Our Japanese Adventures begin!

We moved to Japan February 24, 2011. We were so excited for all of the traveling that we would do, and all of the new things that we would see. We were so hopeful and optimistic after moving from Tucson, AZ. Don't get me wrong, it was fine there. We met some great friends and have many great memories there, but we pretty much did everything possible within a 3 mile radius. Plus there are no seasons. I missed seasons. Christian and I are both very adventurous, and so we were just ready to move on to our next adventure....our first place we've lived overseas. Well...things didn't go exactly as planned. March 11th Japan had a 9.0 earthquake/Tsunamis/Nuclear Disaster. It's a long story, with many exciting details, but I'm trying to catch up on blogging, so won't go into it here. Needless to say, our plans were put on hold. I ended up evacuating with the kids on the 24th for exactly a month. They didn't have the nuclear reactor situation under control yet, and we didn't have our household goods in Japan yet. We decided it was for the best. I had a great time with the kids basically traveling all over Utah and spending time with my family and friends during this month (Remember, I thought I wouldn't see anyone for 4 years, so this was a second chance). The evacuation flights alone are quite the story as well, that I won't go into here. I will definitely remember traveling those flights by myself with 3 small kids for the rest of my life, though.
Now I am back and I am so excited!!! We got our stuff finally, and are settled in. Spring is in full bloom (which is amazinly beautiful after living in Tucson!), and we have started exploring. I want to start keeping a record of all of the places we get to experience while we live here in Japan, so I will become a more dedicated blogger starting now. Here we go....Life for the Colemans in Japan!!!

Family

Photos by my brother Wil of Lincoln at 4 months old

4th of July and Summer fun!

We have had a great summer so far. This is at a fun park with a splash pad that we went to.

Lincoln just chilled in his car seat. His eyes are so big and blue when we are outside.

Here is the splash pad. I thought Aden was running around dancing in the water, but he explained later that he was fighting the water. That makes sense. He is a little fishy since he is not afraid to get his face wet anymore. He will swim halfway across the pool under water with no life jacket. Yay!!!

We had a fun 4th of July with friends at the base event here in Tucson. When you aren't close to family, it doesn't get any better than hanging out with your friends. We spent it with the Wolfe family and the Smiths.

Lincoln is such a good baby. He is always just chillin. He is such a blessing.

Christian let me draw glasses on his face. He said that he trusted me, and let me do whatever I want. That was a mistake! Ha Ha. I love dressing up.

"What? Let me eat my popcorn in peace."

Aisley is such a little doll baby. I love dressing her up. Her hair is so long, so it's fun to curl and braid. She is patient enough to let me, as long as I make a big deal about how pretty she looks when I'm done.

110 degrees here in Tucson. We spent the day running through the sprinklers in our new backyard. Even the hose water was warm.

Aisley couldn't wait to wear this Princess Aurora swimsuit that I got her.

Aisley is completely potty trained now. She is a character. She loves to dance and to draw. She just started her second dance class. She is not shy in it anymore. She was breaking it down the other day during the freeze dance game.

Lincoln is as sweet as can be. He just had his first apt and got shots. Poor kid. I know he's miserable, but still sweet. He weighed 14 lbs, 9 0z (75th percentile for weight). Aden and Aisley love getting in his face and talking to him. He will give them the biggest grin and start babbling at them. His smile is enough to make anyone happy.

We just finished getting completely moved into our new house. I love our new house. There are plenty of kids that play out front and ride bikes during the evening (after it cools off), so Aden and Aisley are excited to have friends to play with. One of them has a mouth already (at age 4!), so I'm not too excited about that influence.

I'm pretty sure I'm not putting Aden back in pre-school when it starts again. He is getting so mature. He woke up before me the other day and then came in my room. I had heard him singing in there. After a couple of minutes he said "Do you want to see what I did for you? It's in the toy room". I instantly thought "oh no, what?" He brought me downstairs and opened the door and said "ta da!" I timidly looked inside and it was spotless! He woke up and went downstairs and cleaned the toy room to make me happy. I was near tears. What a sweet boy. I asked him what made him want to do that and he said "The holy ghost!" Such a good kid. I love him. He's so eager to please. He starts soccer on Monday. This will be his first team sport. He is excited.

Aden is a great big brother...most of the time.

