bleughhh!

is that how you spell the word for "my goodness what was I thinking? 'japan' and 'winery' do not mix!"

I am not a wine expert but the wine we tasted at the winery in Yamanashi was pretty bad. We actually ended up buying a bottle of south african red wine at the supermarket for about 800yen and it was way nicer.

This round up of our camping trip was stuck in my keitai draft box for the last few days(as I fell asleep in the car on the way home writing it, haha), but am finally getting it posted!yay.

So, sat night's camp food was delish - whole chicken stuffed with frozen えびピラフ cooked over coals in the dutch oven. There was yummy vege & chicken & bacon soup; sanma and oysters and other random stuff I can't remember. And the photo is a bit crap, but you can just see the boys preparing something in the dutch oven!


K crashed after a big day of playing with the goats and sheep in the paddock - the camp site we stayed at was part of a farm! She spent the whole time patting the goat on the nose saying "good girl", and feeding it dead leaves, which the goat was not so impressed with. She also made friends with one of the other campers, 3year old (turning 4 in Dec) A-chan, who kept on trying to pick K up "抱っこする" . She was a good kid though, and it seems that K really likes playing with お姉ちゃんs.

After K went to sleep, I went back to the "party tent" to polish off the red wine, however a few glasses and I was ready to curl up with Nora in the tent.
Here is our campsite: car, our 3-man blue tent and the "party tent" looking out over the valley and mountains of Yamanashi.


Unfortunately, K woke up SCREAMING at about 11pm, and there was NOTHING I could do to console her. She I ended up grabbing her and two sleeping bags and heading for the car, where I thought at least if she was screaming all night, the other people at the campsite would be able to sleep. We didn't get much sleep, and it was FREEZING. Found out the next morning when the sun came up that J had left the front driver's side window open.　No wonder I was cold all night *sigh*.

Sunday we decided to go to the onsen around 11am. But K fell asleep in the car on the way there, obviously from lack of sleep and waking up at 6am (her normal wake up time is 7:30am). So I missed out on the onsen, as I stayed in the car with K. We did come back, just the two of us in the afternoon for an onsen while the boys prepared Sunday night's dinner of curry, penne pasta and more sanma (one of J's friend's works at the fish markets, so gets really good fish cheap - he always brings it along for our camps). K was pretty tired by about 7pm, so we put her to bed early, I finnished off the rest of the wine, and a few chu-hais, ate more food (yummy chicken marinated in rosemary!) and then crashed at about 9pm. It was not as cold as Saturday night, so we all slept well.

Monday morning after breakfast was clean-up time, and we left the camp site at about 11am. Again, K fell asleep pretty much straight away in the car (no lunch!) and then so did I. We got home by 2pm, did several loads of washing to get the charcoal smell out of all our warm clothes and then I ran down to KFC for dinner! I reckon I must have eaten about 3 whole chickens over the weekend...and put on about 3kg because of it.

But it was a good camping trip in the end, probably (well, almost definately) our last for the year. We only had 3 this year anyway - 3days over Golden Week, our mini-road trip over O-bon (where the tent never saw the light of day as we stayed in the car) and this one.

all teeva'd up for summer

new teevas for the whole clan

rain and hats

it's not even the rainy season yet, but another day of rain! Enough rain to make the trains delayed, and our playgroup cancelled (*sigh*) I was looking forward to seeing everyone - we haven't been for almost a month. I even made up sandwiches for K's lunch to take with us, when J msged me to say that the rain and wind was pretty bad, the trains were delayed, and maybe I should reconsider going to the playgroup today. Turns out it was cancelled anyway, so I felt better that it was not just me missing out (hehe). And K's just gone down for a nap now, which is when we would be just arriving at playgroup. She is in that stage where sometimes one nap a day is enough, but sometimes she still needs two. It is hard to gage. But this morning she woke up at 7am, when she usually wakes at 8am (or has been the lst week or so) so I figured she might want to take a morning nap too. (yay, Ergo, for putting her to sleep!!)

Anyhoo, I keep on meaning to recount my recent miracle story. We went shopping to a sports/outdoor shop 2 weeks ago, for J's birthday. We haven't really been to an outdoor shop for a while, so J was SO excited, and wanted everything he saw! especially tents (he "collects" tents, as he says. He has about 7 of them! That means that we can either sleep in a different tent 7 days running OR take 14 friends with us camping, lol!)Anyway, he decided what he wanted for his birthday - these chairs (the second set of chairs, with the high back) and we got one of each in green and maroon (the maroon one is mine!) We used them on our GW camp, and they were SO comfy. One of the other guys had one too - his was navy, so it was pretty funny that we all had different colours!

So we left the outdoor shop, and were just getting off the train at our station when J realised that he didn't have his hat.

It was his "Billabong" baseball type cap that I got him a few years ago from Oz. Of course, I got the blame for it - I must have dropped it off the back of K's pram when I was putting the rain cover on when we left the shop. *sigh*. (Well, granted, I DO often lose bits and pieces, K's socks, hats, blankets off the pram) So while J was away for work last week, I went back to the outdoor shop, 2 weeks to the day, and asked on the off chance if they had found a navy blue Billabong hat near the entrance 2 weeks ago....they reckoned it was a slim chance if we lost it near the entrance. But the staff came back a few minutes later and said they had found one near the toilets, and miracle of miracles, it was J's cap!! I was so excited that we got it back (and that it was found near the guy's toilets, hehe!).