Deep thought number one.........

So in my deep thinking I've realized a few things.
I'll share one for today...........


I've got a very different personality than a lot of people.  A couple of people have said I'm intimidating and I don't mind that, but I've been thinking what makes an intimidating personality to some?
Most people don't like conflict, I get that.
I don't mind it, if it's something I feeling strongly about.
I've noticed that people like to complain about it but not actually DO anything about it. People are mostly docile people and I guess I'm not always.
Now don't get me wrong, I complain to Dru and mates about things and mostly it gets sorted, but every now and then I go to the source and get it sorted out.
If I feel strongly about something I'll go to the source and say something.
I guess people don't understand that? Or are afraid to do that? Or don't need to? Maybe they like the complaining but not the conflict? But it makes me different.
I've had comments about 'Be nice to me Melissa' when given a leadership role, like I'm gonna be mean?
It's fine but I've been thinking you know.
Maybe people don't like honesty? Maybe it's the WAY I give honesty? I know I have a feisty attitude that tends to come out.
But I'm also super chill as well and go with the flow kinda girl. Just cause I'm passionate about some things, does that make me intimidating?
It's just with things I feel strongly about. Most things I don't. But when I do, you'll hear about it.
 I dunno?
I think that's where people get the wrong idea that I'll be a good leader from, because I stick up for myself and others.
A lot of my life, people sit back and let me do the fighting for them and us and it's gotten me in trouble. I mean why make a conflict if you can sit back and watch someone else do it right, then they take the hit? Which I'm mostly fine with.
I like it though, being honest. It's like purging things and getting things sorted and done. It doesn't sit and fester you know. For me, it's healthy.
I want people to know they can share things with me even if it's different from what I believe.
I'd like to think I do a good job of that since I have a variety of close mates who believe differently than I do in many ways, yet they still know I love them.
I dunno man.
In my new teaching calling at church I want an open and honest discussion, but for that to happen, people need to feel safe and that if they say something that others or I don't believe, they can do that and it's ok.
So I've been thinking how to get that environment and I can't be intimidating you know? I have to be the kinda person people can feel safe around. So that's why I've been thinking how to accomplish all of this.
It's still a work in progress.

This week in the Nakaya' household

So I had to get a picture of this. This is Emiko writing about her weekend away. Pretty cute right? There's the cabin and all the 4 wheelers, or all of our cars parked at the front with a couple of stars in the sky. I love her attempts at writing too. She's doing great.

So here's the latest updates of our lives. The first video is the kids making room on the swings for their hammocks. They wanted to sleep out there and lucky they didn't due to the fact that it snowed that night which brings me to our next video.
Here's the snow and Dru using our faithful snowblower that hasn't had a chance to show itself off. So glad we have it. Doing the driveway and footpath was way easier especially considering I do the neighbours footpaths as well. I'm glad we have it and the snow is just beautiful. No mountain biking though which is sad.
Then the next video is me trying to convince all my mates to listen to six60 cause I'm loving them at the moment man. This song is one of my favs at the moment. More about that in a second.
The last video is Takeshi, Emiko and I going out to dinner together while Dad, Masaru and Yuki go snowboarding. It was an expensive endeavor but we had a lot of fun with some good food. I don't think my salad was worth $14 but it was very good and the kids food was really good too.

Ok so this is six60. They're a local NZ musical group who write some pretty awesome stuff. They were Uni mates in Otago apparently that decided to do something together and it worked.
Their music speaks to me right now and I need the release.
Their music makes me feel good, that's the only way I can explain it.
Maybe it's because I'm not home in NZ and it's a little bit of NZ I can have in my home? I dunno. It's just good music man and I'm grateful for it.
They say that you only listen to music up till you're around 30 and then you hardly add anymore music to your collection cause you like what you like. I'm glad Bevin and Dior gave us this CD so our family could enjoy these guys.
I hope they come to USA so we can all go as a family and see them in real life.
That would be a total bucketlist for our family for sure, along with all going to Hawaii.
Maybe we can see them in Hawaii..........mind..........BLOWN!!!!
I can't tell people enough to listen to these guys.
Maybe it's just me? But there's a lot of people who like them so I'm not alone.
I want them to get huge so they can write more music.

So Dru took Masaru and Yuki up snowboarding. It was freezing like 9 degrees fahrenheit. Masaru took off to do the bigger riding while Dru's snowboard buckles broke, leaving him to light sledding while he taught Yuki. I don't think it was a big deal because he couldn't have left Yuki anyway you know. He said she didn't pick it up as quickly as Masaru but was feeling better about it by the end of the night.
Dru's a really good teacher so the kids are lucky man.
I'm fine being home. I have no interest learning how. I do too much damage to my body as is,  let alone add another sport I could potentially love you know.
No thanks. 



