Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

        Happy Easter from our house to yours!

                                       The Easter Bunny Eating Leftover Deviled Egg Filling

                                   Oreo Trying To Fit In An Easter Basket



                                  Tail Stew Is On The Menu

    There was an Easter egg hunt at Valplayso today (a nearby playground so named with a rather bad pun on that of our hometown, Valparaiso), so we took Zelie and Keila to meet the Easter Bunny and round up some eggs. Keila was a champ and wasn't scared of the big furry hare at all! Zelie, meanwhile, scored a ton of candy-filled eggs. I even managed to get her to give me a mini Reester bunny, so we all had a great morning!
 I have to give the sponsors, Walgreens and Family Video, props for having volunteers continually replacing the hunted eggs. Lots of times we've been to egg hunts where older and more aggressive children snatch all the eggs, and the toddlers aren't able to get more than one each at best. This one was quite well-stocked, and I saw lots of little kids with full baskets. Probably the only one not too thrilled with the day was the poor half-frozen Easter bunny!


                                                   Not quite sure what to make of the bunny

                                                  Racing for eggs



                                                 Keila and her purple egg


                                   She loved all the colors in Zelie's basket


                                               The much-coveted Reester bunny
  

  Since Sunday was so warm (I think close to 80 F), we took a walk through Coffee Creek Park, about 15 minutes north of town. I'd never gone before, so it was nice to explore it for a bit. Although a few more trees would've been helpful in that freak heat wave! This week we're back in the 50s and 60s, maybe next week will be a compromise and we can hope for the 70s?

                                                   A pretty site for this part of the world, but definitely nothing compared to the cherry blossoms blooming in Japan right now!

Whoever came up with this one in marketing is brilliant: Reester Bunnies! Reese's peanut butter Easter bunnies, yum. Didn't actually buy any since I know how they taste, but I was sorely tempted to just because of the name.
And yes, Keila is happily riding in the basket of the shopping cart. We were in Walmart, what can I say??

   Well, it's finally happened. After almost 10 years of eating nothing from McDonald's, my mom came home with a snack-size fruit and yogurt parfait for me yesterday. So I caved in and ate it. Fittingly enough, it was also the last thing I ate from McDonald's in early September of 2001. I probably wouldn't remember the last time I ate it at all, but I picked a friend up from O'Hare a few days before 9/11, and we stopped at a McDonald's when heading back into town.
  The decision to avoid the Golden Arches for so long wasn't really planned, more just a choice to eat healthier in general. By the time Super Size Me came out, I'd already been boycotting most fast food items besides salads, and that movie obviously just served to reinforce my stance.
  While mass consumption of Big Macs, Whoppers, chicken nuggets, or other fatty and deep-fried foods aren't likely to become mainstream now, at 160 calories a serving the newly proportioned fruit and yogurt parfaits aren't all that bad! Score one for the scary red clown.

          We took my niece to a children's play place today that's about a half hour from home. It's called Bellaboo's, and it advertises itself as such: Bellaboo's Play and Discovery Center is a self-directed play facility providing colorful, fun, and secure areas where children from infants to age nine can explore, create, and interact. 
  Which basically means....a huge indoor unsupervised kids' playground that children love and adults hate. Just imagine about 100 hyperactive yelling kids running around like mad. It was great to see Zelie having such a good time....but the noise level started to get to me about 5 minutes in! Apparently I wasn't the only one, since at one point when I asked Keila 'Are you having fun??', the woman next to me, thinking I was addressing her, replied "Uhh, not really!". Hah!

                                           This kid was adorable. I'm guessing he'd seen Blue Man Group.

                                      The ball room. It smelled of dirty feet. 

                                      This place is huge!