Future Farmers of America

We're back from Indiana, and yeah, there's whole lot of corn! But we actually spent most of our time in the canyons of Turkey Run State Park. When this trip was still in the planning stages, I was really skeptical about spending a few days in rural Indiana on vaca. But, it really is a beautiful place! Some of the hikes definitely rival some of the sights in the Adirondacks. And, we were able to share our love of the outdoors with the kids, thanks to baby backpacks.

Now, to catch up on some sleep...

Cramming into the Car

We're leaving for a short vacation today, and so far, we're on target for a smooth departure. We're staying in a little cabin in a state park with lots of outdoorsiness and a pool. The weather should fabulous and the family time is needed.

However, I'm alway amazed at the amount of STUFF crammed into the car, even for a 3 day jaunt. The double all-terrain stroller, the booster chairs, the pack n plays, the floatie toys, the books, the food, the diapers, the plethora of clothes for hiking, for the pool, for after the pool, for cooler evenings, and on and on and on... Sometimes I think that the volume will decrease as kids get older and need less "equipment". But, while there will eventually be less eating/sleeping/strolling equimpment, that will probably be replaced by bikes, more food for hungry older kids, and non-necessities that kids sneak into their bags.

When it's 11:30pm and I'm shoving onesies into every nook and cranny of an already-stuffed bag, I wonder if it's all worth it. But that time just playing together in the sunshine, in God's beautiful creation, really does refresh, heart and soul.

Sweet, sweet, vaca...

A Few Extras

I found a few extra shots from Kevin's trip to Japan that I had to share...

"Welcome to Nara" says funny antler-wearing Buddha

Don't mess with this guy.

Locust ala soy sauce...mmmmm...

"Delicacy" of the Week

Kevin's Japanese colleagues have made a side show of sorts out of getting Kevin to eat strange, and often disgusting, food when he is in Japan on business. This trip's delicacy: dried locust drenched in soy sauce. For the record, they weren't able to find a restaurant that served the little insects. They had to order them online and bring them to the restaurant. Apparently, locust is not typical Japanese fare.

Ugh.

Kevin pretty much knew what was coming, but I think the blindfold gave everyone more of a thrill. Just thinking about crunching a bug between my teeth makes me queasy.

To donate to the earthquake and tsunami effort:

Catholic Relief Services

The Red Cross

Salvation Army

Kevin's Status, Life on the Homefront, and Greedy Deer

I've had a few calls and emails from people concerned for Kevin's safety and our peace of mind over the past few days, so I just want to let you all know that he's still safe and sound. Maybe a little tired from putting in a lot of hours at work, though.

Life at home has been really busy. I didn't realize how much Kevin helps out until he's not here helping out! It's a lot of work to take care of these two little turkeys and keep the house relatively picked up and in order by the time I go to bed. On the go from dawn til dusk, except for a nice little snooze in the afternoon, courtesy of coinciding naps (Cue the rejoicing angel choir music.)

It has been difficult watching the nuclear reactor accident unfolding, since it is perilous and it also has an affect on Kevin's work. The incidents in Japan are having and will continue to affect nuclear policy and attitudes toward nuclear power in the US, for better or for worse, and I can't help but be concerned about job security and the future. I must admit I've been obsessing over the grim headlines blaring all over the world wide web. (Darn that whole infinite-information-at-your-finger-tips-24-hours-a-day feature of the internet!) But for now, I'm just praying they are able to solve the problem at the plant and keep everyone safe. There is more than enough sorrow and tragedy in Japan right now.

On the lighter side, Kevin sent me some pictures from his trip to Nara over the weekend. Here is some basic info about its history:

Japan's first permanent capital was established in the year 710 at Heijo, the city now known as Nara. As the influence and political ambitions of the city's powerful Buddhist monasteries grew to become a serious threat to the government, the capital was moved to Nagaoka in 784.
Nara is located less than one hour from Kyoto and Osaka. Due to its past as the first permanent capital, it remains full of historic treasures, including some of Japan's oldest and largest temples.

