Trip to Matsumoto

Last month our friends, Scott & Norma Aston, invited us on a little vacation with them. It was a perfect overnight trip up to Matsumoto City (about 2 hours away).

Matsumoto Castle and its moat.

Just being goofy...mostly because no one wanted to smile for another picture.

Matsumoto Castle grounds. What a beautiful place to take a picture...why wasn't anyone else doing it??? Maybe it had to do with the signs that were in Japanese around the perimeter of the grass :/ oops...shane was extremely embarrassed (because he could actually read the signs). Norma and I were taking the blame because we COULDN'T read them :0

Scott, Norma, our volunteer English tour guide, and us right after our tour. This guy did a great job explaining everything in the castle to us. It was very interesting.

Finding things in Matsumoto City to entertain the kids.

We heard about this Wasabi Farm that apparently is one of the biggest wasabi farms in Japan. We had lots of extra time left in the day, so we headed on over to check it out. We laughed the entire time because none of us even like wasabi and here we were touring a farm of wasabi plants. The funny thing was...there were lots of people there. Maybe they were all there for the wasabi ice cream...which ended up not being too bad.

Underneath those black nets are the wasabi plants. They are soaked in running water that is freezing cold (at least it felt freezing cold).

We don't know who this is, but we named her "Princess Wasabi" :)

I'm not a huge fan of my kids jumping on their beds at home so about a year ago I told my kids they could only jump on hotel beds (thanks Michele E. for that advice). I thought they would forget, but EVERY TIME we stay in a hotel room that is the FIRST thing they do.

Here they are wearing their Yukata's (Japanese robes) right before we went to the Japanese hot spring...oh how we love those!

Thanks Scott and Norma for a fabulous day! It was so fun laughing with you guys. At the end of the night Jayden turned to us and said "I really like Scott & Norma...they are fun!" We love you guys!

Service in Sendai

Last weekend Shane and I went up to Sendai with our Church to do some service in the recent earthquake/tsunami affected area. It was super exciting to be able to help in a little way. Our church charters buses up to Sendai 3 times a week until the end of September, so any member in Japan (and any of their friends) can go up and do service. I just love our church for so many reasons...especially how they care about other nations and are willing to help in any way they can.

They gave us these yellow shirts that say "mormon helping hands" in Japanese on them. You could see us from a mile away :) These are some friends we met from Yokosuka base (not too far from our base).

The city we went to had water about 1 meter high after the tsunami hit. Everyone's 1st level of their homes and businesses were affected to some degree.

Our task for the day was digging mud out of ditches so the drains in the city could work again.

First we (actually the men) had to lift out all the cement slabs covering the ditches.

Then we shoveled mud out of the ditches...

...into these white bags.

Here's a muddy ditch.

Here's a clean ditch.

Here's us sweeping the street.

Here's a street with a clean working ditch :)

The people in charge kept making us all take breaks. It was fun getting to know some of the locals and some of the Japanese members on the trip.

This girl (Tomoko) is a member in Yokohama. She served her mission in Hawaii and is just about to get married. She was so nice. She kept translating everything for us when Shane wasn't near by.

This man temporarily lives on this street. He was so sweet to come out and help us the whole time. He actually lives further away, but his house has too much damage to live in it, so he had to move to this block until he can somehow get his home fixed. Oh how I wish we could have helped him get back into his house.

Using a "rice spatula" that we found earlier in the ditch :) to clean mud off the sides.

Our group of Mormons. There were people from all over Japan in this group. One family even drove up from Osaka (about 7 hours) to take another 7 hour bus up to Sendai and back. It was really fun getting to know these Latter Day Saints from all over Japan.

On the way home we drove through a city that was hit pretty badly by a tsunami. The city was deserted...people could not live there anymore...it was really sad and hard to see.

There were piles of rubble & debris all over the city with stuff collected from the streets, businesses, and broken down homes.

If you look closely you can see how damaged these houses are. This looked like it was a pretty nice area before. They NEVER have any vacant lots anywhere, so all these weeds must be in the place of homes that were torn down or fields that were used for crops.

Please keep praying for Japan. We love this place and are so grateful to be here at this time.

Back to Blogging!

