Summer Collection

sunflower road,now gone, but beautiful while here

shaved ice tongue:)

kuwagata/stag beetles galore Kenji and the boys went hunting with their uncle, we let them all go after a few weeks...

we've had lots of visitors this summer, here are Ray and Elizabeth, the boys enjoyed their company for a few days

Menno Village overnight camping trip to the beach-Orie-san and Toshi preparing our veggies to grill for supper

getting wet, ecstatic kids!

grilling burgers

lucas and Sayumi(summer help)

Sayumi and Lucas playing cards with Koko and Orie-san

Lucas loves the "moving ocean" as he calls it in Japanese

Kai collecting shells

Sage and Kazu trying to show me fish in the bag

inside the bag, there is some kind of magical reflecting effect here I can't figure out no matter how much I look at the picture! oops it was a hermit crab not a fish!

the meager catch:)

Toshi and Lucas drawing "wash-off" pictures in the sand, they were at it for a long time

Sage dancing in his second festival this summer

that's him-front right

getting tomatoes ready to can over summer break with Akiko and Kazu, Yohei and Ken-everyone had a job, Ken and Kai are washing the tomatoes, Sage is tending the fire-very proudly to be sure!

this is about a month ago, corn, and a type of flowering pole bean behind

there was a day when all the kids carried sunflowers around for some reason!

Kai and Rita too

another view, the flowers are thanks to Orie-san who has a dream to have a flower farm/shop someday

transplanting greens with daddy and Toshi

all of us from the village attended an event Toshi performed in, she does an okinawan traditional dance called eisa. that's her on the left with the big drum

playing in the fountain at the same event, waiting for Toshi's group

riding the subway in Sapporo

lunchtime at the Plum House, the community gathering house

this time kabuto/rhinoceros beetles the boys hatched from the grub stage(they were given to them on children's day in May and took several months to hatch). We have two males and a female so we may have babies eventually!

Kai's Bday

 
I wanted this!
 
Birthday Brownies(can you see my attempt at rocket racers in the sugar on top-only my kids could tell!), playing at the park
 
with Ken and Sage on the old train at the park-there were 9 kids for the picnic

Aunt Sayoko and cousins Nanami and Hikari 

Uncle Shunsuke with a captive audience!

Kai is 5!

Can you believe it, Kai is 5 years old! It's hard to imagine that time has gone by so fast. He's quite the energetic kid, loves to play with his friends. Loves to hear books read, loves us to be close, loves superheroes:, loves rockets, spaceships, jets, all that kind of stuff, and loves to look at all of our pics and videos on the computer, as well as anything else he likes that he's figured out how to find on there(ever heard of rocket racers?), as long as we'll let him! He likes to build things with just about anything, especially legoes and K'nex, and usually talks about how something he made is the "strongest", the "coolest" etc. He's had a tough year health-wise with asthma and pneumonia and colds, allergies etc. This intensified his need to have all of us close I think, he is the one that makes sure noone lags behind when we are out. He doesn't express things he feels with words as much as his older brother, choosing to be more physical in acting them out probably! He still has a very ornery grin! He has a good deductive head on his shoulders, surprising us with the conclusions he comes to, or the things he's learned from observing without asking any questions, he takes after his dad in that sense! He's a really good helper when he gets into it, he works hard and sticks with it. He's very interested in the new baby, although seemed to work through some fears about it being safe and being okay. He is a champion at getting dirty in seconds-from head to toe, did I mention that before?:)He's good at climbing trees, catching frogs and holding scary looking bugs too...did you know these were skills?? Sage asks him to pick their bugs up sometimes, he knows his limits!


Somehow his birthday seemed like a really long day, not in a bad sense this time, but in a one-party-after-another sense. Even Sage said, this day was so long, and so fun! Very exciting for Kai, the "best birthday I've had in my whole life" he said. We first had a picnic lunch at a local park with all the kids that either live or come to the farm often, and a few cousins who live close. They were all really good and had a great time together. We ate ice cream after lunch, Kai's favorite food-vanilla that would be! Then after returning home and playing all afternoon outside, all who were at the farm that evening ate together and we had brownies and candles to blow out. Then the boys did a few fireworks and then, getting ready for bed were surprised by aunt Sayoko and Uncle Shunsuke and cousins Nanami and Hikari. They drove up with their lights off and set off a bunch of pretty big, but silent, fireworks outside the bedroom window, and then came in with a half a melon with candles on it! Then Uncle Shunsuke had to stay and help Kai put together one of his presents, he's a really fun uncle and Aunt Sayoko had to drag him away when his kids got sleepy:)...Kai went to sleep satisfied and with a smile on his face, he has alot of people who love him!