Bronze Buddha statue from 700 AD. It used to be plated in gold!

This is the temple housing the Buddha, built in 800 AD. It was rebuilt 2 times and is the largest wooden structure in world.



This is the entrance gate to the above temple. Note random deer in the foreground. Kevin said that there are many of these deer at the temple site. They are tame and eat little pellets right from your hand...or they may just try to find a snack in your back pocket or bag as well!

Speaking of eating...Kevin will be eating some more strange food in the coming days and I'm sure he'll send me pictures. Warning: you may not want to eat before reading the next post!

The Other Side of the World

As family and many friends know, Kevin was scheduled to go to Japan on business. And, just to clear up any questions, he did go and he is safe. While much of Japan has experienced after shocks and waves from the larger, 8.9-on-the-richter-scale earthquake, Kevin flew into much further south into Kansai with a final destiation of Kobe, which is just west of Osaka. Kobe is also on sheltered shoreline, so it is not a location at risk for tsunamis. So, in short, Kevin and his colleagues are safe, which gives me piece of mind. It is always hard to see him go on these long trips, but it was especially difficult this time, with questions about the disaster(s) unfolding as he flew away.

The kids and I talked to Kevin over video chat this morning and he's doing well, though he was pretty tired after a long journey. Here is a picture of Mt. Fuji that he snapped while on the plane. The passengers on the other side of the plane were able to see some of the earthquake aftermath, which is obviously quite severe in some areas.




Please be sure to keep those who lost loved ones, homes and businesses in your prayers. Here are some organizations involved in the relief effort as well, if you care to donate or keep tabs on how that is going.



Catholic Relief Services

The Red Cross

Salvation Army

One Last Road Trip

We're making the two hour drive to my mom's house for one last my-side-of-the-family get together before the baby arrives. To those of you wondering, yes, I'm tired. And yes, I'm not so comfortable. However, I'm still able to take a walk, pick Monica up, and clean a bathroom every once in a while. I'll be glad to have more mobility again very soon!

I've been meaning to post a recent picture of Monica but she is not the most photogenic these days. She used to be a total ham for the camera. Now she gives me blank looks, like this:



Love ya, babe, but where are those fabulous grins you used to give the camera???

We hope you and yours have a fabulous Memorial Day weekend. Let's remember to give thanks and say a prayer for all of the veterans who have given their lives for our freedoms!

Get Your Oink On

Kevin ran and finished the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati nearly two weeks ago. It was a tough race day (read: lightning, thunder, pouring rain, blisters, chafing, and going out too fast), and I'm really proud of him! Marathons are never easy, and it was challenging to train for a marathon with a toddler and pregnant wife.

Due to the rain and craziness at the finish, we didn't take any pictures, but the marathon folks snapped some along the route. Click here, choose the Flying Pig Marathon and enter our last name. There are quite a few pictures, but I don't think we'll be ordering any of them. When we saw the pictures, the reality of Kevin's hair loss really set in and the pictures really brought out, well, the pain of the event. But that is how many marathons are: just.plain.painful.

The last time Kevin ran a marathon, we were still sans kiddos and he had plenty of time to prepare for the race. With a full time job and more demands at home, three hour runs on the weekends became too much, and without the time for speed work, it's just too hard for Kevin to get the times he really wants in the marathon. So, we've made an executive decision that shorter distances are in order for the foreseeable future.

I'm looking forward to running again as well. But, now that walking quickly after Monica as she toddler-sprints down the driveway to the road has become almost unbearable, I am reminded that real running is just out of the question. But hey, I'm 35 weeks now! Little Man will be here before we know it, and I'll be able to hit the pavement again. For now, I'll enjoy getting my "oink" on, meaning I will take full advantage of napping, lounging, and eating ice cream to my heart's content.

Dudes' Weekend

Kevin went up north with some friends for the weekend, and I flew solo with Monica. While I was reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? about 50 times (I swear that is no exaggeration), Kevin was participating in the following activity:

Incendio!

(Caption for Harry Potter nerds only!)

