8th

This pretty, smart, hard-working girl started 8th grade today!

While I'm so excited for her to continue on in her school career, I can't help but reflect on my 8th grade year and what a hard time it was for me. I'm hoping as she grows she knows of her worth, which is divine, despite what anyone else says. These years can be so hard, but she's so loved, I hope she always knows that and feels that. Here's to 8th grade, (big sigh).

It's a Good Day When...

Your mom finds some clothes under the bed that were supposed to be last years Christmas presents...and they still fit!

Misawa Days Summer Festival

These are some pictures from the parade during Misawa Day's Parade. The floats are elaborate and quite gaudy, in a very cool way. So different from any parades in the states, not commercial at all that I could tell.

Parades at night are just cool!

Festival season is coming to a close for the year and who knows if we'll be around next year or not. Sure grateful for these experiences here in Japan, especially now that we're officially under our year mark.

Tanesashi Seaside Park

One of the things I love most about Japan is one day you can be up in the beautiful mountains, like my last post, and the next day down at the seaside, like we did today. Two years here and this is the first time we've visited Tanesashi Seaside Park. It's only a few miles away from our favorite beach so it's kinda funny we'd never made it over.

There are huge rocks in the place where the sandy beach would usually be, which the kids quickly decided it would be a good idea to scale.

Then the sun came out, and it got warm!

Green grass and blue sky is my favorite.

It was only a matter of time before Rayce got completely soaked.

I'm thinking we might be back to this place, very soon.