Quick Post #2

In addition to grocery shopping, we have been doing mad amounts of laundry. Marielle and I were folding some laundry last night when something in one of the yet-to-be-folded piles caught her attention. She ran over to the pile of clothes, pointed, and said, "me bug." She repeated it a few times, so I went to see what she was looking at. Buried there in the pile was her ladybug Halloween costume from last year. Although the sentence leaves something to be desired from a grammatical standpoint, I am amazed at how our little ones are starting to grasp sentence structure on some level and pronoun usage. For example, when I say, "You did it Marielle." She responds by saying, "I did it." It's awesome.

Anyway, she spent most of the evening in her ladybug costume.

Quick Post #1

So I will keep these short and to the point. Viv wants to blog about our past weekend and these posts have nothing to do with the weekend. Check them out and stay tuned for Viv's post-weekend post. This one's really for Lisa and PC.

The other day we decided to thin out our kitchen cabinets after returning from grocery shopping. In the process, I came across a box of Taco Rice. For those of you who do not know, Taco Rice is huge in Okinawa, and yes, this is the box of Taco Rice sent to us from Okinawa some months ago by Lisa and PC. At first glance, this doesn't seem like a big deal. Especially since most boxed rice-type meals have a respectable shelf life. Shortly after receiving this stuff from Lisa and PC, however, we got a frantic email from them stating that there was actually meat in this box! Despite the manufacturer's guarantee that said meat was OK to sit, unrefrigerated, on a shelf, they begged us to throw it away. We are finally heeding their warning.

Multimedia message

I am sending this from my cell. Now I can potentially blog about things as they happen. Although it took me 5 minutes to send this with only my thumbs.

More Halloween Hulabaloo

Every Halloween, my brother, Ryan, comes up with the best costumes. He definitely gets this from my parents who always outdid themselves on our costumes growing up. By the way, Jossie, his girlfriend, is no slouch either when it comes to Halloween. This year the two of them went as Mario and Princess Peach from the Super Mario Brothers games. As an added twist, they made little go karts to hang over their shoulders a la Mario Kart.

If anyone has no idea what I’m talking about, I am sad that you have missed out on the Super Mario Brother video game franchise and video gaming in general.

Anyway, either Princess Peach had already crossed the finish line or she spun out on a banana peel because she didn’t make the photo.

Boo at the Zoo and Halloween Too

We decided to really amp things up for Halloween this year. Last year, we skipped going out to trick or treat with Marielle. It was a bit cold last year and we didn't think that Marielle would know what was going on. This year, in addition to keeping our Boo at the Zoo and Bump & Grind (see the Pierz Family Blog) tradition alive, we took Marielle out for a round of candy-tax collection in my parents' neighborhood. All together the Halloween weekend has been a lot of fun. Boo at the Zoo was a lot of fun this weekend. It was definitely an improvement over last year even though the parking situation still sucked. It was better because Marielle and Alex really knew what was going on this year, and it was much warmer. They had a blast watching the animals. The elephants and bears were big hits. Marielle calls them "el-fants" and "bearies." In addition to checking out the animals, Marielle and Alex spent the day finding new places for sitting next to each other.


For Halloween proper, we headed up to my parents' neighborhood. Where our neighborhood is all but devoid of trick-or-treaters, my parents' neighborhood teems with them. Marielle really liked walking to the front doors of homes with all the other kids that were out. she'd stand there in her mouse costume with the ninja turtles, princesses, vampires, and soldiers and wait her turn for getting candy. Omi walked the block with us so that she could show off her grand daughter while Opa (in Where's Waldo garb) stayed back to hand out candy. By the end of the night, Marielle was definitely getting the hang of things. She yelled for one household to hurry up when they didn't answer the door right away and in another instance she tried to take candy from a bowl on her own. A little bit of trick to go with the treats I guess. She had a lot of fun.