If you want to read more about what is happening in that pic, check out this blog post. If you want to know why you shouldn't go near the dumpster, you'll have to ask Kevin personally.

Sea, Sand, Sun, and Unfortunate Events

We're all hanging out in Clearwater for the next couple of days, and the weather is fine! Each year that goes by I become less tolerant of the winter and more passionate about sunshine and warm weather. So, when Kevin called me from work a couple weeks ago and asked, "You wanna go to Florida?" I thought I might just be in the middle of a fabulous dream. But no pinch was necessary. Kevin is attending a three day conference and Monica and I are hanging out at the beach and the pool. (Pics to come!) The weather was sunny and about 70 degrees today. There has been no ocean swimming, but the heated pool is a favorite.

Monica really does love the beach though. She just toddles around, picking up interesting things off the ground (read: shells, leaves, rocks, and garbage) and smiling a lot. She's not really into climbing on the playground as of yet so toddling and the occasional swing sesh is about all we've got at the beach. I never really thought about what 15 month olds do at the beach or at the park. At first, it didn't seem like much: toddling, picking up stuff, babbling. But I see now that there is a whole lot of discovery and limit testing that goes on. I realized how much I take for granted in walking through sand in barefeet with relative ease and staying focused on a destination (i.e. the water) and being able to walk up inclines without looking like I'm rock scrambling. This is an age that requires a lot of patience for repetition and very simple activities.

Kevin was busy with a late business dinner so I took Monica out for dinner by myself. Arg. It was a series of unfortunate events.

We went to a well known seafood restaurant that seemed tasty, but not too touristy. I was right on both accounts, but it was a tad too upscale for soloing it with a milk intolerant toddler. When we walked in, I told the hostess that we were a party of one and a highchair. She gave me a blank stare and said blandly, "Just a high chair?"

Seriously? If the girl had stopped to think for a second, she probably would have realized that
1. A toddler would not be hanging out by herself for a meal at this restaurant.
2. I cannot fit into a high chair.

After straightening out debacle #1, we moved on to others. The highchair's buckle was broken, which I thought wouldn't be a huge deal...except that the chair didn't fit underneath the table and Monica was trying to stand up in it every other second. So, I caught one of the four hostesses (not the one from Debacle #1) and asked for a high chair with a functional buckle. She was only able to find other broken high chairs. It wasn't until she got the manager to assist her that they found a functional high chair.

Debacle #3 was the menu. I only got one menu which had no children's options. Arg. I chose a chicken dish that I thought Monica would like and ordered that, except that I realized about 15 minutes later that the sauce was probably really buttery so I talked to the waiter about plain ol' grilled chicken. He asked me about any other options on the childrens's menu...that I never saw. Apparently there was a separate children's menu that the hostess did not offer. Excellent. So, I changed our order only to receive the dinner sized crab cakes instead of the appetizer size.

Debacle #4 was the timing. By the time the food came, Monica was already full from the bread that I had been giving her in small bits to distract her from fussing and destroying the table while we waited for food. She ate almost none of her meal. I guess we'll be eating grilled chicken and steamed veggies for lunch tomorrow.

But, honestly, aside from tonight's restaurant adventure, the trip is going really well, and I am incredibly thankful for this chance to get away from the cold grayness that is January in Michigan! More to come...

Dinner in KobeTown

Here's a little narrative about Kevin's latest evening meal:

So I had my first eel experience. For appetizers, there were what I might call “eel chips”. Basically, it was just dried eel bones. There was also eel liver for an appetizer. Dinner included meso soup, which had some kind of eel part in it. Then the main dish was grilled (or blackened, I’m not sure) eel on top of rice. The flavor was mostly soy sauce based, so not too bad. The flavor and texture were not too much different from fish. However, the thought was what killed me. I kept picturing the eels slithering around in my head and my brain kept telling my stomach to reject it.

