Amy & Wally visit!

My sister, Amy, and her cutie pie son, Wally, came to visit at the end of August. It was an awesome visit and such good timing for me since I had been dreading the month of August for a while.  In August, the weather here is terribly hot and humid and Wilson has his summer break for the whole month. This idea of being home for a month with three boys and not being able to let them run wild at parks all day due to the temps was pretty nerve wracking. My saint of a sister offered to come for the last week of August to help out with the boys and give us something to look forward to while we were surviving the first part of the month. The boys and I spent the month counting down the days till their visit.

The boys had SO much fun together!

They were inseparable! 

And, they played so nicely! 

It was like they fell back into their old ways from our DC days where they were together every day. Not pictured here are my sister and I with our feet up in the next room while having a glass of wine :)

Even outnumbered, we managed to leave the house every day. We fell into a routine of a fun, outdoor activity in the morning and nice, relaxing afternoons at home.

We made it to Tsugane Falls and tried our hardest to let the boys run around carefree. Amy was the brave one of the two of us and took turns swimming with the boys in the cool water. It was a great place to be on a hot day!

We took a ride on the beautiful Pearl Queen.

Amy took the boys up to the crows nest.

They had a ball in the dress up corner and were well loved by the other boat passengers. There were probably about 15 Japanese people behind me also photographing the boys in their captain outfits!

We visited the lovely Hirado Castle.

Our tour guides were about as cute as they were unhelpful!

We went to the Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine. The boys wore their jinbei outfits to keep cool.

We made it to a lot of parks. Can you spot Amy in this one?

I kept catching these two snuggling!

I loved seeing Wally again. He is a real sweetie. Even though he can say Lisa now, he still calls me Sasa :)

Thanks to Nathan having some guy time with the boys, Amy and I got to go out to eat a few times. Here we are at her favorite restaurant of the trip, Kurinto, after we spent the morning at China on the Park in Arita. We weren't sad to leave the boys at home while we spent a few hours browsing through some fine china!

It was a great week that, of course, went by too fast. It was so nice seeing my sister and we were both thrilled to see the boys play and laugh together. We've already made plans to do next summer at their place near Philly!

Thanks for flying around the world to play with us, Amy and Wally.

We love you!!

Summer night festival

Wilson's school had their summer night festival at the end of July. The students were celebrating the arrival of summer and the beginning of their month long August break. The kids all wore their summer festival outfits. The girls wear yukata and the boys wear jinbei. The outfits are super lightweight for the heat of the season.Wilson had a ton of fun with his Japanese friends.

Leo and Archie got in the spirit of things with their jinbei as well. 

There were several games set up around the playground for the kids.

The kids made their own fans for the festival. Each class danced their 'bon dance' that they had been practicing. Wilson was never really in sync with the other kids, but he sure had a great time anyway.

With the festival behind us, we are in the midst of our super hot and humid summer break. School kicks off again in September and the age two class will have a new student - Leo!

English lessons

I've started giving English conversation lessons to a friend of our neighbor, Yoshi. My student, Fumiko, is a nursing professor at a college in Nagasaki. Like most students in Japan, she's had six years of English classes in her schooling. Fumiko's goal is to take some of her nursing students to America and be able to study and speak with other nurses. She told me I am the first foreigner she's ever spoken to.

Our meetings have been surprisingly fun so far. One lesson, we walked around our house and talked about the differences between American and Japanese homes. Fumiko, her husband and two teenage children all sleep together on their tatami floors. She was very surprised to see Wilson and Leo's beds. Do they fall out??

So far, Fumiko has brought gifts to each lesson even though I've told her she doesn't need to. Just another example of how the Japanese are so overly generous and kind!

Nathan has also started teaching English lessons once a week and will be doing a blog post on it soon.

Tsugane Falls

Another weekend, another waterfall... Are you tired of them yet? 

We're not :)

Tsugane Falls are probably my favorite so far because they are so much fun for the kids. There are lots of shallow puddles that the kids can splash around in. 

The boys had fun climbing up behind the falls.

They took turns swimming with Dad in the chilly swimming hole. On a hot day, the temperature is delightful!

We'll see you again soon, Tsugane Falls!

100th Post!

Woohoo! This is my 100th blog post. Thanks for checking in with our family and the stuff we're doing over here. This blog has been a really nice way to keep in touch with our friends and family back home, and also a great way for me to get out of scrapbook duty!

Special thanks to Sara who always comments! Sara and her husband, Shawn, have had a blog since 2006(!) and were the inspiration for ours. Thanks for your comments, Sara! I love reading them.

Special thanks to my mom who I think about when I write the posts and who I blame for my inclusion of way too many pictures of the boys - Grandma likes them! She also taught me how to make a mean pineapple fruit boat and pose for corny pictures :)

And, special thanks to Nathan whose favorite thing to do is load us up in the car and go anywhere. Kids won't slow this man down! He just throws more carseats and diapers in the car and keeps driving. It does make for good blog material :) I've hired him to do another guest blog soon.


Yay for 100 blog posts!

Bakery

 There is a really cute bakery in our neighborhood that we like to walk up to on the weekends.

 We used to go on special occasions to pick up a nice treat or when visitors were here (Alison, James and Lynn were there every day!), but now it's becoming a bit of a routine. We have our favorite treats, but sometimes branch out and get something new. We can't read the signs so it's kind of like a box of chocolates... wonder what's inside this one? They're usually delightful whatever they are and there's always some green tea pastry to choose from. I've started to really like that flavor!

They always have a different animal shaped pastry. Hm, there's even a picture of this animal on the sign and I don't know what it is. Horseshoe crab perhaps? Well, it's cute whatever it is!

There's cute seating outside and free coffee, too!

Since it's been so hot out, they put a water play area for the kids out front.

We love our little bakery! Come visit and we'll take you there :)

Todoroki Falls

We had a great time exploring Todoroki Falls with some friends last weekend. The falls were our furthest yet at about two hours southwest of us. We made a day of it with our former neighbors who have two boys that are five and six years old. Wilson and Leo idolize them and they had a ball hiking around and swimming with them at Todoroki.

Todoroki Falls were the most beautiful we have seen here. The falls looked as if they were out of a movie. The light hit the water and it was a beautiful turquoise green color. 

Just perfect.

There were lots of hiking trails at the park. They were much more built up and sturdy than a lot of the falls that we've been to.

There was a really cool suspension bridge that had amazing views of the mountains surrounding the falls.

A little downstream from the falls there was a swimming hole. Can you see the person swinging from the vine into the water? It looked really fun!

Here are the falls from a distance. It was pretty crowded there, but the Japanese weren't in the water. We later found out that Japanese people don't like swimming in really cold water because they don't think it's good for their heart. Nathan and the boys jumped in and said the water was cool but nice.

We had a really fun day at Todoroki Falls and will be back - it was definitely worth the long drive!