Video's, soccer and new floor

The other week we received mail from Llewellyn and Ashaan with pictures for the kids from their kids. We loved it.
It's always nice getting snail mail that's for sure.



Here's Yuki with her soccer team. She's been with these girls for a while now, maybe three years? They've grown into an unstoppable team and work really well together.
She doesn't have play dates with any of them really, but when it comes to soccer they're together as one team.
 Yuki is done with soccer this season, and for whatever reason, it's super sad to me. Think what you like with me being bias, but if you've seen Yuki play you know she's got talent. Yet we're moving onto other things. She wants to try track and basketball in her 5th grade year and I'm all for it. I loved basketball.
So we're saying goodbye to soccer and I can't believe I'm taking a perfectly talented, has potential to be great,  girl, out of a sport she's so good at. And she is TOTALLY FINE WITH IT, so I should be too, logically. It makes sense for our family. The next step up is more money and more time but we told Yuki if she wanted to go to the next level we'd do it. She said no. She doesn't wanna practice more or have more games. She's a once a week kinda girl I guess and likes her free time.
So that's that then.
We said goodbye to soccer for Masaru but I was ok with it because he was going nowhere in that sport anyway and has moved onto other things he loves.
I played an array of different sports when I was younger and loved it and probably wouldn't wanna be boxed into one sport either. But with Yuki it's been harder for me due to her talent in this sport. So I need to work it out. It's been so fun watching her over the years. She amazes me.
So it is what it is. End of an era for another child in soccer.
Crazy aye.






Yuki and I making cookies.

Yuki and this super funny slowmo video

Yuki had a showing of her research project which Dru and I both went to. Her mate, Harper, did her one on the white kiwi so we let her borrow some of our stuff.
It was a great time.



For whatever reason, Yuki did the maned wolf. We have one in the local Boise Zoo. She worked hard on it and I'm proud of her finished product.

It was interesting to see the different boards and what the kids came up with. Yuki told me that hers was one of the best boards but when I got there there were lots of boards that were great. A lot of kids used glitter and Yuki didn't. She's not a glitter girl and so figured the ones with glitter on it didn't look as good, therefore she figured her's was better because it was neat, simple and to the point. She cracks me up man.



She's had a really good time with Mrs. Griffin this year and I'm really grateful to her for being such a wonderful teacher to Yuki. It's been the perfect setting for her.
Yuki approached me yesterday and told me she just found out that her teacher used to be married to a woman and they share custody with their son Zeke and that Zeke was born from artificial insemination. Interesting right? Her teacher has kept it from them the whole year and must've figured to finally let her class know. They always figured Zeke was going to his father's place on the weekends and Mrs. Griffin kept it that way until yesterday I guess. It didn't even phase Yuki. Times are changing that's for sure.


I caught the kids hiding under the trampoline the other week and snapped a couple of videos. They were hiding from the rain but then, I guess, decided to embrace it.



Then Emiko got some colours for her hair and we put them in. They turned out good. She also got some for her friends birthday.



Then for the first time in a while I'm without a dishwasher because we're re-doing the floor in our kitchen.
Dru started ripping out the floor and then removed the dishwasher. I figured he'd put it back in for me every night then promptly told me to stop being silly, I was handwashing for the remainder of the time. So I had a small pity party and now have used it as a time where I can listen to podcasts and general conference.
I'll get up in the mornings and wash the dishes and listen to things then set off with the rest of my day. I actually really like it. You know my mother always told me doing the dishes was therapeutic for her. I always thought she was crazy, but turns out that I can totally see that now. When I'm at the kitchen I get to stare outside and just do something mundane so I can focus my mind on other things. Doing the dishes forces you to stop and stand still for X amount of time, which is something I don't do much.
I'd like to say that I'll keep doing them even if the dishwasher is re-installed, but I won't. I'll have to figure out how to get my zen time in other ways. The dishwasher is too convenient.


Here's Dru's progress on the tile. It's been hard work and full of unseen things that he's had to make changes for. But that's what house jobs are right? More time and more money than you first thought.
I didn't realize there were so many steps to tiling. It's crazy man. He ripped everything up and ripped the baseboards out, then the floor wasn't strong enough so put plywood over it, then this mesh metal stuff, then mud, then measuring cause we're doing diamond and THEN and only THEN can you start tiling.
Talk about tedious man.
Thank goodness for Dru's A type personality. I would've just halfpied it and figured something else out. That guy never takes shortcuts though and it pays off in the end.



