

Ya Winds some, Ya lose some

2009-01-10T09:13:00.002+09:00

(Title courtesy of Lyle)

Star pupil

2009-01-07T20:32:00.003+09:00

I finished my "how to knit cables" class just before Christmas. While taking the class to learn the basics, I was also looking up patterns online to show off my new skill. I found a scarf that I really liked, then while browsing some more I found a matching hat. The hat pattern mentioned some wrist warmers...Perfect!

I started the scarf on December 15th, and finished it on January 1. The wrist warmers took a day each, and the hat took me 4 days. What do you think?

School..

2009-01-05T20:03:00.002+09:00

A poem by a mother:

My kids went back to school today
Only one word for me to say

HOORAY!

As much as I love being a stay at home mom, there is something to be said for public school :)

I very much enjoyed my quiet day - I vacuumed the whole house, did 3 loads of laundry, loaded and returned my government loaner table and chairs (thanks for your help, Rita), went to my doctor appointment and Chris' doctor appointment, got my hair colored and cut, and even managed to get a couple hours of knitting done.

I hope tomorrow is as relaxing

Vend-A-Lunch

2009-01-03T20:36:00.007+09:00

I had heard about a restaurant that used vending machines instead of waitresses. On Friday I dragged Lyle and the kids to check it out
We spent some time looking over the menu, only half was translated into English :(
Put our money into the machine:
Pushed the button for the meal or item we wanted and it gave us this:

Which we gave to the cook behind the counter. We had a seat and he brought us our food, nice and hot:

I got the Garlic Pork Rice with 3 Gyoza,

the kids both selected plain white rice and 5 gyoza

Lyle was adventurous and got a ramen soup with pork,nori (seaweed) and a slice of hard boiled egg floating in it.

We all agreed that the garlic pork rice was the best (in fact, we bought a second meal to share before leaving), Lyle's soup was pretty good, and the gyoza were incredible. We love vending machine food! I heard there was another like it in American Village.... we may be going there next!

How to say "love" in German?

2009-01-02T08:15:00.004+09:00

I am sure it is some 15 letter word, but Susan did it in 9 (CHOCOLATE).

She sent me this:

There was another box of chocolate covered gingerbread snacks, but those got opened first and quickly disappeared. I am glad I can't read German to decipher how many calories that might have been LOL

The Cappucino:

is incredibly good. Especially with the cookies :)

Thank you Susan you are wonderful!

Southeast Botanical Gardens

2008-12-31T17:07:00.000+09:00

On Sunday we took the kids to the Botanical Gardens right near Kadena. We have driven by this place so many times. I did a little checking and found out they offered a lunch buffet with admission, so we decided to go.

Since it is December, there weren't as many plants and flowers blooming as there will be in a few months, but it was still nice to walk around outside, in December, with no jackets! And we still got a few fun pictures

The buffet was mostly Japanese style food, which we sampled and enjoyed. We have learned that almost every restraunt offers Curry and Rice so we will never go hungry! For dessert we sampled a little of everything, including the Coffee Jello. It was REALLY good, imagine iced coffee with milk.

After we ate we went down to check out the Pound of Carp. Originally I thought they meant Pond of Carp, but after seeing them I don't think the spelling was a mistake.
Chris noticed a vending machine full of fish food, so we invested a couple hundred Yen and started to feed the fish. At first it was cute seeing the fish come up to the pier with their mouths open like little birds. But it quickly turned into a feeding frenzy.

It was a nice afternoon out.

BTW Happy Birthday to my dad, I missed the date completely (vacation and all) until I asked the kids what the date was when we were in the bank. I love you dad and your package will be on its way as soon as our post office opens back up (hopefully on Saturday)

Tomorrow's post: Love mail from Germany - YUM

My best Christmas Gift

2008-12-29T19:14:00.004+09:00

My husband is not a gift giver. Now having said that I have to clarify. He would love to buy me jewelry, but I don't wear it. I always ask for the things I really want...New cookware, recipe books, and more recently Yarn (and lots of it!) These are things I know I can go buy for myself, but it feels better having someone get it for me.

This year Lyle got me a patio umbrella so I can sit out in front of our house and watch the sun set, without getting a sunburn. But even better, he took me out shopping, without the kids. Since the Japanese aren't Christian (for the most part) all of the stores are open. We went to MaxValu (think Japanese Target Home Decor) and I got a storage rack for in my kitchen. Then we went to Yellow Box, which is a furniture store I have heard about from many, but never visited.

