The next day we got invited to a special tour of the Japanese Friendship Gardens in Phoenix. Apparently a sister city in Japan named Himeji. They have helped develop this garden area to be as authentic as possible. it is quite fascinating. WE of course are so intrigued with Japan because of Reita our foreign exchange student last year and cousin Tanner who is serving in Tokyo right now. We all have hopes that some day we can visit Japan, and not just on google earth! The gardens were spectacular, and the favorite was feeding the Koi fish. Some of those fish can go for 50,000 in Japan at the Koi shows (kind of like Dog shows here in the USA). :) We surpirsed dad at work when were were done since we were close. Poor Miles wasnt feeling well that morning and had really pushed it to go to the Gardens in the first place. So, by the time we had been outside for 2+ hours, he was just exhausted. We ended up going home after a short visit with dad at the office rather than doing lunch with him. Another time.
We had some really great fun with the Webelos here as we all
worked on the Craftsman activity badge and made a wood creation. It is a fun old game with nails and rubber
bands. You set the marble maze with the
rubber bands in whatever way you want and then put try to get your marbles
through it. Everyone had a blast. Jeremy
thought I was crazy teaching table saw use with 8 boys in the house. When I replied that they needed to know some ‘power
tools’ for the badge, he replied with “an electric screw driver would have been
fine.” Ha ha ha. No incident.
We got to head up the 101 into Scottsdale kind of towards
where Aunt Alison and Grandma Norma used to live on Friday. We had another field trip (trying to get a
few in before the kids get out of school around here). You would have thought Miles just was part of
the staff at the Phoenix Herpetological Society. (Basically an reptile refuge and educational
place). We got to feed some African
Tortoises, and a wallabies came right by us (he just roams freely), a crocodile
did a huge snap at us which sent everyone jumping, we saw probably 75 different
venomous snakes (all in one room), we saw a brand new tortoise cracking out of
it’s shell, and the highlight was everyone holding the snake! Miles even held the snake as it wrapped
around his neck and had it’s head right on his cheek! Crazy.
Turns out you can adopt some of the tortoises there, so it’s looking
like the kids are going to do a little research and present a proposal to dad
for a back yard tortoise. He would just
roam the back yard and burrow a little hole…could be fun. They want a huge one, but I think we will
stick to one of the Desert Tortoises who don’t get much bigger than 18” or
so.
Friday night, Pizza…always a blast. The kids made the dough just about all by themselves this time. We’ve been trying to have different people
over and this time we had our next door neighbor Michelle (who’s boyfriend just
died a few weeks ago). She is a
wonderful friend and it’s been nice to be a small part of helping her through
this reall She stayed
and helped me paint Owen’s bedroom and we talked until almost 1am. All good stuff. Sweet Owen chose his paint color and he got a
periwinkle type blue. Although I was hesitant
with how it would look, I am well pleased with the result. The main thing is, he loves it! Now everyone
has some color in their room, except for me and Jer. Some day….
We got to go to another enormous birthday party (where the
whole family was invited again) on Saturday.
It was really a carnival and just a great way to really get to know
people in the neighborhood better. There
are some really great people here. It’s
good to put yourself 'out there' and yet not always easy!
No comments:
Post a Comment