Dru looks like an old man with a grey beard. Still handsome, so that's good.



Frozen solid. So gross looking hahaha

Here's Yuki snowboarding.
I think she looks awesome man.
She had a lot of fun.
I stayed home and helped my mate out with her kids and sister. We just stayed home and hung out together.

I'm doing a lot of deep reflecting over the last week and it's a little overwhelming. It's good for me though, so Dru and I can figure out what's important and what our goals and plans are.
I love Dru man. We're best friends and I'm so glad to have him at my side to talk to.
I know some don't have this, so I will always be grateful for what I have, always.
He's a good man, the best man for me and every day that goes by I'm reminded of this. My heart and soul are both intertwined with his and it feels amazing. He's everything to me.
That's no the deep reflecting, that's just me being grateful.
The deep reflecting can be for another post. I better go do something around this house.

Wyoming Ranch trip

So we headed to the Wyoming Ranch Friday lunch time with Brooke and her family. We didn't make it to the ranch house until around 6 and only Dru's father was there. Shortly afterwards, however, Kristin and her family as well as Shauna and the twins arrived and we got dinner started.
We hung out and watched the olympic's all night. The kids were happy to see their cuzzies and be together.
We got sleeping arrangements all sorted and we ended up in the upstairs room, this time with 5 kids in our room, two which weren't ours. Takeshi ended up sleeping downstairs with his cuzzie Zeke. It worked out great. There was no snoring and everyone was happy.

Saturday we decided to take Dru up on his offer and go have a tour of the Simplot mine right by the ranch.
They got 4 vehicles and took us around to what they could on a Saturday morning.
It was kinda boring until we saw the BIG MACHINES and then it's wasn't so boring after all.
I guess they mine phosphate and it goes down a pipe to Pocatello in some special way. It's pretty amazing.


This huge machine is used to pick up dirt and put it in the massive dump trucks. It scoops it with the front part then the back part comes apart and that's how it dumps it into the truck. It was cool to see it working.

Just one operator per machine.




This machine picks up the dirt and puts it in the dump truck as well but doesn't have the fancy drop like the other one does. But it DOES have this fancy chain for it's tires.



We put the kids out there for some perspective. If you got out of the car you had to be wearing a hardhat as well as safety glasses. Here's Masaru and Emiko showing you some safety wearing.

Yuki and Kate.



The twin boys, Seth and Tate.

Then Dru and I decided to get out there and get some perspective.

These dump trucks were massive and had the weight of their load on the side of the truck. It was fun to watch them go passed and see how much weight they had in them. They don't wanna go too much over 155 or it makes them go super slow.
They move out pretty fast. Faster than what I thought.




Some of the cuzzies by the big truck.





This is a massive 'car wash' for the dump trucks. It was pretty cool to watch them taking a 'bath'.











It was a good thing to see and I'm grateful Dru got us the tour we got and the men took their time to show us around.
They said if we could come at a time when they're blowing up the holes to mine, that that's pretty fun to watch as well.
Can you imagine seeing that? That'd be awesome.
The guy in our car said he used to help out with the blowing up part but then decided to move on to other parts due to the danger side of it all.
It was pretty awesome.

We then hung out and did our thing.
The kids played in the snow with the 4 wheelers and Razors the rest of the day.
We all did a combination of reading, quilting, knitting, yoga, cooking, eating, watching the olympics  and napping.
It was great.


Kate got this kit from Brooke for her birthday and so went around painting on everyone's hands all weekend. I think her hand started getting sore from all of the dedication to the artwork.
Here's what she did on my hand.
It turned out beautiful.

So you have this clay stuff on your hand for a while, then you take it off and it dye's your hand underneath for a while.



Mine got darker the next day and it's still on my hand. I love it.

Here's some pic's of Masaru, Kate, Seth and Tate messing around with one of their phones.

These guys had a blast this weekend and are such good mates. It was nice watching them interact with each other.
I'm glad they have each other.








We also celebrated Masaru and Emiko's birthday's as a family, while we were up there. It's easier that way and fun for the kids to get an early birthday surprise.



Emiko got socks, money a doll and a guitar.
Masaru got money, which is exactly what he wanted.
I'm always amazed at how kind Dru's family are to my kids for their birthday's, and grateful. The kids were happy.
Grandma brought up a cake for the kids which was super nice of her.

Here's his cards.

From Grandma

Auntie Brooke always has funny cards.



The twins card.

