Today was pretty humid. It made for some discomfort which was demonstrated in rising tempers. We tried to cool off a bit by running to the local mart. It felt nice in there, but because it is a small place we could not stay forever. We came home with Popsicles.
While Maya napped, I practiced my viola. Even doing that resulted in being drenched in sweat.
I was able to try out a couple of new recipes, and I am sure glad I did. For lunch, we had a taco salad that included lime and avocado. It was a nice and refreshing touch to this day. For dinner, I made an Asian shrimp pilaf that included freshly grated carrots, diced red peppers, scallions, peanuts, and a sauce of honey, sesame oil, and soy. The dish had a nice crunch to it and also was refreshing. I planned on serving with just watermelon, but I happened to see something on the net today and also had kiwi and bananas on hand. A little food play was is order. The kids surprised me; especially Tomo, started jumping about with excitement with my fruit display. It was a nice and delicious way to end a long day.

...tire, that is.  Tomo and I set out for a "date" late this morning.  Along the way, the back tire on my bicycle started losing air.  As I pedaled the way became harder and harder.  By and by, we lost all air and were just bumping along on the rim.  Fortunately, our destination was within sight; albeit, quite a long sight.  We walked the remaining distance to our destination and enjoyed our time together.  Corey was able to pick up Tomo, and then I set out to find a place to get my tire fixed.  Armed with my iPhone and with a listing of about 6 places, I set out to find a repair shop.  I went to the place that I was closest to and found the remnants of what probably used to be a bicycle shop.  The next closest place forced me to circle around a very "large block" in order to go the opposite direction from where I originally started, but the ended up with a shop that was all shuttered up.  The third place on the list really looked like I was headed no place fast.  It was a dead end street that lead to the railroad tracks, but unless you blinked you would notice a hole in the wall place with a man looking rather bored in what said bicycle shop on the outside but looked more like a key making shop on the inside.  I had to do a double, no really, a triple take on the shop to realize that it was what I needed and that it was open.  At the hole in the wall shop I was able to get the hole in my bicycle tire repaired.  It is a good thing because the next address would have forced my to go under the tracks to the other side and much further away from where I wanted to go.  Walking all over the place while pushing a bike that doesn't work right and in some rain with PLENTY of humidity is rather exhausting.  

I was surprised once I hopped back on my bike how easy it was to pedal it.  It was then I realized that maybe my tire had been flat or going flat longer than I thought it had.  That revelation led to me thinking about how sin is sort of like getting a flat tire.  It slows you down and hinders you.  I hadn't noticed that my tire was loosing air or that it was hindering me until I realized we were bumping about on the rim.  Once you hand your sins over to Jesus, it is freeing and so much easier to pedal on through life.

Hebrews 12:1-13

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. ² Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³ Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
⁴ In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. ⁵ And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:

¹² Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ¹³ “Make level paths for your feet,”^[so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

The boys finished school just shortly after lunch, so while Maya napped and Tomo rested (he said he felt tired), Skyler and I went on a quick hike.  We walked over to the park in our area and picked a trail to ramble up.  We went to the highest point, so this meant we went up 125m.  From this vantage point, we could see quite a bit of the valley that we live in.  It is so pretty along the trail, but we were bug fodder as we walked around.  It was a nice jaunt up for a fairly nice workout.  I will need to do that a few more times to get in better shape.  Sure was fun though to hike a bit.

My cucumber seeds have sprouted.  I can usually manage to get things started, but keeping things growing is not my forte.  Hopefully, I can break the norm for me and manage to actually get cucumbers.

Today I worked on something that I have been wanting to do but just haven't been able to do yet.  I planted cucumbers.  I know, earth shattering.  We secured planters yesterday and 4 kinds of cucumber seeds.  All the seed packages said that I could plant them in July.  Here is hoping that we can actually grow them.  The cucumbers are actually serving a dual purpose.  I would have really liked to have started some cucumbers as soon as we got here, but that is just not how it worked out.  If all goes as we hope we will have yummy cucumbers to eat AND shade from the hot summer sun.  Since cucumbers tend to grow up in a vine-like manner, the theory is that given a path to follow the plant will grow up and fill out the provided guides thereby creating shade.  We have a net in place for the cucumbers to grow on.  This is nothing new in the world of gardening, but it is a new project for our family.  Recently more and more people are doing such things to cut down on the direct sun that comes into the house during the summer.  This country is all about saving electricity since the March 11, 2011 earthquake hit, and all the issues surrounding the nuclear reactors.  One of my neighbors has a great start on her cucumbers and morning glories growing and it is creating a great natural shade.  Another neighbor recently got started on their cukes, and they are just now ready to spring straight up the string they have strung up for it.

