Have fun at Disneyland Hinata!

The girls wish they were there now, but we will go sometime soon hopefully. Thought I'd add a few more pictures of Hinata's visit.

Today Hinata heads to Zion National Park!

Students singing the school song
Kirk, Hinata and Zach with the lovely artwork

Eliza "helping" Hinata get ready

Our final breakfast together

After a day at the jr. high yesterday, we went shopping and then to the closing social. The students and the host families all gathered together for our final night of fun. Their were about 1,000 people there, so it was a good sized group. The pulled pork sandwiches and potatoes were a light dinner, but the best part was seeing the performances by the Japanese students and then the BYU dancing group. The "Living Legends" did traditional dances from Samoa, Tahiti, New Zealand, Hawaai and an American Indian hoop dance. It was quite entertaining.

We had some ice cream on the way home and then exchanged our gifts. Hinata brought some beautiful artwork of his grandmothers as you can see in the picture. They are amazing! I love the large painting of flowers especially. Thank you to Hinata's grandmother for sharing her talent with our family!

He also brought us some candies and treats to share in addition to the pencils, origami papers and chopsticks we opened on Sunday. We sent him home with some American chocolate and treats, a book on National Parks of America, Utah calender and puzzle, and some other small gifts.

Bright and early this morning, we said goodbye to Hinata. We wish him well and hope he has a wonderful and safe journey as he travels on to Zions and Disneyland!! Take care and come see us again!

Halloween Party!

"Jasmine", "Snow White" and "Alice"

The girls had fun dressing up for the Halloween party at church. The youth put on the party with activities and fun for the younger children. They all had a great time...including daddy!

The Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday was the full day of lectures and classes at BYU. After Hinata came home, we went to the pumpkin patch at a local farm. It is a beautiful setting and is used for wedding receptions. We came home and had a dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn and peas (one of our favorite meals except I didn't make my biscuits because I ran out of time.)

Today is Hinata's chance to see what life is like at an American jr. high. He will get out early, so we will have some time this afternoon to do a little shopping before we go to the closing banquet with all the other students and their host families.

The rest of the weekend...

Showing off their gifts from Hinata

Bridal Veil Falls
Walking in the fall leaves




We had a nice time on Sunday. It was the special children's Primary program in sacrament meeting. It's only once a year and the children sing the songs they've been learning and each child says a short line or story of things they've been studying all year. Always a very sweet experience. Eliza said "I can obey my parents. I clean my room and fold my clothes." Olivia's was about going to the Draper temple this year and Grace's was "Remembering Jesus helps me choose the right." They all did great! The songs were beautiful too.



Church is three hours long so we came home and had lunch of noodle soup with bread and potstickers (dumplings). Then we headed up the canyon for a lovely walk to the waterfall.

Weekend with Hinata (updated on Monday)

Zachary took this awesome picture of the Salt Lake Temple (above)

"The Christus statue"

We heard a great story from our guide about it. She said the sculpture was making it and had the arms raised up at night, but each morning when he came back to work, the arms would be down. He finally decided that was the way it should be, with Christs hands beckoning all to "come unto him".

On Temple Square in the Assembly Hall.

The Dinosaur Museum:

Standing under the "Supersauras"

Eliza and Grace loved playing with the wind tunnel experiments.

Saturday night eating with the cousins.

We had a very busy weekend! On Saturday, we went to Salt Lake City to temple square, the dinosaur museum and had the cousins over for dinner and games that night.

Sunday, we went to church, and took a walk up at Bridal Veil Falls in the Provo Canyon. We played UNO and watched some tv. We try to keep it simple on Sunday, so we wanted to do things that were more relaxing. It was a nice day after being so busy yesterday.

Friday night at the corn maze!

Hinata, Zach and Kirk getting ready to enter the scary monster!! (The scariest part was Zachary jumping out at me around the corner).

The boys and I had a great time at the corn maze. Besides the corn maze, we rode a haunted hayride wagon, played on some huge slides and ate popcorn. It is a fun place to take the kids and was perfect for Friday since that was Hinata's day at the farm. We didn't take pictures on Thursday but we went to the library after we picked him up in the afternoon and visited Grandma's house during our piano lessons.

We found our way out of the maze!!

They loved the fast slides!

Hinata is here!

Eating our yummy hamburgers!
Kirk and Hinata playing air hockey

The boys had fun playing chess, air hockey, foosball and the Wii before bed last night.

They had fun playing and learned that Hinata understands English pretty well.

We should have a fun week ahead!

October brings Halloween and...

our newest student from Japan! We are all excited to meet Hinata this Wednesday. He will be our third student to stay in our home during his jr. high school's trip to America. It is always a fun event for our family and we look foward to learning more about him this week. Good thing he likes cats! (Now we will see what he thinks about three little sisters!!)

Zach with Copper, Takuya and Kirk

Takuya and Kirk at the corn maze last year.
Takuya and Voodoo at home

Last year, our student Takuya, had a great time and we really enjoyed getting to know him. He especially loved our cat, Voodoo and playing with Kirk and Zach. We were sad to see him go and wished he could stay longer than just one week!

Our first student, Shoji was also happy to come and stay with us and hoped he could come again someday.

It is a good chance for our family to learn about another culture as well as the students learning about America. Hopefully, they will stay our friends for years to come.

General Conference: "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus"

This weekend was General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I love hearing the prophet and apostles speak. I especially enjoyed President Eyring's talk on kindess and putting other's needs before our own. "That is what love is. And the sorrow comes primarily from selfishness, which is the absence of love". He talked about little children singing "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" : I'm trying to be like Jesus, I'm following in his ways, I'm trying to love as he did in all that I do and say. It was a beautiful message and great words to live by! Go to lds.org and you can click on archives and listen to other talks on families, service, etc.
President Eyring:

Autumn is here!

Olivia drew some pretty pictures of flowers and butterflies outside. (She helped pick out the colors for our new fall background for the blog too!)

Grace is ready for school! She looks so cute with her hair like this. (That's our new door by the way, mom.)


Eliza having a breathing treatment. (She thinks it's fun.)

We have had our share of sickness this last week. Eliza and Grace had colds. Eliza would cough non-stop, so I decided to take her to the doctor. She seems to cough all winter long, with brief gaps in between. The doctor said it could be cold induced asthma so we are trying the breathing treatment. Fortunately, I had a nebulizer from when Zach had the same problem when he was younger. It seems to be helping.

Olivia and I both had a bad sore throat last week and then fevers for a few days. With all the worry over swine flu in the schools, I had to keep her home the whole week. Now she has the cold that the other girls had! Let's hope we are all better soon.