August Adventures

I love August! I love the hot weather, the playing in the sprinkler, the swimming, the harvesting of the garden, and of course, the going back to school! Every August, Idaho Falls hosts the Roaring Youth Jam. We try to go to it every year because we have so much fun! They have awesome FREE things for the kids to do and fun, cool, FREE shows to watch on stage. The kids want to do everything and we try to get everything in. Here's Ethan trying to hula a huge hula hoop: Jacob making his clay creation:
Ethan and Asia making clay stuff:
Mia figuring out what to do with her clay:

Racing their homemade boats:

Painting the giant dragon:
It was all very fun, except for the part when Jacob got lost... I think it was the scariest moment of my life! I feel yucky right now just writing about it. We all took a break from the activities to take a potty break. We all finished up and started walking to the next activity. I went to get Jacob to sit him up to the table and he was nowhere to be found! I started to walk up and down the walkway where we were and he was gone! I started to panic because the river was right there, rushing along really fast and I figured he had drowned in the river trying to catch the ducks or something. So many nasty things were going through my head! It had only been about 2 or 3 minutes, but it seemed like hours! I finally talked to this woman at an information booth and she told me that they had found him, just wandering around aimlessly, trying to find us. Sooo scary! He was so scared too! I burst into tears when they brought him to me and then we left! That was enough adventure for me!

Another exciting thing that happened in August was I was able to get 2 braids in Mia's hair! She actually sat still after bribing her with treats and T.V.! Her hair is a lot different than Asia's. Asia's hair is very thick and started coming in a lot sooner than Mia's did. Mia still has a cute little baby mullet, so we do the best that we can with what we got!

More July Happenings

So, I turned 32 this year. Yippee! (sarcasm) I try to say to myself that age is just a number or that I just get better with age. But let's face it, getting older is so not fun! My body isn't the same, my mind isn't the same, and life in general is not the same. I usually only feel this way on my actual bithday and then things just go on their merry way until my next birthday. This year the feelings are lingering. It might be because my ankle still hurts after spraining it over 5 months ago, or because I can't get rid of the belly fat from having my last kid (2 years ago), or maybe it's because I really need a vacation!! Something's gotta change, so tell me what I need to do to get out of this funk. In the meantime, the vacation planning is in full swing!
In other July news, our strawberries really took off this year. So much so that I was actually getting sick of picking them! We made a bunch of jam and ate a bunch with ice cream and cereal. They're my favorite summer fruit. I don't know what we'll do with them all next year. This is one of our first pickins':
Now, I just thought I would post some pics of one of our zoo trips. We love the zoo, especially the petting zoo part. This was Mia's first time petting and brushing the goats. It wasn't her favorite thing! The goats were all bigger than her and a bit intimidating I think:

And the last thing in July I want to blog about was Ethan's first pinewood derby. He was so excited to make it with his dad. It was a very fun experience for the both of them. Ethan planned out the design, helped carve out his design, spray painted it, and glued on his weights. He did a really great job!
His car won some and lost some. We actually found out, near the middle of the races, that his car went faster backwards! We must've weighted it wrong or something. So from that time on, he put his car on the starting line backwards and he won a bunch more races!

Yamada Family Reunion 2010

So, we had a Yamada family reunion this past summer with all of my dad's siblings and their kids. It was so fun to see people that I hadn't seen for a long time and some people that I hadn't even met. The first day we drove to Spokane and spent the night with Mike's sister's brother-in-law. Here are the kids sportin their super cool sunglasses. They were pretty good for the whole drive. Thanks goodness for DVD players!

The next day we drove the rest of the way to Harrison Hot Springs in British Columbia. The drive was beautiful! Everything was so green and fresh! The weather was pretty good almost the entire time too. There was a lake and beach area just outside our hotel, so we spent a whole day there playing in the water and catching minnows:

See my dead minnow!

The rest of the time was spent lounging in and by our hotel pool, eating wonderful food, and visiting with amazing people. It was a very fun, relaxing vacation for the most part.
Here's my whole family minus my sisters Naomi and Christina. We missed them!

Here's a teeny picture of the whole Yamada clan. You can't really make-out who anyone is, but this is about how many people were at the reunion!

