Love Month

Life lately for us...including all of the strange weather Oregon likes to throw at us.

Valentine's Day came early for us and James totally surprised me with a trip to the coast, where we stayed at a beautiful bed & breakfast and did some fun shopping and enjoyed the beach - the only sunny place in Oregon...sometimes :)

Then, a few days later, we had a CRAZY snow storm and school/work was cancelled for days! The snow was followed by an ice storm and there was tree carnage all over the place. The University of Oregon sent out email alerts warning people not to walk under trees (kinda tricky in Oregon...) because branches and whole trees were falling down all over the place!

Despite the craziness, we kept celebrating Valentine's Day pretty much the entire month. Yes, those are pink heart-shaped pancakes. So festive.

Then a couple weeks later, the weather was so warm that we got out for an impromptu bike ride along the river. More sunshine - yay!

Ok, I took waaaay more pictures of my bike than I did of us. But look how cute it is!!! Can you blame me?

I thought this was so funny - this sign was half covered in water. I feel like it is a sign...I mean like a sign-from-the-universe-kind-of-sign...telling us to throw caution to the wind. Or drown it in the water. Something like that. 

Spring is Here!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!! I can't believe that spring is here. There are tons of flowers blooming everywhere and we even have some cherry blossom trees too. It was a very exciting and long week for us and we are so ready for spring break! Here are some pictures to highlight a few things.

This cherry blossom tree is right outside out front door. It reminds me of Japan.

This is our little courtyard where a lot of the neighbor kids play. Took it mostly to show the blossoms on the trees.

We went to a little gardening 101 workshop on Saturday and got some free seeds. Looks like we'll be getting our own garden ready pretty soon.

This is one reason we haven't started the garden yet. This is what the couch looked like pretty much all week. Emily finished her classes and has just been writing papers like crazy. She'll be completely done with papers on Wednesday whether she is actually finished or not (That's when the last one is due).

This may not look like much, but I gave Emily a coupon book for Christmas. This is one she used this week to go to the movies. We went and saw "The Great and Powerful Oz." The movie was really really weird. I'm not sure if I would go and see it again.

This is an older picture of some things we got in a Valentine's Day package from the Grandbobs; some cute Disney water bottles stuffed with some of our favorite candy. So awesome!

Emily made me this tie rack for Valentine's Day and we never put pictures up. So this is the rack in action.

The rack by its lonesome. I have to admit that it is very effective and I love it dearly!

We sure excited for spring break but are probably more excited to have this term over. Emily is now half way through her program (at least credit wise) which means we need to start figuring out what we are going to do next. I have applied for graduate school and the results will be up on a blog post soon. We hope that everyone has an awesome week!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Happy March everyone! Spring is definitely on its way, at least in Eugene. I (Emily) am pretty thrilled about the warm weather and the sunshine. My cohort had class from 9 to 5 on Saturday (I know, what were they thinking?!), but the good news was that we held class almost entirely outside. AND James and I were assigned our free garden plots this week, which I am quite excited about. We welcome any gardening advice from you expert gardeners out there about Eugene growing (what to grow, when, how, etc...we are pretty new at this). 

Anyway, I am in the midst of final papers and such this coming week. I also had an interview for a fellowship that I am waiting to hear back from, so feel free to send some love and positive thoughts this way :)

Here are some quick pics from a few weeks back when we had a gyoza (pot sticker) party with some friends from church. Good food, good company, need I say more? 

We also had dinner with some friends from BYU-Hawaii who moved here recently. It was so good to catch up with them...unfortunately we forgot to take pictures, so I guess we will just have to get together again :) I love being reminded again and again of BYU-Hawaii and the amazing experience we had there. Makes me a bit homesick for Laie, but the world seems like a much friendlier place when you know people everywhere you go.

Only a Month Left...

The weeks seem to be going along faster and faster. With only a month left of our stay in Japan (that's right, it's almost been a whole year since we came here...), we have been trying to hit up all the local tourists spots. We have also been really lucky this spring season with the weather. It has been around 70 F with the sun out on most days despite it supposedly being the rainy season. We will just count our blessings. Enjoy some of the highlights of the week.

This is at a place called Oyakuen. It is a botanical garden that has a bunch of plants used for medicine. It was started several hundred years ago (1500's I think) and it known as a place of refugee for soldiers to get better after being wounded in battle.

I guess we could have chosen a little better scenery behind us, but the garden was actually really pretty.

There is a trail that takes you all around the garden showing it's various plants and trees. Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot of info in English, but like I said earlier, the colors were amazing!

This is another view of a part of the garden. The little building there is on a little island and was used as a tea ceremony room or something like that.  

We also went to the Aizu Sake Museum this week. It was quite disappointing. This is a picture of some of the brewing tanks. We thought we would be able to see the process of making sake here, but it looks like they don't really make sake there anymore.

