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

Trippin' with the First Graders

Rylee had her first exciting field trip.  And, of course, she wanted me to come as a chaperone.  I assumed a lot of other parents would want to do it, so I took an extra day before sending the form back.  Alas, they needed 5 chaperones and exactly 5 parents volunteered, so I did not get out of it as I had hoped.

The field trip was to take the Toka-toka train.  I knew nothing about it other than each Fall the ITT office has a trip to pick apples and ride the Toka-toka train, and it always sells out.   So I wasn't totally unhappy to be chaperoning.

It was an hour bus ride into the mountains, and I get a bit carsick if I read on the bus that long.  We arrived about 9:30am and they said we had 35 minutes for lunch.  What?!!  Who wants lunch at 9:30 in the morning?!

Then it was a 15 minute bus ride to the start of the ride.  I was mildly disappointed to see that it was not an actual train with tracks.  It was more of a three-car tram.  But that's fine.

The kids were wildly excited.

The view was lovely.

And Rylee was adorable.

Hanging out, enjoying the 40 minute ride.

I do love Japan!   It is so pretty!

The train meandered around the mountain and through some tunnels.  The last tunnel was really long and the train stopped in the middle because there was 100 yards or so of this amazing art on the walls.  It was done with little rocks and they shined a blacklight on it and it was awesome.  The train stopped and everyone got off to run around and look at it for 15 minutes.

My new iPhone does these video photos.  It is annoying.  But the video actually got the vibrant colors that the still photo it also took did not.  So I'm putting that up. It won't really play you a video though, I'm sorry.  But you can see the pretty colors!

Here you can see that it covered the walls and ceiling.  It was really cool.

Again, trying to get the brilliant colors. 

My cute kid!

Waiting with her class after the ride.

Rylee's first grade class and the Toka-toka Train.

I want to mention that the train ride ended  kind of nowhere near anything.  The bus was there to pick us up, but there wasn't much there.  The bathroom was a single, co-ed room with 2 stalls for girls, 2 stalls for boys, and a couple urinals.  All together.  Oh, and they were all squatty-potties.  For 4 classes of first graders who were about to spend an hour on a bus.  Yep.  It was as awesome as it sounds.  Fortunately, Rylee and I have embraced the Japanese culture and we can do it.  I did feel bad for the kid I could hear in there, "I haft poop!  I've never pooped in one of these before!  This is really hard!  How do you do this?!"

Too much awesome

 At Parent Teacher Conferences last week, Marian's Home-Ec teacher showed me this spectacular recipe Marian had created on how to make a Marian.  It was so great and so HER!   You really need to enlarge this and read it because it is wonderful!

I  just love this kid!

An this is what my street looks like.  It is lined with these gloriously adored trees.  It is gorgeous and every time I drive down it I feel so blessed. The photo really does it no justice.

Cats and Kintai

 Callie has been begging to go to Kintai to feed all the semi-feral cats out there.  Dan was out of work early on Thursday, and it was a gloriously beautiful day, so he obliged and took the girls out there.  They had a marvelous time!  Dan even documented the occasion for me. (And you!)

$ .75 of Fun

 While at the Exchange, we found the Halloween clearance section. Delaney found some gingerbread house kits and we discovered that they were marked down to a whopping $.25!  So we bought 3. They were especially awesome because the house was already put together and the girls just had to frost and decorate them.  Perfect!

Someone is getting too much into the creepy spirit! 

Rylee did a good job squeezing the bag. 

The (mostly) finished products. 

Delaney was very pleased with her results.

Youth Activity- Marian

 Marian got a new YW leader, right before the big Stake Activity in Tokyo.  I was a little nervous, but Marian really likes the new leader and they had a marvelous trip.  She even sent me photos, most of which Marian was enthusiastic about taking.

On the plane.  You can see Dan and Josh in the background.

Having lunch. 

 She found a tree to climb.

Posing together.   

 Marian was less interested in Saturday's group activities, and more interested in the tree-climbing.

And swinging. 

She was happy to pose.... 

.... and even managed to enjoy herself with a few of the group games.