I'm excited for it to be all over, as I'm over it, but I'm being patient and quiet cause I know Dru is doing the best he can, so I'm doing the best I can.
It'll be so great once it's all done and this is totally what I wanted. I hated that linoleum and wanted tile from the beginning. Now I understand why it took Dru 2.5 years to commit to me to doing it.
So we're without an oven as well, as of a few days ago.
Dru has set up the camp chef and I have the crocpot. We're making it work amongst the life chaos of spring sports as well. We should've done it before spring sports started but it was cold and wet as well with snow still and so it is what it is.
We're in it deep now and there's no turning back.
I'm hoping to have my kitchen back Monday, but realize that could not be the case.
I'm grateful Dru can do things like this so it saves us a bunch of money.
When we were choosing the tile I figured I'd be fine with whatever tile as long as it wasn't linoleum. But then we looked at some 50c tile and I quickly realized that I couldn't choose just whatever. There's some pretty ugly tile out there. But there's also beautiful tile as well that is SO EXPENSIVE. So we settled on this $1 tile and got the best of both worlds, something I can live with for the next few years until we completely re-do our kitchen, and cheap.
Stay tuned, hopefully this'll all be done in the next few days.

Katie comes to town

So for the first time ever, my mate Katie came into town with all her kids. Katie doesn't like to drive on the motorway and so when she found out her friend was coming up to Boise to visit her sister, she sorted out a way to have her mate drive her car then meet her sister at my place once they arrived.
It all worked out wonderfully and I was so happy when Katie gave me the news that she was going to come up this weekend.
She came up on Thursday then headed out Sunday morning. It wasn't long enough, but at least we got some time together.
She brought some coco samoa and made it for us every night. I loved it. My friends in Invercargill, who are Samoan, would make this drink for me when I was a kid. I loved it then and it was awesome to drink it every night.
It must be an acquired taste and everyone else were just taking sips and not whole cup fulls like Katie and I hahahaha
 

The kids all took to each other really well. They all loved playing together in the back yard.
Katie has three kids. One is Masaru's age (Hannah) and the middle one is roughly Takeshi's age (Gabriel) and the youngest one is younger than Emiko (Joshua).
It worked out really well. Between the swings, trampoline, bike track and grass, these kids had a blast together.




Here's Takeshi getting Gabriel out on the track doing some jumps. Gabriel was impressive with his willingness to try. I love it.



We had dinner and hung out then put everyone in bed since my kids had school the next day. Katie's children were on spring break, so it was party time for them.
The boys slept together downstairs, so it was awesome. We had to talk to them about talking, which I'm sure was mostly Takeshi since that dude is a talking from way back.

The next day we sent the kids to school and I played board games with some of the kids who were awake.



Then once everyone was up and dressed and where they should be, we headed out to the Boise Zoo.




We all had a great time. The animals were mostly around and let us interact with them.

I made sure all of my kids were at school before we headed out.



I couldn't stop staring at the ant eater. It's a weird looking animal.



Hahahaha everyone gets their picture in these ears but I dunno if everyone is this cute!!



















It was a great way to spend the afternoon.
We were going to do some shopping but we were having too much fun and needed to get home to have fun with the kids once they got home from school.

The kids decided to get out the bow and arrows and do some serious playing.



They continued to play while we made them dinner. Then we all decided to watch a movie together. I forget which movie we watched though, oh yeah, we watched the Greatest Showman. Everyone loved it and we had a great night together singing and loving the movie.
Then the kids went to bed and Katie and I stayed up late talking just like the night before.



We woke up and played a board game together before the chaos began.


We then had the morning of chaos as we juggled piano and soccer, birthday parties and play time together. It was the first Saturday of soccer and we were all over the show. I felt bad for Katie but she didn't mind one bit.
Here's Emiko playing her first game.



She did a great job her first game and score time after time. The field is small and the competition pretty small too. She looks good though, so I'll be interested to see if she likes it. She loved it today, so we'll see.


