April is the time when school starts. The Pumpkin Princess started school, but before that, she finished day care. The last day she was allowed in day care was March 31st. The first day of school was April 9th. This meant that there was a whole week without day care. So I sent her to gakudo for 2 days, and she spent the other 3 days at the Pumpkin Granny's.

Gakudo is after-school child care. The kids spend the time between the end of school and the time their parents come to pick them up in a supervised environment where they do homework and read books and play outside. On non-public school holidays (like spring vacation), they can spend the whole day there, but unless the gakudo has a special permit to prepare food, they have to bring their own lunch. Some gakudo have a contract with an outside catering service for box lunches, but I was too late to sign the Pumpkin Princes up for it.

So this is what happened.

Characters from the "Tamagocci" anime. The character on the left has ears of rolled salami skewered in place by pieces of fried spaghetti (safer than toothpicks).



Pokemon bento. The cutout of Pikachu was sold in packs in the local supermarket. I put it on a slice of cheese on top of a microwaveable frozen hamburger steak. The Pokemon ball is cutouts of salami, cheese and nori laid on a ball of plain white rice (and held in place with small drops of mayonnaise).

That was just two days in a single week. Come summer vacation, if I don't remember to sign her up for the catering box lunches, I am going to have to do this every day. Which, um, no. This is fun, but quite time consuming. Once every so often (to give me something to blog) is enough.