Just a few shots...

to share our Christmas morning with you!

A taste of home.

This was Matthew's christmas present this year... a taste of home!! A fun family tradition that I'm trying to uphold. It was a little hard the first time in a different country with a new oven and ingredients, but it was well worth it to see Matthew enjoying them so much Christmas morning!!

Merry Christmas!!

Praying that your day is filled with the joy of Christ coming to earth as a baby!! The BEST gift EVER! With much Love & Joy, Merry Christmas from Japan!

Engrish Fliday

HAPPY CHRISTMAS Best wishes and heartfull greeting for christmas. Christmas Greetings the Engrish way!!

stuff. lots of stuff.

After a long journey over the ocean, our extra luggage from america arrived just a couple of weeks ago. Now that we've put away a lot of it it doesn't seem like a lot, but when we first got the boxes I was wondering where it was all going to go. It has been so nice to have things from our home, it was a huge encouragement to me... and opening all those boxes!! It was as if Christmas had come early!!
Matthew and Liam worked hard unloading all those boxes! Matthew is relaxing with a cold 'drink'. and boy were we thankful for such a warm and beautiful day!! We were able to keep our doors wide open while we carried stuff into the house. Thank you Lord!
Hudson loved all the packing material, and we loved that it kept him occupied!
Liam was an eager helper giddy with excitement as we unpacked his 'old' books, toys and blankets!!

Look who's standing!!

well kind of!! He's pretty proud of his accomplishment and smiles over at us when he's pulled himself up, he loves to just stand there and bounce. He's still pretty unstable and when you pair that with liam running up to 'hug' him, well, the falls are plentiful.
:: It won't be long till Hudson really can hold his own... ::

Engrish Fliday

I wanted to start a weekly blog entry where we appreciate the wonderful way in which the Japanese sometimes use english. I love it and thought this might be a nice way to celebrate 'Engrish!'

So here is the first Engrish Fliday!!
On a box of cakes that a sweet friend gave me.... it reads....
"people gather to Tokyo from here and there with memories of their home. And then, Tokyo gets everyone's home town. Tokoyo Banana"

Our 'Silly Nilly'

Liam is definitely our 'Silly Nilly'!!! We love that he can be silly and laugh at himself... I hope he keeps that up through out his life. It is always good to slow down a little and laugh! He sure had us laughing on this particular day... He will randomly bring me these goggles and ask me to put them on him! He'll then spend about 15mins or more running around being silly.

Hope that you got a laugh out of our Silly Nilly too!

The boys!

Here's a small taste of the boys as they are growing up so quickly!! Liam is sporting a pretty fresh hair cut, and doing one of his cheesy camera smiles :) Hudson is just simply thrilled to see his daddy! Contrary to the pictures of them in this post, they are whining and fussing and demanding that I give them back my full attention! Hudson may also need me to rescue him from his 'loving' brother... So I'll be back later.

Gotta love those smiles... makes all the stress and hardship of parenting worth it.

Settling In

We are slowly settling into our house, and it is slowly becoming 'Home'. We really do love our house and praise God for His wonderful provision. When we come home liam yells out, 'Our House!! We made it!'. To be honest, that's a bit how I feel... It took as so long to get here, but we made it!! In God's perfect timing.
The houses here are placed VERY close together. As they need to be with half the population of america living in an area smaller than the state of California! This picture was taken out of our bedroom window.
We also love the location of our home. We have a park just several houses down from us. (to the left of me in the picture.) and we also have a small grocery store just about a minutes walk away. (I'll have to post about that later!) Now that we are finally starting to settle down I hope to be posting a little more frequently, but I won't make any promises that I can't keep :)