Sock Puppets and Jack-o-Lanterns

This post has been waiting in the wings all week. This past weekend Geoff, Colette, and Alex came over to go pumpkin hunting with us - at least that was the plan. Our first snows of the season kind of "rained" on our parade. Rather than trudge through the muddy fields of the pumpkin patch, we decided to trudge through the aisles of Albertson's for our pumpkins. Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. Since we new that hunting pumpkins at Albertson's wouldn't be nearly as time consuming as picking them out of a field, we thought we'd need some other activities to fill our afternoon.

We opted to make sock puppets with the kids. Over the last few weeks, Marielle has been obsessed with putting her socks on her hands. It's pretty funny. First she'll pull the socks off of her feet. Then, she tries her hardest to pull them onto her hands. She manages to get her fingers into the sock on her first hand, but she usually needs help from there. I thought that if she really wants to put the socks on her hands, they should at least be entertaining. Making sock puppets sounds easy, but believe me when I say there are a few things to keep in mind. Like the fact that sock puppets need lips but not mouths. Or the fact that poorly-drawn noses will look like mouths which we just learned are unnecessary. After a little trial and error, we all managed to crank out 5 or 6 pretty cool sock puppets. Geoff cranked out a decent ant-eater puppet, and I had a pretty scary looking puppet with fangs (it seemed appropriate given the upcoming holiday).

Later we got to work on decorating our pumpkins. I say decorating because we didn't carve pumpkins. In previous year we have, but it just seemed a bit too messy to tackle with the kiddos. Instead, we found these nifty little kits containing Mr. Potato Head parts to attach to the pumpkins. Marielle and Alex were able to help connect all the parts to their pumpkins. And they seemed pretty excited about their finished creations.

Altogether, we had a lot of fun. Watching Marielle and Alex playing is always fun. We always end up breaking out our cameras to capture something funny that they are doing. We always joke about how they play together. This is mainly due to the fact that they spend the majority of their time merely playing next to each other. It's typically near the end of their get togethers where they start interacting and playing with each other. On this particular day they hit their stride by casing each other back and forth from our kitchen through to the living room. Each time they got to the back of the kitchen, they would take turns pounding on our trash can. Then, they'd chase each other back into the living room where the'd pound on the coffee table.

First Snow and Gearing Up for Halloween

This past week brought us our first snow of the season! I love the snow. Any afternoon news cast that predicts snow later that night will have me constantly checking the windows for approaching clouds. I get sooo excited for the clouds to roll in and love the sounds of the snow tinking off the windows in our bedroom. I always get bummed that the snow may have moved out by morning. This week, this was not the case. The snow came in early while I was still at work, so I constantly found myself looking out of the window at work. It snowed through the night and didn't lift until late the next morning. Later in the week we got our second helping.

As we all know, Halloween is fast approaching and Marielle is getting anxious to give her mouse costume another try this year. Last year, for her first Halloween, my Mom made her the cutest mouse costume. Sadly, the fabric store didn't have patterns small enough for our little one, and my Mom had a hard time scaling it down. It was awesome, yet a little big. This year, we think we are in business. We will save the mouse pictures for the 31st, but to get you in the spirit, here's our little devil.

Sick and Running out of Kleenex

We have all been sick. Marielle is sick, I am sick, and Vivian is just getting over being sick. The only one of us that didn't get sick was Sophie. By the way, why is that? How come our dogs don't catch our colds? This dog has spent the whole week eating bits of food that Marielle had dropped, licking her runny nose, and chewing up the occasional kleenex that we forget to snatch up. You would think she would have some sort of mutant mega cold from all three of us.

Anyway, us being sick is not the excuse for us blogging, but rather the subject of this blog (until I shoot off onto another tangent . . . wait for it). We think Marielle caught her cold last weekend at a gymnastics class we checked out. Although we haven't let this fact reflect negatively on the experience. She had an awesome time checking out the class, and it's definitely something we want to explore with her further. She enjoyed learned somersaults and climbing across the mats and blocks. The gym also had a large inflated mat the her and the other children could jump and tumble on. When they finished with that portion of the session, the kids sat with glee as the mat was deflated out from under them. The high point of the class was Marielle learning to hang from a bar for the first time. Teaching her the concept was quite amusing. The first four or five times we brought her hands up to the bar, she would only pretend to really grab it. This became apparent each time we'd go to let go of her, and her hands would just slide off the bar. After a few more tries, I tried wrapping her hands around the bar and holding them there. When Viv started to let go, Marielle instantly realized what she needed to do. She was totally amazed with herself! There she was hanging by her hands on her own. The look on her face as it was scrunched between her two arms stretched above her head was hilarious. Just a complete look of awe and accomplishment.

