Masaru decided to do a time lapse of him cleaning his room. I was just happy he was cleaning his room. He still didn't get it all clean. Oh well.
Masaru and I went to one of his group rides. It was 85 degrees and he biked 13 miles and around 2000 vertical feet. He came home and dropped like a fly. It was pretty funny.
Kids need to be run hard man, especially boys I think. Being in the mtb club is really good for him and he's riding with the 3's now and doing well. I'm proud of him. He's improved leaps and bounds.
We rafted the Boise river last week and it was the worst time I've had on the river.
I was cold and none of us were in the mood to do it really and our rafts all popped and it sucked. Oh well. Live to raft another day though, so that's something. We spend way too much money on crap rafts that pop and I"m totally over it man.
Here's a pic of the kids afterwards though. At least someone had a good time. The kids caught a snake so they thought that was awesome.
Here's Yuki playing an aweosme song. She practiced really hard and it sounds awesome.
The night before July 4th we spent with the Cranes at their cul de sac. It was fun lighting off our fireworks and being with them.
Here's Takeshi making some cookies and making sure he's doing it with style. Isn't that pretty cute. I guess those rock piles that people do around the river are called cairns. So it's a cookie cairns. He's a good boy and I love that he loves to cook.
Last Thursday night I had a kiwi night. I meet this lady at the pools at the beginning of summer and we decided to get together. She brought another kiwi lady as well and we made it a night.
The kids drove RC cars off the roof while we sat around and talked the night away.
It was a little bad timing as we were also packing for Stanley, but it couldn't be helped and it was a fun night.
It was really nice to have strangers over with our only connection being that we're from the same country, yet all got along really well.
Turns out we're all members of the church and one even went to CCNZ a few years before me!! Crazy right?
Fun, fun.
Today was all about being together as a family and I loved it.
We headed to the chapel to have some breakfast that they were putting on.
We ate then left for home.
We then got everything ready to head to the local waterpark that the kids had read over the school year for to get free tickets to.
Also it happened to be a Wednesday and so you could pay for 2 people and get one in free. This meant that all of our children got in for free.
Once you hit Jr High they don't do the reading for free tickets anymore.
So it worked out just great for all of us.
It was still $60 for Dru and I to get in, so as you can imagine, if the kids weren't free, we wouldn't go. That's a lot of money.
It opened at 11am and we were there right at 11am and stayed at the park until 7:45pm and it closed at 8pm.
We had the whole day there and it was a blast. We had a wonderful time.
These slides drop you straight down. You get put into a little room I guess and then it counts down and they open up the bottom from under you and you go flying down.
Yuki has done it once and hasn't done it again, but all the boys in the family do it.
They do the green slide because it's closed and seems safer, but apparently the water gets up your nose more in that one.
Dru said the purple slide is where it's at.
They asked me if I was going to do it, as they do each year, and I laugh, as I do each year, and say, not on your life mate.
I'm comfortable with my 'wooziness' thank you very much. "Know you limits" I always say.
But I love the fact that my boys do it and love it.
Masaru didn't do the purple slide, just the green one and since you can't really tell on the green one I didn't get a shot of that.
Takeshi wanted me to take a shot of him going down the green slide. I told him no, I only take shots of the purple slide. So he thought about it and went and did the purple slide and told me to take a shot. So I did.
This kid is so brave it astounds me. I love it.
In the morning it was a little cooler and so we'd stretch out and lay in the sun to warm up, after a few rides. Then we'd be back at it.
This was Emiko's first year coming and she could go on all but 2 rides. It was nice to have her with us and she loved all the rides. Next year she'll be able to do all of them and that'll be even more fun.
The lines weren't bad at all and we got to do all the rides we wanted to again and again.
Masaru met a friend there, out of the blue so enjoyed talking to her.
The mother said "Lucky you guys are a good family or I'd be worried"
I'm glad she see's us as such but also would hate to be judged on my 13 year old's behaviour hahaha
Halfway through we stopped and had a picnic outside the park with the food we brought, then headed back in to run around together.
By 2pm the park had started to clear out and we realized that the lines were dying down and we have first pick of most of the rides we wanted to do.
It was amazing.
We ran around from the wave pool, to the lazy river to the race slides and had a blast.
Our feet were starting to get sore from all the running around on the concrete, but we didn't care.
We had a blast.
It was the perfect day to go and we couldn't of asked for it to have been better.
We then headed home, but stopped into Cafe Rio for some dinner first. Yum. I haven't had that in years. It's a good one.
We got home, got changed and then headed into downtown with our bikes for the fireworks show.
We parked at Dru's work and then biked into the park to meet our friends.
We met Dru's old buddy, Fonz and his family.
We haven't seen them in over a decade and it was amazing to see them all.
They have 4 kids and haven't changed much at all and it was awesome to play catch up with them.
These fireworks were some of the best I've seen.
I was so impressed.
We sat under these and watched with amazement.
I'm SO glad we went into town. I'd like to do this every year now that I know that it's awesome.
We then headed back to our bikes.
The crowd was big and we lost Yuki for a second.
She stayed put, like a good girl and waited for us to find her. Smart girl. She was easy to find. Phew.
We then said our goodbyes and headed back to the car park where Takeshi wanted me to video him doing some 'sweet jumps'
So I did.
We came home and dropped into bed like flies.
What a great day together. It was so amazing and I loved having this day together to celebrate USA's freedom.
I went mtb the other week with Jobecka and we came across this snake that we didn't know if it was dead or not. I didn't wanna touch it and find out though. It'd just shed it's skin, so I'm going with it needed a break.
