Okay, Wow!! Been a while

So, it has been a very long time since I have posted anything on my blog.  I knew that I was not going to be very good at this, but this is ridiculous!  Again, I will try to be better...we'll see.  There have been several things that have happened in the last few months.  We went to Hawaii in November, Christmas in December (of course), Australia in January, Fiji and Hawaii (for my birthday) in February.  We are leaving on Thursday for Sapporo, Japan for the Winter Festival they have every year.  I will write a blog for each trip with pictures.

Justin is on the big computer that has our pictures on it.  I will have to get on it when he is not and write the posts for each trip when I can add the pictures!

Soon!!

What We've been doing

 So, my last post said that Gabriel was not going to play video games except on the weekends.  He has been doing very well with that!!  I have also been staying off the computer a lot more, but I wanted to post some pictures on here of things that we have been doing instead of playing video games.  We have been playing board games (sorry, no pictures).  Gabriel's other favorite thing is Legos, so we have been putting together all of his Lego buildings.  This is actually a lot of fun for me!  I don't have pictures of us working on them, just the end product.

Prospector's (Toy Story) Fire Pit

Woody's Town, and behind that Harry Potter's Quidditch Stadium

Woody's Town's Jail/Harry Potter's Quidditch

The Sheriff's (Woody) Office

Place-mats Gabriel made to "serve" us for Cubbies (AWANA)

Gabriel

Okay, I said I was not going to be on here, but I had to share these pictures because I am just so proud of Gabriel.  These are pictures of his school work where he has written his own name.  One of the pictures is his work that he has cut out all by himself!!

Today

So, writing a blog post every day might get a little monotonous since we didn't do much today.   We went to church, then I dropped everyone off at home and went grocery shopping.  Once I came home we ate lunch and took naps.  After naps we went outside to play for a little while.  Now, we have just finished dinner.  That is our day...kind of boring to write about.

Here is what I am going to do.  Gabriel really loves to play video games, but we are trying to limit the amount of time he plays.  We have decided to only allow him to play on the weekends.  With this in mind I have decided for myself to only "play" on the computer on the weekends.  So, I will update my blog once a week instead of every day.  I have updated my blog so much this weekend I think I have pretty much caught up.  So, I will update again next Saturday.  Until then I hope everyone has an excellent week!

Melanie

Halloween

So, we got back from Tokyo on Saturday morning (around 2:00).  We stayed at home Saturday and rested.  I think the pool at our apartment might have been visited, can't remember.   But Sunday was Halloween and we had been invited to some friends house to trick or treat.  They live in a neighbor hood where I think everybody on Guam visits for Halloween.  They say they have about 1,000 kids come each year.  The night started off rainy (seeing a theme here?), but it stopped raining and the kids got to trick or treat.   Elyssa dressed up as Tinkerbell and Gabe was Spongebob.  They filled their Disney buckets up to the top! It was such a fun night!

Tokyo

Front of DisneySea Hotel

Ship in DisneySea Hotel lobby

Ispiria (shopping center)

I wanted to write a little more about Tokyo than just catch up on my last post.  We left for Tokyo on Monday, October 25.  Justin's parents and I got to sit First Class from Guam to Narita, Japan, while Justin sat in coach with the kids (children can't ride first class).  The kids did really well!  We got to Narita and had to take an hour long bus to Disney.  We got to the DisneySea Hotel pretty early, and Gabe was taking a nap, so we hung out in the beautiful lobby of the hotel until Gabe woke up.  It had stopped raining at this time too, so we took the monorail to Ispiria (which is like Downtown Disney in Tokyo).  This was just a Disney shopping area.  We then went to check into the hotel.  We ate dinner that night at the hotel.