Later that day, we went on to music class. The class came with a CD for home that we use to learn the songs (we are all required to sing along in class). Marielle loves the class. She spends half the class participating by singing and dancing along, and the rest of the class is spent wandering and exploring the classroom. At home, she can't get enough of the CD. I ripped it to our Media PC, and she has started to realize that this CD, and her other favorites have been saved to the Media PC as well. She has taken to standing in the living room, pointng at the TV, and saying, "Music? Music?"

Later last weekend, on Sunday, the runny nose started. We then proceeded to Geoff, Colette, and Alex's new house for playtime at the park and dinner. We warned them, but being the great frineds that they are, they did not turn us away. Although turning us away would have been OK. Afterall, we did this to a coworker of Viv's once.

So far, we have managed to pass the bug on to Colette, Alex, and my Mom. Our new nanny and her son seemed to have made it through last week unscathed. This week is looking better.

Dad's Weekend '06

Well, Geoff beat me to it. Check out the Pierz Blog for the first of our two posts about the 2nd Annual Dad's Weekend. Last year we inaugurated our Dad's Weekend tradition with a trip to Vedauwoo, WY. Vedauwoo is this great little nature area full of great rock formations and lots of aspen trees. The aspen trees are kind of key to the Dad's Weekend concept. Basically, the idea is to schedule it in the fall and camp someplace where the aspen leaves are turning. It gives us a chance to hang out, try some new beers, and grab some great fall photos. This year we camped back in the Poudre Valley, northwest of Fort Collins. As Geoff mentioned in his post, we were a little apprehensive about the weather, but everything turned out great. I think I will defer to Geoff's post in most respects and will just leave you all with a few more photos to round out the ones Geoff put up. He briefly mentioned the wood chopping that we spent part of Saturday doing, and I've got the photos to show why it took part of the day. By the way, Frank, we probably owe you a new hatchet.

A Day With Marielle

Marielle is a pretty busy girl. She has a full day filled with activities. Sometimes she goes for walks. She is a really strong girl too. She is so strong she almost pulled daddy over. She loves her daddy.








She even makes time in her busy day to cuddle with him.










She also makes time for baths. Every princess needs her spa time.


Then at the end of a busy day she gets a little beauty sleep. Oh the hard life she leads.

Marielle's First Haircut

When I heard that Alex got his first haircut it motivated me to actually go and get Marielle's haircut. She has sort of been sporting a mullet lately. I didn't want to cut it, because I know its not very long and I didn't want her to look like a boy. At the same time it was so uneven I knew it was time. Well turns out Marc and I took Marielle to the same haircut company that Geoff and Colette took Alex to. Anyway, Marielle did pretty well. She got to watch Dora the Explorer aka Dori. Dori and my keys kept Marielle pretty occupied. She didn't have to deal with the razor like poor little Alex did. Marc and I were pretty happy about the haircut. The lady made Marielle's hair even and got rid of the mullet. Hopefully now it will grow nice and long so I can put it in pigtails.

O - R - E - O

Like so many of our posts, we've been meaning to mention this for a few days now. As you can see from the Photo, Marielle has dunked her first Oreo! It was hilarious. I just can't get over how quick our little ones absorb new concepts. Marielle stood in front of me and watched me dunk one or two cookies before she realized she wanted one. After handing her the cookie, she came around the corner of the table, climbed into my lap, and carefully dipped it in the glass.

