The Payne Family

Where has time gone??

2010-02-16T00:57:00.001+09:00

Can you believe it is February 15th already?? Wow.... time has flown by. We need to update you on everything that we have been doing. Where to start?
Brie's B-day was a BLAST!!! She had a really good turn out of kidos. We were hoping for more snow, but we had enough to still sled. The kids had such a good time. Thank goodness that we had no accidents. Brie was spoiled more than anything, but hey you only turn 10 once!!! We created a slide show for you to view the pictures. Brie was very excited and surprised that one of her presents was a brand new laptop. No more fighting between her and Jordan. lol.

Since Brie's Birthday we have been so busy with events and family activities. John and I recently went to the Base Annual Awards and John was awarded the Honor Guard Manager of the Year!!! We are so proud of him and his dedication to the Base Honor Guard. This is a well deserved award. Jordan is doing really well in school. His strengths are math and music. Brie made straight A's on her recent report card. YAHOO!!! While making good grades, she is involved in the Sollars Student Council. Just this past weekend we took part as a family and joined the Student Council in visiting a Japanese Orphanage for a day of friendship. We had many other parents of student council members and faculty of Sollars go out to the orphanage and have a fun day of games and treats with the children of the orphanage. We had a really fun time there and really looking forward to doing it again. Here are some pictures of our time there.

Now last week we decided to take a short road trip up to Armori and check out the AMERICAN restaurant that we heard just opened up. TONY ROMA'S. YUMMY. We were did some sight seeing as well. Then yesterday we went back up to Armori to check out the Hirosaki Lantern Festival. We took some friends of ours to come out with us. Tammy and her kids had a great time and it was fun to enjoy it with others. The Lantern Festival was amazing. They had ice sculptures and they were lite up in the inside with Japanese art on the outside. The kids and John were excited to see a slide, where they went down a few times. Even though it was freezing they were still not wanting to leave. Here are some pictures of our day out.

10 Years Old!!!!!!

2010-01-28T12:23:00.007+09:00

I can not believe how fast the years have gone by. Brianna is turning 10 years old tomorrow. As I am running around today making all the final touches on the her birthday party for Saturday, I began to think about my (Our) little girl. She has grown so much in the past year, but to think that she is turning 10 is starting to get me down. Can you believe she is going to be 10!!! I remember the weekend she was born... in the middle of a DC blizzard during Super Bowl weekend. There she was at 2:34pm on Saturday, January 29th 2000. She looked just like her daddy. We called her our Chunky Monkey. She had rolls and rolls of beautiful baby fat. Just a good baby in all.

We have done so much in the last 10 years and look forward to so many adventures ahead that I am sure will take us for a ride. :) Our baby is going to be 10!!!!!

I will be posting pictures and videos from the b-day party. :)

Love and miss you all.

Jess

Last couple of months in review.

2009-12-26T14:17:00.009+09:00

Time for some catching up. Here are some of the events we have not had time to post. Starting with Jordan's first day of Kindergarten. He adores his teacher Mrs.Sterry and Mrs. Mitchell the teachers aid. Also a few with Brie and his friend Olivia

Our next event was in October. We headed out to the Orasie Gorge near Towada. It is about an hour away. The changing colors of the trees is gorgeous and the waterfalls are so beautiful. There is a trail you walk through out the mountains. We did not stay as long as we wanted, so we went back about a week or two later.

This was just a normal weekend at home in October and it had rained and then the sun came out right after resulting in a rainbow. The colors were so vibrant and it seemed so close that we had to take pictures.

Our next event was Halloween. Jordan was Woody from Toy Story and Brie was Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribean. Don't you think they look so darn cute??

In early November we decided to head back up to Towada and go to the gorge again and head up to Lake Towada. We stayed a couple of hours and ventured to Tori Gates and a Temple. Very pretty day it was. The colors of the trees were so bright this weekend. The falls were amazing. This was one of the best weekends we had in a while.

Okay.. Well we will post more tomorrow. Love and miss you all. :)

Merry Christmas!!!!

2009-12-25T23:59:00.006+09:00

Wow... we are so sorry that we have not updated anything since September. In the next couple of days we will be posting a 6 month in review for everyone. We do have tons to share. John has been busy with Airman Leadership School and Jess has been busy with the school PTO. Staying busy is the best way to past the time while being stationed so far away from family, but we do find time to enjoy the things while living in Japan. It is about almost midnight on Christmas and we had a great day with the kids and enjoyed seeing their faces with all their MANY toys that Santa left. Santa must know how well Brie and Jordan are both doing in school this year and know that they have been pretty good kids. Here are a few pictures of kids this morning. Jordan received a Toy Story bed tent that Daddy set up later tonight and Brie with her clean room with all her new stuff.