This is an email I sent to Christian today, and decided I might as well just copy and paste it here:

We went swimming today. I didn't put a swim diaper on Aisley, and she told me twice that she had to go potty. We all would get out and go to the bathroom, and she went on the big toilet both times! Yay! She also went poop today at home. I know, very interesting, but I think we almost have a potty trained girl! That is the first time she has told me she has to go anywhere outside of our home. I showed Aden since he can go under the water with his eyes open, then he can dive for the dive toys. That's what he spent his whole time doing. When we got home Lincoln was ready for bed. I asked Aden if he would read Aisley a book while I put Lincoln to bed. He was more than happy too. They were in there for 10 minutes together with him reading to her books about colors and shapes, and she just was sitting next to him listening. Then they wanted milk, so he kept reading to her while I went to get it. I was excited about the system until I came in, and he was telling her that "tigers eat babies". hmmm. Maybe not so good. Anyway, then he wanted to sing her a song too. He tickled her feet and sang twinkle twinkle little star. He said he wants to read to her from now on. Cute.

Summer 2010

Lincoln is now 2 1/2 months old. He is a sweetheart.

Here is Lincoln watching the ceiling fan. You can see how happy it makes him.

Aden started swim lessons. Last year he was terrified of the water the whole time. His dad took him tubing down a river last year for fathers and sons. They were going to hit a branch and had to get off, and Aden's face went under. He would wake up with nightmares that he was in the river again(I won't comment on how this made me feel). Anyway, this year started out mostly the same, but he was a little more confident. By the last day he put his face under water for the first time ever!!!!! I'm so excited. He even got confident enough to try swimming under water.
Aden has found a new love of drawing recently, especially on dry erase boards. We played a game with his dry erase book the other night. I tucked him in, but he wasn't ready to go to sleep yet. I told him he could draw one more picture before bed. When I went to check on him later, this is what I found! He even hiked up his underwear and drew on the bottoms of his feet. He was thorough.

Life as a mom of three...

So I've never done much with this blog except upload a few pictures now and then. I figured no one looks at it anyway, and I post all of my pictures to facebook, so why bother? I just found out from a friend that you can print your blog. I didn't know that! Wow, that's like having your only family book, and prevents the need to journal (this is it). So here I go... I am selfishly not going to do more for any of you that may be reading this, but for me. Ha Ha Ha.

Life as a mom with 3 kids has not been bad so far. Lincoln is an angel sent straight from Heaven (I know they all are). He is soooo sweet. He sleeps a lot, and when he is not sleeping, he is quiet and content. If he cries, he is easy to console. His first friend is our ceiling fan. He loves to lay under it, and will smile and talk to it. It is adorable. He is 2 1/2 months old now, and is just getting to where he will make eye contact with us for long periods of time. When he does, he is all smiles and cooing. I am quickly transferring from the baby only mom to the soccer mom-taking kids to this class or that lesson. I like it. Aden can finally play more mature games with me like checkers (not just pretend), and he gets it.

We went to Colorado last month for Christian's graduation with Regis University. Yay, he got his Bachelor Degree! That was one of our goals when we joined the Air Force. We also got to visit with his family, and my parents and brother Wil came.

I didn't realize this picture would be so small, but right before he flew out to meet me for his graduation, he was here. He just finished his training for level 2 combatives. He will bring it back to Davis-Monthan AFB and teach airman in his combatives class that he set up, what he learned. He's basically a ninja.

Lincoln was blessed in our ward on the 6th of June, 2010 by Christian. Here he is in the cute outfit that my mom made for him.
Aisley had her first dance class at the YMCA downtown. She is all about dancing and princesses and pink right now. Such a girl! She was the youngest and cutest in her class. She was shy for most of it, so she didn't talk much, but she followed directions very well.

She had a dance recital at the end of her class, where they dressed up like lions and danced to "I just can't wait to be king" from The Lion King. She was adorable. Since she spent so much time with her class and her teachers for this performance day, she has come out of her shell at the class, and is not afraid to be spazzy, like she is at home. I loved watching her in this. It was at a High School auditorium.

Busy month

Christian won the Volunteer of the Year award for our base.

Lincoln is Born!!! 7 lbs 15 oz 19 3/4 inches. Born on 4/8/10 at 12:45pm. We love him!

We had a fun Easter! The Easter Bunny came to base.