Sunday: Nagasaki and Sasebo

 I should have gotten photos of church.  Oops.  We went to the Japanese Branch in Nagasaki for church.  It was a little over an hour drive from our hotel in Omura.  The branch was super welcoming and nice, and the missionaries there were American and translated for us. After church it was a short drive to the Nagasaki Peace Memorial.

The Peace Memorial is to remember the atom bomb dropped there in 1945.

And these garlands ARE tiny origami cranes linked together.  1000 cranes for peace.

I'm not sure the girls really understood what happened here. 

They just wanted pictures with all the monuments. 

This one had the date and time of the bombing. 

This is where the hypocenter of the bomb was. 

I do love these kids, even if they are irreverent in solemn places. 

They did have a marvelous time feeding the pigeons.

Rylee was not feeling well.  She HAD spent the entire night puking non-stop, but she was a trooper and did not complain.

 Interesting info on the bomb.

This was a neat column of a building that mostly survived the bomb.  They moved it here to the peace park to serve as a reminder. 

Silly girls wanted another picture. 

Joshua was too cool to join them. 

Delaney is so cute! 

I may have mentioned how much fun they had with the pigeons. 

We drove 2 hours to Sasebo Naval Base for the night.  This was the view from that hotel!

Saturday: Fukuoka and Omura

 Saturday morning we left at 8am.  The kids claimed they were not exited about taking this trip, but they were still up and ready and surprisingly pleasant in the car.  It took us just over 3 hours to get to Fukuoka and 5500Yen in tolls.  We got to the temple with plenty of time.  We'd gotten a bunch of bags of Reece's Peanut Butter Cups for the missionaries, and so we stopped at the Mission President's house- he lives under the Temple.  He was super nice and invited us in and the girls took advantage of the bathroom there.  We visited for a bit, and then went out to do our thing.

Marian, at the mission president's house. 

The lighting is dreadful here, but here are the kids and the Temple!

 While I was inside the Temple, they wandered a bit.  Here are Callie and Rylee, with the Temple in the back.  It is in an odd spot, in the middle of the city, right next to a zoo!

Photo courtesy of Callie. 

After the Temple, we drove another 90 minutes or so to Omura.  There might have been some napping on the way!

Our Japanese hotel room.  The beds were hard as a rock and small. 

But we had a great view out our window. 

And did you know they have cigarette vending machines here?!!

We took a little trip

 Everyone had a 3 day weekend (well, the Americans did), so we went on a little trip, just to try it out. While I would not call it a colossal failure, I also would not call it a rousing success.  I would lean more towards success though, and the failure was somewhat due to the puke party going on.  We left on Saturday morning and just got back home (Mon evening).  I'm a bit tired and cranky, but didn't want you to feel unloved.  So, here are some random photos taken during the trip.  And I promise to bore you to tears with the details later.

Reason #67 Why I Love Being a Mom

Oh my goodness!  My children are too funny!  I'm listening to Marian play a very interesting version of "This little Piggy" with Rylee.


This little piggy is going to the ball.

This little piggy is putting lotion on his eyebrows.

This little piggy is that little piggy's boyfriend and is REALLY mad about the thumb asking her out.

And this little piggy is planning to sabotage the thumb's night out at the ball.

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!