She's been discovering all sorts of things like this lately and doing them for herself. When she goes up to Oma's house and plays with her Little Tikes kitchen, she puts all of the dishes in the sink and moves them around like she's rinsing them. She gets pretty upset that the water doesn't actually flow. She also sets the dishes out on her play table and sets a place for Oma. I think I'm seeing the beginnings of a first tea party.

Getting the Most Out of Outgrown Clothes

I've been meaning to post about this for a while now, but as many of you have realized, we've been deliquent in our posting lately. Anyway, about a week and a half ago, I came home to find Marielle wearing an outfit that she picked out completey on her own. Natalei told me this when I got my first look at Marielle, but it was apparent with or without the explanation. Marielle was super excited about her get up. She pranced around smiling, while waving her sock-covered hands. Clearly, her hat's getting a little small (still ultra cute), her shirt's riding up, her pants are a bit short, and there are no puddles in sight, but I can't think of a better use for all this clothes.
Oh, and note below that despite requesting that we help her put the socks on her hands, she is still mad as can be that she can't pick up the ball.

We Haven't Blogged Since Summer

Yes, that's right. We haven't blogged since summer. Our friends' posts of late have been making note of the waning year. Lisa's getting geared up for Christmas, and Geoff's captured the very beginning of the changing leaves in his recent post's pictures. This past week I too noticed the end of summer, and I'm excited about it. I love the fall and winter. A lot of this has to do with liking the weather. "What?" you say. Correct, I like the cold weather. You all know that I sweat like it's going out of style. The cool weather definitely suits me. This past week we got down into the 50's. It rained and we had the best low-hanging clouds in the mornings. As excited as I am about the dreary days to come, it is a little sad that so much of this year has already flown by.

I'm glad that we have been filling it with fond memories of our growing children, weekends with friends and family, and trips to see all those who we don't get to always see.

Have Internet, Will Blog

Warning: We were going to blog about our Tokyo adventure in several separate posts while we were traveling, but the technology at our disposal wouldn't allow us to post pictures along with the text. We decided to wait to tell the rest of the story until we could get photos up as well. This all adds up to one very long posting. Don’t complain. If you choose to read it, I thank you for being interested in our lives. If you don’t choose to read it, then I’m sorry you lack culture and class. Hehe, just kidding. I separated them so you could read them one at a time if desired.


Tokyo was a lot of fun. The city has tons to see and tons of great food to eat (my favorite activity). Getting from the airport to the hotel, however, was quite a challenge. Marc, I, and Marielle had two suitcases, two travel bags, Marielle’s car seat, Marielle’s stroller, and my purse. The subways had a complete lack of elevators, thus we had to carry the luggage, the stroller, the car seat, and Marielle up down every flight of stairs in between transfers at each subway stop. Lisa, PC, and Nathan were facing similar circumstances. After several times climbing and descending several staircases I felt like the cab ride which would have cost $70 should have been the chosen travel vehicle. I looked over at Lisa a couple of times and felt like she also thought that the $70 would have been worth it. When going up the last staircase I think I would have paid $7,000,000 not to have traveled that far holding and lugging all of our stuff with us. (ok so that is a bit of an exaggeration). Anyway, when we did get to our hotel we were very pleased at our accommodations. I have stayed at military hotels before, and they are always clean and safe, but this one was definitely a step up from the rest. It had a great pool, nice rooms, and a shop where we could buy the essentials i.e. Marielle’s milk, ice cream, soda, etc.

On our first night in Tokyo we ate at a really good Korean restaurant. Ok I know we were in Japan and before you all start giving us a hard time, we all ate plenty of Japanese food. Let me tell you that the Korean food was awesome. Marc did have an incident at the Korean restaurant though. We all sat in the back room where there was a pit in the floor that you had to step into. Apparently Marc did not see the pit and instead of graciously stepping into he slid into it and crashed into the table sending a dipping dish, that broke, and silverware flying. Lisa, P.C. and I could not help laughing although Marc, who now thinks it was funny, was obviously frustrated at the time. After Marc’s slip we ate a great meal. At the end, however, the kids got restless and Lisa and I took the kids to the hotel while the guys took care of the check. The kids LOVED the pool. Marielle kept saying WaWa WaWa and then she would yell WaaaaaWaaaaa in an excited voice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so excited about the pool.