On our way back home we decided to spend a night with my friend Kamille and her family. It was nice to catch up on the good ole days with her. She has an amazing memory and helps me remember things about our childhood that I have either forgotten or have buried down deap! Ha Ha! She has a wonderful family and it was so nice of her to have us stay the night. Especially being 8 or so months pregnant! Thank you so much!

Next it was off to Seattle to spend the day. We checked out the Space Needle and said instead of all of us going to the top, we'd spend our money on the cheap carnival rides next to it! I think the kids had more fun doing that anyway.

We had to spend a little bit of time in downtown Seattle. I love it there! My fave is Pike's Place. I just love all the fresh stuff you can buy there everyday. Nothin like that around here. We like this Japanese restaurant down by the market. It's always good and not very expensive (for Japanese food anyway). And we always have to buy something from the bakery there at Pikes Place. Sooo yummy! Here we are, enjoying our pastries with all of the homeless people drooling over them!
That was our big family trip for the summer. Hopefully we can do something like that again next year!

4th of July

We went to the parade, played with friends at the river, and went to the fireworks. I forgot to bring my camera to the parade, of course, so I took pics with my phone. But I have no idea how to get them off of there... So maybe I'll figure it out later and post those next year sometime!

Here's Asia waiting for the fireworks to start:

Jacob waiting patiently:

Having fun in the sand:

Chillaxin':
I was looking for a picture of Ethan, and then remembered he was in Lethbridge. We missed him.

It was a fun, relaxing day, except for the drive home after the fireworks! We always think we can be smarter than everyone else and find the quickest way home, but it still took us an hour to get home. Thank goodness for the DVD player in the van... We couldn't have made it without you!

June Happenings

This past June, Asia participated in t-ball again. It was quite an eventful t-ball season. I think it was her second or third game when it happened. Her team was practicing before the big game. One person stood at the tee, one person was assigned to put the ball on the tee, and the other team members shagged the ball. Well, it was Asia's turn to put the ball on the tee and just as the person up to bat was swinging the bat back to get ready to hit the ball off the tee, Asia was there trying to put the ball on the tee. The batter didn't see her and her bat hit Asia square in the mouth! She had two big fat lips and her front permanent tooth got chipped right off. In all the rushing to figure out what to do and who to go see (her dentist was out of town), we forgot to take a picture. But, now she has a fake tip on her front right tooth. She was very brave and finished out the season, but still was a bit wary of going near the tee! Here she is at the end of the season with her medal and fake tooth:
My Mom turned 60 on June 22, so we decided to come up to Lethbridge and surprise her. My sister was having a big party for her so we wanted to come to that with her not knowing. She figured we wouldn't be able to come on short notice. But we made the trip up. Turns out my mom already figured it out that we were coming. But it was a fun, quick trip anyway. Again, not very many pictures. Too busy I guess.

We decided to leave Ethan up there to hang with his aunts, uncle and grandma and grandpa for 3 whole weeks! We figured he was old enough now and I wanted him to be able to spend time with the people we love the most and don't get to see nearly enough. It was a long time being without Ethan! He is actually quite the little helper around here. It made me appreciate him more and I think he realized that he missed and loved us too. Here is the shot of him before we left to go back to Idaho; shaggy hair and everything: (Cynthia took him to get his hair cut later)
Here's Mia blowing on Cynthia's back door. She thought it was hilarious and so did we!

Best Buddies

Jacob and Mia are only about 15 months apart. They can always be found playing together. I think it's mostly because Mia likes to follow everyone around and be part of the action. And since Ethan and Asia are so much older, the two babies end of being together most of the time. For the most part, they get along pretty well. Jacob is kind of Mia's protector. It's pretty cute. So here are some cute shots of the Little Buddies:

Eating fresh beans by the fence:

Mmmm, more beans from the garden. And I promise I didn't pose these two. They were sitting this way in all of these pictures with no prompts from me.

Throwing rocks in Leigh Lake:

Enjoying ice cream together. Love Jacob's face!

I hope they can be best friends and take care of each other for a long time to come.

Experimenting

The first day of sumer vacation, Ethan was already saying, "I'm bored!" Man, it was going to be a looooong summer! So, I told him to think of some experiments he could do. He wanted to see what would happen to food if we left it out of the fridge for a while. This is the before shot:

And here's the after. Ethan decided to add a raspberry and a couple of carrots. Gross! We'll see what other ideas he comes up with this summer!