Friday Nite Update

Evan's watching an old black and white of Elvis in the movie "Love Me Tender" with my mom, so I've got some time to make a quick post. We're getting Evan an early start on the classics.

A quick update from Mark. He's done with work and meetings and has two days to play. He met up with Hideaki last night to go out to dinner for okonomiaki; I'm so jealous of all the good food he's enjoying out there. The only thing Hideaki wanted was a burger from Burger King from on base. I guess that's the only place to get one in Japan. They're meeting again this Sat to go to a baseball game. Mark's told me how exciting the games are, especially the crowds, so I'm guessing they're gonna have a great time.
Mark was worried that his Japanese was rusty before he left for his business trip. But he found that it came right back to him as soon as he found him self lost on the streets walking from the train station to the military base where his hotel was, dragging his luggage with him. That's probably the only bad thing during his trip. He's been site seeing and shopping in Yokohama and Tokyo. He even went to the Tokyo temple to work on some family names we have.
Wami and Jerin told me about how picky Japanese are about their rice, and that it was a lot better than what we have here. So I asked Mark to get me some! :) He said it was a bit pricey, about $10 US for 2 kilos (apx. 4 lbs). So I hope its good. Is there a special way to prepare it? or is my regular rice cooker fine?
One of Evan's current little obsessions, besides Nemo, is a little white bunny named Miffy. We got him the Chinese DVD and he loved watching it. Acutally, we found out that he really just loved watching the intro song over and over and over and over... So, Mark's gonna feed his obsession by buying him Miffy ABC books and toys. hehehe

As for us in Seattle, Evan seems to be learning more and more words faster. He's starting to copy what we're saying, probably not knowing what it means. I'm not sure where he learned it but now he likes to say "nope" all the time. So I've had to teach him to say "yup". It's so funny when we're directing a question to someone and he'll think we're talking to him and he'll say, "nope!" He's also started referring to anything that's round or close to round as a "basketball". And all fruit as "apple" even if he knows its call something else. He has become a bit OCD about fish too. If he sees one in any form, photo or drawing, he must point it out and say "fish!" over and over and over. And it doesn't matter if you acknowledge his discovery or not, he'll keep pointing and saying "fish!"
The other day my mom took him into the Disney Store. She thought she'd buy him something from there and wanted to see what he really liked. The funny thing is that I don't really buy him things he sees in stores. I let him play with toys while we're shopping but I tell him to put them back. So, Evan got SO excited to see a huge pile of stuffed Nemos and Lighting McQueens. He arranged them all into a nice neat line in the middle of the store. So my mom thought he liked the cars. Well, then he put them all back and ran to the other side of the store and got excited about something else. He was so funny. He wouldn't take anything, he'd put everything back. For a while he held on to a toy car and a mickey mouse plate. Then he saw a huge beach towel with a HUGE Nemo on it. He dropped the car and plate with such noise and ran up to the huge Nemo blown away at how HUGE Nemo was! It really was bigger than him. I wish I got a picture of the look in his eyes when he saw how big Nemo was.

I'm coming along in my knitting and crocheting lessons. I'm finding out that you just need to learn the basic stitches, the lingo and how to read the patterns, and master how to hold the needle and yarn right, and for the most part, you can do anything! Ok so it's not as easy as it sounds, but at least I understand how things are made, even if I probably wouldn't be able to do it myself. I'm working on learning how to make a baby hat so I can make a bunch and donate it to the church's Humanitarian Aid program. And I'm making a shawl for myself to use while at the temple. I don't know why I'm always cold when I'm doing work there. I hope this helps.
I'm getting faster and faster at crocheting it, and making less mistakes along the way. It's so annoying when I make mistakes cause the only way to fix it is pull out everything you done since you made that mistake. So that could mean an entire section that took me a half hour to do gets pulled apart. So frustrating.
Anyway, you guys probably don't really want to read this much about crocheting... it's really grandma's thing. :) hahaha. I think it is too, it's just that I think I feel like I need to know this for some reason.

Well, that's about it for now. I still need to figure out the fastest way to upload pics off my camera to my parent's computer. The USB cord doesn't seem to be working right. Actually I think the memory card in the camera is messed up. I swear I'm gonna win this fight.