Summer has come to a end.

2009-09-07T23:59:00.005+09:00

Where did the time go? How the summer has ended and how fast our kids have grown. Last week Brianna headed off to 4th grade and boy do we remember living in Fayetteville and sending her off to Kindergarten. WOW!! She has gone a full week of school now and really is starting to understand how much responsibility she will have. She had homework on the first day!! Her teacher is Mr.Crawford, which Jess requested due to volunteering with the school doing PTO. Though all teachers are awesome, she felt that Brianna's personalty would do better with Mr.Crawford.

As we head to week 2 of school for Brianna it starts the first week of school for Jordan. He will start Kindergarten tomorrow (Sept.8)!!! Yes, KINDERGARTEN!!!! This past week Jordan was able to meet his teacher and learn where his classroom was located. He knows the school pretty well with being Jess's little shadow & helper with the school PTO. His teacher is named Mrs. Sterry. She is actually from NC too. On Friday Mrs.Sterry and Ms. Mitchell(Aid) came to the house for a "home visit". They come to observe Jordan and get to know him in his own environment for about 30 min. It is a great way to get to know them too. They gave Jordan his first "family project" homework. Jordan had to create a face that resembled him to be displayed at school. Since it was a "family project", we all were able to help him out. Jess made the shirt, John made the hair, Brie made the eyebrows and Jordan drew the face and wrote his name.
We took a few pictures of Jordan's first homework project.
Here is also a few pictures of Brie on her first day of 4th grade.
We will post again tomorrow with Jordan's first day of Kindergarten.

Summer Beachcombing.

2009-08-05T00:16:00.005+09:00

Well the kids and I decided to head to the shores and just find anything we can find. Our main goal was sea glass, but our first day was all about Sand Dollars. We heard about a place called "Sand Dollar Beach" and so we ventured out. Looking for both sea glass and sand dollars... we ending up finding tons of sand dollars. Whole ones too. We also found 2 baby crabs. They were so cute. The kids were a bit scared. All in all it was a great couple of hours and just fun to get out. Here are a few pics from Sand Dollar Beach.

Now today we headed to a place called "Shipwrecked Beach". They had very old ships that are wrecked on the beach. I don't know the history of them, but I am searching for it. I will let you know what I found. Here we did find our first ever find of sea glass. Tons of it. It was a about 1/4 mile till we ended up coming to the ships, but a nice walk to find beach treasures. The kids and I had so much fun in the last two days going beachcombing. We have definitely found a new hobby while here in Japan. Now my next find is finding a glass ball float. Those are rare and are highly hunted. I will be lucky to leave Japan with one of those. We shall see.
Here are pictures from Shipwreck beach.

New Pictures Up. :)

2009-08-02T22:59:00.002+09:00

Here are some more pictures we have finally uploaded. We added 3 Slide shows. We also updated the last slide show too.

Enjoy. :)

Tokyo Vacation 2009

2009-07-19T23:26:00.004+09:00

Well we are back from our first official vacation in Japan. “Tokyo 2009” is now complete and we are all well rested from our miles and miles of walking, standing, and waiting in line. Our vacation started a day earlier than expected with a shorter than expected drive to Tokyo with a stop at Yokota Air Base. We stayed there a night (after checking in at 1 am) and enjoyed an early morning stop to their BX and commissary. Sounds exciting right? Well it was for us, buying big boxes of freezer pops, clothes, and shoes for the kids that you can’t always find here at Misawa. Following our quick shopping stop we journeyed to the New Sanno Hotel in downtown Tokyo. We navigated our way without getting lost at all and found our Military Resort Hotel quite easily and were very impressed from the beginning. After a quick stop to Tokyo Tower and a long walk (we got lost walking back to our train station), we returned to our hotel and journeyed back out to Roppongi and T.G.I. Fridays for a meal and drink. We definitely miss the States…

We decided then that we should consider getting started early in Tokyo for day 2. So we did. Disneyland was next. The characters, rides, and overall initial experience of Disney was overwhelming to the kids, but it didn’t climax until the next night at Disney Sea. The third day overall (second day at Disney) found us at a parental moment where it makes us realize why having kids are special. Brianna started to cry as we were leaving Disney knowing that there wasn’t a third day planned for Disney on the schedule. It was quite the moment and hopefully made her realize that these situations are not always going to be there. It was definitely a “Kodak” moment.

