Preparing

Last week was a busy one - getting ready for Christmas and for my knee surgery. It was nice having the girls on winter break, so we could all relax. We began the week by going to the library, since the girls had been looking forward to playing the yearly Christmas ornament game.

 

Every year, the children's librarians put ornaments depicting well-known children's story characters. They made it easy this year, only asking for 10 correct answers out of 14.

They got some new ornaments this year - here are some of my favorites! Can you name them all?

Besidse pruning my rose bushes (I know, it was a little bit early, but I wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise until mid-February), I had to hurry and make a new batch of mochi, or Japanese rice cakes. I hadn't done it in a few years... hopefully they'll turn out all right! In the old days, they used to pound the rice but we are fortunate to have an actual mochi machine. After soaking the rice for about 12 hours, you drain it and then put it into the machine to be steamed. Once that's completed, the machine kneads the rice into a smooth ball. The last step is to separate the hot rice into individual rice cakes. We'll be enjoying that for breakfast on New Year's Day morning - I'll make a hot soup (dashi-based) with vegetables, chicken and rice cakes. YUM! DaddyDude isn't too thrilled by it all, but he suffers through it silently - the girls love the rice cakes. Although, I wonder if Mika will be able to eat them this year with her braces!

I played my last soccer game last Thursday night (12/22) - the last for at least 6 months! *sigh* We only had 6 people (it's supposed to be 7 vs 7) but we still managed to tie the other team (they won 1st place last season) 5-5. I even got a goal! Yay!

So in the meantime... until July 1st or so... I have to be inspired by remembering the soccer fields and what it felt like to be able to run really fast on it and cut.

Oh, and I have these beautiful cleats to look forward to wearing once I get back out onto the fields. It's the first time I've purchased flashy cleats, so I better be good or I'll look like a poser! :)