So I haven't forgotten that I needed to finish telling about our trip to Japan. Just haven't had the time to sit down and write. It's a rainy morning here in Jakarta, so my plans for the day have changed and I find myself with a little time to continue the story and update you are a few other news worthy items.
First, I want to say Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family back home. We are so thankful to have you as a part of our lives!! It is Thanksgiving morning already here in Jakarta and we are getting ready to have a Thanksgiving celebration of our own here. The kids actually get out of school at 11am today and have tomorrow off for an Indonesian holiday, so it is almost like the real deal. We are having 7 other American families over to our house tonight for a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Then tomorrow, we will watch the Aggies (whoop!) live on TV and decorate the house for Christmas. The kids are really looking forward to the Christmas decorating despite their dad's reluctance.
Baseball season started a couple of weekends ago. This year Jack and Luke are playing t-ball for the Cardinals and Isaac and Alex are playing machine pitch for the Twins. (We gave the triplets the choice to do another year of t-ball or move up to machine pitch.) Justin is the official coach of the Cardinals and is the asst. coach for the Twins.
So far it has been a really fun season. Jack has really been enjoying being an official of the team and as the smallest and youngest on the team, has taken everyone by surprise with how well he can hit and field the ball. He's loving every minute of it. Since Luke is one of the older and more experienced kids on the team, this has been a tremendous confidence booster for him as he can now be a leader on the field.
Isaac and Alex have been enjoying the challenge of moving up to the next level of play in machine pitch. Despite being the youngest on the team, they have been able to keep up and have fun playing. And I have been having fun watching them.
In other news...Isaac lost his first tooth this week. After weeks of just dangling there, Justin finally convinced Isaac to let him pull it out.
Now more Japan...
At last I left off, I had told you about our hotel.
Monorail
From our room, we had a nice view of the Disneyland park and the Disney monorail station that stopped right outside the hotel. The monorail circled the entire Disney resort stopping at Disneyland, DisneySea, Ikspari (a mall filled with shops and restuarants)/Tokyo train station and the Bayside Station (for some non-Disney resort hotels). Since the Disney Resort was built on Tokyo Bay, you also could get a good view of downtown Tokyo as the train made its circle. We enjoyed riding the "Mickey" train!
DisneySea
The Tokyo Disney Resort has 2 parks, Disneyland (which is like the Magic Kingdom) and DisneySea (which is built around a water theme). DisneySea, I think, is only around 8 years old and it was amazing. The scenery and thematic elements used to create the park were awesome. There was a huge, life-size cruise ship around 5-7 floors high with the tall Titanic-like smoke stacks in the American Waterfront section. The Mysterious Island section had a huge volcano that would erupt on occasion. The focal point of the park was the Mediterrean Harbour, complete with Venetian gondalas to ride, where each night they put on an amazing fire and water show. I have never seen anything like it and wished I had captured some on video because words just cannot explain. The Lost River Delta was home to the Indiana Jones ride (we got to meet "Indy" himself on our walk to the ride) and Isaac's favorite ride, Raging Spirits, a loop-de-loop roller coaster. Jack liked spending time at the Arabian Coast on Sinbad's Storybook Adventure and in the Mermaid Lagoon riding Flounder's Flying Fish Coaster. My favorite ride in this park was Tower of Terror. Justin and I decided we liked the storyline for this Tower of Terror better than at the other Disney parks we have visited.
Disneyland
At the Disneyland park, Disney hotel guests got a 15 minute head start in the park in the mornings. So just like a good Bethancourt, we were there when the gates opened early. During those precious 15 minutes, you could either ride one of the new rides, Monsters Inc. Ride and Go Seek, or you could have your picture taken with some of your favorite Disney characters and then line up behind the rope and wait for it to drop, opening the rest of the park. We began our day at Disneyland twice so we took advantage of both options.
Disneyland had all the famous Disney rides that we have all come to know and love...Pinocchio, Snow White, Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Pirates of the Carribean, etc. Unfortuately, Its A Small World was closed while we were there (although Justin didn't mind). I bet you couldn't guess which ride was the hardest to get on. Winnie the Pooh! Crazy. I guess Winnie's a popular guy in Japan. The line was always long and the fast passes were all given out for the day by lunchtime or early afternoon. We chose to skip this ride since there are others we like better but we didn't skip the Honey Popcorn they sold in this area. Yummy!! We noticed on our first day that there were an awful lot of people walking around with popcorn buckets around their necks. We wondered why that seemed to be the popular snack until we started noticing all the different popcorn vendors around the park selling all different kinds of popcorn...caramel, chocolate, strawberry, butter and soy sauce, curry, honey. It turned out to be a pretty economical snack. So we bought a bucket. It was Minnie-themed so I had to carry it around the whole time. We enjoyed the popcorn and found out that we like the honey the best.
I have more to say about Disneyland but I want to make sure this gets posted before Thanksgiving is over and time is running out. So to be continued...
In the meantime Happy Turkey Day!!
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