I was signing a form the other day and I wrote my name down initially as Wright. Man I've almost been married to Dru for 17 years and I can't believe I did this. Mind you I was Melissa Wright for 24 years of my life. So I guess until I'm a Nakaya for 24 it's gonna happen.
I thought it was pretty funny and interesting as well.
Takeshi came upstairs to show me he'd found Dad as a lego cop. I was laughing.
Yuki hung out with Caleb the other day and they had so much fun together. They wandered around town and went to the mall with Caleb's mother.
She was way too nice to them.
They even got matching t-shirts!!
I hope they make it as mates next year.
Time will tell.
It was good to hang out with them for a while when they came to drop Yuki off. I really enjoy Caleb's mother. She's super nice.
Then my mate, Jobecka left to Hawaii for 10 days and wanted us to watch their kitten. Dru said hell no, and then I slowly worked on him until he said yes, but not the whole time.
The kitten was potty trained and wasn't a big deal at all. Dru even let us keep it till they came home. But it still confirmed to me that I just can't do an animal man. This kitten was pretty awesome, but it still pooped and I've realized I'm not ok with it. The kids, after one time, didn't wanna clean out it's poop and I forced them too, but I realized it was just one more chore I'd have to enforce you know.
Then we had to keep the doors closed at all times incase it got out. It was like having a toddler again. No thanks. It was nice to babysit, much to Dru's disgust, but it was nice to give it back and the kids were done too I think.
Dru softened up to it and no one was allergic to it, so that was a bonus.
We then got some raspberries from our mates and so I've made two batches of jam.
So yum man.
Jam is easy though, 15 mins and you're done start to finish. Now that's something I can get behind.
I also made some fresh bread and so we had the ultimate treat of homemade jam and bread.
So our mate, Rebecca Robison, works for Simplot and Albertsons doing shoots of food for their business.
Albertsons is opening a brand new huge building close to here, and so she asked us if our family would be interested in submitting some pictures and do the commercial.
We threw our hat in the ring and they chose us and also Emiko for a separate shoot.
Emiko was on Tuesday and our family shoot was on the Thursday.
They wanted to re-do this old picture that Albertson's used.
We went to make-up first at a salon downtown. They put some stuff on Emiko's face, but not much. They combed her eyebrows down and put some moisturizer on her face and a little foundation as well as lip gloss.
We then headed over to their new building to do the shoot.
They had clothes they wanted her to wear.
Here she is practicing her shoot with the new 'baker', who actually IS a baker for that store. So that was kinda cool. The lady is from Jordan and now lives in Boise. Kind of a big move right? Anyway Emiko got a brand new cookie everytime they did a take. So she ended up getting 6 cookies and was pretty pumped about that.
The phone changed her name to Emilio which is pretty funny. But you get the point.
Then after that shoot was done, they wanted her to do another shoot with the bakery. She had to run up and point to the donuts and look up like she wanted that particular one.
She did great with that.
They also wanted her to change her clothes. So we did.
We left the tags on, so they could take the clothes back to the store since she was only wearing them once. I figured they may just give them to her, but no such luck.
She then was allowed to eat the donut, which she was happy about. With her front teeth missing it was even cuter. They then took a shot of her looking through the hole in the donut.
By this time she was totally over it and wanted to go home.
They were a pretty chill team and so let us leave.
Then Thursday we all headed out to Lucky Peak to get our shoot, as a family out there.
We met with the make up lady first and all got our hair and faces done.
Yuki
Emiko
Masaru
Dru
We then headed out and pretended to fish and eat at the dock and camp and eat smores.
They provided food for us and it was really good.
We went around and did whatever they asked us to.
There was another family there as well, so it was good to talk to them.
All the crew were really nice and Rebecca was there as well, which was great.
We were there from around 4 until 10pm.
For both shoots they paid us $500 which is better than a kick in the head, but I am not about to go crazy and start submitting our family in this kind of stuff.
It's not worth the money.
They'd have to pay me way more to make it worth it man.
It was fun to do it, however, and we're grateful for the opportunity and the fun night we had with everyone.
So Dru, his father and Masaru all went back to Boise on Father's Day to do their own thing.
Dru had work, his father came to help dig the shop and Masaru had scout camp for the week.
So here's some pictures of their week.
Masaru had the best time ever. He was disgusting, as usual, and entertained the whole time. He got 4 merit badges done, which apprently is good, so that's good. He was in heaven with his mates and the outdoors.
He got up to a bit of mischief and brought himself 2 knives at the scout rip off shop. He said his sleep was average, which I think is typical.
He won this tug of war and the won, for the second time in a row, the yearly big race thing they do. So they were so happy.
Thug life right here hahahaha
Dru went up for the Friday and Saturday and took him mtb in Jug before they headed home. Dru said Masaru is really good and has improved a ton. I'm proud of him.
He tells me the other day that he chopped wood all week and I should be able to tell by how huge his muscles are right now. I couldn't stop laughing. This guy man.
So here's a video of what Dru and his father did all week. They removed the grass and dug the footings for the workshop Dru wants to build. It's pretty big man. I can't believe it. Anyway it's all happening and pretty exciting if you ask me.
Then our mate, Keith came over and removed the concrete that was getting in the way of the final footings to be dug. I tell you what man, Keith is a solid friend and I don't know what we'd do without him, hire everything I guess right?
Now Dru just needs his concrete guy to come and start putting some foundations in. I'm excited for Dru and not for our savings. But it is what it is.
So there's what the boys got up to.