I forgot to mention that it was a lot of eel too. A couple pieces would have been no big deal, but it was a lot. Like maybe twice the size of [a] tilapia [filet]...I survived, thank God for beer. Afterwards, we stopped at a coffee shop for dessert. I was very glad to eat some pastries to get the eel flavor out of my mouth. I am also chewing lots of gum. I would say this was my biggest challenge yet. But I feel good about it because halfway through, they offered to eat the rest of my eel, but I finished it all.

Way to go, Kev. If someone would have told me when we got married that my donut/pb sandwich/pringle eating husband would be feasting on various eel dishes in a few years, I would have wet myself for laughing too hard. Miracles do happen.

Photos from the Far East

Kevin is in Japan again, and he sent some pictures, complete with captions!

Enjoy!

I don’t even think its (eating octopus) strange anymore, just chew, swallow, and chase with beer

The Shinkansen (bullet train) with old design (foreground) and new design (background).

Himeji Castle

Sunset behind Akashi Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge.

On the Road Again

Kevin is jetsetting...again. To be fair, it's not exactly a joy ride to a tropical isle, or even an interesting foreign country. He's in the desert of Idaho at Nerd Camp. Kevin's going to be a part of a two week class put on by Idaho Nat'l Lab and Idaho State University. Something about modeling, experimenting and verifying - MeV. The nerdy part about the name (MeV) is that it's an acronym for the class and a unit of energy used in nuclear power nerdiness. Oy. I think I'm cool with staying home and concerning myself with naptime, diapers, and preventing Monica from licking dog hair off her hands. (She's crawling now and as much as I vacuum, I will never win the Yucky Black Dog Fur battle.)

Much to some people's relief (and others' disappointment) I will not be posting pictures of strange, raw food. I think Idaho potatoes, even when raw, would be utterly boring...so would stories from Nerd Camp '09 (at least to those of us who are not Nuke Nerds).

Here are few pics from kiddie pool time on the deck. I think Monica might end up being a bubble bath lover/hot tub lounger.

Summer in the City

Here are a few pics from my sister's bachelorette bash this past weekend in Chicago. That's the bean in Millenium Park. Strangley fascinating, I'd say. It's great when random brown shirt-wearing men pose for your pictures.



I also love the "spitting" video sculptures.




How can you pass up a photo op with Abe and Mary Todd??

Monica Hits the Beach

She ate a handful of sand, so I would consider her first beach excursion a success!

Who Thinks of This Stuff??

Kevin brought some fun stuff home for Monica and me, but this little gadget is the most interesting.

Here's a good blog review of My Ocean

Warning: Some Content May Be Unsuitable for Those Prone to Nausea

I have the perfect recipe for lowering dinner expectations at the homestead: send your husband to Japan for two weeks. Here's a rundown of the meal to end all meals.

I made the mistake of saying that since it was my last dinner here that I wanted to try other foods. So I pretty much ate a cow from head to tail, literally. Here is the rundown (all parts are cow):

Tongue, Esophogas, Heart, Liver, Stomach (multiple different ones because cows have more than one), Intestine, regular meat, and the finale of Tail.

I forgot to mention, the liver was raw.

Actually, the heart and tail wasn't bad at all. If they hadn't told me, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between heart and regular meat. Liver was nasty. And stomach was the worst. It had little flaps and everything.

But I survived, and dessert was actually good. It was like lemon ice kind of thing. So after all that, I will eat anything when I get home, as long as we are together.

I think I could make oatmeal and turkey sandwiches for dinner for a week straight without complaint now. If I made typical meals, I bet I would be dubbed the Best Chef EVER. I'll milk this one for all it's worth.

Dessert: Red Beans and Rice!

Here is a typical Japanese dessert. Yes, those are red beans. You'll find them in many desserts...red bean flavored ice cream, red bean filled cookies (fig newton-esque...without the figs), etc. I think this is a tough thing for Kevin to handle. He LOVES sweets. The more sugar, the better, and on the whole, Japanese desserts are not very sweet. It's probably been a rough couple weeks!

More about the food from Kevin..."I am doing ok with the food here, but I am excited to have some “bland comfort food”. My coworkers asked me what I liked to eat and I told them I liked “simple meals”. I think they have a hard time understanding what I mean. Several of them remarked that sashimi is very simple because it is just raw fish, no cooking. I don’t think that is what I meant. I meant more like simple as in bland."