We were only in there for 10 minutes before I found the perfect table for my home here in Okinawa. My table is one of two things I wish I had decided to bring along rather than put into storage. My queen mattress is the other, but we already bought one of those :) I saw this table from across the store, made a bee line for it and sat down. It was a bar height square table with a self storing drop down leaf. It also came with 6 chairs.... Our price less than $600! I caught Lyle's eye and said "We'll take it!"

It was delivered on Saturday. Unfortunately the Government Furniture Warehouse is closed until next week, so for now I have 2 dining room tables (with 12 chairs) in my dining room. I love my new table :)

Christmas dinner

2008-12-28T17:16:00.004+09:00

My family has never been one to be "traditional" on any holiday. But since I had a turkey breast in the freezer we decided to go with a Thanksgiving themed Christmas.

We enjoyed Turkey, Stuffing, Mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn and fresh baked rolls. For dessert we tried Pumpkin Dump Cake.

I love Dump Cakes for a few reasons, they are super easy, usually only require a couple ingredients and they are ALWAYS served with ice cream. This dump cake has a few more ingredients and a couple extra steps, but the flavor was well worth it. It was even better the next day warmed up in the microwave!

Pumpkin Dump Cake

21 oz can 100% Pumpkin
13 oz Evaporated Milk
3 Eggs
1 1/2 Cup Sugar
1/2 teaspoon Cloves
1/2 teaspoon Ginger
2 teaspoons Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Salt
1 Box Yellow Cake Mix
1 Cup Butter, melted

Grease a 9 x 13 inch pan and preheat oven to 350. Combine all ingredients, except cake mix and butter, in a large bowl. Mix until well blended. Pour into prepared pan. Sprinkle the dry cake mix over pumpkin layer and smooth out any lumps. Evenly pour melted butter over cake mix. Place in preheated oven for 50-60 minutes or until the middle is set. Cool for 10-15 minutes before scooping out over Vanilla Ice Cream.

Christmas Morning

2008-12-25T10:51:00.003+09:00

Just a quick explanation about the Ranch Dressing. Over the last month the price of Ranch went from $1.50 per bottle to almost $3. I joked with Chris that I was going to have to limit his Ranch usage to 1 bottle a month (the boy puts Ranch on EVERYTHING). So as a gag gift we gave him two Large bottles of Ranch. He thought it was funny, especially after he found the gift card tucked between the bottles!

I love to cook

2008-12-25T10:01:00.003+09:00

Of course you all know that and most of you have tasted the benefits of being my friend! I love trying out new recipes and since I have been in the mood to cook, I have been trying out quite a few. I made home wrapped Pizza Rolls for our lunch yesterday. The original recipe came from Taste of Home, a recipe source second only to The Zaar. But I had to make a couple of small changes. I took out the onion and peppers, only because I am the only one that would have enjoyed that here. I also couldn't find Egg Roll Wrappers (I know!!!) so I decided to make them in Gyoza skins instead. I used my deep fryer outside to cook them up. In the smaller wrappers they only took a minute to cook.

Pizza Rolls

4 cups (16 ounces) shredded pizza cheese blend or part-skim mozzarella cheese
1 pound bulk Italian sausage, cooked and drained
2 packages (3 ounces each) sliced pepperoni, chopped
1 medium green pepper, finely chopped
1 medium sweet red pepper, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 jars (14 ounces each) pizza sauce
32 egg roll wrappers
Vegetable oil for frying
Additional pizza sauce for dipping, warmed, optional

In a large bowl, combine the cheese, sausage, pepperoni, peppers and onion. Stir in pizza sauce until combined. Place about 1/4 cup filling in the center of each egg roll wrapper. Fold bottom corner over filling; fold sides toward center over filling. Moisten remaining corner with water and roll up tightly to seal.

In an electric skillet, heat 1 in. of oil to 375°. Fry pizza rolls for 1-2 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Serve with additional pizza sauce if desired. Yield: 32 rolls.

Because I used Gyoza wrappers I had about 6 cups of filling left over. So for dinner we put scoops of the filling onto sub rolls and broiled them in the oven until the filling was bubbly. They were very good. I think the filling mixture would be good inside the bread dough from the Cheeseburger roll recipe I posted a couple days ago!

For Christmas morning Chris said he wanted cinnamon rolls instead of a big breakfast. I used that request as an opportunity to try another Recipezaar find that I had bookmarked months ago. This is why I needed Cook and Serve Butterscotch pudding mix!

