Probably the Best Engrish

I think this is the best one I've ever seen.

Surprise indeed.

It was for a foot scrub something or other.  I think the idea was to have it say Foot Peel, but thought that an exclamation point would be cool to substitute in.  Obviously the effect wasn't quite what they intended.

Ellie has some news...

Merry Christmas!  Because we all know what the world needs is more little Lewis'.

Our Little Lion

I've been busy making felt ornaments for our advent calendar and Ellie loves to play with them.  Especially the lion.  So we taught her what a lion says.  Enjoy.  And excuse the nakedness.



She also laughs hysterically whenever she watched herself in this video.

Count Your Many Blessings

Ben and I were inspired by President Monson's talk on gratitude, particularly the story about the family counting all of their food on Thanksgiving.  We certainly aren't farmers, we don't really even have food storage, but we counted some of our material things.  We have been immensely blessed. Between the three of us we have:

358 books
173 CDs
131 hangers of clothes
94 boxes/cans of food
80 DVDs
18 drawers of clothes
18 blankets
11 chairs
11 kitchen appliances
10 VHSs (yes we still own some of those)
6 bins of baby clothes
6 bins of fabric and stuff
5 pillows
3 tables
1 large sheet music collection

Certainly there is more, but these were the things that were easiest to quantify.
But more important than all of these blessings are the immaterial things we have.  We have testimonies of Jesus Christ and His restored Gospel.  We have a wonderful marriage, and a beautiful daughter.  Both Ben and I have been able to complete a college education.  We have many talents to share with others.  We have been blessed with amazing parents, siblings, and extended families.  Ben has a great job that he is growing in and that allows me to stay home and be a mother. We are healthy and have a comfortable home to live in. We have made wonderful friends in the many places we have lived.
We have so much in our lives to be thankful for that this post could get to long.  But sometimes it is nice to sit down, count your blessings, and remember how much our Heavenly Father has blessed us.

Something I Did Back When I Was in School

I was reorganizing our DVDs the other day when I found a copy of my documentary I made for one of my classes back at BYU while I was working my Theatre Ed degree.  It was a lot of fun to make, and kind of emotional as well, for obvious reasons.  Anyway, Ben and I were engaged at the time and boy have we come a long way.  Enough chatting, here it is.

Another Home Tour

Our parents indicated that they wanted to see our house after we had moved stuff in.  So we tidied up a bit one Saturday (there was a "typhoon" so we couldn't really go do anything more exciting), and made this!  Really, it's not all that exciting, or maybe I think I just look funny.  Whatever.  Enjoy!

Happy Halloween

Well, there is a pretty nasty typhoon outside, so we did Halloween at home.  We got all dressed up and took pictures and did "trick-or-treating."

These pictures are actually from  yesterday when Ellie and I stopped by a Halloween activity the Young Women were doing for the primary kids. 

 Ben taught Ellie to use this pencil as a wand. So she runs around the house hitting herself on the head with it.

 Grandma and Grandpa Lewis might like to know that Ellie is all excited because I'm holding a picture of them with Ellie to get her to look at the camera.  She got super excited.

Ben is a very serious ninja, Summer is a very serious...Japanese something, and Ellie is a very cute "Japanese" ballerina.

 But these are our true colors.

Ben showing Ellie how to enjoy the spoils of trick or treating. Ben ate 75% of Ellie's candy.

Ellie-O-Lantern

We picked up a pumpkin at the commissary a few weeks ago, and finally Ellie and I sat down and carved it this morning.  

She wanted to help draw on the pumpkin, which was about as much help as she could offer since clearly she wouldn't be doing any cutting.

 Mostly Eleanor was interested in trying to eat it.

Happy Halloween everyone!

In the Kitchen

We made brownies.  Ellie and Ben helped to clean up.

We have very limited cupboard space, and we can't screw in latch locks on the bottom cupboards, so I knew I would have to be okay with Ellie being able to pull out whatever was on the bottom.  Like this.

 She thinks the colander makes a particularly fine hat, or mask, depending on her fancy.

My Old Dress

My mom made this dress for me.  As I recall, she had one in matching fabric as a maternity dress.  Correct me if I'm wrong, mom.  So since our stuff arrived I've unpacked clothes that Ellie now fits into, and this dress was in there.  However, it's a wee bit short.  At least she has the legs to pull it off!

Moving Day

Our shipment of household goods, the majority of our stuff, came by boat and got here on October 6th.  Our unaccompanied baggage, which came by plane, was a month late and got here on October 7th.  Whatever, we didn't have to pay for our move, and for that I am grateful. Anyway, at 8 am the movers showed up with our stuff.  Ben was at school, and so I strapped Ellie into her front carrier and checked off each item as they unloaded it in the house.  I had them put all the boxes in the tatami mat room.  I should have taken a picture before I unpacked half of the boxes.  The room was packed.  I swear our stuff gave birth to baby stuff during the two months it was on a boat.

Ellie loved wandering between the rooms looking at and touching everthing as I unloaded it. And of course, she played in boxes.

