New Paint!!!

Coleen and Rick left our house more beautiful than they found it - with new paint in the living room, and a gorgeous custom-framed family picture on the wall. Coleen and Spencer were incredible and fast painters, and the color really warmed up the feeling in the room. After they left, Tyler painted our kitchen area with the leftover paint (as part of his Family Life Merit Badge for scouting). I am very happy with how everything turned out! Pictures don't totally capture it, but here are a few angles of the room - so you can see the walls, the family picture, and my cute new frames along the wall in our kitchen, too. We have three new lamps in there, too, that are gorgeous and really light things up. Thank you so much Rick and Coleen! As you can see, we are in the Christmas Spirit here in Minnesota! We love our tree and nutcrackers and nativities....but we don't love the freezing temperatures. It was 2 degrees when we woke up this morning!

New glasses

Amanda got new glasses this month! Doesn't she look so cute?! She is not really near or far sighted, but she has a "focusing insufficiency" that she will hopefully grow out of in the next few years. They help her as she looks from far to near throughout the day. She forgets to wear them a lot, but I think she looks great in them. Spencer also got new glasses, with a kind of invisible lower rim. No, Tyler does not wear glasses - he is wearing Grams' glasses in this picture.

We had lots of fun with Grams and Gramps when they were here before Thanksgiving. We played lots of games, and had movie nights with popcorn!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Devin really likes to dress up, and he always chooses a different costumes for each party we go to. He was hulk for our ward party, an indian for a neighorhood "Halloween Lunch", and he was an alien for Trick-or-Treating. He is our only kid who has ever let us put makeup on him, and he looked AWESOME with his green face!!! Amanda was a pioneer girl, Zach was a pirate, and Ty was a Japanese Baseball Fan! :-) Check out our cool pumpkins, too!

PCC

Pearl Harbor

The Beach at Waikiki

This beach had the calmest and most shallow water we've had yet. The kids loved it! Isn't that sunset GORGEOUS???

S.C.U.B.A.

My dad and I
went scuba diving
today. It was really awesome. There was a ton of current and it made it so I was like swimming in place. Dad saw two eels, but I only saw fish.
We started out learning in a swimming pool, then got on a boat to open water. The boat made me really sick and I threw up. All the fish ate the throw up. Yum!




CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO!

Hawaii Day 2

Today was a great and very full day! We started with the Laie Hawaii Temple, made our way to the Dole Pineapple Plantation, and ended up with 3 hours of beach time up on the North Shore. We are having so much fun with Tiff and her family. They are being very good to us!

Oct 14th Japan Oct 14th Hawaii

On the way to the Airport we stopped at the beach and looked for shell. Tyler liked the crab crab claw we found.






We left Japan at 9pm on Oct 14th, flew all night and arrived in Hawaii 9am on Oct 14th.

Kichijoji

We went to a park in Kichijoji there were several street performers. One man made everyone things out of balloons.









There was a temple in the park. It was a small one

After the park we went to a huge eletronics store. They had a train section Devin and Zach were in heaven. They each left with a new train

Thursday Oct 9th

These two pictures were actually taken at the end of the day. On the way home we stopped at the Shibuya Crossing - a huge intersection where they stop traffic in all directions and let everyone cross at once. Literally hundreds of people cross the street every few minutes. It was awesome to be a part of.

Shinagawa Aquarium

The highlight of the day was going to the Tokyo Temple and doing Baptisms for the Dead with Tyler.

Back to Yokohama

At the Yokohama Zone conference we made some new friends.Tyler did some marketing of his book Lotsranyd. There was a lot of interest but no sales.

We had a ride on a giant ferris wheel over looking the harbor.

This is the view from the Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan. The bright lights in the center is Yokohama stadium, they finished the game that was rained out on Tuesday.

Niko