In addition to planting cucumbers, I worked at pulling up weeds around the yard.  I noticed that our front yard, under all the weeds, had three furrows like someone had grown things in three short rows.  We are thinking to do the same.  Since it is getting to be a bit late in the summer, I think that we will just plant some flowers, but we would really like to get a vegetable garden growing next year.  

We haven't done anything more today than yank up weeds and turn over the soil.  Three furrows of freshly turned soil sit waiting for something.  Since I cannot do anything about it tomorrow, I have a little more time to make a decision about what to plant.  Corey will weed eat the remainder of the yard tomorrow before the day grows too warm.  The yard is not big enough to do more than weed eat it as a manner of mowing it.  I know the neighbor whose house is in front of our front yard is very happy to see that we are doing something about our yard.  She came out to talk to me a couple of times while I was working.

Of course, she mentioned several times that it pretty hot to be working in the yard.  This all being said while sweat was pouring off me.  Between the dirt and the sweet, I got a nice cool shower in.  However, the afternoon Saturday cleaning of the house pretty much undid the shower.  Bummer.  I have been so thankful that even though our daytime highs have been in the middle 80's with heat indexes 10 to 20 degrees more, that the evenings do cool down very comfortably.  Now, I know all you stateside readers are balking at that mid-80 temperature, but even though it isn't nearly as hot as some of you all have been experiencing, I do need to remind you that the humidity is pretty high, and most Japanese homes do not have central air.  In fact, our current home does not even have a wall unit at all.  This is actually a first for us, and we may consider finding a small unit for one of our rooms, for those handful of days that it is just simply unbearable.  As a whole though, this summer has been pretty good to us so far.

But August is coming.  August is when we tend to have the hot temperatures that do not really even drop at night.  Those are the hard days.  The days that you feel like you are just living your life walking through the sauna.  I really do think someday I will write a book with the title "Walking Through a Sauna".  

One of the things that is really important for us to do is to figure out who people are and begin to build relationships with them.  One of the first things you would notice if you came to my neighborhood is that we have one small mom and pop grocery store on the "main" street in our neighborhood.  This street is the street that has the train station at the end of it.  Besides the grocery store, there is also the post office and the police box.  The grocery store is run by a very sweet couple.  They mostly do all the work themselves, but sometimes their children help them.  (They children are young adults.)  

As it turns out, we require the service of this small grocery store from time to time and my own children have discovered that allowance money is very fun to spend down at the grocery store.  We have had chance to chat with "mom and pop" as they often have down times, and they are very willing to chat with us.  They told someone they knew about us, and then told us about this person who is Japanese married to an American.  Long story short, the grocery shop owners passed on the information to us, and we met the Japanese lady.  

The Japanese lady married to an American lives in America but returns about once a year to visit family here.  It just so happened that their visit here coincided with our move here.  This lady whose name is similar to my second son's name, has a boy about said boy's age.  We were able to meet this lady and her son.  Through this one lady, we have met a number of additional people.  This lady grew up on the Buddhist temple grounds about 15 minutes walk from our house.  Now, her brother is the priest of that temple.  

The Buddhist priest loves to roast his own coffee which naturally has intrigued my husband.  The priest's wife communicated her desire to learn English, so now I am meeting with this Buddhist's priest's wife once a week to exchange English and Japanese conversation.  

We have met a few other people who live near us as well just because of walking around.  The lady at the end of the street saw Skyler and was so taken by him that she asked him to come into her house to introduce him to her husband.  She introduced us all to her husband.  They seem like a nice couple, and the lady commented that seeing my kids reminded her of raising her own children.  It will be interesting to see where some of these relationships go.  We have asked a few people to eat with us, but as of yet the schedules have not have worked out, but hopefully that will change.

Now that we have moved.
Now that we are settling into this house.
Now that house guests have come and gone.
Now that a month since we moved has past.

Now I will try to build momentum and get back to web blogging.

There are so many things that I have thought about writing over the past few weeks, but there has been no time to sit and write anything.

Let's start with a run down of the past couple of weeks.

