A 2 car family, once again!

Last week A.J. and I finalized the purchase of our second car! Seems like a minor feat, but after driving A.J. to work everyday for 5 months and having to wait for him many of those evenings as well, it is a nice change of pace to have my own car again. This little guy is old, but he is in great condition and running well! The perfect little car to get me to and from work... and notice that it is the PERFECT color as well.




It also got properly zapped as soon as it got home!

Snow, Valentine's Day and 2nd Grade!

Happy Valentine's Day! I need to apologize for the lack of blog posts the last few weeks. Things have gotten a bit busy around here! Not many "outings" have been happening on this side of the world (ie- not much to blog about), the weather has been a little crazy so we haven't been out and about much. Last week it was reaching the 60's everyday and then it snowed ALL weekend! The ground was too warm for much of it to lay, but it was here!



We have done some little adventures in the past weeks; we took a second trip to Costco and checked out the IKEA here in Japan. We also added some furniture to the house, so we have things a little more organized. Doesn't seem like much, but it has filled our weekends and kept them interesting!

However, (I saved the best for last), I really haven't been around much lately because I have been observing in my new classroom!!!!! That's right... I will taking over a 2nd grade classroom at the end of the month. I am very excited to have the opportunity to teach over here! My class is a great bunch of students, and both myself and the students are very excited for me to start teaching! Once I am all settled, I will take some pictures of my classroom to share, but for now, I am observing and helping in the classroom so the transition will be a bit easier on everyone!

So, that is the update on our life! A.J. has still been flying everyday and will be headed to Kadena (another part of Japan) on Thursday to go on Det for 3 weeks. I will be visiting him there for a long weekend, so stay tuned for pics from there as well!

Hope that all of you are keeping busy! We sure are! Have a great Valentine's Day and I promise the next break won't be so long!



PS- Here is a pic of my Valentine's Day flowers that were delivered to school today! A.J did good! ;-)

Disneyland: Tokyo

Since A.J. had Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we decided to head up to Disneyland with some friends that invited us. It was a great day to go because we had the day off, but the Japanese do not. And when living in Japan, it always smart to do things when the Japanese have to work! I have wanted to go to Disney since we got here, so this was a very exciting day for me! I am told that Tokyo Disney is similar to Disneyland in California. I have only ever been to Disney World in Florida, so this was "kind of" a new experience for me.

The rides are fairly similar, with the exception of everything being in Japanese! Which also makes the rides a little bit more amusing! We had a great day with some great friends!






3 humans? I wonder what else they think we are going to put in there?


Vending machine by Alice's Tea Cups!

23 days...

As most of you know, A.J. and I have 2 cats that we adopted while living in Kingsville. When we moved to Japan, we decided to leave Alfie and Ellie here with my in-laws. We knew that kind of move would be too stressful for them (and probably me), so we moved them in with A.J.'s parents. 23 days ago, Ellie ran away. She got out the back door, got spooked by everyone chasing her and took off into the woods. We were given the awful news over Skype one day, but kept our hopes high that she would find her way back home. As our trip home approached, and no one had seen her, we slowly started giving up hope.

After many dead end phone calls and even one prank one, we were starting to accept the fact that we may have to head back to Japan with one less kitty. But, God works in mysterious ways, and Ellie made her way home today. She was stowed away in a garage 2 doors down from my in-laws! She has been gone 23 days, and looks like she may have had no food the whole time. She had to get a bath when she got here, and outside of her being all skin and bones, and some minor scratches on her back paws, she is no worse for the wear. It is like nothing has changed! She is still her loving self and she seems very happy to be home! And we are VERY happy to have her back!!



Welcome home Ellie!

Hello America! And Happy New Year!

We're back! And it feels so good! A.J. and I got in around 4:15 yesterday afternoon after a 12 hour flight and being awake for 26 hours (neither of us really slept on the plane). So here we are, ready for a wonderful 2 week vacation filled with family, friends and 4 more Christmas's! We are struggling with the time change a bit, seeing as we have been up since 5 AM this morning, but hopefully that will fix itself quickly and we'll be back on track!

We hope that everyone has a Happy New Year! I expect that the blog will be pretty quiet for the next two weeks, but we'll have lots to share when we get back to Japan!

Happy New Year!

Kamakura

On A.J.'s last day off for the Christmas weekend, we decided to head out to Kamakura; home to Daibutsu (Great Buddha) and many other beautiful temples and shrines. It was a gorgeous fall day and the perfect end to the holiday weekend!


Buddha Kitty tells us where to find Great Buddha!


We found him! He stand 40 feet tall without the base underneath him and he weighs 93 tons! We got to go inside of him as well and see how the structure is built. Very cool! Has has survived a number of natural disasters (including earthquakes), but the building that used to house him was destroyed by a tsunami.


I can hold him up!


We also went to a temple. I took almost 70 pictures while I was there! It was just amazing with all of the landscape and such, here are a just a few pics to share!














We also walked down along the coast for awhile. If you look closely in this picture, you can see Mt. Fuji in there. The sky was so light that Fuji-san blends in a little bit.


Beautiful day!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone from Japan! We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday with your family and friends! We had a great day here and are very much looking forward to coming home on Thursday of this week!! We have 4 more Christmas Days scheduled while we are home and lots of other things to keep us busy! Here are a few photos from our Christmas morning!



Our tree on Christmas morning.



I got one...



And AJ too!!! We were very excited!



This made for a funny picture!