A day of firsts...

Brandon had a very exciting day yesterday! He played his first soccer game and he even scored a goal for his team. Unfortunetely, I had to be at a remedieal driving course for an accident that I was in a few months ago, so I was not able to be there. (Someone was parked behind me in the parking lot at the exchange, he was talking to his wife a few parking stalls over, and I backed right into him.) Derek took all of the kids to the game, but he forgot the camera! I will try to get pictures next week.

As I was driving up to the house after my class, everyone was outside riding bikes. And here comes Brandon on two wheels! It was very exciting to see him finally riding without training wheels, he had been working on it for a few months. Again... we have no pictures of this! I will be sure to get a few pictures this week and post them.

Well, it is time for Brandon and I to get ready for church. Everyone else is too sick to go this morning.

Whale Watching

Last Saturday we all went on a whale watching trip with a homeschool group that I joined. It was the morning after our earthquake, good thing we didn't have a tsunami! Seriously though, that morning was just another day, business as usual! The kids slept through it, Brandon woke up for a minute only because one of our toys turned on from the shaking. I thank God that it wasn't worse, while it was happening all I could think of was Haiti.



The trip was NOT at all what I expected. I pictured us going out on a bigger boat, I even asked if it was going to have a galley where we could get snacks! I also pictured us seeing groups of whales swimming together. Little did I know...





In the beginning it wasn't too bad. We were having fun taking pictures and trying something new.

I thought I was putting a picture here of a whale's tail off in the distance, but this is just a couple of the other boats that were out there with us and one of the small islands in the Ryukan chain. Don't worry, you can't really see anything in the other picture either!

Instead of seeing groups of whales, we would see a whale off in the distance and try to chase it down.

This picture was taken when Brandon was still having fun!

Don't I look great in orange?

And then... about half way through Brandon started feeling sick (after eating the pretzels!) After he threw up once Derek took him on the lower level where he threw up four more times, poor guy! He even had some Dramamine. I ended up taking the girls down where they all fell asleep. The rest of the group got to see a couple of more whales while we were down there, they were actually the best one's. But, we didn't bother getting up!

Day at the Park

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day. So, we decided to go down to Comprehensive Park and see what they had over there. The kids had a great time climbing on the rocks and feeding the fish in the pond.

I uploaded these pictures in the wrong order so you get to see the gross picture of the fish before the cute pictures of the kids. Sorry!


These are the carps that they have everywhere in Japan. I have never seen this many together though. They are so used to being fed when they see a person that they flock together like this for a chance for food. It is kind of disgusting! You can see a couple of the pretty orange ones in the background.

Danielle didn't want anything to do with feeding the fish.

But she had a great time on the rocks.

They all had fun sliding down this section of the rock.