We moved here about a month ago.  Moving with a long time consuming thing.  I really do not like moving.  When we drove to get here, we were about 2 minutes from the house and Maya demonstrated that she may get motion sickness.  Lovely way to greet your realtor and new landlord.  We won't even mention that my washer and dryer didn't arrive until a week and a half later.

It took us about a week to get unpacked and some of that time involved visiting the recycle shops in the area to find things to help situate the house.  My kitchen turns out to be quite a puzzle, but I am pleased with how I was able to make it work.  I know many people expressed concerns about me missing the bigger kitchen, but my only thought has been...finally a kitchen I can manage and that won't manage me.  There are still a few things that we would like to purchase for the house, but these things will have to wait until either we find the right thing or the cash is in place to purchase the items.  I am on a hunt for a homeschool storage cabinet.  I have enough room for it to be rather large, or possibly two smaller things, but either way that could be pricey.  There are a few things that I am still not 100% sure where I want to put them, so I am sort of at a stand still on some things.  I will let ideas stew in my brain.

Our first set of house guest arrived just over a week after we moved.  This group came and did some prayer walking in our area.  I am grateful for their prayers.  While the first group was getting ready to leave, the second group was arriving into the Narita airport.  This group was Corey's family.  His dad, brother, and two nephews came.  They stayed for nearly two weeks, and I feel like we got our whirlwind tour of Niigata through them.  Boy was that exhausting.

Since we have moved in, we have met the guy in charge of the neighborhood and were told about the annual neighborhood clean up.  Yes, we were outside at 7:30 in our grubby work clothes and boots.  Our house and the neighbor across the street from us (we are the last two houses on our street) were responsible for cleaning the gutter behind out houses.  This gutter separates our houses from the rice field.  We pulled weeds and picked up trash from the gutter area.  We sledged out mud that had accumulated over the past year as well.  I couldn't find any gloves, so I was pulling my weight bare handed.  I saw more centipedes and kemushi (um help me out here folks...hairy caterpillars) than I care to see.  Both these insects sting something fierce.  Both Skyler and I have been stung by kemushi before.  OUCH!

We have met some people in the area.  Perhaps that is a story for another day, maybe even tomorrow.  The last two days we have been trying to pull together some resemblance of an actual schedule.  By and by it will come.  We are building momentum. 

I have a few moments and thought I'd share about the time with the karate sensei today.

I took Skyler the opposite direction we usually take when "going to karate" because Skyler had been invited to the second home of his karate sensei. Sensei met us at the train station and then we walked to his building. For about an hour he instructed Skyler in what I felt like were all the things that he wanted to explain to Skyler in class but never got the chance to do so. He explained the reasons behind some of the moves and worked with him on doing the moves more precisely. Two thing that I will always remember from Sensei are the admonition to focus and the phrase "down your body."

After about an hour of this private instruction, he told Skyler that the remainder of the time was for a "small farewell" party. As I suspected, I think he really wanted to share with Skyler this one last moment. He spoke to Skyler about just keep on practicing and trying. He told Skyler to do his best and that the attitude of doing one's best covers all areas of life not just karate. He told Skyler to keep working to try to attain his goal of becoming a black belt. BUT he also said tht once he is a black belt, he must not use karate to ever solve his problem. He said karate is for building strong, healthy bodies and for training the mind and spirit. He reminded Skyler to always remain calm for calmness is better at solving problems than actually using karate moves. Besides, he said that as a black belt it is very dangerous thing and people can be killed by karate. It was fun listening to him speak to Skyler, and he was so encouraging and loving.

We will miss this karate sensei. We didn't know the treasure we stumbled in to when we enrolled Skyler in karate some three years ago.

Life has been buzzing along at warp speed.  Last week was big for us.  May is always a big month for us.  It is the month we recognize the number of years ago that we arrived here on Japanese soil and set up residence.  It is the month in which we remember all the many years ago that our son, Skyler, entered the world.  It is also this month when we recognize even longer ago still when Corey and I took the vows that forever knitted us together as one.  This past week, in addition, to the anniversary and birthday celebration had other various things to attend to.  We started the week viewing the solar eclipse.  Corey and I eeked out a lunch date down one afternoon.  Then there was the last Japanese class.  I made 3 sweet potato pies because we had a considerable amount of left of roasted sweet potato from a weekend meal and took it to Japanese class to share around.  After attending that class every Wednesday for almost a full 4 years and it seems almost surreal to think that I am never going back.  Then there was the day that Corey brought home the car that we have been the paperwork process with that for several weeks.  From start (looking for a car) to finish (Corey bringing it home) it seems surreal that the car sitting in the driveway is ours.  Then there was the ninja party for my brand new 11 year old.  Fun!  Great fun, but oh so exhausting.  Thankfully there was plenty of coffee in the chocolate cake to keep the cake moist and to give me a little extra energy to make it through the fun day.  This was followed by church which we had two four legged friends join us, much to my daughter's ABSOLUTE DELIGHT.  Finally we rounded up the stretch of 7 days with an impromptu game afternoon which didn't turn out quite as expected, but still fun.

