Video season begins.

If you chase the link below you can find the daughter's christmas choir performance. I have edited it for watch ability.  It was orginally half an hour of video and it is down to 5 min.  I hope it is bearable.

Video link.

Great Room Renovation.

Great Room Renovation.:

3D model by Dunnetsan Hopefully you have a chance to down load Sketch up and then take a walk through our latest renovation evolution. We are looking for opinions.  Click on the link at the top and it will take you to the google site where you can download it.  Please and thank you.

Washington Week

So we spent a week in Washington visiting my older sister and her husband recently.  It rocked.  They are living in Yakima which is actually closer to our new house than Vancouver.  Plus it has cheap shopping and gas.  Lots and lots of pluses to visiting. 

They are a short walk from tonnes of stuff and they get good weather.  Definitely an outdoor paradise.

You will notice the youngest is just freshly casted here.  In reflection it is so nice to have him back to his old self.  We left that foam soccer ball down there.  The house had tonnes of good toys and the children had an awesome time.  With the food and company and pets we all had a good time.  Plus they had enough rooms that the kids could sleep separately from their parents.  That was amazing. 

 Unfortunately they have weird gravity down there and my son couldn't seem to stay the right way up.

I am just realising now that we didn't get the dogs and Mia in the big group shot.  Major faux pas.  We will have to remedy that next time we are down.

Not gonna last forever.

So as long as the listing stays up here is the house we are in the process of buying.  Should be an interesting few weeks as the process roles along.  I don't think the link will be up forever but I also don't imagine I will ever come back and fix the link.  The Mrs and I are deep in the thinking process of some serious renovation ideas.  So this blog may evolve into a renovating blog.  Or maybe we will start a new blog.  Who knows.  Maybe gardeneatlive has run its course.  I have definitely lost the thread of this blog over the last year.  So we shall see.

Anyways, thanks for reading as always.  Stay tuned for more news.

Love out.

The Last Days.

Well this is a little tardy but nevertheless here is the last days of our stay in Japan.  With the kids both not attending school we had some time to go out and do some day tripping.  One such day has us at a museum of war.  Kind of  a dark place.  Some nice gardens though.

Just so happens it was Cinco de Mayo.  We didn't take any pictures of the war memorabilia or the life size diaramas depicting war in all its gruesomeness.  The kids were thoroughly impressed by it, at some points they were actually scared.  Nice work parents.

 Three kilometers back from the War museum was another temple power spot.  So we stopped in, walked the stairs, made the offering and rang the bell.  We all made a guess as to how many steps there were.  The daughter was the closest.  The wife said she was fooled by a false landing. 

After the temple we stopped for a snack and then tried to find the onramp to the freeway.  The last month or so in Japan was marred by some extraordinarily bad luck or poor decision making in my driving.  So many back tracks it was insane.

Another day trip involved using the tickets to the flower festival we had purchased.  This was supposed to be a trip to take with my mom and her hubby when they came to Japan.  However, with the tsunami and earthquake happening two days before they were supposed to arrive the trip never happened.  But we decided to soldier on and see the festival any way.  Within half an hour of arriving it started to rain.  We ate our bento lunch under cover and then put on some rain capes and tried to take a look around. 



Within the hour we were wet and defeated and headed back home, once again making some major long cuts in an effort to save time and money (unsuccessful on both accounts). 

And with that our time was up.  We enjoyed the last couple of days hanging out with family and eating home cooked food.  Then it was off to the airport.  Some teary farewells and a grueling 17 hours later and we arrived in Vancouver at the same time and on the same day that we left.  It is nice to hear English all around but we really miss our Japanese family.  We hope to be back there soon.  If not to live then at least on an extended vacation.

Entertaining Guests.

They were both entertaining and entertained.  It was a good three days.

We had some friends from Niigata come and visit us this last weekend.  It was a Kagoshima whirlwind.  The day they arrived we also had two last days of school, one farewell party and one school viewing day.  So we divided and conquered.  Miraculously we all managed to get to the same hotel in the Kag at the same time.  We strolled through town and had dinner at an Izakaya.  Everyone was tired so we had an early night. 

The next morning we started with the main attraction, Sakurajima, the volcano. 

The ferry ride was a little cool but the view was super cool so that kind of made up for it.  I managed to make a wrong guess during one portion of our drive and we had to back track to get to our second destination.  This was the basic theme of the trip.

At the dinosaur park the daughter climbed this five meter t-rex to prove she could even though I said she shouldn't.  While sliding back down she got some painful fibre glass burns.  Yes I mentioned to her that I told her so.  So hard not to.

After the dinosaur park we hit up the free foot spa.  We had passed well into the lunch hour so the kids got pop to tide them over.  For lunch we headed back to kagoshima city and had black pig pork cutlets at pretty up scale place.  They were good but I think we all felt a little under dressed.

 We finished with the requisite picture with Saigo Takamori.  The big man of Kagoshima. That night they came back with us to stay in Ijuin.  It was a crowded house but we all made do and had a good time.  I made chili and pizza.  The mrs. contributed veggies and dip.  There was lots of beer.

The next morning we didn't rush out the door.  We took our time over breakfast and then we headed south for the requisite visit to the sand baths.  The daughter went in with the guests while I played with the boys at the beach and the Mrs. took some pictures.  However, she only took that one with ours.

 We made it back earlyish and had a great dinner of Kagoshima's traditional foods.  This of course included lots of beer.

 The last day we went and visited Miyama, a local pottery village.  If you have been following that is where the kids and I made our pottery.  We toured the grounds of a historic pottery making site.  Then one of our guests bought some shochu cups.  The original potters came to Japan from Korea so it was neat to see the Korean influences. 

After a great ramen lunch where the daughter finally got some gyoza (she was twice denied only earlier restaurant trips) we headed for the airport.

Our guests did some last minute omiyage shopping and then we said our farewells.  They made it back to Niigata safely. 

It was a busy busy four days but it was good to see them.

Love out.

Hello, Goodbye.

We are fully into the farewell season here.  Last Saturday we got together with some of the daughters classmates and their families.  Barbecue in the park.  It was great.  One of the families we have basically been trying to have a get together with for the last 8 months.  So it was nice to finally get together.  But a little disappointing that it took this long.  It turns out that the are big into camping.  Good to know for any return visits.  The food was good.  The weather was a little cold.  The kids had a great time.  It was one of those settings where they would run off and play at the park and then twenty minutes later a couple of them would run back for some food.  Then take off again.  This is the kind of family fun I have always dreamed off.  The picnic in the park.  A bunch of families, open ended eating and drinking and no one wants to go home at the end.  Loving my life right now.  Can't believe there are only two weeks left.  Dreaming about packing these days.  Sigh.

Love out.