Indiana Jones ride, DisneySea

The next morning everyone was up early to get ready to go to DisneySea.  We could see this park from our hotel window.  It was awesome!  I forgot to mention earlier that our hotel was an Italian theme.  There was a Venice side of the park/hotel and a Tuscany side.  We stayed on the Tuscany side.  So, we went to DisneySea Park on Tuesday.  So much fun!  The center focus of the park is a volcano which houses the Journey to the Center of the Earth ride, and also is used in their fireworks/light show.  Gabe really loved the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride and continued to want to go on it (I think he got to go twice).  He really enjoys scary rides (or what he thinks is scary)!  My favorite part of the park was Mermaid Lagoon.  This place was Beautiful! We also got to meet Ariel, The Little Mermaid, in her lagoon while we were there!  Elyssa enjoyed the Arabian Nights Carousel.  This part of the park was beautiful as well, and of course based on Aladdin.  There was really so much that we saw and did that day I can't write about it all!  But, it was a Wonderful time!

DisneyLand Castle

Tom Sawyer's Island, DisneyLand

Wednesday, we went to Tokyo DisneyLand, which isn't much different than Magic Kingdom in Orlando. There were a few rides that were different...for example Gabe's favorite ride here was a Monster's Inc.  ride.  I was pretty fond of the Pirates ride, which is always one of my favorites, but my all time favorite,  It's a Small World, was closed for renovation :-(    Oh well, I had such a good time anyway!  We played on Tom Sawyer's Island for a while, and of course rode Space Mountain (Gabe got to ride it this time), and every other roller coaster they had.   This park had an Indiana Jones roller coaster that was really fun!  We went to a great Japanese restaurant in the park for dinner.  It was delicious..  I had a great time going in some of the gift shops, but really didn't find too much.  There were not a lot of clothing souvenirs.  If I found something I like it didn't say Tokyo Disney, and what's the point of that?  I can find a Disney shirt anywhere.  The kids got "Tokyo" souvenirs, but Justin and I didn't find anything. Again, I could go on and on...

One thing we really enjoyed at the parks was popcorn.  I don't know if they are doing this now in Orlando, or if this is a Tokyo thing.   They have popcorn stands set up on each corner of the park.  You can buy character buckets filled with popcorn, and then have then refilled for a discount.  But, the best thing about this is the different flavors they had.  We tried chocolate, strawberry (my favorite), honey (in Winnie the Pooh area, of course), and Pepper flavored (you would think this would not be good, but it was GREAT.  It was some type of pepper seasoning, so it was not as harsh as regular pepper).  We got Tinkerbell and Mickey Mouse buckets,  which also served as the children's Trick or Treat buckets!

Thursday we were checking out of the DisneySea Hotel and trying to decide whether to try to fly back to Guam this day, or stay downtown Tokyo and explore it the next day.  At this point it is raining to the point that it would be a little miserable to walk outside for too long.  We did choose to stay, and it took us most of the day to figure out the subways to get to our next hotel.  We got there in time to check-in, then it was nap time.  Honestly, we didn't do anything very exciting this day...we were tired and wanted to re-coop for a day.  We did walk a little downtown to find something to eat for dinner.  We found a great italian restaurant with really good pizza!  Then went home and went to bed!

Gardens, Downtown Tokyo

Fountain Park, Tokyo

Downtown Tokyo

More Gardens Tokyo

Friday we explored downtown Tokyo!  We wanted to go to the Imperial Gardens, but it is closed on Mondays and Fridays, Go figure!  But, we did get to see some cool Japanese architecture.  There was a great Fountain Park that we took a few pictures at.  We found a Starbucks (yum) and ate lunch at McDonalds (Gabe and Elyssa's favorite place).  The Mickey D's in Japan has these really good Teriyaki Burgers, so I was happy to go there that day!  We hung out in this really cool toy store for a little while, then went to fish market, which was closed already because it was around 4 pm by this time :-(     The fish market might have been a cool place to see...next time I guess!  After that we went back on the subway to the hotel we had stayed out the night before (they were holding our luggage).  We had scheduled a bus for the hour long ride back to the airport to go back to Guam that night.  We had a reservation on a 9 pm flight.  Of course, flying standby you might not get on the flight.  We almost didn't make it on the flight, at least not all of us.   It looked like Justin and his dad might have to wait till the next day to get on a flight back, but luckily we all got on the same plane.  YAY!  We didn't get first class this time, but known of us cared as long as we all got home safely!  Oh, and I finally got to watch Eclipse on the plane ride home!  I know I am a few months too late, but I have read all the books, so I already know what is going to happen :-)   Pictures from the Tokyo trip are in the previous post.