Moving day

So yesterday we bought a house. Today our stuff arrived from Tokyo. On Wednesday I cried like a baby watching old videos from our church in Tokyo and the closing ceremony of the Olympics showing Tokyo take the torch for 2020. It's hard having your heart in two places but it means we loved well. It also means we may not be here forever because God has given us a vision of the world that reaches beyond our local hood. But if we are that's okay too. Only time can tell. The mix of emotions between excitement and sadness is hard to grasp. So you just keep putting one foot in front of the next and enjoy the ride and story God is writing. Oh, and I am really enjoying the fact that the Americans who work for the Japanese moving company are taking off their shoes while they unload boxes into our brand new home. Why can't everyone take off their shoes when they come inside?

Creeks and trails

There are trails everywhere in Boulder with beautiful scenery. Today we drove five minutes to a nearby trail I run on to have a picnic lunch and play with friends in the creek. My disciplined nature didn't want to stop mid morning through our school day but I am so glad I did. The J man got to play and do something fun rather than roam the apartment while I teach. The big kids had a nice play outside with their friends. We came back with a better attitude and refreshed after spending some time in nature. It was a lot of fun.

WOW Children's Musuem, Lafayette

There is a tiny children's museum in our tiny suburb of Lafayette. The K man had a free entry to it from his summer reading program prizes so we ventured for a visit a couple of weeks ago. It was small but the kids all had fun. We ended up running into a friend at it who invited us over to make homemade pizzas for lunch. So it was a great day. I loved watching the kids play doctor and pretending to be like the old Japanese Doctor we saw back in Tokyo. It was cute. Enjoy the photos.

Scrapbook day August 16, 2016

 This month scrapbook day fell on a Tuesday. After home school in the morning we ventured out to play at a local park with friends. Then we had dinner with our future neighbors and friends from Kentucky. It was a full fun day with a lot of community. We close on our future home this Thursday. We are all so ready to finally be in our own place. The home is beautiful and I think we will really love it once we finally settle, unpack and can rest a bit. My personality wants to get it down right away but my husband reminds me to take our time. We want to make our home warm and inviting and you cannot do that all in one week. We will take a week off from homeschooling to unpack and settle. We are glad we see the finish line. The kids have been troopers. It has not been easy on them but they really are doing well with all the changes. We are crazy about these kids. With that, I will leave you with some recent pictures of them to show you how they are growing and changing. 

Date Night Hike

A few weeks ago we hired a college student at CU to watch the kids and ventured out on a double date with friends. We hiked Mt. Sanitas and then had dinner in downtown Boulder, which is quite happening on Friday nights. It was a lot of fun hiking without the kids. Nobody complained on the way up or asked for gummy bears. :) We had some amazing views and felt like we earned the burger and beer afterwards. It was a great first date in Colorado and we will probably do more similar style dates in the future.

Rocky Mountain National Park

We did our first of hopefully many visits to Rocky Mountain National Park on Saturday. It was beautiful and exceeded our expectations. We will definitely be getting a yearly pass and going back hopefully once a month. It was so huge and we were not quite sure where to go. It was also very crowded with summer being the peak season for visitors to the park. For our first trip there, we did the long drive along Trail Ridge Road. We stopped at the Alpine visitor center at 11,796 feet. It was quite chilly up this high and we were all a bit cold. The road we took is the highest paved road in any national park in the United States. It is typically open from June to some time in October. We brought back our map and have already picked a spot for our visit next month to picnic and let the kids roam around rocks and creeks. 

Mt. Sanitas

On Saturday morning my running partner and I did some cross training and she took me on a hike up Mt. Sanitas, right in Boulder! It was an awesome work out, a beautiful hike, and I am still sore two days later. It was so fun to do a hike without listening to kids complain.:)