Our Yard

 Here is a picture coming into our house. We no longer park our van here, we use the parking lot next to the house because we have filled this place up with bikes.

 I love how our mailbox says our name. All our neighbors have Japanese kanji on their homes. We are making our place official!

 Here is our yard! We planted some flowers to give it some color.

 Here is the little path to our front door. We love our house!

 We have taken down the dog cage in the back. We made some extra room for the trampoline!

 The ledge on the porch is an excellent pie making shelf. I love the hose right by the front door. We have added a brush for the kids to clean their feet before they come inside.

Outdoor Projects

 Claire found this giant cricket in the yard. This is the biggest cricket I have ever seen!

 There was a big dip through the parking by our house. Teddy shoveled dirt into the hole and the kids packed it in. I think they enjoyed their work.

 Parking is a hot commodity here. I have never had anyone ask me if there was room to park at my house until we moved to Japan... now it is one of the things that I always ask when I go to someone's house.

 We got it all filled in and the kids got a little work done. Good job!

9/11 lesson

 Claire built the twin towers out of legos. This picture was taken on Sept. 15th. We had a good lesson on what 9/11 was all about.

 The siblings often make good toys for Christine.

 Great Theo boy is getting so big.

 We have some great kids!

Christine

 We love our cute Christine. Aunt Christine gave her this pretty outfit. Christine was playing with the sign from a high school play that we saw. It was a funny version of Snow White. It was only funny because Teddy translated for me, otherwise I would have missed all the jokes. :) 

Left over fireworks

 Our neighbor had some left over fireworks that they gave us. The kids were big fans.

Thaddeus was a little scared of the fireworks at first.

What a great boy!

Temper Tantrums

  Christine is pretty good at throwing temper tantrums. She can sure turn it on and off.

 While waiting for our stuff to arrive, these boys made their own fun.

Another cool Japanese critter the kids found.

Mt. Fuji

After having a day off from hiking Mt. Takao, we figured we would up the hiking to Mt. Fuji. We started off with the right attitude which made the whole hike manageable. Teddy and I could only carry Thaddeus and Christine. We didn't think Theodore would be able to climb the whole mountain, so we started off thinking we would just go for as long as Theo was doing well. We also knew that we didn't want to push too far because he would have to walk back down as well.

Theodore surprised us and hiked HALF way up the mountain! Great job Theo! The girls were champs and wanted to keep going, but we told them that we would come back another time. It started getting cold and windy at about 1/3 of the way up. I'm glad that we packed as many clothes as we did.

Here we were getting all of our packs ready and making sure we plenty of clothes, water, and food.

 We tied a garbage bag around the carriers to help keep out the wind and keep them warm.

 This family picture is one of my favorites. Tyler took it and it turned out great! Thanks Tyler!

 When we turned around with Theo, we left the rest of the group so they could hike up the whole mountain. We hung out at the bottom for a few hours while we wondered how cold everyone was. The night came and we still didn't see any sign of them coming. We were getting a little nervous when they finally arrived. Thankfully everyone made it safely.

I like how you could see all the check points up the mountain at night.

Mt. Takao

 We got some more visitors out! Tyler, Dee, and Sterling came to visit us as well. We met up with Takuya and Keiko to do some hiking. We decided to hike Mt. Takao. It took us about three hours to walk to the top. The children did great. Teddy carried Thaddeus up, but he walked down. The weather was great for hiking!

 The drinking fountain was a flat stream that was 5 or 6 inches wide!

 The girls were great hikers!

 We all enjoyed the view from the top. These three loafers got a free ride. :) I love these carriers. It makes hiking so much easier.