We went out on our first day and got Starbucks and bagels for breakfast, which we did every morning because they were good. Then we went to a see the Senso Ji temple near Asakusa (the pictures are above). We all thought it was pretty neat. Afterwards we went to the kitchen district of Kappabashi-dori. First though we ran into some Chinese tourists who thought Nathan and Marielle were pretty cool. They thought Marielle was so cool in fact that one of the men felt compelled to comb Marielle’s hair with his comb. What?!? Uhhh I felt like that was kinda weird. Anyway, the kitchen district was awesome. It’s a place where all the people go to buy supplies for their restaurants. There are tons of shops with pots, pans, silverware, chopsticks, plates, vases, etc… Marc and I got some cool serving platters, they look very Crate and Barrelish without the Crate and Barrel prices. Lisa got a teapot that is very Japanese and very cool. After stopping to eat, we headed home for more pool time and the boys went out to do exploring Akihabara. (Apparently it is the electronics district, snore).


















The next day in Tokyo we went to the shopping district at Ginza and to the Shitamachi History Museum in Ueno. The museum, which showed an older, Edo Era Japan, was cute because the kids could touch everything in the museum. They could even try on the clothes, see picture. Ginza was cool, but too expensive to buy anything other than eyeliner. I was out of eyeliner so I bought some. We ate at what Marc and I thought was a great udon noodle place. Lisa and P.C. who ordered poorly (sorry guys) didn’t enjoy their meals, but Marc and I thought it was great. Then we ate at a great Japanese restaurant out in Meguro that had breaded pork (called Tonkatsu) with all you can eat rice, miso, and cabbage for dinner. It was P.C.’s find and it was really good. It was also the only restaurant in Tokyo that had high chairs.

On day three we went to the Imperial Palace and its East Gardens. The Palace was neat and the gardens were beautiful. Marielle really enjoyed walking and running and prancing through the garden. Nathan and Marielle loved the fish in the ponds. After the Palace we all went on a search for food. A very long search for food. We thought it would be easier to just find a place instead of searching for a specific restaurant, but it wasn’t. We finally ended up at a Ramen restaurant that our guide book had recommended. For those of you who didn’t know, they have Ramen in Japan. While Ramen originated in China, the Japanese have adapted the dish as their own and have a number of Ramen restaurants. (hehe sorry Lisa but I had to do it). Anyway, the ramen was awesome and cheap to boot. For dinner Lisa and P.C. did room service and Marc and I did take out. Marielle and Nathan had pizza.



We had mainly chosen to eat in this night because our afternoon trip to witness the spectacle of the Harajuku Shopping District ended in disaster. While in Harajuku, we visited a 100-Yen store, watched our daughter gag herself and throw up everywhere (not once, but twice), and failed to see any of the vampy goth teens (google it) that we heard hung out there. They would have made for a neat picture with Marielle and Nathan . . . I think. See Lisa's blog for more on Harajuku, the 100-Yen store, and amazing vomit.

The next day when we got ready to leave it was kind of a sad day. It was so great to see Lisa, PC, and Nathan. Marielle loved having Nathan around. All week she kept going up to him to pat his arm and say Baby! She thought Nathan was pretty cool. It was neat seeing them interacting together. Sharing some toys and fighting over others. It was nice for all of us to get to hang out with Nathan, PC, and Lisa and we are sad that we are again 14 hours away. Lisa, PC, and Nathan are such great friends and we are glad they are doing what they want, but are sad they are so far away. Hopefully we’ll get to see each other again soon.

On the flight home Marielle was a champ again. I am sooooo grateful that she traveled well. She was such a sport. She slept, ate, and played on the plane, but didn’t really complain. When we got home she ate Oreos for the first time, ate some more pizza and then went to bed. We’ll that is all I can think of. There are more stories but I am tired and need to go to bed.