Oirase Gorge

So about an hour from us is a place called the Oirase Gorge. It's amazingly beautiful. It a stretch of road leading up to Lake Towada and within this couple mile stretch of road is about 10 waterfalls. You can park and walk along the path and view all of them. We went on a drizzly day but the canopy of trees kept the rain out!

I couldn't read the signs but I assumed this was a really old tree? Or at least it was really cool.

Moss covers everything.

Critters

So, yeah, the bugs here are big.

This moth was on our back screen. Danielle thought it was going to bite me, Boris was trying to eat it. It probably would have filled him up!

Welcome to Misawa AB

So when we first heard we were coming to Japan we were anxious to live off base, with the locals, nestled in the community...then we heard it wasn't an option. We had to live on base. I didn't think I would like it. Like most other things I was wrong, living on base has been a huge blessing and it's quite nice.
This is base housing, there are two housing areas, one on main base and about ten minutes north is where we live on north base. It's very nice and quiet.
This is the base "beach", not bad right? The real beach is about 15 minutes away but this one is great and they have kayaks and boats and jet skis and it only a two minute drive from our house.
This is the maximum speed here on base, but it's not miles per hour, no it's kilometers, so I think it's about 45 miles per hour. Pretty slow, and this is only a small stretch for the most part it's 30-40 kilometers on base.
These stone shrines are all over the base.

Yep, we got a van, everyone here has vans, and not just regular vans. I'll have to post a picture sometime, but it's like a van that looks like it could eat another van, they're lifted with big racks on the front, pretty mean looking, but we opted for the regular van. Dan calls it a living room on wheels. I still can't believe he let us get one!

Yeah, we like it here.

A New School Year

These little cuties started another year of school here on the base. Danielle in 6th and Rayce headed to 1st, and Avie just wishing she was going. Each year I convince myself that it wont go as fast as the previous year and every time we start another school year I think where did the time go.

My very beautiful Danielle.

My Raycey boy!

Avie wasn't about to be left out.

Hopefully, they'll still be smiling by the end of the year. So far, so good!

Back Up and Running

Yay, we have our computer, and I'm anxious to blog about our adventures here in Japan.

Here we are flying to Japan on the Patriot. I thought a 10 hour flight with three kids would be the equivalent of hell on Earth but it was amazingly easy. It may have had something to do with the fact that we had to be at the airport by 2 am. The whole flight was a blur, I remember eating a bit and kinda watching some movies but mostly nada. The kids did awesome!

We are grateful to have made it here safe and for the amazing experience thus far, much more to come!

Road Trip Pt 2 (Overload of Mt Rushmore Pictures)

Having never been to the black hills before I could only assume that they were hills and that they were black, right? Rapid City is beautiful, the black hills appear black from a distance, Mt Rushmore is amazing and well worth a trip. Overall we had a lot of fun and are so glad to have seen this part of the country!

Perfect weather and blue skies.

The Sturgis Bike Rally was going on at the same time, but it still wasn't that crowded...just a lot of leather.

I love that Rayce had to wear his cowboy hat, somehow it was very fitting.

We loved this place! Next up, a drive-through animal park. There were bears everywhere.

At first I kinda wondered if we had wasted our money...and then this guy came walking along. I've never seen a white wolf, or any wolf for that matter.

They even had some bear cubs.

We left Rapid City the next day and drove 11 hours to Utah, something I probably wouldn't do again but everyone was ready to be here with family and friends. I didn't really think about leaving Omaha until after it was done. We had a short but sweet year in the Midwest and will always have fond memories of it. I hope we will find Japan to be a good fit for our family. We will soon find out.

Road Trip Pt 1

We are in Utah now! After a week of packing and moving and saying goodbye yet again we had a very eventful road trip to Utah, not to be outdone by a soon to be road trip to Seattle for our departure to the great unknown.

We had a couple of days completely entrenched in boxes before the movers came, yeah, not my favorite thing, but it went as smooth as possible.

One of our going away dinners with the Sorenson's.

Rayce and Boris made use of the bean-bag after beds were packed up!

After the movers let we noticed nails left in our driveway from them nailing up the crates...only problem was we noticed too late so 2 hours into our drive we had to stop and replace a tire!
We also made a few stops along the way to Rapid City, SD, like to the Corn Palace.

I know it's hard to believe that this is the only Corn Palace in the world, so we had to stop. Truth be told I hate stopping along the way but would rather get to the destination, but Dan loves to stop and check things out.

We also stopped in the middle of nowhere, which happens to be somewhere in South Dakota to see an 1880's town. It has been used in various movies and TV series and it was actually pretty cool.

The saloon was our favorite.

Then the kids found a kitten and nothing else mattered. I've never seen Rayce like that before, he was determined to take it to Japan with us.

We finally got back on the road and made it to Rapid City about 11 pm.