sorry, i'm not very good at blogging any more. facebook takes up a lot of my time these days, though i don't post a lot over there, either. i'm afraid of sharing too much any more. afraid that things will just spill out and people won't see me as having it together. good life, happy family. what a laugh.

i've been really stressed about finances lately. nothing i can really write about, you know? wouldn't be prudent. things are fine, but things could be better. so, here i am at the end of the month, hoping to earn enough next month to keep september going....

the kids are driving me crazy. i've already sworn that i won't take them anywhere this summer, and we haven't even finished the second week of summer vacation. it's just as well, though, since i don't have a lot of extra money this year.

actually, summer vacation hasn't started yet, so we're not totally bored out of our skulls (yet). i have had a very disappointing month, so far (and it's only the 10th day in!) which doesn't bode well for when summer vacation actually starts.

i haven't made a lot of plans for the kids and myself. we will go to the nakatsu gion festival as we always do (end of july), and we already have tentative plans for sasha's birthday, but other than a vague sense of traveling to oita-ken at some point, there's nothing really that we're looking forward to.

besides payday. it will be nice to get paid.

i'm afraid hiro is turning into a bit of a homebody. he doesn't want to go out and do things. we have to force him and of course, he has a great time, but the forcing him to go out and do things sucks. he's a lot like yoshi in this regard. video games, youtube channels about video games and minecraft do much to contribute to his want-to-stay-homeitis. *sigh* so, i am hoping to get out more during the summer. more beach, more pool, more picnics. or perhaps, more visiting friends. wish me luck!

nothing too special.  the other day i saw a beautiful damselfly in the garden, but the P&S camera i was using would not focus on it....sorry for the blurry, but i hope you enjoy the beautiful blue (and messy garden!)

so, this year we were ready for the gion-gurumas!  i think that staying the night before creates extra work for rachel, but i hope that i could help, even if only a little (of course, i would rather be a big help, but helping a little is better than being a burden!) if nothing else, i did bring a bottle of NZ sav blanc....

rachel and i stayed up late on saturday, drinking wine and enjoying cheese.  and waiting for little ones to go to sleep!  *sigh*  i think tommy was the last hold out, not going to sleep until nearly midnight.  ugh.

so, there are soooo many pictures at flickr, and so many more left on the computer (which i will probably not be uploading to flickr.)  i did post four pictures of the cake, mostly because i took two pictures with two different cameras.  silly me.  so, on to the pictures.  there may or may not be any commentary!



(before--saturday evening.  sorry it's blurry.)



(after--sunday morning.  nearly ready for guests!)



cake by amy



the first gion-guruma is accompanied by children who sing a song.  the following cars have the dancers!



this guy was with the first car.  here he is enjoying a glass of beer at 10:30 am!  it looked great!














our lovely hostess, and her friend/coworker.







...and i think i will finish this tomorrow!

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.

well, rainy season this year was quite long, but finally summer is here! last monday we went to uminonakamichi to meet some friends and play in the pool. we had a great time, although all the kids got slight sunburns. so impatient to get in the water, they didn't wait long enough for the sunscreen to set in! so, basically, this will be a picture post. enjoy!

some photos from our summer, since my last post about our summer antics.

it has been a rather wet summer. not cool. anyway, here are the kids enjoying the laundromat:



c'mon hiro, out of the washing machine!

i have been able to get sasha and tommy to take a nap every day. usually i leave hiro downstairs to do his summer homework. however, the other day i came downstairs to this:





my brother and his wife came to japan just before obon, and he came to visit us just after obon finished. one of the days he was here, we went to uminonakamichi (twice in one summer!). we only went to the park, not the aquarium.

well, i thought that once i got caught up, i would blog more. guess i was wrong! whoops! it's really hard, though, since i'm spending "six weeks at home alone with three small children". it's been rather hectic, actually. not with going places and doing things, just with the kids' constant bickering, hitting and all-out fighting. we're not having a lot of fun this summer.

we did go to the aquarium at uminonakamichi last week. on the very day hiro and my 'passports' expired, so that was good. and we had a pretty good day, though the sun was strong and the hike to and from the kiddie pool at the park was harsh.

now it is obon, but we have no plans for doing anything. yoshi has today and tomorrow off, so we are trading off having time to ourselves. i mean on our own as one, not alone together. which would be nice, but not gonna happen!

next week i'll be going to hyogo for a job, that should be fun! hopefully the kids won't miss me too much and give yoshi a hard time!

well. today wasn't too bad. except for the headache. and the noise. and the bus. and tommy and sasha whining at me (i want to go home. i'm HUNGRY. i want to try. it's my turn. WHY???)