This is what Katie mostly saw, was me running around in the car with everything that needed to be done. She was a trooper.
Takeshi's game got canceled and he was really upset. I felt bad for him as the weather was just fine and there was no need for it to be canceled. So I tried to cheer him up.

Katie and I found a window of time and went shopping for some food we needed for dinner that night. I had planned on making homemade pizza's. We headed out and did a shop then came home and started.

Celebrating with the good stuff.

Katie made an amazing salad for all of us and we got the pizza's done one by one.




This was the basil tomato pizza.
We had pepporoni, basil tomato, BBQ chicken and hawaiian. They were all amazing.

Most of it got eaten and the kids kept playing outside.

We then came in and watched 'Hunt for the Wilderpeople' and had a blast.






Then it was time to go to bed for one last sleepover and then they headed out super early the next morning.
Katie had to wake me up to say goodbye. I felt bad.
I was smashed though.
Our family had such a good time with Katies'. The kids got along and we had fun and it was just wonderful.
I'm really grateful for Katie making the effort of coming all this way and having a big catch up with her as well as getting to be with her children for a long amount of time. It's the only way to do it.
Thanks Katie xxx

Family life

So the other week I got this note left on the kiwibus. What's funny is that Dru found it and showed it to me. I asked him why he got that note and maybe he should drive a little better around the place. He told me that it was already there when he used the car, so it was actually ME who'd gotten the note left on the car hahahahaha
He was asking me what I did and I thought and thought and couldn't come up with anything.
I'd be interested and more than willing to talk to this person and know what I did that was so crazy. I feel like I'm a pretty responsible driver so it'd be fascinating to me to have information given.
This is why passive aggressive people don't sit right with me. If we have problems we should either A) work it out ourselves on the inside OR B) try to work it out with the person we're upset with.
But for whatever reason passive aggressive people have a C  and D which is C) talk about it behind this person's back and cause gossiping with others and take forever to get over it cause we don't wanna cause conflict D) write anonymous notes so that we can get our point across but not have to get a backbone and face a person with what our concerns are because for whatever reason we're scared and don't wanna resolve concerns, we'd rather throw a stone and run and hide.
Now I'm not perfect, but I consider myself a reasonable person.
I wish this person had approached me with some rational, that's the real way they could've changed my supposedly crazy diving habits.
But instead, all this person has done is be the brunt of a joke due to this being funny.
I'm sure that's not what they were going for.
Moving on..................

Takeshi brought some school work home the other day and I figured I'd better take a picture of it cause it was pretty cute.



The weather has been crazy this spring and I've barely gotten out to mtb. But last this week after Easter I was able to get out with Kim.

I enjoy biking.
But it's hard for me as I'm not fit enough.

Emiko and I played games the other morning for a while. It was fun. Then we have the kids playing their songs they're learning.
I think they sound great and I'm grateful to Lola and to the kids hard work paying off. Then Masaru has started rugby. He really likes it and the coach. So that's good. He had his first game the other day. It's pretty good to watch.
Things are busy now that the kids have started their spring sports.
Masaru has rugby, piano and scouts, ontop of all of his schoolwork he needs to focus. He has two practices of rugby and one game a week.

The other three have soccer. They have one practice and one game a week as well as piano and Takeshi has cubscouts and Yuki activity days which is a church girls programme once a fortnight.
I'm also helping to coach the running club twice a week after school with Jobecka that I put the three younger kids in. They'll be having their 5k race in a month. It's the same one Yuki won last year.
Turns out it's a lot of work to stay ontop of everyones stuff.
I write everything in my phone. If it's not in there, I'm not showing up, as it doesn't exist for me.
Dru and I tag team to get the kids to what they need to be at.
It's alway super busy and a little exhausting BUT it's only for 6 weeks and so there's always an end game which I'm good with.
So I know if we work hard for a few weeks it'll soon be over and the kids have had a good time.
I loved sports. They were a huge part of my life. My parents didn't have to run us around though and that makes all the difference.
Takeshi bikes to practice and the piano teacher comes to our house and all church things the kids walk to, so, really, we don't have too much that we have to take the kids to if we work it out right.
The problem is they don't have a rugby team over here on this side of town, so Masaru has to play for a team who live around 20 mins away. So that's the biggest thing for us is co-ordinating that.
It works though and I have no reason to complain as we've done this to ourselves and obviously the positive outweigh the negative or I wouldn't do it.

