Memorial Day Weekend

We had a quiet Memorial Day Weekend.  Dan and I ditched the kids and went to the Fukuoka Temple.  It was wonderful.  It is fabulous that the kids are old enough now to fend for themselves and we can leave them for the day to go do this. It was such a nice day.  And we enjoyed the weekend.

Ouch!

Last week Callie came home from school after Field Day, in pain.  She had fallen during the Backwards Sack Race and landed hard on her arm.  I took her to the Urgent Care for them to check it out.  

Hanging out with the skeleton, waiting for X-Rays 

Looks clear. 

Nothing wrong here.

So her arm was badly bruised and really hurt, but nothing was broken.  They put a splint on it and gave her a sling and that was all.  Thankfully it really wasn't too bad and a week later she's about all better. Callie has had a great time inventing all kinds of exciting stories to explain how she hurt it.

Callie's Science Experiment: Will it Dissolve?!

After seeing this article about a mouse dissolving in Mountain Dew, I was fascinated.  Snopes even verified it, so it had to be true, right?!  I had to find out if this was true.  Callie was on board and we decided to make this her science project.  

Unfortunately, I do not know how one might obtain a mouse in Japan.  Callie and I  certainly were not going to kill it ourselves, and we couldn't figure out how to ask any of the pet stores about buying already dead ones.  I do not think many people keep snakes here as pets.  So, using an actual mouse was out.  

We went to the commissary and purchase 3 small bone-in pieces of meat.  We purchased Mountain Dew. Coke, and a Monster Energy Drink to make it a well rounded experiment.  We hypothesized that the Coke and Mountain Dew would deteriorate the meat, based on the mouse video.  We did not think the Monster drink would mostly because it isn't a soft drink.

We sealed the meat in their beverages and left them on shelf in the corner of the back porch. We may have forgotten about them for a bit, and it was 55 days before we unsealed them. 

Our meat selections.

What it looked like when we sealed the jars.

What the jars looked like 55 days later.

The meat is swollen to twice its original size in all of them. 

The meat in the coke was quite tender, but definitely NOT dissolved, and the bone was still quite solid.  No gelatinous mass here.  It was definitely still a piece of meat. 

The Mountain Dew was almost the same, but less tender.  It did not break apart at all. 

 The Monster energy Drink was notable in that the meat looked and (when poked with a stick) felt like it had been cooked, but it was not as tender as the Coke meat. And the bone was not dissolved at all.

Conclusion:  Maybe using beef made a difference, but there was no way it could be considered a "jelly-like substance".  It was definitely recognizable and not disintegrated at all. None of the drinks could possible be considered to have dissolved the meat at all.  

This means we must try this again with actual mousies! 

Family Photos

 I decided we needed family pictures.  Good ones.  Ones where we pay gobs of money and someone else makes us look good.  So I did it.  And I agonized over what to wear and what to do, and was it going to be worth it. And I worried that the kids would be dreadful and uncooperative.

Last Saturday we met our professional photographer at Kintai and she spent an hour taking pictures.  The shirts all matched, and the kids were mostly cooperative. I did come to the realization that we really are not a touchy family, as she wanted a lot of hands on shoulders and arms around each other, and the kids were less than enthusiastic.  So if it comes out actually looking natural, she will be worth every penny.

Our photographer was really good with the kids, despite their shenanigans.

Fooling around between shots. 

My handsome boy. 

Rylee was milking the piggybacks for all she was worth.  I missed Joshua giving her a piggyback and she was jousting.  Joshua would race forward and Rylee would have her fist extended  shrieking "Punch!"

Rylee wanted a picture on the bridge at the Koi Pond. 

Yes, they got ice cream at the end as a reward for a job well done. And no, Callie did not wear her pink jacket for the pictures! 

Selfie with Delaney... and her ice cream. (Apple/grape flavor, in case you wondered!) 

Me and Rylee.

For her birthday she wanted to.... PARAGLIDE?!!

 Callie said she wanted to go Paragliding for her birthday.  I was a little surprised.  She's not typically adventurous, but she was adamant that she wanted to.  I got her set up to do it and today (Sat May 21) was the only available day before we head to the U.S. this summer.  So, today it was!  Her friend Charlie managed to come along and that made it even more fun.  It also really perplexed the Japanese who could not figure out if she was a boy or a girl and kept asking, "Boy?  Girl?"

We drove out this crazy narrow road through the fields to the landing area.  I waited there at the bottom.

The girls were hopped up on adrenaline and were very silly. 

 They got in the van and drove to the top of the mountain.  I waited at the bottom to catch the landings.  I confess, I wasn't convinced they would jump!

But they did!  See that field there on the top of the mountain?  That's where they launched. This is Callie.

She floated around the air for about 8 minutes. 

She flapped her arms for me, but I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of that. Silly pickle! 

I love this photo.  If you zoom in, you can see the big grin on her face.

Still smiling and coming down for landing. 

All done!

She had a fabulous time and LOVED it.  She wants to do it again! 

And then I drove down the tiny little roads got get us home.  It was a rousing success.