Sorry for such a long delay in updating the blog, though perhaps it isn't as interesting now that we are in Idaho for most of you. We have been very busy unpacking and visiting since we returned home to the US. Most of these pictures are from our recent trip to Nevada, there are new friends, cousins, grandparents and even some great grandparents in the mix. We will be better at updating it from here on out, thanks for all the Emails while we were in Japan!

So Sweet

Kaiya normally hates tummy time, but if I put her on the nursing pillow she can handle it for a little while. The other day I got these photos of her during such an occasion. She looked so sweet just studying the rug and relaxing. I just had to share them.

More Roses

Many of the schools Patrick works at gave him roses on his last day there, and he in turn gave them to me, and I couldn't think of anything better than surrounding Kaiya with them and taking her picture. So here are a few cute photos of Kaiya with her roses.

どもす

日本の友達へ
この１年間どもありがとうございます。本とに楽しい一年間でした。すばらしい思い出をいっぱい作ることが出来ました。おせわになりました。どうぞこれからもこのブログを時々見て下さい。また英語でCommentsの所で一言書いてください。自分のEmailもそこで教えて下さい。アメリカに戻ったらパスコーン日本語が出来ないと思うのでがんばって英語読んでください。これからもよろしくおねがいします。

Rose Garden

Here are some pictures of our trip to the rose garden. We went just after the peak of the blooming season, but everything was still so beautiful. I wish it showed up in the pictures a little better, because it was a lot prettier than this. But it was a really fun family outing!!

Earthquake

We just wanted to let everyone know that we are all okay. In case you didn't hear, there was a pretty big earthquake just south of us in Niigata yesterday. We felt it up here, but there was no damage near us, so we are so grateful for that. There were a lot of people killed and injured however, so please keep the families and missionaries in that area in your prayers!

Patrick Graduates...

... From basketball that is. These pictures are from Patrick's last night playing basketball with his friends in Japan. They had a "Basketball Graduation" for him and even gave him gifts. It was really fun for him to be able to play every week and he's going to miss it! Oh, and the towel on the head seems to be mandatory for playing basketball in Japan.

A New Favorite

Kaiya's new favorite activity is to suck on her hands, but her hands don't always cooperate. She tries desperately to get her fingers in her mouth, and is so happy when she does, but soon afterward they always seem to go flying out in every direction. She gets better at it every day though so i think soon she may be able to keep those rascally hands where she wants them. It's so cute I just had to take pictures.

Finally she got it!! (this one is for Grandma Ginger;) )

More Fun

Here are some more fun and interesting things from Japan:

This one cracks me up! it's the sign on the way to Yamagata City.
It's a little hard to see, but this one is of the gas pumps hanging from the sky. When i first saw this I was completely amazed.
Here's a snake we saw on the way home from church. Patrick had to stop and look at it.

So this one is the Japanese rhinoceros beetle. You can buy them at the shopping malls and keep them in little cages and feed them a jello like substance. It kind of freaks me out to walk by the displays of them at the shops. We've also seen people making oragami beetles too.

Japan gets really excited for fruits and you can only get them when they are in season (the seasons are usually only a few weeks). Apparently now you can get mango, but there was only one in the store and it cost about 24.50 US dollars. I don't think i would pay that much for fruit, but maybe if you really like mangoes...

And the last one, and this is exciting... yellow watermelon! I'm not really sure how they get them yellow.

One last visit...

The view from the top (up) and you can see the mountain in the distance (left)

We wanted to visit the ocean one last time before we leave Japan, so we went there the other day and explored a bit. There is a shrine at the top of an island mountain that we walked up to (253 very steep steps; the picture just doesn't do it justice). It's funny how these shrines are just everywhere. It was a really good view and we were the only people up there (turns out everyone else just wanted to play, not hike the beastly stairs) so it was a really neat experience.

Yamadera

For our last big adventure in Japan we decided to go and visit a somewhat famous temple complex built up on a mountain side. The weather was great, but unfortunately hundreds of other people decided to go on the same day. It wouldn't have been so bad except every grandma wanted to ask about Kaiya, so it took some time to climb the 1110 steps to the top. The temple itself was started in 860 AD. It's amazing how old some things here in Japan are compared to the western United States where our old buildings are from the 1800's. Kaiya decided to start screaming as soon as we reached the top so we actually didnt get to look around too much, but it was still pretty impressive. There were many interesting buildings, statues, engravings, etc too it was difficult to decide what pics to put on the blog, but here are a few highlights.

Fourth of July

Our fourth of July wasn't all that fun, but we tried to celebrate nonetheless. We wanted to do fireworks with the Yaguchis and have flag cake, but nothing really worked out. First we couldn't find the right things for the cake, and then the Yaguchis couldn't do the fireworks with us on the fourth, so we did them on the third. Kaiya was pretty fussy, so we went down to do them when it was halfway over already. We were going to try again just with our family on the fourth, but then it was raining. So, all in all it wasn't that great, but I guess we shouldn't expect much when we aren't even in the US. Here are some pictures anyway.