now that hubs isn't here to use his computer all the time, Kay and i have been taking that advantage to watch more DVDs. i don't think it'll be long before we finish watching all of the Anpanman movies that the store has, and i'm starting to run out of new Disney movies that i haven't watched. :/ this time, we rented the new "Winnie the Pooh" movie, "Rio" and one of the Anpanman movies.

i don't watch the Anpanman movies since it's really not my cup of tea, but the times that i have watched some with Kay, the movies do have nice story lines and teach kids morals and values that some kids just don't get at times. Plus the variety of characters in the show is just insane! ^_^ i'll take Anpanman over Pokemon any day! :D

when i heard about the new "Winnie the Pooh" movie coming out, i was soo happy that Disney was going to bring a piece of my childhood back to life for me! they did a decent job of modernizing the characters, but some things were a bit off in my opinion. sigh, what can i say? i'm more of an old school kind of gal anyway. :) so, i still prefer the original ^_^ i watched it so much when i was little that i could recite the whole movie verbatim! :D other movies i can do that with are "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast" and "Cinderella" ^_^

lastly, we saw "Rio" and O.M.G!!! XD i looooved this movie!! not only was it stunningly animated, but the music! THE MUSIC!! XDDDDDDDD i actually watched it three times just for the music :P then, i went on youtube to find the music from the soundtrack and now those vids are in my favorites box. ^_^ who knew that Jamie Foxx had such a sultry voice??? it's also gotten me wanting to learn how to samba! i mean, you really can't sit still in your seat when you hear that music. :P now, i'm not someone who likes to travel, nor did i ever want to go anywhere in South America, but that movie really inspired me! so, i've added it to places i want to visit before i die along with Hawaii, Germany and Canada. ^_^ that, and i also want to learn how to samba somehow :P

now for those who may not know, we here in Asia will be fortunate enough this month to witness a solar eclipse!! it wasn't until today, that i was made aware that there are different types of solar eclipses. very interesting read there ^_^

for the past week, we've been teaching and prepping the kids at daycare for the big day tomorrow. we even bought a special film that you can use to make "glasses" to watch the eclipse. they're actually more like visors a la Geordi La Forge from Star Trek ^_^; Kay has hers ready, but the problem now is the weather :( i'm so dreading that tomorrow when i wake up at 7:00 AM to get ready to witness the peak (a.k.a. the Ring of Fire) at 7:25, i'm just going to end up going back to bed :/ the weather forecast says it's going to be raining and majorly cloudy around that time ;_; sigh... they've been wrong before, so i really, really, REALLY hope that the skies are clear :( we'll see...

i'll leave you with one of my favorite songs from the movie Rio. Enjoy! :D

just got an email saying that this blog has been put into a directory called JAPAN BLOG DIRECTORY. i think i listed my blog with them a while back, so kind of forgot about them. the surprising thing is that i got featured as a "green belt blog" ^_^; i think it's just because i've been using this account for so long, not necessarily because i've been in Japan for that long. i'm still honored though. :)

does this mean i'm going to have to be careful of what i say on here now that i might have other people outside my handful of online friends reading this...? lol ^_^;

anyway, they asked me to post this on here to help them spread the word about their site:


i wonder if i could find my friend Adventures of Chiba Mom on there or even Gaijinwife, two blogs that i look forward to reading every week :)

what do you do when you're stuck between what you want and what you should do? what you want would be following your dream and having a great life in the present, but does not guarantee a stable future or even a good future for that matter. as far as what you should do, it will be a difficult path to go down because you have to start all over again from scratch, but it is a path that has way more opportunities for you and your family and can ensure a stable and even great future with friends and family included. do you chase after a dream and waste more time and money that you do not have, or do you weigh your options and do what might be best for you and your family?

( decisions, decisions... )

wouldn't it be easier if i didn't care so much? :P

today is Mother's Day and the only thing i have planned is to clean the apt., watch some movies with Kay and then maybe make something yummy or order out... depends on this week's budget.

hope everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day!!

in my last post, i said i'd be going out with one of the moms at my daycare for a semi-get together/playdate!