Too Easy Gooey Caramel Rolls

This is an AWESOME recipe. It took 5 minutes last night to assemble. Then I just turned on the oven this morning and 30 minutes later we had breakfast warm and sugary on the table. The extra caramel sauce is what put these over the top for us.

no pictures, no post

2008-12-24T20:02:00.002+09:00

I just wanted to check in :)

I cooked something new again today, and those pictures (and recipe) will be up tomorrow. I will need something to do since the kids will be WII-ng all day long!

Happy Christmas Eve to you all

Cooking Mama

2008-12-22T19:47:00.003+09:00

The weather on Okinawa has turned cold...okay lows in the 50's, but for us that is COLD! And cold weather always brings out the cook in me. I don't know if it is the need to warm up our house by using the oven, or if this weather calls for home baked goodies. Either way I have been baking and the family has been eating well.

On Saturday I baked two batches of cookies for a cookie swap I was going to on Sunday. My Neopolitan Cookies are a tried and true recipe, but I also tried a new cookie called Eggnog Snickerdoodles

And as if 2 batches of cookies weren't enough, I also signed up to bring a dessert to church on Sunday. I made an Apricot Cheese Danish that was TOO DIE FOR! If (I mean when) I make this again I am going to try it with Strawberry Preserves instead of Apricot.

Today was spent baking as well. I had already planned pasta with Italian Sausage for dinner, and my Rosemary Garlic Bread sounded like it would be perfect to go with it. And the leftover loaves will make excellent grilled cheese sandwiches to go with tomorrow's soup dinner!

What's for Dinner

2008-12-18T16:55:00.003+09:00

I always have more recipes than I could ever make. I love to look at cook books and magazines and imagine the food. Over the years I have gotten pretty good at judging a recipe without even making it.

I saw this one in an old Taste of Home magazine and knew it would be good. Turns out they were better than good, especially after I took my son's suggestion halfway through assembly. When he heard the ingredients he said "No pickles?" so I chopped up some hamburger dills and stirred them in. This little addition made them incredible. We spent the entire dinner talking about what else we could put in this dough. Chris suggested hashbrowns, sausage and scrambled eggs....Sounds like Christmas breakfast to me :)

Bacon Cheeseburger Buns
Taste of Home
24 buns (12 servings)

Dough:
2 packages (1/4 oz each) active dry yeast
2/3 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)
2/3 cup warm milk (110-115 degrees)
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup shortening (I used butter flavor)
2 eggs (I used ½ cup egg beaters)
2 teaspoons salt
4 ½ - 5 Cups Flour

In a large mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add milk, sugar, shortening, eggs, salt and 3-½ cups flour; beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.

Filling:
1 pound sliced bacon, diced
2 pounds ground beef
1 small onion, chopped
1 ½ teaspoons salt (I used 1 teaspoon sea salt)
½ teaspoon pepper
1 pound Velveeta, cubed
Optional, ½ cup chopped hamburger dill pickles

In a large skillet, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp. Drain off fat and set bacon aside. Cook the beef, onion, salt and pepper over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain off fat. Stir in bacon and cheese; cook and stir until cheese is melted. Remove from heat and stir in pickles if desired.

Assembly:
Punch down dough. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and divide into fourths. Roll each portion into a 12 x 8 inch rectangle; cut each into 6 squares. Place ¼ cup meat (I used my middle size Pampered Chef Scoop) in the center of each square. Bring corners together and pinch to seal. Place 2 inches apart, seam side down, on greased baking sheets. Brush with melted butter if desired. Bake at 400 for 9-11 minutes or until lightly browned.

Serve warm with ketchup or Barbecue sauce.

My care package

2008-12-17T16:42:00.002+09:00

The variety of foods here in Japan is staggering. For example their cold drinks don't fit in a small Pepsi or Coke fridge in front of the check stand. They put them in 2 aisle long fridge cases. I could drink a different beverage every day we are here and never repeat. And the bakeries, Bento meals and snacks could keep me from having to cook for months.

But there is something to be said for basic American fare. Some of which I can get at the commissary, but even they don't stock some Spring family necessities. So when my brother said he wanted to put together a Christmas care package, food is what we asked for! Specifically, cook and serve butterscotch pudding, malt powder and popcorn salt. Rick... THANK YOU!!!!!!

He went above and beyond by including three different flavors of popcorn salt, my favorite, black pepper Triscuits, Hersheys chocolates and Minnesota Wild Rice. I have already hidden the popcorn salt so the kids don't use it up without me :)

He even snuck in a gift just for me, a Christmas scrapbook/card kit! Does he know me or what? Love ya, bro!