last week was pretty difficult. first week of summer vacation, and now that everyone is in school/preschool, it's a big adjustment for all of us. sasha has been particularly difficult, fighting with everyone and plenty of screaming. with a healthy (not) dose of bullying as well. *sigh* so far yesterday and today have been better, but i can only hope for more improvement!

so, on saturday we drove out to nakatsu (the kids and i) to visit rachel for the nakatsu gion matsuri.  we have been for the past two years, and this year didn't disappoint.  i think the first year we only went on sunday, and last year we went on saturday and stayed the night, but didn't go to the festival i the evening.  the picture above was the last bit of sunlight in the evening to check out the gion-gurumas being put away for the night.  again, a picture post, all from saturday.














it was hot, and hiro was so over it pretty quickly. he wanted me to buy him a drink, a toy, a glow stick, and well, pretty much anything that he might have seen. *sigh*



but the gion-guruma were pretty cool at night, all lit up. there was even a bit of dancing, and we saw the car off of which amy's gion-guruma cake is based.