11 November, 2012

Physics, the stage, and a good weekend

This weekend my husband is being a Physics teacher geek, getting together with a bunch of other international school physics teachers. I'm not sure what they're doing, but it sounds like they're enjoying it. I'm just grateful this one is in our neighbourhood (ie Tokyo). The last one of these he attended was in Shanghai, which was a whole big deal including visas.

So yesterday he had breakfast and left some brekkie stuff out for the rest of us (I don't like getting up early on Saturday, if I can help it). We told the boys the night before that they could have breakfast whenever they felt like it. Result: very happy boys for most of the morning and a delighted mum who ate breakfast in peace and then enjoyed applying herself to some baking.

The afternoon was pretty quiet too. I continued baking and the boys had SQUIRT time then a bit of "screen time" (ie Miniclip).

At 3 I fed them some afternoon tea and we headed off to school for the high school performance of "Arsenic and Old Lace". A comedy that's more of a Will-the-murderers-be-found-out, than a Whodunit. CAJ stage performances are almost always superb. It is amazing the talent lurking at this school!

I invited some English-speaking Japanese friends. They enjoyed it, though needed a bit of help with understanding some of what was going on. Their three girls had much more difficulty, unfortunately.

The play was long, 2 1/2 hours. And it ran right over dinner-time: 4-6.30. So it was lovely to come home to a warm house with dinner ready to put on the table. That made the transition back home much easier.

Overall it's been a good weekend where the boys have, for the most part, gotten along well and been obedient. I'm so thankful.

Today, our middle son went to Sunday School. He's been refusing to go and instead coming to church with us (it happens at the same time). He also joined with all the other children when they came upstairs and sang us the Lord's Prayer in Japanese before the annual children's blessing.* I'm thankful.

Now, however, I have the dishes waiting to be washed up. Before long it will be food time again. Golly, when they're home like this it seems that most of the time we're feeding them! Even our seven y.o. — who tries his best to eat exactly the same amount as his 13 y.o. brother. And even goes so far to claim that it's unfair if I rule in favour of his older brother getting an extra serve of something and not allowing him to! I'm just waiting till he's old enough to take part in these school theatrical performances. I think we could be harbouring a future star of the stage. I just wish he could wait until then to exhibit those theatrical tendencies.


*The pastor praying over the kids, this is culturally significant as this time of year the Japanese often take their children to the shrine to be blessed.

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