Playing with food

 One of the things we got at the Japanese grocery store is this fun box.  You make the sushi out of sugar candy stuff.

Delaney and Rylee had a marvelous time working on it. 

And they did an amazing job!

It looked pretty similar to the box.  But apparently was not entirely delicious.  

And, we will close with a photo of Callie and Levi.

Random

This kid had a doctor's appointment at 8am on Thursday.  Since we hadn't hit TCCOR-1C yet, it was still on. Yay! We squeezed it in there before everything shut down.

The look Levi gave me when I asked if he wanted to go outside during Typhoon Kong-Ray. 

What I did during the typhoon! 

I had to get the kids out of the house after too many days cooped up inside.  So we went to the Japanese store and got delicious breads at the bakery. Callie was thrilled with her long baguette.

And silliness ensued.

Activity Day Cuties

But first... A girl and her dog.

 They had an Activity Day activity in the spirit of the Bake-Off shows... but with crafts.  

The girls were given 5 items that had to be used, and a ton of other items they could use.  The theme was "Typhoon" and they could do whatever they wanted. 

This was Delaney's dream activity.

Delaney did a cute Diorama.

 And she won first place for her use of crafts.

Rylee won first place for representation f a Typhoon.  (And the judge did not know who had made them!)

Van vs Typhoon

 So two of our cars sat out the typhoon in the driveway and had zero damage.  They were not even dirty.  The kids scoffed at the long lines at the car wash and I confess, I wondered why they were so eager to wash their cars.

Then I picked up the van.  The van had been sitting in the Auto Car Center's parking lot for a week, and spent Typhoon Trami there as well.  I was annoyed to see that it had a fresh dent and had lost a rain guard over the driver's side window. I would not have been so irritated if that had happened while it was at home, but it was the insult of it being at the Auto shop and getting damaged that irked me.

The dent doesn't look awful here.  The crack isn the paint is the worst part, because it will rust.  

And it doesn't look awful, but the window looks naked without the plastic piece over it. 

Now, Typhoon Trami left on Sunday.  On Wednesday Typhoon Kong-Ray moved in.  

We were carefully following the typhoon projections to see if we had school or not.  The typhoon had been a Cat 4, but was down to a Cat 1 by the time it sideswiped us.

We had no school on Thursday and the worst of it hit Thursday night.  No school on Friday, although everything opened up around 2pm. The typhoon was not bad at all.  Barely enough wind to qualify as a Typhoon at all and it disintegrated into a tropical storm as it left. Zero damage.  So it was a great typhoon!

Typhoon Recovery

Sunday morning at 2am we went into TCCOR-Recovery, which means the typhoon is past and essential personnel are out evaluating the hazards and cleaning up. There is no church till All Clear is called, and it wasn't called till noon (so no church for us!).  We spent the morning cleaning up all the stuff blown down in the storm.  And it was brutal on the foliage. 

 This is the next door neighbor's house.  I thought it would be easier to see the trees that fell in their yard, but you can't.  They lost two biggish trees and a scrubby tree. You can kind of see our house there on the right. 

Callie selfie with Levi. She wants you to see the crazy hair, thanks to humidity and wind.

My sad banana tree.  Callie is ready with the machete!

Callie may have run off with my phone and taken pictures.  Levi featured prominently.

Levi enjoyed chewing on pieces of the banana tree.....

....while I hacked it up. I wanted to cut out all the dead limbs, because once they die and dry out, they are tough and leathery.  When they are fresh, they slice so nice.

My manly helper.  We hauled a lot of debris to the curb.

Silly girls!

Callie and her selfies!!

What the banana tree has been reduced to.  

Hmmm.... I may have an unhealthy attachment to my banana tree.....

Rylee wanted you to see just how windy it still was!

And this just makes me laugh.

Someone else took this picture, but i thought it was pretty awesome.  I think 250,000 people were without power when they typhoon ended.  They had it down to 130,000 by Sunday afternoon.  Even now, on Monday evening, a few people are still without power.  A lot of transformers went down and poles came down too.  It is a bit of a mess in some areas.  But the Japanese workers are awesome and dedicated.