Imagine that you are on the floor above the brewing canisters... This is what you would see. They had holes in the floor  just above the canisters. Not exactly sure how it all goes together. However, to make good sake, you need to have both good rice and good water. You also need a nice warm season for the rice to grow and a nice cold season when brewing the sake so that not as much bacteria grows. Anyways, Aizu is really famous for sake because it has a good balance for all the key elements that are needed to brew good sake.

There was a tiny display room at the museum and one of the displays had these dolls. Not really sure what they were used for... Some of them are a little scary looking. 

We had omelettes sometime this week. It was pretty awesome. We made it with avocado, tomato, grilled onions and garlic, and melted cheese. 

This is a picture just outside of one of the schools that Emily teaches at. You can only imagine how awesome she thought it was to have a whole field of daisies (if you don't know, daisies are her favorite flower).

Some bridge that Emily thought was really cool by her school.

Some river that Emily thought was really cool by her school. :)

If you remember the post a couple weeks back with the video on the chicks hatching, this is how big they have gotten so far.

This is June's bulletin board that Emily made for one of her schools. She wanted me to say that it is probably the ugliest one so far. However, July's is going to be awesome!

I hope you enjoyed the picture tour of our week. We love you all lots and look forward to seeing many of you in about a month. It's crazy how fast time goes!

Cherry Blossoms and Castles: It's Springtime!

The things I (Emily) love the very most about spring:


*Smooth legs! Yes, I shaved my legs during the winter, but let's be honest - they didn't stay smooth past the Arctic blast of air that came in as soon as I opened the shower door. Not anymore! Me and my smooth legs are here to stay!


*Leaving the windows open at night! I wake up to sunshine and birds singing at 5:20 every morning. It makes me actually happy to wake up.


*Going barefoot, at least in my own house. The floor doesn't feel like an ice rink anymore!


*My sun tan line. I have a serious farmer's tan on my neck, and I'm so proud of it.


*Color! The world is alive again. Flowers, flowers, and more flowers. I even planted a few of my own, along with some basil.


Ok, here are some pictures to catch up for the last couple weeks. I was a slacker and didn't post last Sunday (because we were gone), and probably won't post this Sunday (because we will be gone again), so this one will be full of pictures to make up for it.

The castle that is in our city. It is a great spot to see the cherry blossoms and we had tourists packed into the castle grounds for days. James and I went for a walk early in the morning and were able to catch a few pics without too many people in them.

The blossoms blew off the trees and into the moat that surrounds the castle. So pretty!

It looks like snow, but those are cherry blossom petals! I could go for that kind of snow all year round!

The English club at my base school invited James and I to go with them to the castle and have a picnic.

Some of my cute new first year students.

Last weekend, we traveled up to Aomori prefecture at the very northern tip of the main island of Japan. We stayed with some friends James knew from his mission. They spoiled us rotten. One place they took us was a museum filled with nebuta, or float-type structures that are carried in festivals during the summer.

The Kimura family, the ones we stayed with, had a beautiful grand piano. James was in heaven. We definitely need to get this boy a piano soon.

They also took us out for sushi!

Bread salad...interesting.

Aomori prefecture is surrounded mostly by ocean. I was happy to be close to water again, even if it was freezing cold water. This bridge is right next to the ocean and I was fascinated by it.

Yes, I even made James come walk across it with me :) We did the same with the Golden Gate bridge last summer.

We visited Hirosaki Castle in Aomori, one of the top places in Japan for seeing the cherry blossoms. Unfortunately, we were a bit early to see them at their peak, but it was still a fun day. 

We took a tour inside the castle and saw some ancient samurai clothes, swords, etc.

View from the castle grounds. There was still snow in some places, but the sun was shining and we wore short sleeves for part of the day and even ate ice cream!

Aomori is famous for apples, so they served apple ice cream at the castle. How fitting!

We also got a slice of the world's largest apple pie. Yummy!

Apples, apples, and...

more apples.

I caught James flirting with this statue on our way back from the castle.

Yeah, busted mister!

A very large...pig?

The Kimura family also took us out on their boat. It was chilly and very bumpy, but we had a blast.

On the left is Kosuke, the Kimura's son. He was a very crazy driver and made it fun for us. Pretty sure we all had bruised backsides by the time we got back.

View from the boat.

Mom Kimura. She spent most of the time on the floor of the boat while Kosuke was driving. She was hilarious and when we told her that we had a fun time, she yelled, "It was not fun!" referring to Kosuke's driving :)

I have such an odd husband.

And he has a perfectly normal wife.

Yesterday, we took a trip to Tokyo (I swear, I have been living on a bus for weeks now!) to go to the temple and to a BYU-Hawaii alumni event. It was fun to see some people from Hawaii and to catch up with some former students.