( well, here's out it went! )

after having a chat on Skype with the hubs about our day, i spent the rest of that evening catching up on youtube and Kay zonked out around 9:00. i've been watching a lot of Say Yes to the Dress and What Not to Wear lately. i caught an episode of What Not to Wear that day where they'd made over a single mother who was from Norfolk, Virginia (Holler to my 757 peeps!!). the eps. was titled "Dottie", and i dunno, but watching that episode kind of got me thinking about my wardrobe and how i dress. now, i'm no where near as trashy/horribly dressed as some of the women they have on the show, but i do have pieces in my wardrobe that i've had since college! granted i love that i can still fit in those clothes, they are a bit old. plus, i don't own any nice jeans at all. most of my jeans are just regular bootcut or boyfriend jeans that are really baggy on me but very comfortable. i don't wear them often now that i work 6 days a week, so i never thought that i would need to fork out the cash for a new pair of jeans when my old ones are perfectly in tact and wearable. however after watching some eps. of the show, i thought it was time for me to add a few pieces that were a bit more updated to my wardrobe. :)

so Friday afternoon, i took Kay to our local dept. store that had a Uniqlo in it. we went to Daiso first to get a few of my work things and some playthings for Kay. then after a late lunch at McD's, we spent the rest of the afternoon at Uniqlo. Kay was such a sweetheart and patient while mommy tried on piece after piece of clothing ^_^

in my mind, i knew that i wanted at least one outfit, especially a good pair of jeans. so, that's where i started trying on clothes. they have a lot of skinny jeans at Uniqlo, and i don't think i've ever seen anything but skinny jeans or straight cut jeans there :/ so i tried a few pairs on, but they just didn't work for me. there were only the jeggins left, so i thought "what the heck" and tried them on. never in my life would i have thought that a tight fitting jean/legging would look good on me, but these were both super comfortable and really made my legs look thinner! Uniqlo was having a sale, where if you bought a second pair, there'd be a discount, so i searched for a second pair. i ended up going with a pair of beige colored ankle jeans that were also slim, and after a little tweak at the bottoms, looked pretty nice on me :) kinda made me want to go out and buy a nude pair of heels, ya know what i mean? ^_^

so now that i had my bottoms, i searched for some tops. they had a whole bunch of polo shirts, but since i already have a ton of those for work, i didn't want any more :P i looked some more and found some quarter-sleeved spring flannel shirts that i knew i would be able to wear with my bottoms and would be great in the upcoming hot weather! i could also wear them to work with a little cardigan if i wanted. :) so, i got one in this color and this! i would have bought all the colors, but didn't want to splurge all that money, and some of the colors didn't really work with my skin tone. :P

so, in the end, i got two outfits and spent almost 9,000 yen. Kay and i really had a fun afternoon together. :)

that night, we went to the DVD store and rented 5 more DVDs for the rest of our dwindling break: Cinderella, Cars 2, Karigurasi no Arrietty, another Anpanman movie, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 :) we've seen 4 of the 5 so far, and we're saving Cars 2 for tonight after dinner ^_^ can't wait!!

here are the pics on my facebook from Kay's first playdate in Japan! Enjoy!

so my two days of work in the middle of Golden Week are over. i was so caught up with getting back into a working vibe that i forgot to post my usual rabbit rabbit! some good news is that three of my original students who'd left in the beginning of April have rejoined our daycare again! granted i was kinda happy with the smaller class, but having more students is always a plus for the daycare. after all, we are still a business, and in the end, the more kids we have, the more money we're able to make. :)

of course, there's always a little bit of bad news that comes with the good. apparently, Kay started coughing again after she went back, and my voice took a beating after one day of teaching. i've already got Kay on her usual meds and got myself on some Robitussin cough syrup to keep things from worsening. i was going to take Kay to the doctors on Wednesday, but it started raining so i got lazy :/ now, she doesn't have enough meds to last her through the break :( hopefully, her cough will get better on its own, but the meds would've helped her sleep better and in turn help ME sleep better as well. i don't think i've got anything but a soar throat from talking so much. so i think the Robitussin will help for now.

tomorrow, Kay and i will be going on our first playdate with one of the kids at the daycare! it was the mom who actually was interested in spending time with me when she saw me at Lotteria doing a language exchange. she'd spent some time in the States when her husband was there getting his degree at Berkeley, so she can speak English. i thought it'd be nice to get to know her and her family since i teach her son English at the daycare :) so she's coming by to pick us up, and we're going to head on to Marinoa City which is an outlet mall. there's suppose to be an arcade of some sort, so the kids can play there, while us moms chat or what not.

honestly, i'm a bit nervous. i dunno why i'm thinking so much. i guess i'm just afraid that we won't be able to chat as well since her English isn't as fluent. i know i'm just thinking too much, because she's really just a laid back mom of 2, and i shouldn't worry too much. :P oh well, we'll see what happens ^_^;;

for those who don't know what "Golden Week" is, it's a string of national holidays at the end of April and beginning of May where, if you play your cards right, you can get almost 10 days worth of vacation! sigh, unfortunately for my line of work, i still have to work on the two days in the middle of the Week that aren't holidays. so, i've got what i'd like to call a "broken" Golden Week. ^_^;

basically, i had to work on the 28th, even if half of my students didn't show up for classes, so my break started that evening. i've got today and the 30th off, then i'm back to work on the 1st and 2nd, and then off again from the 3rd to the 6th. the 7th is when everything returns back to normal. a break like this is both a blessing and a curse for me. it's a blessing because one does get tired when there's only one day in your whole week to rest, but it's a curse because the upcoming vacation time you're going to have effects your mentality before and after your break!

