Chair project

When we moved to Kansas we inherited yet another table that was once Grandma Beebe's.  I'm grateful!  While we were getting carpet laid in the basement I spent about two hours recovering the six chairs.  The new is the red, the old is the brown.  I like the change!

Kansas City Japan Festival

Somewhere I saw an advertisement for the annual Kansas City Japan Festival, and knew I wanted to go!  Andy had to work, so I took the girls and a couple of friends and set off!  More information is here:
http://www.kcjapanfestival.com/

There was workshops and demonstrations you could participate in or watch.

 
We ate some decent Japanese food.

I finally saw a sumo demonstration!  We saw some Taiko drum performances also.

Sophie even dressed up (cosplay) her favorite Anime character and was in a costume contest.
Fun day!

Watch for the unexpected

I found out where all the bluebirds went!

I haven't seen a bluebird since mid-July, and I wondered where they all went.  I used to see one every morning when I took Kiki for a walk.  Then, all of a sudden, they were gone!  This morning I went to the gym to exercise, but it was such a nice day that I decided to take Kiki for a walk too.  I came upon this stand of trees and there was a whole flock of bluebirds!  

I was reminded that I need to keep my eyes open and look for God's blessings.

Update:  I took this photo and wrote this post a couple of weeks ago...but it took me that long to transfer the photo to my computer so I could put the whole thing together.  I haven't seen any bluebirds since this day.  That's okay, it gives me something to look for when I take Kiki for a walk!

Sister fun

My sister Kathy came to visit for a couple of days!  This was the first time she'd been to my new house.  We are only 5-6 hours away from each other...not too long, but much longer than than we used to be.  When we lived in SC, we lived around the corner from each other...that was fun!

We didn't have any plans, mostly we just hung out together.  She's been playing tennis with her family, and she brought her rackets so we played tennis both mornings she was here.  I haven't played in so long, but I really enjoyed it!  I'm going to find our rackets or buy some new ones and get one of the kids to play with me.  Maybe I can talk Andy into trying it too.  :)

We went for a nature walk and saw this beautiful flower.

Thanks for coming Kathy!

I may have to change the name of my blog again....

I haven't seen a bluebird in weeks!  I used to see one every morning on my walk, until the week I went to camp.  I can't remember seeing any since then.

I don't know where my bluebird went, but God sent me a hummingbird!  I finally got a hummingbird feeder at Walmart and had Andy hang it up.  We have a lot of windows on the back side of my house, and we have it hung where it can be seen easily from many spots in my house.  I've heard stories about how sometimes it takes months or even a season or two for the hummingbirds to find the feeders, but we had visitors to it the same day!  I think it might be the same bird, but of course I can't be sure.  We see it/them many times a day!  I'm so thankful to God for creating such beautiful and amazing creatures for me to watch!

I sat and waited for this picture!  I used Abby's good camera and tripod.  Abby edited this photo for me a little bit.

First day of school

We've had a long summer; longer than we are used to at least.  Three whole months...mid May to mid August!  The girls still weren't ready to go back...probably never would be ready so I sent them off anyway!

Abby - 11th grade

Sophie - 9th grade

Molly - 5th grade

Abby told me to take the pictures out on the back porch...the light was better.  I didn't realize the windows had turned into mirrors...and did you notice Kiki photo-bombing Abby's picture?  :)

They all came home tired and saying it was awful...but hopefully it will get better.  The first day of school is always boring, having to listen to rules and procedures from multiple teachers.  

Molly and I went to the beginning band meeting last night.  She decided on the clarinet.  We had to order it so it won't be here until Monday or Tuesday.

Junior Camp 2012

Last week the four of us girls went to Junior camp at Hidden Haven Christian Camp.  Abby was the camp photographer; I was a Family group leader and Sophie was a Family group leader-in-training.  I have almost no pictures of the week...I'll have to steal some of Abby's pics...

Chapel

I went to camp every year I was able to...I think from 4th grade up until the summer after high school.  I loved going to camp!  I was happy to be able to go again, we went once in Virginia but that was 6 or 7 years ago.

Sophie and Molly enjoying snack time

Hidden Haven is a small camp; a girls dorm (with two sides to it, and a large meeting room in the middle), a boys dorm (two different sleeping places), an open air chapel, a snack shack, a mini golf course (rather run down), a large playing field, and the dining hall that also houses the staff room and nurses office.  This year there is a new swimming pool that is nice.  There is a lake...if you can call it that.  No swimming in there or even boating...so what's the use?  :)   I missed the beauty of Victory Cove, the camp I went to in McCall, Idaho.

Molly on the Rhino by the mini golf course

Anyway, it was everything church camp is supposed to be...lots of spiritual stuff but lots of fun mixed in.  Fun highlights:  playing kickball and going down the slide on the hill.  Spiritual highlights:  praying with a girl who wanted to accept Jesus into her life, and helping baptize Molly.

Sophie organizing the 3-way tug-of-war

Molly on the slide

Abby and Sophie are at High School camp this week, I hope they are having a good time!

Sophie in a skit

Molly and her favorite leader, Kaitlyn

Baptizing Molly

All done

The whole camp

Numbers

It's been almost 7 months since we left Japan.

It's been one year today since we learned we would be leaving Japan earlier than expected.

 It's been two years today since we first arrived in Japan.

It is hard to explain what that country has done to me...how scared I was to go there....how much I had to grow there....how sad I was to leave...how I think about Japan every day.