She was also quite excited to unload some of her toys, many of which she enjoys a great deal more than she did before.  What a difference a few months can make!  For instance, she HATED wearing these glasses before, but loved chewing on them.  Now when she finds them she tries to put them on and then toddles over to me and has be put them on properly, and then takes off around the rooms looking at everything.

At any rate, most of our stuff has a home now, except sewing stuff.  I have too much of it.  So I'm determined to finish several projects that I started long ago before I'm allowed to start any new ones.

Because You Can Never Get Enough

And because I need to clear off my SD cards so I can take even more pictures.  Can you handle the cuteness?

Clearly Ellie adores her Dad.  And rightly so, he's pretty great.

In fact here he is, already for his first day of school, with his "new teacher bag"

We love to read the Book of Mormon!

And to play under the computer with the cords, which is forbidden.

We listen to Broadway online

And Ellie loves dancing to it sometimes. Sorry the video's a little shaky.  I was trying to scoot back to get her whole body, but it didn't work.  Anyway, she's a hoot. 
Also, I realize that technically "Newsies" isn't Broadway, but don't you think it should be!?

Skinny-minny

Ellie's a bit of a skinny-minny.  Pants in her "size" are always too big.  Even pants that are 6-9 month are frequently too wide in the waist, though usually a little short.  So I borrowed a friend's sewing machine and have been "fixing" some of her pants.  But I recently bought a pair of women's legging shorts for about $2 and refashioned them into leggings for Ellie.  They fit perfect and are so cute on her (I'm biased, whatever).  I'll definitely go back and buy some more cheap leggings to refashion.

Then I went crazy and cut an old "pre-baby/nursing" shirt and made her a little tunic.

It turned out fine.  There are some things I'd do differently but she's a doll.

I know other moms must run into this problem (I swear that children's clothing manufacturers must think that all babies are little buddhas). Where is a good place to find pants for skinny babies?

Troublemaker

We had our first bathroom troublemaking incident the other day.

I realized that it was really quiet in the office, and that Ellie had left the room.  I got and looked around and noticed that I had accidentally left the bathroom door open. I walked in just in time to see her pull a brand new roll of toilet paper out of the toilet. So the toilet paper was quickly relocated, which is especially good since she just figured out how to open doors...

Little Red Backpack

I pulled this little treasure from the trash the other day.  In Japan, the elementary kids all have these adorable, indestructible bags, in lots of different colors.  I saw them while shopping, and they come with a pretty hefty price tag (around $40), so when I saw this cute red one in the trash the other day I saved it from a landfill fate. 

Obviously Eleanor is far too young for a backpack, but because it is so sturdy it works great as a place to put some of her books.  She's recently become enamored with putting things in bags or boxes, so this is perfect.

She loves to sit in her little (salvaged) chair and read her books, especially the Little People book that the McKneely family gave her for her birthday (Thanks!  It's a big hit).

She also recently learned to fold her arms.  She does it all the time...except when it's time to pray.  Oh well, it'll come soon enough.

In Kamakura

On Saturday we went to Kamakura, a very historic city about 30 minutes from us.  It was the seat of government when the first shogun ruled Japan...or something to that effect.  Obviously history is much much more complex than that.  At any rate, we went there to see two things; the Shinto shrine Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, and the second largest Buddha in Japan.
When we stepped off out of the train station we were greeted by three very enthusiastic Japanese college students.  They belong to an English club at their university in Yokohama and on the weekends come down to Kamakura and offer free tours to English speakers to practice their English.  We accepted their offer and had lots of fun chatting with them and getting to know them, as well as learning a lot from their tour.  They even came to lunch with us.  They were great (two girls and boy, one of the girls was "in training"). 

Here we are at the shrine. It was built in 1063 AD, nearly 1000 years old!  While we were there a traditional Japanese wedding was taking place.  It was really neat to watch the procession with the bride and groom in traditional kimonos following priests playing traditional Japanese instruments.  Being a religious shrine, there is obviously lots of symbolism in the architecture and whatnot.  I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say that the more I learn about world religions the more obvious it is to me that Heavenly Father is watching over everyone and has been since the beginning of time.

That being said, here's the Big Buddha!

He really is quite huge, about 43 feet tall.  Though the most memorable part of our trip to daibutsu (Great Buddha in Japanese), was Ellie getting a pretty good goose-egg when she fell while trying to walk down a ramp. 

Ellie was a trooper, skipping her afternoon nap while we went tromping about Kamakura. Granted, she has the good life...

See what I mean?

At the park

Ellie and I went to a park that is just outside the gate to base.  It's a really lovely park, with lots of gardens and water features, a small amphitheatre shell, and even a water fountain show at night.  But those weren't the coolest part to Ellie.  We waited in the playground area for Ben to get out of school, and Ellie discovered...

DIRT! yeah...

Between the dirt and pushing her stroller around, she was in heaven.

Then Ben got there and showed her how to play with a few of the toys.

Good times all around.