for example, the whole week leading up to the 29th was horrible for me. not in the sense that anything bad happened, but it was just unbearably slow for some odd reason! maybe it was my PMS or just my mind didn't want to wait to be on vacation or whatever, but i was not a very genki person during that week ~_~;; there were also a few hiccups here and there with staffing since everyone wanted to take some time off. so, there were some activities that i'd plan on doing that didn't work out in the end because there weren't enough staff members to help ~_~;; i'm pretty sure after this break is over, it'll take me a bit to get used to just having Sundays off again. :P

so, how are Kay and i going to spend our down time? well after we came home from my Saturday job, we got some pizza (i tried Pizza Cooc this time, and loved it!) and rented a whole bunch of DVDs!






since the last movie i saw was "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2", i haven't been able to catch anything that's been coming out. so i thought i'd catch up at home instead. i did consider going to the movies here with Kay, but after calculating the cost of travel with the actual movie ticket price and other misc. costs, i thought things didn't balance out ^_^;; so last night, we saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! Kay and i both enjoyed it a lot! there were so many times that i loled and cheered. did you know that Mr. T was in that movie?? he and his character did an awesome job! i didn't realize that Earl (his character) was voice by Mr. T until i watched the special features. then i was like "NO WONDER!!" XD

later that night after Kay went to bed, i watched How to Train Your Dragon and really liked that one too! that got me kind of regretting not being able to see it in 3D in theaters, because there were some flying scenes that would have looked awesome on a big screen in 3D! ah well... :P

on a related side note, i was cleaning up files on my computer under my husband's account when i noticed that his account still had a Power DVD program in it! after realizing this, i pulled out the DVDs i'd brought over from Taiwan and tested them out. EUREKA!!! they worked!! before, i'd messed something up with my Power DVD, so it ended up not working. i uninstalled it from my account, so i'd thought that it was gone completely. apparently, my computer is weird so that there are some programs that i can only use when logged in as the administrator (hubs account). meh, go fig. it doesn't matter to me what account i'm using so long as i can watch my DVDs ^_^ after telling Kay, she immediately brought out her favorite Ghibli movie: Kiki's Delivery Service ^_^ she watched that while i did my chores in the morning :)

so, that's probably what we'll be doing for the rest of this week as well. i'm actually glad that the weather isn't all that great now (cloudy, overcast with chances of rain here and there) because that means we can stay home and relax ^_^ although, i do hope to take her to the park if the weather clears up this week. maybe in the second half of this broken Golden Week of ours :)

now, i'm going to get ready to have a Toy Story marathon with my little girl!!! i vowed that she would NOT be growing up without seeing all the Toy Story movies!! we'll see how she takes them ^_^

so last night was the first day that hubs wasn't home (he's back in Taipei). while we were chatting on skype around dinner time, a whole bunch of sirens started sounding outside. they were from fire trucks and engines along with police cars that were zooming down the street next to our building. i didn't pay them any attention until Kay said she smelled smoke! my nose was still a little stuffed up, so i couldn't smell anything, but knowing how much Kay hates smoke, i knew something was up.

a moment later, i actually smelled smoke, so i opened our apt door to find that the whole street had been engulfed with smoke!!! there was an actual fire happening down the street about a block away! it was burning a house that was behind a convenient store, and there was smoke everywhere! i went back inside to tell hubs and get Kay. we both went out and walked down the street to see what was really happening. everyone from my street was out on the street watching the whole thing. i don't really know how big the fire was, but i did see flames occasionally flicker up from the smoke billowing roof, so it must have been pretty bad. :( i'm probably going to go and check out what happened later since i can't find it in any of the news channels or online at all :/

okay, i just walked over with Kay. it really was someone's house! it was totally burnt through and through! nothing seems to be salvageable... :( although surprisingly enough, the flames didn't affect the neighbors' houses! at least that's what it looks like. i say surprisingly, because the house that burnt down had two neighbors on both of its sides that were at most 2 meters away, and the convenient store was about 5 meter behind! still no news on if anyone was hurt though... :( it's still sad how someone can lose everything in just a blink of an eye.. sigh... my prayers go out to them... ~_~

i don't know if i could ever make my entries here "quick" since they always seem to end up like mini-novels ^_^;; anyway, i'll try and make this short since i have to head to bed soon.

this week has just gone by in a big tiring blur. i say tiring because i'd been sick though half of the week with another cold attacking my sinuses again. thankfully, i was all better by Sunday, so that i could finally get a good day's rest before starting another week of work.

