"Bouken da! It's an adventure!"

Tetsu and I are in a short period of lull because Leiya and Luka left for Tokyo yesterday to meet up with Tony at the airport.  The three of them will travel in Japan for 10 days and then Leiya will bring Tony back to Nikko for his first visit to her childhood home.

So what did we do this past week or so...

Played in the yard...

Went to a petting zoo and met a goat...

...and his friends...

Rode a pony...

Took a bunny for a walk.

Leiya and Luka accompanied me to the crosswalk a few times and one time we asked if they could take a walk inside the school so that Leiya could walk down memory lane.  This is in the entryway to the school.  There is a beautiful ceramic mural there above the shoe cubbies and unicycle parking station.

The very large gymnasium for this school which is actually pretty small (150 students?)

Leiya got to meet up with 4 of her elementary school and middle school friends and all their children so there was a whirlwind of activity when all the kids took over our downstairs!  We also visited Leiya's old kindergarten, (where I also taught English for 20 years) and she met up with three of her old teachers!  Luka had a wonderful couple of hours there and it was hard to pull him away from all the toys and equipment indoors and out.

On rainy days especially, Luka loved playing with the train set one of my friends has loaned me while Luka is here.  One room of our very small house is now an obstacle course of tracks and bridges and trains...

Wouldn't you know it, yesterday morning before they were leaving, Luka ran his hand over a small cactus plant that Tetsu had set OUTSIDE the window.  (Luka opened the window and reached out.)  Leiya spent a long time pulling out stickers and we even covered a couple fingers in Elmer's glue, let it dry (took 45 minutes!) and then pulled off the glue and stickers together.  Disaster averted!

We are so going to miss having Luka's voice waking us every morning, hugs and kisses throughout the day, and holding hands as we go to new adventures.  One phrase we taught Luka was "Bouken da!"  "It's an adventure!"  meaning, "we are off to something new now" (pulling him away from whatever he really wants to do) "what exciting adventure is ahead?"  Luka heads off chanting, "Bouken da!  Bouken da!"

And the adventure yesterday was taking the trains from Nikko through Tokyo and meeting up with Daddy at the airport.

Tony has missed his family and he is excited to explore Japan for two weeks with them.  "Bouken da!"

Days of middle May

The days are getting away from us but we are having fun.

Leiya got a lot of sewing in and she finished up the baby quilt that she's been making!  

She and I picked out a pattern and she bought fabrics before she even left the States.  I think this pattern is called Hidden Shoofly, and I had the Tri-rec tools already so once she got here we started cutting up her fabrics and sewing.

By the way, a blog reader asked me how I like my Juki sewing machine and I must say that I have been loving it!!  It is a Juki SPUR 30 SP and though it only does the basic straight stitch and doesn't have any of the fancy decorative stitches, it sews with no problem and even handles pretty detailed free-motion quilting.  The only extra I wish I'd thought to have included is a needle threader as my eyes don't find that needle hole so easily (see that separate red needle threader on the table there?  That gets a lot of use!) but besides that, I love the thread-cutter on the foot pedal function and the possiblity of holding two spools of thread at one time (sometimes I use a different bobbin thread and it is just nice to have both spools ready to use.)  The purpose of buying this machine to begin with was so that I could do some heavy-duty machine quilting and I haven't run into any snags yet!

Back to Leiya.  Let's say that she and I have very different approaches to making quilts.  I am more of a "let's try and see" type of person whereas Leiya wants to UNDERSTAND before she begins.  If I waited to understand all the instructions before beginning, I'd never get started!  (Which she does admit happens to her a lot.)  Leiya also wants all the colors placed just so, or the seams exact and I have more of a "it's good enough, no one will notice" philosophy.  She could play around with block placement for days (she did) until she was satisfied...  She also spent a lot of time making a beautiful label whereas I would have just penned in the information, but she is very pleased with all her efforts.  Maybe this is the start of a quilting hobby!

Until Leiya and Luka return to the States, I get to have the quilt up on my entryway wall.

As for what we've been doing with Luka...

We went to the onsen and Luka had a very good time.

We visited my friend, Hiroko-san and Luka got to see samurai armor displayed for Boy's Day.

Hiroko-san also showed Luka a fuuki leaf from her garden (the dish on the right there are fuuki stalks simmered in soysauce) and Luke pretended he was with Totoro...  the children's animation character that uses a fuuki leaf as an umbrella.

Luka and Totoro.

On sunny days Luka and Leiya sometimes come to the school with me and they play in the playground while I work at the crosswalk.

