Cross Country Banquet

 The Cross Country Banquet was right up my alley!  It was held in the school library, and they picked up a sandwich platter from Subway.  And cookies.  It was perfect.

I also loved that they gave out the letters and pins for the runners, and then gave them less serious awards.  It sounded like it was a good team and a great season.

That's my boy!  I kind of love him.

 Getting his letter and 2 pins.

Getting an award for being the "Most Determined" runner. The coach was impressed with his drive and dedication.  When Joshua was there, he was always doing his best.  And he was determined to finish the season and not let his grades slip. 

Watching the slide show of photos from the season. 

He is rather overcome with emotion for his award. (Okay, he's not.) 

He also got an award for being most improved.  He cut 2 minutes off his 5k time from his first race to the last. And that was more improvement than anyone else on the team.

Now that he can be proud of!

Temple Day!

 We went to the Temple last Saturday.  We had to be there early because one of our awesome Marines was going through for the first time and Dan was his escort.  I had plenty of time to relax and have lunch before the 1:40 session- which is the only one in English.  It was a long day (3.5 hour drive each way), but worth it.

Selfie at the Temple!

The Fukuoka Temple is in an odd spot on a hill, so it is really hard to get the lighting to cooperate.  But its me and my hunny-bunny.

Levi is a good dog

Delaney's Friendship Feast

 The fourth grade classes did not do a traditional Thanksgiving activity.  They did a family heritage Friendship Feast.  Delaney came home with the assignment to come up with a family dish.  She was suppose to explain why it was significant to our family, how it was made, and what it represents to her.  It is a pretty cool assignment.  Last year, Callie talked me into doing Corned Beef and Cabbage, and I was NOT up for something so time consuming this year.  So we did rolls, which represent bread, which we like and the Swiss do well.  (Don't judge me!  It was a busy week!)

We made rolls and brought them in at the appointed time and partook of the things that the other kids had brought.  While we ate, the kids were called up to give their presentation on their items.  It was a lot of fun, and entertaining to hear the different takes on what constitutes a family heritage.  There was a kid who brought pirogis and talked about his great-grandma rolling them from scratch in Poland.  And there was the girl who talked about how she and her mom like to make cookies, so she brought cookies.

Decorating the butcher paper table cloth.

Delaney labeled this section for me.  See the "VIP"?  She saved me a spot! 

 She was very soft in her presentation, but did well.

That's a lot of love!

 A few weeks ago, the stake patriarch came down and gave Joshua his patriarchal blessing.  He and his wife came over for lunch before I took them to the airport for their flight back up to Tokyo.  During that lunch time, he seemed to really enjoy chatting with Josh.  The patriarch is America, working in Tokyo in computers, so Josh talked about his aspirations to build his own computer, and the trial of lacking funds.  They had a great time bantering and visiting and the patriarch said he would get with his colleagues and send some spare parts to Joshua.

Joshua's joy was nigh to bursting when he learned a box had indeed arrived.  A second box soon followed and Joshua spent an afternoon putting his pieces together. He had so much fun!

Unfortunately, he lacked a monitor to connect it to to see if it worked.  He finally realized he could connect it to the tv.  Such sadness when it did not work!  The patriarch was truly delightful and emailed back and forth with Joshua trying to troubleshoot the problem.  It took a few days but he got it up and running (He had not pushed the RAM card in hard enough to connect it).  What utter delight was suddenly to be had!  Josh's joy knew no bounds.

But now he needs a monitor.

Joshua told me I need to include the specs.  So it is:  An Intel core, i5, 16gb of DDR4 RAM, an NVIDIA GTX 1060, a 256gb m.2 SSD, and an ASUS Z170 programing motherboard