one thing that happened this week worth mentioning was that my necklace broke. :( one of the links in the gold chain snapped while i was taking a shower. i was sooo bummed about it because it's not one of those links that you can bend back into place. this would require me to go to a jewelers, ask for them to solder on some extra gold to fix the link, and then pay for the gold that was used. i would know because it's happened before. i think when Kay was around 4 months old or so, she tugged too hard on my necklace and it snapped in the same spot. luckily in Taipei, there are little jewelers everywhere, so it wasn't like i had to google map it. plus, it only cost me NT$200 to fix it last time. so yea, Taipei sure has it's conveniences!

anyway, i had no idea how to go about fixing my necklace, so i thought of just patching it up and keeping the broken link for when i would be able to use it again. thank goodness Daiso carried the DIY parts for my necklace, so i went out and got it and voila! my necklace is back around my neck again! :D

for those who don't know, my necklace is very dear to me, because it belonged to my grandmother. i got it from my mom a little after grandma had passed away, so it's been kind of like my lucky charm in a sense. kinda like having my grandma watching over me when i have it on. therefore, i never take it off ^_^




another thing worth mentioning is that i found Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in Japan!!! i don't know if they have always had them, but i'm glad i found them!! on Saturdays after teaching, i normally go to the supermarket next to the school i work at, and there they were right at the entrance! i had to literally cover my mouth to keep myself from screaming out loud! i was THAT excited!! i think Reese's is up there on my things that i miss from the States list, along with Pop Tarts, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and IHOP. they were a bit pricey (almost 300 yen), but i grabbed two 4 packs of the cups and one bag of minis. if they had had Reese's Pieces too, i would have just died and gone to heaven then! ^_^ who'da thought that i'd be so happy over something so simple?

i took them home and gave Kay her first Reese's cup and hubs tried one too. lol, you should have seen their reaction ^_^;; Kay ate through half of one before she decided that she does not like peanut butter and chocolate together. hubs took one bite and started pouring himself a big cup of tea to wash the rest down. "why don't you just dump a bunch of sugar on some butter and eat that??? typical American candy..." :P i was secretly happy that they didn't like them, because that just meant MORE FOR ME!! XD i still have about 6 more packs left and i haven't decided when i want to open the minis yet. i'm still contemplating on whether to share with my coworkers or not... i'm sure they'll have the same reaction as hubby though ^_^;; i might just end up hoarding the whole lot and enjoy it myself XD we'll see...

Friday the 13th is actually very far away in our minds when one is living in Asia. it's not really noted since it's a western superstition, but people still know about it here. for the past few years, those Friday 13ths have always been just normal days for me. however, this year will probably be remembered through our family history and be retold as one of those funny and embarrassing stories whenever relatives are around ^_^;;

( a lost passport )
and now everything is back to normal, and tonight, we can all have a good night's rest! ^_^

the weather's been really nice lately and down right warm outside too. so earlier this week, we decided to do a "hanami" picnic this Sunday. hubs actually went to another hanami picnic on Saturday with some other volunteer Japanese teachers from our local community center. so he was lucky enough to get to do it twice :)

we originally wanted to get some bentos from Hotto Motto, a chain of bento stores, but since we still had a lot of stuff in the fridge, we decided to save the money and just make something simple. instead of buying some bentos, we bought some fried chicken from a little place we usually get our fried stuff from since i don't like to deep fry things at home, 'cause it stinks up the whole apt... :P

hubs actually wanted to go to a park that was farther away, but since we didn't want to spend too much time out today, we opted for the nearby playground/park instead since it's only a 5 min walk away. it was a really relaxing day even with the bento prep we did in the morning. i actually didn't sleep well last night, so i ended up sleeping in until 10:00, and then spent the next hour or so making a very simple bento lunch for the three of us. we left at around 12:30, so it took a while for us to find a nice spot to settle down for a picnic since almost everyone else in the neighborhood had the same idea as us ^_^; we even bumped into Kay's pediatrician enjoying a nice hanami with his family too! :) after a quick bite to eat, Kay was playing around with the rest of the kids at the playground and hubs and i just soaked in the nice weather and atmosphere. sure, there weren't as many sakura trees where we plopped down, but the few trees that there were made things still nice.

i especially liked it when a nice breeze would stir up the trees and the cherry blossom petals would just float down softly like little snowflakes! i tried getting a video of how pretty it looked, but dunno if our camera really captured how beautiful it was ^_^; now i understand why a lot of animes have sakura petals floating around in some scenes! :)

after a couple of hours in the sun, we decided to head on home. Kay was already starting to get tired and hubs, and i were a little overdressed for the weather, so the afternoon sun was getting a bit unbearable. on the way home, we stopped by a DVD rental store to get Kay an Anpanman movie for her to watch later while i did my chores. we had leftovers from lunch for dinner and that was pretty much our day. :)

here are the pics from today on my facebook and some vids that we took!

( my uncle )