So if you need me in the next 6 weeks then don't be upset if I can't get to you for a few days due to be over scheduled and tired.

Easter Weekend

Dru started out Easter weekend by ripping out the rock in our front entrance. Can I tell you how excited I am to have this done?
For starters that rock was really hard to clean. I'm not sure how you clean rock. He's already put down plywood to bring it up enough to start tiling.
We're just going to get cheap tile from the store and put it in as, eventually, we want to re-do the whole kitchen and dining room with hardwood flooring. Well that's the plan at least. Who knows what life will throw at us right?
While he was doing that I was going from one thing to another then another.
I came home and the kids had friends over.
Some of our mates from SLC were up and they hadn't seen us in a while so all of our kids hung out for a while. It was really nice.
Dru and I went to a boxing match where a kiwi and an English guy fought against one another.
The kiwi lost but not by knock out, simply by points.
I was kinda sad, I really wanted the kiwi to win, but he was the underdog and it ended up being a boring match to watch. But at least he got tons of money to fight and is set up for life if he plays his cards right.
We'll see how he'll recover.


We came home and Dru and Masaru and our friends boy all went to the priesthood session of church together. It was general conference weekend where all the apostles and the prophet speak.
We listened to them a little this morning but the afternoon ones got missed.

While they were gone my girlfriend came over with her other kids and she helped me make my mothers easter eggs.
She was a HUGE help to me as there's a process and she understands how it all works. It was way better having someone to make them with.
I did banana, vanilla and coconut. I wanted to do strawberry but didn't have that flavouring. I need to make sure I have it next time, we missed it.
They turned out good though.
It was nice to catch up with my mate, Ellen, and be able to see her children and how much they've grown. They're doing really well down in SLC so that's good. Her husband works for the church and really likes it and is being treated well, so that's all that counts right?

Sunday morning we woke up and I could here this noise coming from our door and went to open it and found this:


It was April fools day as well. So they'd figured they'd lock us in our rooms. Which actually isn't really a punishment, it'd be really nice to just stay in there, but we have to go to the bathroom right? It was cute though and they thought it was fun so that's all that counts.

Yuki had written us all notes for Easter which was really nice of her.

We then sat down as a family and watched general conference. It was really good.

 I made hot cross buns while we were watching. The second tradition that I like to keep alive for my family. There's only two. It's always funny because they make 16 so I always have to squash one in at the end. Takeshi was keen to learn how to make them and I'm keen for him to learn so he can be of value to me in the future years!!! He's gonna help keep traditions alive. He helped me with the eggs as well.

 Here they are finished but no glaze.

Here they are all done.
They're SO GOOD and turns out Dru doesn't like them. Sometimes I'm disappointed in Dru's taste buds and it upsets me, but what can I do? Divorce him? He doesn't like hotcross buns. It's almost like spitting on my country and in my face, but I need to see it in a different way then maybe we can stay together and make this marriage work ;)
We watched afternoon conference and it was really good as well. There's a couple of changes going on in the church which is exciting.
They're getting rid of splitting up the men into two groups on Sunday's. They'll all meet together now and be one big group, just like the women.
They also re-named the visiting programme that we do in the church. It used to be called visiting and home teaching. They changed the name to Ministering. Sounds like it'll be pretty much the same thing with a few tweaks. It was also the first conference with a new prophet, so it was good getting to know him a little better since change is hard for most.

Then Dru's cousin came over for Easter dinner with us. It was really nice to have Jamie over. We ate roast and potatoes and veges and had the hotcross buns for dessert. We then played games for the next hour or two. Jamie had brought us a card game called exploding cats. It's fun.
His family aren't coming up for a couple more weeks so it'll be good to have them all up and the kids to have cousins around their age.

Easter weekend was a really nice weekend. We had lots of fun with friends and family and I like to keep our traditions alive and I was grateful for the general conference weekend and listening to all the leaders and what they had to say. It's always nice to re-set yourself and to be able to look inward and figure out how you can improve yourself and be a better person.
It's also nice to be reminded of Jesus Christ and who He is and what He's done for us.
I'm grateful.