Feeling Home-makey

The other day I was looking at recipes online and I saw this yumminess and decided I must try it.  It is homemade peanut butter, and she has a chocolate variety as well.  I was hooked.  I was in love!  I had to make this!

Except I have no food processor.  I had one at one time.  But I never used it.  So I passed it on to someone who really did want one and who did use it, and I never missed it.  Until now.

Never fear, we have a thrift store on base.  I took myself over to it to check out their offerings.

And I found this!  For $4, it was mine.

Yep, it is a super cool Japanese food processor. And today, I made peanut butter in it! 

I had me some peanuts and I tossed them in.

I love this machine.  Super simple! You just push on the top.

 And your peanuts magically become something even better.

 It really does take 5 minutes to get it to peanut-buttery consistency.

Thankfully, I had a good helper.

 And oh yes, we did add chocolate chips to one batch and it was divine!!

And then I made THESE!

Adjusting!

 This week I finally had the time and urgency to seek out the chiropractor!  I collected all the info I could find and called up my friend Laura to go out in search of it.  It really was easy to find.  There were several directions listed on the base FB page, and they were nice and accurate.  The road was a wee bit on the wee side.  

The kind where you look at it and think, "No way, that's not a road!"

But right down the little road, sure enough, was a yellow house with parking spots in front.

 And the front door looked just like it did in the photo someone else posted.

You walk inside, and there is a place to take off your shoes, and then you can sit and wait.  Laura very much enjoyed the massage chair while she waited for me!

I am use to American doctors, and the idea that my back is out of whack enough that I do routine maintenance on it.  Here, you walk in and they ask where it hurts and work on that.  Perhaps if I spoke Japanese, or they spoke more English, it would be more what I am use to?

I said my hip hurt and I was having numbness in my right hand.  I was directed to a chiropractic table and he adjusted my neck.  Then I was directed to a chair where the stim stuff was and I had 5 different sets on zapping me with little buzzes of electricity for 15 minutes.  After that I was led to a table where I was face down and they poked acupuncture needles in my lower back and hip.  It did not hurt.  Next, they hooked up the electric buzzy thingy to some of the acupuncture needles, and that was weird, but not horribly uncomfortable.  After 15 minutes on that, the chiropractor guy came back with what looked like a small silver hairbrush with pokey metal bristles and poked my hip with it for a few minutes.  Then we were done.

I paid the grand sum of less than $18 American dollars for that.  

Best part, my hip feels better.  Not all better, and I think if I could have explained why it might be hurting, he could have done more.  Because there are definitely parts that are totally pain free, and then parts that still hurt.

Rethinking

Our family has no problem with trips.  We love to hop in the car and drive out to visit family or to do something special.  We are old pros at that sort of thing.

We are currently planning our first little trip in Japan.  And it is a wee bit different!  I have to rethink everything.  Gas off base is around Y1.30 a liter.  That's about $5 a gallon.  I need to plan to minimize driving and maximize the base gas station (which is still well over $2 a gallon, but MUCH better than the Japanese are paying.)

We will be driving the Sanyo, the toll road.  This is really expensive.   The 4 hour drive to Fukuoka is something like $40 one way.  Plus, I stress out about paying at the stations- how will we know how much to pay?  Will there always be an attendant present?  Will google translate actually help us if we get into trouble?  So may things I don't worry about in America!

Feeding a family of 7 on a road trip in the US is pretty easy.  Swing by McDonald's and order from the Dollar Menu.  Not so convenient here!  The Japanese culture takes mealtimes seriously and fast food is not really a thing here.  There are very few drive-thru windows, and I'm not sure we'd have much success with one anyway, with them speaking Japanese and us.... well.... not. This means I have to decide how much food we can pack in, and we have a significantly smaller trunk in our van, which means we have to pack light.  We also have to allot more time to meals, since if we eat out, we have to go in and sit down. And I have to budget significantly more for dining out.

I think I mentioned the van is smaller.  The kids are going to have to bring less stuff.  Typically they each like to bring a favorite pillow and blanket.  The littler girls feel the need to bring all 25 of their very most favorite stuffed animals.  My usual rule is that they can bring whatever fits in their backpack. I'm not sure there is room in the car for each of them to have a back pack!  And the trunk certainly does not  have room for everyone to bring a blanket and pillow.

I'm worried we might need the blankets and pillows though.  After Dan's overnighter at Miyajima, I worry I may want my own pillow and stuff.  We will stay one night in the Sasebo base billeting, and one night in a Japanese hotel.  So this will be an interesting experience!  To make it even more fun, USAA (who we predominantly bank with) only has mastercard, and Japan only does visa, if they accept a card at all.  It is pretty cash-based here.  This begs the question of how much cash (yen)  one should reasonably carry on such a trip.

Whew!  Now that I have named all the things I'm concerned about, I feel better.  And you shall get a report of how it all went in 2 weeks.

Sunday afternoon walk with Levi

Happy New Year!

What we woke up to New Year's Day! 

Rylee enjoying the dusting. 

Delaney dressed her doll in her doll's new snowsuit and boots to go outside. 

You have to look for it, but Joshua is catching snowflakes! 

Jan 2, and it snow flurried all day long.  But it was 35 degrees so nothing stuck. 

It was so pretty though!