I thought that after the big week last week that things would even out a little, but there are always curve balls that seem to be thrown right at me.  Take for example today.  I ashamedly admit that as a mid-Westerner I failed to pay attention to the weather signs.  I know better.  It was so beautiful out this morning.  Just gorgeous.  I got my "Monday" laundry load done (I don't do laundry over the weekend to give the boarders a fair chance to do their laundry) and got it all hung out to dry.  The breeze today was wonderful for drying clothes.  BUT I should have known that breeze was blowing something in.  Corey, the younger kids and I stepped out briefly to grab groceries.  While out, that "something blowing in"  blew in.  It poured something furious.  Skyler helped to try to "save the laundry", but in the end my laundry ended up wetter...much, much wetter...than when I put them out on the line.  I remembered that when I put out the laundry this morning I thought it was strange that the neighbor's laundry was not out.  She always beats me in getting her laundry out, but today she didn't put any out and that was strange.  Should have gotten my clue then!

Tomorrow Skyler has a two hour private karate session with his karate sensei.  He wants to test Skyler again because the time he tested a few weeks ago was a "make up" because he had missed the real test day due to stormy weather.  When Skyler tested, sensei didn't have his check list with him.  Mostly I think that he just wants to be able to say goodbye to Skyler because I think he has gotten to like Skyler a lot and will miss him when we move.  Frankly, I will miss sensei too.  He would have made a MUCH better sensei for the latest karate kid movie than the guy who did it, you know, Jackie somebody.  BUT I digress.

This is the last full week of class for the CAJ kids.  Next week will be an odd schedule for them with finals and senior comp things to attend to and whatnots.  I will have my kids finish up before they get a month long break the middle of next week as well.

We will be moving mid-June.  Followed a week later by two groups of visitors.  One group will stay for 3 weeks.  Thus the reason my kids will get a month off school.  August is also going to be busy.  

Anyhow, that is the run down of the busyness that consumes my family as of late.  I wish I could get all the Maya-isms down.  She really has been coming in to her own personality and, as always, it is an amazing thing to watch.  I am so blessed with three beautiful and unique children.

Not sure when I will write again.  If I don't write before the move, then I suspect it will take some time after the move before internet service is up and running again to write.  Once things settle a bit, I hope to be more regular in my writing again.  Until then...

There is a lot going on right now, and this is one of those times with all the distractions of life that we as a family would covet your prayers.  Sometimes when the distractions and all the things that go on, we lose sight of HIM.  This is when the evil one creeps and in and creates doubt and havoc.  Things will be crazy for a while for us, so we appreciate your prayers.  I do not see that things will taper out until the fall.  Hopefully by then we have adjusted to new schedules and a new life and our schedule will be more even tempered, or at the least some of the current distractions will no longer be a problems because they will have taken care of themselves by fall.  

Until then...as my dad always said, "Keep your tailgate up."  That is what we intend to do.

Rough day.

Rough start to the week.

It is rainy and perhaps that doesn't help make my disposition any sunnier.

Tomo had a nice day of school.  Skyler is doing all right.  The problematic kid right now is Maya.  She is a bright girl and uses that much to her own advantage.  In the terrible two stage??  Yes, terribly so. 

I know that I am having trouble juggling all that I do from day to day, and the sign that I am not doing great come out in the way Maya looks for ways to be mischievous and get into trouble. I am very tired and exhausted from a morning of cleaning up messes, soothing over pains, and punishing a little girl.  

I am not much for counting the days until summer, but I have to be very honest in saying that I will be very glad when one of the plates that I have been faithfully and patiently spinning for about a year and a half is safely out of my hands.  That plate has been a tough one to keep spinning and has been quite time consuming.  I know my children will be glad to have some more of mom's attention back.  

Just got to keep hanging in there.  Got to just keep spinning those plates and pray that none fall and break.  I worry about that a lot.  I worry that I will get distracted and drop a plate.