Japanese Gatorade. As Kevin said, "Who doesn’t want to drink something with “sweat” in the name?"





Kevin and his coworkers at a shrine in Kyoto

Blog-Pressure Delivers

Here are some happenings and the first photos I've received from Kevin in Kobe. A previous post hinting for some pics must have paid off!

Excerpts from an email...
"A young girl from the office came out with us and I was told she speaks English really well. However, she went to school in London, so her English is still “foreign” to me. She sounded like Keira Knightley. Very strange to hear a Japanese person ask me if I “fancied another beer”.

We went out to dinner last week with a different group and they really like to have a good time. One of my US co workers made the mistake of telling someone else that they were “party animals.” Ever since, they have been saying there was an “animal party”. Obviously an “animal party” sounds more sensational." (Ed. note: When I first read about the "animal party" I immediately had an image of some sort of weirdly themed costume masquerade, not a wild bunch of people out for a good time.)

Now for the pics...




Toilet flusher – The different directions mean “large” and “small”. I will let you figure out what that means.
















Golden Temple, Kyoto – It's covered in gold leaf!

















Kobe – From a boat looking at city and mountains behind

Kevin's in Kobe

Here's the latest from the Land of the Rising Sun...

When Kevin and his coworkers go to Japan, they have always been treated to conference rooms for work and the executive dining room for lunch. For Kevin's second week, he is on his own. He now has a desk with all of the other employees in the cube farm, and he will have to buy lunch in the cafeteria. The employee caf at MHI is very different than American corporate cafeterias. When he walked in there was one long line that eventually split into two lines which corresponded to one of the two lunch dish choices. Somehow Kevin ended up in the chicken line. For about two dollars he got a big bowl of rice, cut up, cooked chicken stuff (that's really all he was able to say about it), miso and some type of salad. Not a bad deal, even for a penny pinching engineer. I think one of the most interesting things about this story is that there are only two meal choices. Can you imagine walking into a corporate cafeteria in America, or even a college cafeteria with only two meal choices for two dollars? I think people would be lessed than pleased.

After lunch, a voice comes over a PA in the cube farm announcing the daily exercises. Since the instructions for all of these exercises are in Japanese, Kevin has to be all shifty eyed and watch those around him for the cue to change from jumping jacks to toe touches to waste twists and so on. I can't imagine feeling anything but ridiculous doing jumping jacks in a shirt and tie in the middle of a cube farm, but he says that most people participate. When in Rome...or Kobe I guess.

Kevin went to Kyoto with some of his Japanese coworkers. He said the ancient temples and city were very cool and that it was interesting to see the juxtaposition with the modern part of Kyoto. For lunch, the whole group ordered Udon (a noodle soup.) Udon is made with one really long noodle, and by really long I mean about three feet. The noodle is not cut up so the usual way of eating it is to pick up the noodle with your chopsticks somewhere in the middle and start slurping (which is considered the proper etiquette). Between trying to manipulate chopticks, eat the noodle and slurp (which is totally counterintuitive for Americans since many of us were taught not to slurp) all at the same time, it was a tough meal. But hey, anything that is cooked and not part of an animal's gastrointestinal tract is a-ok!

Kevin also had the chance to go to mass on Sunday morning. There is a Catholic Church in Kobe that has an English mass. One major reason for the English mass is the large number of Filipinos working in Japanese factories. Apparently, most of these folks don't really assimilate into Japanese culture; they stick to their native language and customs. Kevin met an older American at mass who came to Japan in the 70s to teach English and has been there ever since. Kevin also went to a coworkers apartment and met his wife and sons. The boys are 8 and 4 and didn't speak English. However, they are totally fluent in the universal language of Wii. Kevin was schooled in tennis but redeemed himself with some baseball.

I really want to post some pictures (hint hint Kev!), but alas, there are none to be posted as of yet. Soon and very soon...