Summer in the City

Time has slipped away on me again with three weeks seeming to vanish into thin air. While I write an actual post about our lives, here are some photos of what our summer has looked like so far.

On July 1st we celebrated our third Canada Day in Japan. I made poutine and the boys tried it for the first time. Theo seemed to really like it, but as always with anything containing potatoes, William was not too excited.

Rosie was happiest of all with her piece of barbecued corn on the cob.

Even though we barbecue A LOT in the summer, we occasionally head over to the local 100 yen sushi restaurant to change things up a bit. The boys decided that during this meal they would be sushi zombies. 

Rosie, who can never be left out of their shenanigans, tried her hardest to be a sushi zombie too.

We've also been working on removing the training wheels from Theo's bicycle. He has been wanting us to do this for a while, but his balance still needs a little work. Here he is taking a popsicle break on one of our biking trips.

Summer time at our house means trying to avoid using the air conditioner as much as possible. Instead I boot the kids outside and let them splash around in the kiddie pool if they get sweaty.

"I yam wot I yam and that's all wot I yam!"

Rosie enjoying taking a stroll around the block.

Inspecting a large caterpillar we found on the bike shelter. 

The Japanese star festival, Tanabata, is held on July 7th. People write wishes on coloured strips of paper and hang them along with paper cut into pretty shapes and designs on a young bamboo tree. Here are the boys posing in front of a Tanabata tree we found at a local department store.

Some people also go star gazing on the evening of the 7th, but since it was pouring rain it was kind of out of the question. With all this rain we've been having, I got to see a gorgeous double rainbow.

Another way we enjoy summer is with one of our favourite traditional Mennonite meals, rollkuchen and watermelon. It is quick to make and really light but best of all there are never any complaints no matter how many times we have it in a week.

And that's a little glimpse into our world these past few weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to get a real post up soon! 

Sunshine and Clouds

In the past week we have experienced a lot of rain which almost makes me think the rainy season has arrived when it is supposed to this year. Our first year we saw no change in precipitation during the late spring/early summer, and last year, when the rainy season finally did come, it was a month later than it should have been. 

After a week of almost solid rain, the sky cleared a tiny bit during the weekend so that we could have a barbecue for Rosie's birthday on Saturday, and get all of the laundry that had accumulated during the rainy week washed and dried. Thanks for cooperating so nicely clouds! 

Cake stacked and iced with cupcakes skewered to the top.

On Saturday, I woke up bright and early (seriously Rosie, you need to stop waking up before 5 am!) and got to work on decorating the birthday cake. I decided go with a hydrangea theme because they are one of my favorite flowers and this is the season that they are blooming in Japan. I had made 3 round cakes and a dozen cupcakes earlier in the week and frozen them and also 3 batches of icing the night before. I leveled off two of the three cakes and stacked the layers with icing in between in the brown plastic base of a planter pot. I did not level off the dome shaped top of the uppermost layer to give the cake a bit more roundness and height. I fully iced the cake in chocolate cream cheese icing so that it would look like a plant pot. I then arranged the cupcakes on the top of the cake and secured them in place by sticking 15 cm long skewers through them and into the cake. 

Finished!

To ice the cupcakes, I used the star tipped icing nozzle and an icing bag. I put blobs of purple and blue in the icing bag separately and tried not to mix it up too much so that I would get colour variation as I iced. I then took a few hydrangea leaves and arranged them here and there. As a side note, hydrangea leaves are mildly toxic (they contain cyanide), so I wrapped the cut ends in aluminum foil before decorating the cake with them. It was really easy and took me just over an hour to decorate from start to finish.

The only problem I ran into was that over the course of the morning, the temperature in our kitchen rose to 27˚ C and the humidity to 89%. The icing started to liquify and things started slipping so I had to pop it in the fridge until the party.

close up of the "flowers"

After icing the cake, I had to run off to work for the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon. While I was at work, Mr. Oshima took Theo on a tour of our local water treatment plant, something he has been talking about for months. We got to hear all about poop eating bacteria for the rest of the day. Yaaay! 

When I returned home we had a few close friends over for a barbecue to celebrate Rosie's birthday. 

Totally oblivious to the fact that it was her party

William and the Oshimas

First inspection of her birthday cupcake

Realizing that smashing it is so much more fun than eating it. 

Because the weather remained warm and mostly sunny the next day, I pulled out the little pool and let the kids splash around a bit.

This was Rosie's first time in the pool and she loved it.

Also, thanks to a little inspiration from my cousin over at lately léna, the boys and I spent a few hours on Sunday tie dyeing some old t-shirts and a onesie. 

Now I have a few cups of dye left over and my eyes are roving for anything else that could help me use it up. I've already convinced Dustin to let me have fun with some of his undershirts but who knows what else is going to get some colour around here!

Hello, Goodbye July!

It turns out that taking care of three children and managing a small household doesn't leave as much time for blogging as I would like. Who would have thought? So here is what we were up to during the month of July: 

I finally believe in the existence of the Japanese rainy season. This year we actually had quite a lot of rain. It seemed to come a bit later than expected, but when it came it poured. We don't have a car or a clothes dryer but it nonetheless the fairly constant rain didn't seem too terrible. It was a bit tricky but we just tried to plan bike trips to the grocery store in the windows of clear weather and hung our clothes inside to dry. I think William took it the hardest since he wasn't able to putter around outside in the yard for hours like he is used to. 

Here is William coming back from an excursion with Dustin to the veggie patch to check if any cucumbers or zucchini are ripe. 

The boys get a bit stir crazy being cooped up all day but at least the clouds and rain prevented the temperature from getting too high. The few quiet moments when the boys were contentedly drawing or watching a movie and Rosie was asleep made me feel confident that I can do this whole three kid thing. 

And of course, every free moment and free hand was taken up with this cute and demanding little creature. 

Buckets of Rain

I have been told the rainy season in Japan begins in early June but after having been through two Junes in Fukuyama, I have yet to see proof of this. Last year there was about a week of sprinkling, intermittent showers and mild humidity and this year it was just plain hot and dry. Not exactly what I would call a rainy season, especially compared to the torrential monsoons that we experienced in Cambodia. I used to love the rainy season there, wandering around outside in the warm rain soaked to the skin, or riding my bike through the foot of murky water that flooded the streets.

Traditionally, during the rainy season children will hang up teru teru bozu, or shine shine monks, to chase away the rain and encourage the sun to shine. I think they are pretty cute, but seeing how much our garden needs rain I might just tear down any ones that I see.

Enjoying the shade and any excuse to be nearly naked

This year, we have been watering the garden every day and our grass is going dry and brown in some spots. Our house was getting to a toasty 35˚ by noon and the city was days away from issuing water restrictions. But this week, thanks to Typhoon Leepi, we are finally getting a bit of rain. Actually, quite a lot of rain which has been fantastic for everything I have been trying to grow and the cranky hot people that I have been sharing a house with. It has been a fabulous 20˚ or so and we haven't been bathed in sweat at night. So even though it has been raining almost continuously for 3 days, and doesn't show signs of stopping for the next two or three, I say bring it on!

Hot and sweaty baby