Throughout the next 3 days and 2 nights that were left, we went on a train/metro trek through Tokyo, stopping at Krispy Kreme in Shinjuku, Claire’s Boutique in Harajuku, and the Imperial Palace in downtown Tokyo. We also drove to Ikea in Funabashi to get some more shopping in and stopped by Rainforest Café near the Disney Resort for a quick lunch. Our final night in Disney, we hiked through Roppongi again and stopped by Outback to satisfy some more cravings and Hard Rock Café for desert. Mmmmmm…..

The final day we spent with one more trip to Ikea, Krispy Kreme, and surprise stop at the largest mall that we’ve ever been to at LaLaPort at Tokyo Bay. Huge!!! It wasn’t planned but we couldn’t resist. A stop by the Wendy’s for burgers and Frosties made it worth it. Yes, we miss (and love) American food!!!

Although we probably walked a total of 50 miles (it felt like more), stood in heat, and spent more money than we planned, it was worth it. We didn’t spend a lot of time in the hotel (and the time we did it was either for breakfast, sleeping, or swimming) and we spent a lot of time out and about. We didn’t do everything that we wanted to do and that’s why we’ve decided to do it again next year. Stay tuned…

Party Time!!!!!

2009-07-03T00:20:00.000+09:00

Jordan decided to go with a "Handy Manny" B-day party. So we had him a small party with a few of the neighborhood friends. He waited a whole week to have it, so we wanted to make it special. The weather of course was still a bit chilly, but we managed to have it in our house. Here are some pictures of the party. Jessica made the cake with some small plastic toys Jordan found in the $1 section of the BX. What a great find to decorate his cake.

Jordan's B-day Updates.

2009-07-02T23:31:00.004+09:00

Wow... It has been way tooooo long since we have updated everyone with pictures and family happenings. The summer has started and yet it is still about 60 degrees during the days and 50 at night. We had a few 80 temp days, but not many. But living in a home that has NO AC this is no big deal to us. We see a lot of fog and clouds during this time of the year and they call it "Sea Fog". Well the kids are both home during the day and boy they are driving Jessica up the wall. They are very excited that we will be taking our first vacation while being stationed in Japan in about 10 days. We are going to be heading down to Tokyo for about 7 days. Yes.. 7 Days. We are going to hit up Tokyo Disney, Ikea, Tokyo Tower and of course a few American restaurants that we have not been to in about 3 years or more. There is a OUTBACK, Tony Ramo's, TGIFridays and Hard Rock Cafe to name a few... :) Yes.. we will try to hit them all, even if it is just to take a look and have a appetizer.

We did not get a chance to share some of the pictures of Jordan's B-day Party and where we ate the night of his actual birthday. Every year, we allow Brie to pick out a restaurant for her b-day night. For the past 3 years, she has always wanted to go to a place called Vikings. Well now it was time for Jordan to decide. He decided a place we have never tried and so this was going to be adventure for all of us. We all enjoy Sushi and so we went to place we really don't know the name, but we call it the "Turtle Place". There is a picture of a cartoon turtle on the building. This place was so neat and fun for all of us. It was also very well priced. You order your food on a computer screen located at every table. When your food is ready, it is placed on a mini "Tokyo Train" and stops right in front of your table. Most plates of sushi are around 100 Yen and with about 4-6 pieces. Very good price and fresh.
Here are some pictures of that fun adventure.

Updates coming soon.

2009-05-21T10:19:00.003+09:00

Family updates come soon.

Hope everyone is doing well!!!!!!

The Original ScrapBox Contest..... for the craft desk!!!!

2009-05-18T12:19:00.006+09:00

So this is the first time I have enter into a contest like this. I have been amazed with this companies products from the start. They are well made and very veritile for all types of crafts. Go check them out when you get some time.

Click on the title of this blog post.
Or click on the link title below.
The Original ScrapBox

Sorry for the delay in updating.

2009-04-16T18:47:00.009+09:00

Wow. Has time flown by? We are sorry about the delay in updating. Where to start. Brianna finally finished her first season in basketball and the team finished 7-1. Brie started out so shy and so scared that her first couple of games she suffered from a upset stomach. As time went out she finally relaxed and enjoyed playing with the team. So in the end, Brie will be playing basketball again the next season. Here is picture of Brie's basketball photo.

Our day out and about. We decided to take a trip to the beach. The beach we go to we can not go swimming in. We were going to fly some kits, but it ended up being way too windy. The day was started out somewhat warm, but when we went to the beach it was freezing!!! So we did not stay to long. On the way we headed to feed the ducks. We had ducks all around us, but there was one that sat on a post and Brie was able to feed him without him flying away. She was not scared one bit. Unlike Jordan, he would just throw it at him.
All in all it was a pretty laid back day. Here are some pictures from this day. Brie had her new friend Patton join us.

