so, tonight's dinner is tuna casserole. last night's was manicotti (for the kids, i had homemade beef stew.) i see a trend here, do you? but then, yoshi had a drinking party last night, kinda last minute, but not nearly as last minute as tonight's drinking party. *huff* but i noticed that half the ingredients tonight's dinner are imported: i got the flat noodles from expat express (and as an aside, why aren't flat noodles sold here in japan?!), and the tuna and cream of mushroom soup are from costco. i got the milk and frozen veggies here, obviously, and although i got the cheese from costco, it was produced here in japan. anyway, it was easy to make (i love my oven. first i microwaved it (without cheese) on high, then sprinkled the shredded cheese on top, then toasted it on 'morning set menu' setting and toasted the cheese on top just perfectly) and the kids love it, they even eat all the veggies (mixed corn, carrot and peas) so that's a good thing. probably took me twenty minutes to make, so not so much moaning before dinner was served!

yesterday's manicotti was kind of a left over. i got the noodles from expat (love them!) and stuffed them with a mixture of cottage cheese, mozzarella (the stuff i used on the tuna casserole) and parsley, but i could only fit half of them into my dish (although i love my oven, it's still rather small inside *sigh*) so i froze the other half. it was great for yesterday because my kids don't really like beef stew (neither did i when i was young) but they love pasta. yay.

i really hope yoshi doesn't have another drinking party tomorrow, i have to take the kids to the dentist so i won't have time for pizza....

today i took hiro and sasha to the dentist (and tommy just came along for the ride). hiro has pain in one of his teeth, and sasha had that 'bad news' the other day at her three-year check. i had to pay for both of them, but since they're both under six-years-old, it was only 600 yen each. that's pretty awesome because they got examined, had x-rays and cavities filled. we do have to go back tomorrow for a little bit of work (they both had cavities in between teeth, so i think they filled the bigger cavity and we'll go back to have the other one done tomorrow. not having it all done in one day is normal here, i think it has to do with insurance billing.) while we were there, yoshi called so then i had to think of what to make for dinner....ugh, i'm just so tired. hopefully the kids will go to bed early today, especially since both hiro and sasha didn't take a nap. wish me luck!