For Mother's Day Leiya cooked dinner.  Like me, Leiya says that although she cooks dinner everyday at home, now that she's in Japan, she can't remember how to cook things nor use the ingredients she finds in the Japanese supermarket.  I used to say the same thing every summer when I went back to the States and didn't cook for the whole month. 

Helping Jiji in his garden.

Watering is great fun.

Leiya and Luka visited one of Leiya's old middle school friends and they had a great time between the rice fields with bubbles and kites.

Bubbles...

...and a kite.

The days are over so quickly...

Golden Week

Another week has gone by.  I guess I can say I'm glad I'm a grandparent and not a parent of a toddler!  The decisions that have to be made and all the things that have to be considered between naptimes and moods!  The complete devotion and release of any personal time!  I must have been able to do it at one point but I can't read the signs anymore nor figure out spontaneity!

We also had a day of possible earaches (we were uncertain whether Luka with all his smiles really meant he had an earache when he pointed at his ear and said "hurts") and rashes (definitely visible but not seeming to bother Luka) and a cough, (maybe only before sleeping?) and finally Leiya and I took Luka to my doctor just because we were heading into Golden Week when everything except emergency rooms would be closed.  Leiya wasn't too impressed by the doctor's manner but she got some cough medicine and was assured that it didn't look like symptoms would take a turn for the worse.  They didn't. 

Between naptimes we find the best way to keep us all involved together is to head to some park and Tetsu and I have discovered quite a few that were unknown to us previously.  

Of course I just park on a bench or in this case on the grass, and play around with my pens and paints.

Done!

There was a huge scary slide at this park that Luka just loved.

Another time we met up with the Yamadas at a park near them and Marlene packed us a lunch.

There was a college group that was practicing huge flag waving and dancing that Luka found interesting.

And a lttle stream where Luka could shed his clothes and wade around.  (He quickly found it too cold though.)

Tetsu's garden has been nearly as entertaining as any park for Luka and he and Leiya dig in the dirt and play with his trucks.  That's my Koi Nobori that I made (the scrap one) hanging in the garden.  The cut down tree trunks from the past forest make a good sitting place for me.

Playing in the dirt.

From another angle.

Dirt anyone?

In honor of Boy's Day which was May 5th, I have an old Koi Nobori quilt up on the wall.

And these funny Koi Nobori made out of silk worm cocoons that I once found.

And yesterday I painted some of the Koi Nobori flying over a farmhouse.

During Golden Week, the rice fields are being flooded for planting and the reflections are just beautiful!

Another week gone by!

Another week of Luka and Leiya's stay!

We are coming onto the end of Leiya and Luka's second week in Japan.  I'm really surprised at how quickly the days are passing though we don't get all that much done...

We have learned that it really doesn't take much to keep Luka occupied and that we don't have to go out looking for amusement parks and fancy places.  He is content to be digging in Jiji's backyard as he is at a sandbox in a city park.  

We MAKE plans to go somewhere but quite often we get waylaid at some minor place with a children's slide or some treestumps and that is where we end up for the next couple of hours...

I too settle down on a bench (or a treestump) and sketch, while Tetsu and Leiya entertain Luka and it is a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

We get to the supermarket and Luka has as much fun in the store push cart as he does on park rides... and Leiya enjoys buying the foods she remembers from her childhood.  According to her, everything is so fantastically delicious and she can't help praising my cooking which is such a laugh but greatly appreciated!

We went and visited John once at the vets where he is being boarded and we took him for a walk around the parking lot.  Luka was interested in John but John had no eyes at all for his visitors... not for me nor Tetsu either.  Hmph.  It doesn't look like we've been missed...

My arty stuff has been put on hold, at least the learning aspect of it.  Instead I try to add a doodle in my bullet journal about what we did that day or something Luka said or saw.  None of my doodles look like the people I'm trying to depict but at least yone can tell they are people or whatever...  In this case I just thought it was so funny that my 2 year old grandson had such vocabulary when I went to check on him in the bathroom!

One entry was of our meal was at a noodle restaurant.

Yesterday we spent some time again at a beautiful city park and I parked myself at a picnic table while everyone else went off to play.

I realized when I got to the park that though I had brought pencils and watercolors and pens, that I had forgotten my glasses!  (Excuses, excuses!)

Tetsu loving the time being a grandfather.

He (Tetsu) was pretty exhausted by the end of the day though.

Luka especially enjoyed hearing all the frogs making noise in this pond.

Even with all the exercise and sunshine, Luka wasn't sleepy last night and so we had a midnight bedtime story hour.  EGADS!!!!  As Tetsu points out, I look just like my mother in this photo!  So scary and shocking to me!!!  But Luka and the three cats who are there listening to the Cat in the Hat Comes Back don't seem to mind!