And check out the cute things they said to Masaru. So heartfelt. I love it. I'm sure we have Auntie Leslie to thank for the cool card though.



Ella wrote the card to the cuzzies and Kate did their names nicely on the front envelope, which I don't have a picture of.



Emikoko's cards.





I don't know where her other cards got put, but she was a happy camper.

Then that night we sorted out our family trip and what we wanted to do while on the trip. It was a little while trying to organize it. Dru and Kristin did most of it while we all put our 2c worth in. It all worked out in the end though and it's super nice to have it all done.

Another night of yoga and olympic watching and bed.

Sunday was much of the same deal as Saturday. Playing, relaxing and fun.
Monday we packed up, cleaned up and headed out.
It always takes us FOREVER to get home and I HATE getting home late. So I was ontop of the kids and Dru to leave.
I told Dru the night before I wanted to leave by noon. We got on the road around 1pm which wasn't too bad.
We stopped for dinner though and didn't get home till 8pm!!!
So late man, and then the kids wanna stretch and unpack and eat a little and don't get in bed till 9pm which is late for a school night.
That's the one thing I don't like about the ranch is it's SO FAR AWAY.
Oh well.
It was a great time.

I finished off my pillow for myself.
It's just my second project I've done in 8 years for myself and I love it.

Here it is on the couch with it's buddies and my other knitting project I did for myself. I guess I like pillow's? My next project for myself will be a cardigan.

I learned how to seam better as you can see here.

The seaming on the bottom turned out great as well and I'm way pumped about it.

It was a nice end to a great weekend.
I'm always a little stressed on the day we have to leave and the drive home is SO BORING, but these are little complaints for the wonderful time it was with Dru's family.
Great weekend.

Valentines

So Yuki had been working on her Valentines box for a couple of weeks. She'd come with the idea to do Haku from Spirited Away and wanted it to be epic.
Again, like true me form, I'm like, you'll have to talk to your father, he's the builder.
So Dru and Yuki figured it out. Dru did the basick form and Yuki did everything else and did a great job.
Here's a picture of the dragon she was going for.

She came home from school and said she'd won the 'most creative' and one other category that the class had all voted on. She felt bad for her friend so gave one of her prizes to her which was super nice of her.
She was so happy with how it turned out and I'm glad Dru helped her. I just don't see the big deal for one day of Valentines. Seems like a lot of effort man. But lucky there's Dru who 'gets it' I guess.
I'm glad she was super happy. She deserves it.

I got up at 5am to work out with Jobecka and she said "Happy Valentines Day" and I didn't even realize it was Valentines Day. So I'm glad she reminded me. So I came home and made piklets for the kids and did one each in a heart shape. It was easy and meant something you know, to get into the 'spirit'. I like to keep it simple.
We'd gotten all of their Valentines done for $8 weeks ago and I told them to look after them in their room until it was time to take them.
Here's what we came up with.

Cheap, not candy and effective. I like it and owe it all to pinterest. Thanks pinterest. With three kids in school and 24 each in their classes I have to get creative so as not to break the bank. I also like ones where you don't have to write the kids name, just yours. Lazy at heart people.

Emiko had a playdate with her mate Claire and I gave them M&M's but they had to do pictures with them first. Here's what they came up with.



Emiko said this was the biggest smiley face ever. Hahahahaha I love it.

The flower from sis.

I got the kids some small $1 chocolates and made them each a note of why I loved them. They seemed happy with that, which is great. I don't think kids needs many things, they just need to know they're loved and given hugs and notes sometimes.
I'm bad at this, so I was happy to do it for them.
Yuki returned the favour by giving this to me.
Super sweet.

Can I tell you that I LOVE that she sees me as this. "Made of muscles, and strong" I love this and hope she remembers that over her outward beauty. One can hope right?

Very thoughtful.



Dru came home from work with a poem, flowers and chocolates. I laughed and told him it's not like him to conform. He laughed too and said "I know, I just got suckered into it all this year"
He figured this flower would be better than real flowers cause this little orchid would last longer you know.
I got him a funny card and a beard tool. I hope it works for him.
He went to Young Men's for the first time since he got called on Sunday and seems to have a good attitude about it.
We've swapped roles essentially and now he's gone on Wednesday nights and has meetings on Sunday's. At least we had a couple of months worth of Wednesday's together until he was called into the youth programme.
He's the first counselor and so it's not as bad as being the president, so that's at least something.
I'm glad he's in with Masaru cause that's the goal right?
I hope that he'll be in there for a while and then I'll get a chance to be back in with Yuki when she's in at some stage.
We watched the olympics together and had a good time.
I made soup and it was a busy but good day.