Summer

Had you given up hope of any new postings on here?? I almost had,but today I decided to jump in and post, although I've almost forgotten how. No time like the present. So a few pictures of summer to get me back in?? This is Sage's last week of summer vacation, he gets a month. He's not ready to go back yet....all of the kids around here have had so much fun together!


This collage is of a local summer festival. Kenji got the idea of painting Akiko and I's bellies to look like watermelon and his head to match. The purple tape around his head is what we wrap our veggies in:). He shaved his head right before. Lucas and Kai got in on the act too and Kenji and Kai borrowed their watermelon "jinbei"(traditional summer festival wear) from Ray and Akiko's family. We were one of 9 costume entries and we got 5th place, the last place that got a cash prize! We had a good time. Sage danced a traditional "rice-planting" dance with school kids, a group of older Japanese men and women teach and dress them up. He looks so cute and little in the costume. The girl in glasses behind him in one picture is a grade or two ahead of him but adores him and always takes him under her wing, that night she bought him some things at the festival even...:). He enjoyed the dance alot, he enjoys anything done with friends pretty much! Lucas is holding the bush he won in the drawing at the end of the night, the only one of us who won something. They give wooden number tags to everyone who participates in the dance of the festival and then they do drawings of bunches of donated stuff. Lucas was proud! Kai wanted to take pictures all night, I think the one of Toshi he took:).

So what are we busy with right now? Well, I'm in my 34th week of pregnancy now, how time flies! We've had quite a bit of hot and humid weather here lately and I'm feeling it...my second pregnancy without air conditioning...but at least in Hokkaido the nights almost always get cooler and there's a breeze most of the time, if I could just get outside into it! I've felt very good this last half of the pregnancy. My midwife is always telling me to get out in the dirt and work..I try! But I usually end up packing veggies for delivery, other odds and ends, or helping in the kitchen-we are feeding lots of people these days. All the kids are home on vacation plus we are having lots of visitors this year. Our lunch crowd has been running in the high teens every day. The farm work is centered on harvesting, harvesting, harvesting!,packing things for delivery to our CSA members and daily packing and delivering to the three farmer's markets we are selling things through right now-we don't have to be there, but we have to deliver and pick up leftovers. Oh and lots and lots of weeding and right now as it's dry, lots of watering.
We are very busy eating lots of yummy veggies, tomatoes every meal almost, cucumbers, eggplant, okra, peppers, snap peas, japanese turnips, and soon to come-corn.Sage especially is in heaven, he's our biggest veggie lover of the three, but they all eat them well. Sage discovered that he likes roasted eggplant the other day and so I've made that the last two nights for him. Today for afternoon snack we went out and picked handfuls of blueberries and raspberries, very sweet! The neighbor fruit farmer sold us a bunch of plums very cheap so we've all been snacking on them from the cooler during the day. It's not uncommon to see the boys with a cucumber or a tomato or handful of mini-tomatoes in hand outside while they play. They've all enjoyed the steady stream of visitors we've had this summer, someone new to show around, play with, etc. Today we had a camera crew come and spend the day, we have a journalist that will be spending extended time over a year as she writes a book about organic farming. Aki and Ray's boys went to their grandma and grandpa's for several days and our boys were sad, so they hung out with the crew all afternoon, very nice guys. Kai was very fascinated with the cameraman's cameras and convinced him to show him how to use one and he told me he got to take lots of pictures, he was thrilled! I think he was in alot too, with his signature dirty face, well, that would be dirt from head to toe, look! I can't let them even come in the house in the evening, they go straight to the door to our shower/tub room which opens out to our greenhouse, handy, huh! At least the three of them can get themselves clean usually! Well, I'll post more pics afterwards, there are plenty to choose from....:) Hope you're all doing well and you'll find this post eventually:)!