What are you doing?

We've been home now for ten days and we're well and truly settled into holiday mode. Well I'm working, but on reduced hours. Breakfast is a eat-it-when-you-get-up affair and bedtimes are a little later. We're still eating lunch and dinner together most of the time.

The boys are sitting around doing lots of electronics, but our agreement does mean that we have leverage and they're being pretty good about taking some reading time also. Exercise has been a little harder to get out of one or two of them. Creativity? Varies per boy. Our eldest has been playing around on his guitar a lot and changed the strings today. Our youngest has been slowly putting together a scrapbook from our trip, but he's easily distracted by electronics. Board games and movie afternoons/evenings have also been a part of our days.

As I type the third dinner in a row is being prepared by a boy. The boys have varied considerably in their willingness and ability to manage doing this. Most of the time I've been needed as a consultant if not a motivator in the kitchen with them. This current meal is proceeding well at present (oldest boy, one would hope so).

Pokemon Go. Yes, that's entered our house (it came to Japan only last Friday). Because our boys don't have roaming data plans, they are stuck at home or at wifi spots, or, with David or I going with them with our phones as portable wifi. That limits them quite a lot, but is better for our pocket. David's gone walking with one boy a couple of times and this afternoon I'd planned to go for a ride to my favourite park. I really wanted to go on my own, because I enjoy the serenity. 

However I tried to be a good mum and tossed the idea out that anyone who wanted to come with me could. Well I ended up taking the two boys who have gotten into Pokemon. It was a bit of a deal. First one then the other couldn't link with the wifi on my phone, then one would lose GPS on the game or the app would become unresponsive. Most of all they needed to learn how to "lead" us around the park (i.e. check with the other about if it was okay to go and to say "let's go". These two boys don't usually get on that well, so it was all a bit of a challenge (complicated by my lack of understanding of the game). 

We went past this little playground in the park. It struck me as noteworthy
that my parenting has changed. The boys used to get so excited about swings and
slides and things to climb on...now they're excited about catching imaginary
things on their phones!

However we did get outside and ride more than 10km. And we're all still talking to one another! The park was nice, but as "tethered" as I was to these gaming boys, I couldn't go far. So I didn't find anything too fun to photograph.

This is a type of cherry blossom, obviously not blooming now. There was a Pokemon stop here and the app
named what type of tree it was, kind-of cool!

David's doing lots of reading, playing games on his iPad, and doing a particularly tricky jigsaw puzzle (penguins). Actually I think most people have been dropping in to do a couple of pieces every now and then—it's about all we can manage at once.

As for me, I'm gradually working my way through a To Do list that contains a number of projects in-between regular household tasks like grocery shopping, and vacuuming.

Tomorrow we will all get out of the house and go into the city to help pack and post the magazine issue I helped finish off while we were camping. We may stop for a treat while we're there...that's not been decided yet. Oh, and I believe a little bit of Pokemon hunting will be going on too.