Now on with Easter. We had a great day and weekend. Jordan was so excited. The easter bunny put a new Leapster 2 with Lighting McQueen Logo on it. Brie had 3 new Webkinz in her basket. She can spend hours on the computer playing with them, if she could that is.:) We went to the club for Easter Brunch and then did the egg hunt later that day. No golden egg found this time. Maybe next year. Here are pictures we took with the easter bunny. Jordan was so excited that he woke up at 6am. He wanted to head outside to find eggs, that is why he has is coat on. :) He forgot all about the basket the bunny leaves.

In March John and I were able to find a sitter and go out. We went on a small trip to a Japanese Brewery with teachers and faculty from the school. We had a wonderful time. It was all you can drink and all you can eat. We cooked our food mangolian style and it was so good. After that we headed back to Misawa and went out downtown.
Here is a picture of John and I.

Okay. Well we are sorry for the delay in updating. We hope everyone is doing well. We miss and love you all. Please keep in touch.

Some Really Old Photos

2009-02-27T19:49:00.000+09:00

Create Your Own

Some Old Photos

2009-02-27T19:48:00.000+09:00

Create Your Own

2009-02-22T16:57:00.005+09:00

Just a few updates on us. Well mostly Brie. She started playing basketball on a team at the beginning of Feb. There team was undefeated till this past Saturday. Every game the team gets better and better together. Brie is only 1 of 2 girls on the team. She was a bit nervous at first to play with mostly boys but has adapted really well to playing with them now. She really does enjoy playing and sometimes the games can get a little tense when they are close. Here are some pictures and a short video of the games. I will try to take better shots as we head to another game this weekend.

9 Years Old!!!!

2009-02-02T13:05:00.002+09:00

Wow... We can not believe that we just celebrated Brianna's 9th Birthday. Time is really flying by. Seems like just the other day she was running around in a Walmart and driving us up the wall... Well she still drives up the wall, but is growing up to be a very smart girl. She past that torch on to her brother to run around. :)

She wanted to have a High School Musical party and that is what we did. As you can see she had a wonderful time at her party. We are so proud of Brie. She is becoming such a generous and caring kid. We hope you enjoy the pictures. We miss everyone and wish you were here to celebrate with us.

Take Care,

Our Holiday Adventures!!!!!!!

2008-12-25T17:15:00.004+09:00

Merry Christmas!!!!!!

Another Christmas down the chimney chute. Things got started last night with us online on the Santa Tracker (from NORAD) and followed by the family watching Mickey's "Once Upon a Christmas". Then it was off to bed for everyone. We ended up waking up around 9 a.m., a little later than we normally wake up but we figured the kids probably stayed up to see if they could hear Santa's sleigh.

We started off opening stockings, Santa's presents and lastley presents from the family. Everyone got what they wanted and more. We ended the session with some donuts and a talk about how important it is to give back this time of year. We ended up eating our Christmas dinner (ham) around 3p.m. We also had some green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes. The kids led off grace, something that Jordan has been wanting to do at every meal now. Pretty impressive for a 4 year old that doesn't go to church at all. He's figured it out pretty well though. After that, it's been the normal cleaning up, and getting acquainted with all the new toys and some phone calls from family.

We hope you all had a safe holiday and we want you ALL to know that you are all in our thoughts during this time of year.

Halloween at Kiddie Disco!!!!!!!!!

2008-11-10T00:56:00.000+09:00

More Halloween Pictures

2008-11-09T19:50:00.001+09:00

Updating.. Our Family Blog

2008-11-09T15:26:00.004+09:00

Hello Family & Friends!!!!
We know it has been time and we are very sorry. Things have been good but very busy. John has been busy with ALS (Airmen Leadership School) and Jess with the PTO (Parent, Teacher Organization). The kids are growing up too fast. Brianna enjoys third grade, while Jordan can not wait to start school. We just celebrated Halloween and I have attached the pictures to the slide show. Brie was a Disco Diva and Jordan was a Dinosaur!!!!! In the pictures, we took the kids on a "Haunted Hay Ride". Which was a big F-750 truck. The best we can get while here in Japan. :) The hay ride took us to the "Haunted Forest" which was a walking haunted trail that the kids WANTED to do. As we started walking Brie did not want to go. She was crying and scared. It was not scary at all. Jordan did not say a thing. lol. Come Friday night, Halloween night.. the kids went trick or treating..The base allows the host nation to come on base during this time... and when they come on base... They come by the bus load!!!!!! Seriously... we have lines of 50 or more kids & teens trick & treating..It is CRAZY...Some wanted to stop and take pictures. All in all the kids had fun this Halloween.

Various Pictures

2008-08-09T13:37:00.002+09:00

Create Your Own

More Pictures

2008-08-09T12:48:00.002+09:00