so, back in may (or june), yoshi signed hiro up for the kodomokai trip, which was to a children's science museum and planetarium. yoshi also signed himself up and thought sasha would enjoy it, too. he cannot handle all three kids on his own (in public) so he decided tommy would stay home with me for the day. fine, ok, whatever. then a few weeks later yoshi found out he had to work on that day (today), so it then fell to me to go with the kids. and take tommy, too. OH JOY.

so this morning i got their thermoses ready, and put a few snacks in the (now no longer used) diaper bag. i mainly got the diaper bag because i can't find the strap for tommy's thermos, but of course, i forgot his thermos at home. smart. i am the smart! so we went to the park to meet up with the other kids who were going. not all parents went (oh, so looking forward to the day when my kids are big enough to go on their own!!) but a few of us did. there was a private bus to drive us to the museum, but there wasn't quite enough room. so, i had to share a seat with tommy and sasha (actually, it was two seats, but not quite enough room for the three of us!) the drive there wasn't so bad but on the way back was pure torture. everyone was hot and tired and i really couldn't wait to get home and get off the bus!

so, we get to the museum and head straight upstairs to put our extra stuff in a classroom. then we went to the planetarium. i actually quite enjoy planetariums but everything was in japanese and i didn't sleep well the night before and so...i fell asleep for a little bit. after showing the usual 'night sky in our area' stuff they had some kind of anime about dorothy and the wizard of oz. since i was mainly sleeping i didn't really get it but i don't ever remember there being a part in the story where a scorpion chases dorothy and her friends over a ravine (of course, the scorpion fell in so everyone was safe!) after seeing that i actively tried to fall asleep again. *sigh*

after the planetarium the kids were left to roam free in the museum. there were five groups with a parent in charge of each group, but it was basically mayhem. tommy was too small to do most things (it's a hands-on kind of children's museum) so he got really frustrated. then sasha and tommy got hungry and wanted to eat. i told them we had to wait for lunch because we were having bentos. so then they started shouting that they wanted to go home. telling them we couldn't just go home because we got there on the bus did not impress them. and so, i got a pretty bad headache. finally we went back to the classroom where our stuff was to have a bento lunch. it was actually pretty good (probably to be kid-friendly) but yoshi had only ordered a bento for himself (me), hiro and sasha. sasha, tommy and i shared the two bentos, and it worked out fairly well, except they ate the very best parts! luckily i had some tylenol in my purse so i was able to combat my headache. phew!

after lunch the kids looked around a bit more, but then it was time to get on the bus. each group had their picture taken together and then we left. as i said, it wasn't too bad but i was so ready to be home!

so, like last year, we went to rachel's house to see the nakatsu gion festival. we actually drove to nakatsu on saturday afternoon and stayed the night with rachel and her family. that meant i got to help out preparing for the party! we stayed up late chopping veggies while having a couple of beers, and taste-testing the gion cocktail rachel made up (it was yummy!) as usual, the pictures tell (most of) the story:

first up, a cake that amy made. as in, she made the cake from scratch, cut it out, made and colored the frosting and then decorated it. it looks like a gion-guruma, isn't it fabulous?? and, it tasted great, too! yum!!



this was taken fairly early in the morning (before 10). amy, sasha, erica and hiro had on festival attire, but lena didn't want to wear a yukata and i forgot tommy's jimbei at home! amy broke out the yogurt and jam and suddenly there was silence. it was nice.



preparing for guests to arrive:



tammy's son andrew with amy



group hug (and can i just say that amy's photo smile has gotten gorgeous?!?)



waiting for the first guruma (and i asked sasha to knock off the peace sign thing, and she did a pretty good job for the rest of the day!)





sasha's kinda like, who are these weird guys??



so much food!







then, dancers!



suddenly, one of the old fellas in this 'town' (for the guruma) took off his coat and belt and put it on hiro:





if you check out the blog post from last year, i'm pretty sure the little kid in front of the coke machine is the same one who was begging his mom for a drink last year.







ok, ok, this is getting long. more dancers!













sasha wants to be a dancer on the gion-guruma. maybe someday!











then it was the end, and the mikoshi came by, followed by a man being pulled in a rickshaw.







and that was it! we had to leave early because it was also the kindy's summer festival yesterday. such a busy day!! but the kids still got to splash in the pool and we enjoyed the great food. thanks for having us, rachel!

two (very) short videos of a couple of dances.





surprisingly, these aren't all the photos i posted to flickr. check them out!