A little tour of Menno Village or a morning walk

Sage on the way to the schoolbus stop..a really nice morning walk. His Jiji(grandpa here) usually goes with him when he is here, but when he is not, Kenji and I take turns, it's a nice time to talk and look at nature.

The sign at the entrance to our driveway, new this year, nice huh! Akiko's dad made it.

walking back home after the bus came

stopping to look in the nice little brook

I love these little tree frogs, they are everywhere!

chestnut

tonbo, dragonfly in English, there are many many in the summer/fall. The best are the bright blue or red ones, but they are rarer than the brown ones, they will often land on your hat or arm or wherever. The kids like to catch them



the edge of Menno Village' land

turning the curve to head in to the village

the straight shot home, soybeans on the left

Chinese cabbage coming up on the right side of the road

Almost there!

the chozoko, root cellar that snow is shoveled into in the winter to keep the root veggies for longer

Our house, with packing room/walk in refrigerator attached

The main house where we eat together and Toshi lives, the office is, the part timers live, etc!

Ray and Akiko's families' house

The chicken house.

There is more, but that's all for now!

Rain from the hurricane a couple of weeks ago, that pretty much missed us all but quite a bit of rain and just a little wind

Rain, rain....

And the beautiful rainbow..s, can you see the second one to the right? just barely there? it was a beautiful evening

and the sunset to follow that made Sage ask if this is what heaven will look like mom? the picture doesn't do it justice to be sure.

Saying goodbye for awhile..

Saying goodbye to Ray, Akiko, Kazu, Yohe and Ken...who are now settling down to life in the States. We are glad they made it safely and by the sound of it are enjoying the change and having some good family time. we talked to them the other day and it seems that people are much more accepting of his ideas this time, maybe because of all the unrest in the world and disasters people are looking to different avenues for answers. It sounds as if he will be busy speaking to different groups and writing along with school and Akiko hopes to help with those responsibilities while the boys are in school. They love to do this, so we wish them the best there! Although we'll be glad to have them back of course!

Potato digging

Kenji pulling the potato digger

Kai riding along while driving thru the field picking up potatoes

picking them up!the really small ones we separate in the field and most of them are sold to make potato starch

eating mid-morning snack at the field

helping Toshi dig potatoes

a big furecon(I think this word was made from the English words freight and container?) filling up, they hold maybe a little less than a half -ton, we pick the potatoes up and put them into plastic feed bags and then someone drives the tractor thru the field dumping the bags into these big bags hung from the tractor bucket.They then go into the equivalent of a root cellar, pics later!

Our little camping trip to the beach

Kenji's early morning shots























do you see the faces here??





ahh, if only mom could have slept that well, but do you see a space for her anywhere??



Kai the earliest riser as usual

welcoming the day at the ocean is unparalelled!

Kai

all of us

Lucas' first experience in the ocean and with the tide, it was fun for us all to see his face and his delight, we got to the beach late, after dark, Kenji had already set up the tent, so his first look was waking up and walking down to the water

cousin Megumi and Kai

cousin Manami and Sage



getting ready to do a Japanese kid thing, suika wari, watermelon breaking translated directly. Like a pinata, quite fun, then you can break the watermelon apart with your hands and eat it.

Here he goes!