Is it the country itself?  The native people there? Or just the friends I had there?  Many of them have left Japan themselves.  I'm not sure.

Does my heart just always yearn to go back instead of forward?  An old friend recently told me they thought I also longed for the place previous to where I was when I had met her, so maybe it is true.  I need to find a place of belonging...and the longing for the past is greater until I do find my "niche" in the new place.   I haven't found my place here yet.

Independence Day 2012

Andy had a day off of work for the 4th of July, so we decided to take a day trip!

He wanted to go to Ft. Scott, KS and check out the old fort there.  I didn't get many pictures there.
 

After some lunch, we went to Gunn Park, and enjoyed walking on the trails there.  Kiki was such a happy dog, we let her off her leash since there were so few people around.  We actually didn't see anyone else on the trails!  It was hot, and in the middle of the day, so maybe that was why.  She walked right into the lake and sat down to cool off.  Now we've got a wet dog!  So we had to walk around some to give her a chance to dry off some.

We took a meandering route home...stopped at an old battlefield site but it was closed....Drove through Garnett and looked at the houses we could have bought...picked up some Sonic blasts....found a nice lake and campground near Garnett...

We got home and ate dinner, then decided to go try to see some fireworks.  Our town didn't have any, but the little town about 15 miles away from us did.  We've seen some really spectacular firework shows, so I wasn't expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised at the show this tiny little town had.

Buy local...

I went to pick Abby up from driver's ed this afternoon; she's having to do the actual driving with the instructor part this week.  I noticed I was almost out of gas so after picking her up, I had her drive us to the gas station, and pump the gas for me.  I could get used to this.  :)  Across the street I saw a tent up in the hardware store parking lot...hmmm...wonder what it could be?

CORN!  Fresh corn, right off the farm and sold by a nice young Mennonite lady!  I bought a dozen for $4, and a good looking zucchini for $.25!  I wondered if the corn would be good this early in the year...and YES.  It was.  It was really, really good.  

AND, I saw a bluebird tonight on the way to pick up the girls from church.  :)

Mochi = happiness

While we were still in Japan, one of the treats we would often get when we were out in town was mochi.  This is a Japanese dessert item, made of sweet rice flour.  Traditionally, it is pounded into a glutinous mass....this still happens at festivals and such.  Molly got to take a turn pounding some mochi at school one day, it was fun!  (I've just spent about 1/2 hour looking for that picture...it is no where to be found...grr...)

ANYWAY.

I bought some Mochiko rice flour at the commissary when we went, and finally today we tried making it into mochi!  

First, I took the red beans that I soaked last night, and then boiled this morning, then pureed, added sugar and fried them a little bit until they were dry and made a paste.  These went into the fridge after frying. 

Sophie made the mochi part by stirring together the rice flour and sugar and water, then microwaving it for about 8 minutes.  It was very sticky by then!

After cooling both the beans and the mochi, we took a little ball of beans, and wrapped some mochi around it.  The mochi is very sticky, so we dusted it with a mixture of corn starch and sugar.  YUM!!!

If I had a dollar....

....for every time one of the girls has asked me "Can we get a dog?" over the past two years...I would be a rich woman!

Just over two years ago we left our beloved dog Kiki with our neighbors as we were headed to Japan.  She's not kennel trained and we knew she would NOT like the long, long flight.  We also didn't know what to do with her the first few months we were in Japan...with the rules they have about dogs and not knowing where we would be living for awhile.

Molly and Kiki before we went to Japan

We didn't expect to get Kiki back when we returned to the States...but our neighbors have developed allergies to her and when we got back, and they knew that we still missed her terribly...they offered her back to us.  

Abby and Kiki on the day we were reunited

Last week the girls and I drove to Sandusky, OH.  We stopped to see my sister on the way, and spent a day at Cedar Point Amusement park.  Then, they arrived at our hotel and such happy girls we were!  I'm not sure she recognized us at first, but it didn't take long.  We had dinner together and I really enjoyed catching up with our neighbor.  

We've come home and Kiki was so excited to see Andy!  She's fit right back into our family, and we're so glad to have her again.  

New beginnings

Welcome to my new blog!  I decided it was time to jump back in to blogging.  I'd pretty much stopped writing after leaving Japan.  We are now pretty much settled in Kansas.  It still doesn't quite feel like home, but we've only been here 2 1/2 months.

It took me about a month of thinking before actually making a new blog.  I couldn't decide on a name for it!  My last blog www.findingjoyinjapan.blogspot.com seemed quite out of date since we weren't in Japan anymore!  I wondered about just changing the URL of that blog to a different name, but I was afraid I'd loose everything from that blog...I just didn't want to chance it.  So I just decided to make a new blog.  So, how did I come up with the name?  Our home faces almost due West, and one thing we do three or four times a week is to go out on the front porch in the evening and watch the sunset.  I really enjoy the time to just sit and talk to each other, and see the beautiful colors in the sky.  Sunsets are common...they happen every night, yet they are each unique in their own way.  They are most beautiful when there are some clouds in the sky to create layers and different colors.  Bluebirds live in Kansas, at least at this time of year.  I don't see them very often.  They fly so quickly through my line of vision, just a quick flash of bright blue.  I get so excited when I see one!  These are two things that make me happy here in Kansas.

Things that are common, things that are rare...I am trying to be thankful for everything that God brings my way, and find beauty and joy in the little things of life.

Image taken from: blue-bird_471_600x450.jpg