Hiking, loosing neighbours, blue cow and collections.

 

Nawang and I made it up tablerock together talking all the way. I love hiking and don't do it enough. I love our hikes and talk time and her. I have a great time hiking with all my friends and family to tell you the truth. Glad we have sweet trails so close to the house.

Our sweet neighbour gig is up and it sucks. I found their fork in our drawer and told them I'm not giving it back hahahahaha

I'll miss having them right there behind our house. They're the best and we miss them like crazy. They've purchased a house about an hour away and while I'm super pumped for them I'm super bummed for us. Our new neighbours aren't the best. They have nothing to do with us and are weird. I'm sure they think we're weird too so whatever. Good neighbours are he best and bad neighbors are the worst. These neighbours leave us alone though, so that's good. I'm just glad we built the shop before they moved in otherwise they would've kicked up a big stink I'm sure of it. 

I'll miss seeing them all the time. Total bummer.

We went to blue cow frozen yogurt on our buddy Tashi's birthday. So we took photo's and sent it to him. That's someone else who's moved that we miss. 

We also did a lot of sorting during the spring break and here's a little close up of what we did. Each kids room got a complete overhaul. It was a great idea and we all worked on each others rooms. I need to do this whole spring cleaning thing every spring. It's awesome.

Emiko decided to get her ears pierced. She was scared but did great. I got a second hole while I was there. I love earrings, so getting a second hole to wear even more earrings made sense to me. 

I'm actually obsessed with earrings. I'm a total sucker for them and want lots and lots and lots. Here's a little of my collection.

Takeshi looses a tooth, old pics of Emiko, I meet up with a good mates, spring break and the loss of neighbours.

 

Takeshi lost another tooth. If we can have him loose all his teeth, then we can start him on braces.

Natalie sent this cute picture of Emiko and Bryan years ago. Love it.

This is Maria. She went to CCNZ with me and we met up a few years ago at the AllBlacks game in Chicago. She said she was coming to Boise and wanted to meet up. So we did. We watched Yuki's bball game together and caught up on each others lives. She's back in Utah and is loving it there. She talked to me about one of her friends, Melanie and I ended up interviewing her for my podcast. It was awesome. It was so good to be able to catch up with her. She's pretty great.

I saw this poster at the kids school and I loved it. It sends the best message to our kids.

We had spring break and I got the kids working. Since Masaru was having problems with his mates he was home all week. So I put them to work. It ended up being a good thing and they worked hard on deep cleaning things.

I got them to do the roof of the bathroom. It looks good. They did other stuff too. It was nice to be home for the week together.

Here they are watching movies together. Aria stayed a lot of the time which was nice too. 

Here they are on the tramp.

Mum also got herself an ebike and here she is at Sarah's place just picking up baking powder. It's so awesome that mum got her a sweet bike. Super pumped for her.

Old Pic's of Dru and I

 

Puggs sent us these old pic's of us at the cabin before we had kids. I look at us and we look so young and not even prepared for what life has to bring us hahahahaha

But I love us also and unprepared or not, we've withstood time together well.

So handsome.

Here we are lots of years later. Still having fun, just not as young, and a little more experienced with life and what it has to throw at you. I love my partner in this life and am so grateful we have each other. I made the right choice and am happy I sacrificed to make it happen.

Masaru's weight lifting and rugby

 Here's Masaru deadlifting his biggest weight to date (March 2021)

Masaru also played rugby for Capital High School since Timberline doesn't have a team. Here are some amazing shots of his game with them.

New job, hikes and St Patrick's Day

 I always love hiking. It's hard but good for me. I need to try and do it more. Nat and I did a hike together up tablerock. Tablerock is hard but good. I always love it. Glad I get to do it with friends and family. 

I got a phonecall from someone who'd heard my talk about American History to the youth and they asked if I wanted to teach seminary and sub for the highschool kids. I thought about it and thought I'd give it a go. I sub in the Boise High seminary class and the Timberline High seminary classes. I did it for the rest of the school year and I loved it. It was an easy gig and pretty good money considering the amount of time I was teaching. I'm glad that I went for it and think I'll keep doing it. They've asked me if I wanna teach permantly or at least part time, but I dunno. Maybe if it was three hours a day and just at these two schools and the money was right........sure. They're gonna send me the class to do to apply and I guess I'll do that and see what I wanna do from there. But I'm not interested in travelling to teach kids and working more than 3 hours a day and the money needs to be worth it as my life is fine how it is and I'm not looking for full time work at all. 

So for now, this is good.

We then had St Patrick's Day and Emiko put this out to catch a Leprechaun. I woke up and saw that someone had written her a note and put all this work into making it look like she almost had him. I thought for sure it was Takeshi.

Turns out it was Masaru. Who knew. Apparently he couldn't sleep so decided to do this for Emiko. What a nice brother.

Here's Emiko story about how to catch one.

Then I made corned beef and cabbage for dinner.

Notes from Masaru aka the Leprechaun. 

Here's Emiko's trap

Masaru's bday gift from the Crane's

 The Cranes always do an amazing job with gifts to our kids. Here's Masaru's 16th birthday gift they gave him. IT'S IN CONCRETE. hahahahahaha

I took a video from the start. But I figured I'd get the ball rolling once he was halfway through........

Super thoughtful gift and he loves it and I'm sure will use it his whole life. Love the Cranes and how they care for the kids. 

Yurt weekend with the mtb crew

 So the Thompsons got themselves a yurt in Stanley for the weekend. 

They invited Dru and I and so we asked Natalie to watch Takeshi and Cesha if she could watch the girls and they could for a couple of days while we went. Big thanks to them. Masaru went with his buddy Kyler for the weekend.

We carpooled with the Thompsons and were the last ones to the yurt. The Zipps got there first and we met Dmo and Will at the trail into the yurt and got started.

Here we are about to get started on the hike into the yurt. Most ski in and will take the sled with them and take turns pulling it in. I brought my snowshoes, but it turned out it was packed enough for me and Will to simply walk in. It was really nice. 

Here's Dru, Jo and Will walking in. Cool right?

Here's what the yurt looked like.

This was inside where Dru and I, the Zipps and Jo slept. It was beautiful.

Here's a birds eye view of the yurt. See it has the kitchen area as well as the sleeping area and then the other building is where the wood is for the stove. Then you have the toilets. Those are the little trails. It was beautiful.

Little closer view of the yurt.

Some of the mountains the boys skied around the yurt. 

It was just beautiful and I'm glad I was able to witness it with my eyes. Sometimes I wish I had a camera on my eyes so I could take a picture of what I see. I'm not a good enough photographer to be able to do it. To take a decent picture is a true gift.

There was hot tubbing to be had.

There was games to be played.

There was food to be eaten.

Naps to take.

Fantastic food to cook.

Snuggles to be given.

Plenty of talking to take place.

Did I mention the beauty?

We had some great talks and some wonderful times together. It's a good crew and I'm grateful they invited Dru and I and grateful my kids were looked after.

Takeshi had fun doing the ropes course with his mates. The girls had fun buying things at the mall with Cesha and hanging out. Masaru had some good hang out time with his buddy Kyler as well. Which is good cause it was basically the last time he hung out with him. So I'm glad he had that weekend.

Wonderful weekend together and the first time in a yurt. I'm a fan and think it'd be fun to do again with the kids and mates. I hear they're hard to book though, so I'm happy we had this experience thanks to the Thompsons.