I know, I know...it's been FOREVER since I've posted! There's really NO reason why. I think I just got out of the habit...and that I'm overwhelmed with how much I HAVEN'T blogged, so I just gave up. Well, thanks to some nudging from friends...I'm trying to regain a relationship with my blog :) I'm in the middle of a BIG post (our visit to Utah), but it's going to take me a while, so here's a smaller post just so I can say I'm blogging again :)

TANABATA FESTIVAL

The city near our base had a Summer Festival last week. We dressed the kids up and headed out for "Dinner on a Stick". I didn't get any pictures of our dinner, but basically everything comes on a stick (corn, pineapple, banana's covered in chocolate, chicken, rice wrapped in pork dipped in a yummy sauce, etc). But, our favorite item of the night was...the Shaved Ice. Sorry, we also ate them to fast to take any pictures :/, but they were fabulous!

We just had to take a picture with these cute Japanese kids.

BAKING & BUILDING

Tia received a package from Grandma in the mail this week...it was an EASY BAKE oven. I remember having one of these as a kid and feeling so grown up. The kids were SOOOOO excited to use it!

Making pretzels.

Yum Yum!

Shane and the kids used the boxes from Grandma's packages and built this in the front room (while I was grocery shopping--boring)....

...they were so excited! I think every toy in the house ended up in this fort. Thanks Grandma for making our week an exciting one and thanks Shane for being one awesome dad!

I'll be back soon with more posts than you'll be able to handle :)

Tulips in Hamura City

The other day my friend Elizabeth took the kids and I to a tulip farm in Hamura (a city close by). It was so beautiful! It made me really excited for Spring. Here are some pictures from our visit:

Thanks Elizabeth for taking us to such a beautiful place. I'm reminded everyday how much I love Japan!

I LOVE Velcro!

I just have to say how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE Velcro. Velcro ROCKS!!!

Let me explain. I'm a little OCD and don't like crooked pictures in my house...I would walk around straightening them EVERYDAY! Back in

California I tried putting those sticky rubber stumps on the back of my pictures, but they did not win my heart.

When I moved to Japan my MOTHER sent me with Earthquake kits to put under each of our beds. Yes friends, I have earthquake kits under each bed in my house. They have cool things in them like: a headlamp, small flashlight, flares, whistle, M & M's :), bandaids, & extra batteries. My mom is a genius & always inspired to help us be PREPARED for ANYTHING. I don't fear natural disasters because my MOM has made sure I am prepared in every way possible--THANKS MOM! We even have helmets in our earthquake kits. I know some of you are laughing but one day we'll probably have to use them and I will be very grateful for them. I've actually already used the flashlights, and headlamps in these kits a few times (our base was flooded last year and we had NO power for a few days-the headlamps came in really handy while climbing dark stairways with kids in tow).

Anyways, back to VELCRO. My mom put some industrial VELCRO in our earthquake kits and told me to velcro down everything in the house. So I did! Every single picture hanging in our house has velcro on it. VOILA!!! I was sold!!! Velcro works AWESOME on the back of frames. I haven't had to straighten a single picture the whole time we've been here....and remember...we just had a massive earthquake hit the island!!!

Here are some of our frames after the earthquake. Nothing even moved. Now, if you are thinking that some of them look crooked...it's not because of the earthquake...we are still working on our hanging skills :).

Not only does it keep everything in place, but It makes me not worry so much about pictures falling off the walls during an earthquake. So far the frames have not even budged (and we have had hundreds of earthquakes in the last month).

All I do is cut 2 little squares and place them in the 2 bottom corners. There you have it! Straight pictures forever!

I love you velcro! Thanks A TON mom!

Tia's Combi Mini Modeling Job

A couple of months ago Tia did her 2nd modeling job. It was so fun! She was super excited because she had been standing by watching Jayden for the past 9 months. She was ready for her turn again.

To look at the catalog go to combimini.jp

and click on the tab that looks like this...

Then you'll see this picture appear

down on the left hand side.

Click on it and it'll open up the catalog. She's on page

10, 11, 13, 18, 20 & 21.

Here's an ad from the website. Tia's the one in pink & black.

And here are some pictures that I took during the shoot:

Tia with her good friend Sol (they are in the same church class).

Having her hair done "like a princess" - that's what she kept saying!

They let the kids jump on the couch for this one. Super fun!

Here's a little video of it.

This was a picture I took of the photographers computer. I missed this shot but thought it was adorable. Can you tell she had a blast.