Car!

First, as an update for the previous post about the decision for school, I thought of a couple other things that have made my decision difficult:
1. A positive for staying home with Sterling a couple of days a week would be that our life would be so much less hectic and crazy feeling. Right now we are just barely getting everything done during the week, and then playing catch up on the weekends.
2. A negative for doing the tutoring is that it will be really really expensive. It's $40/hour and I would want to do it three times a week for 2 hours each session. That's $240/week, which is a lot more than just doing school. I'm not sure we can actually afford that much, which means I would have to get less tutoring- which is definitely not a good thing.
3. A positive for doing the academic program is that I can always be done after a quarter is finished. So even if I do this quarter, I could still be done in July, and start doing tutoring then.
Okay, well, that's just more food for thought and I really am open to hearing your thoughts about it. In the end we will do what is best for our family no matter what!
We finally got our car today! It has taken a really long time to get it due to a lot of different circumstances, but we are SO glad to have it now. It came at perfect timing because the last two days have been rainy, snowy and incredibly windy...so we were about at the end of our ropes with riding our bikes in this kind of weather.






This is a piece of art that Sterling made at school. It is an origami doll (Colette helped draw the faces on for him). Here is what I read about why they made them:
"The Hina Matsuri or Doll Festival or Girl's Festival is celebrated on March 3. On this day, families with girls wish their daughters a successful and happy life. Dolls are displayed in the house together with peach blossoms. The doll festival has its origin in a Chinese custom in which bad fortune is transferred to dolls and then removed by abandoning the doll on a river. On Hina Matsuri, sweet sake is drunken and chirashi sushi is eaten." So I'm not sure why Sterling made them, except that I think everyone at school made the dolls. Also, just as a side note, Sterling's teacher (his "sensei" in Japanese, which is what he calls her, it's so cute!) has been telling us that he is really beginning to make Japanese friends since his American friends only come a couple of days a week. One friend especially is named Haruku and they gave each other high fives today when Sterling was leaving...again, so cute!

Superman!

This video is from yesterday. Luke was trying to get Sterling to say "Superman!" in case you need a translation of what he's saying in the video. It was pretty funny to see him running around like that.
Many of you have sent us packages for Sterling's b-day lately and we are SOOO grateful! We have enjoyed everything so much! It is fun to get packages in the mail and it's even more fun to have treats from home. This is a picture of Sterling enjoying a book, a new stuffed cow and some goldfish crackers that we got in a package today from our friend Lindsey. I have been praying for God to encourage us here during these first few months of adjustment, and you all are definitely an answer to my prayers, so thank you!

Something else to decide...

Well, here's my latest decision to make: We are going to start the academic program of our language school in April (the program we're in now is a short term conversation focused program to get you functional in the country). The academic program is definitely more rigorous and long term; it can even be more hours during the day at different times. I have to decide whether or not I want to join this academic program, or on the other hand, take private tutoring three times a week and stay home with Sterling the other two days. I feel like there are positives and negatives to both sides of this decision.
Positives of doing academic program:
1. I will learn Japanese more thoroughly and more quickly
2. Sterling will get to stay in the daycare and also learn more Japanese
3. In the future ministry here I would be fully capable to communicate
Negatives of doing it:
1. I will have to leave Sterling in the daycare all day every day
2. There will be times when he will be there even longer than the 6 hours he's there now
3. I will learn more slowly and potentially be less fluent
4. Maybe I could be getting the best of both worlds- learning and being with Sterling, if I didn't do the academic program.

Okay, that's all I can think of for now, but if I think of more reasons on either side I will post again. If anyone has any input, please feel free to write! I have to make a decision within the next week. (I've been thinking and praying about this for a while now, and I just haven't been able to make up my mind!)

Sterling's B-day Party

Here is a video we took at Sterling's party, enjoy!

2nd Birthday!

Today was Sterling's birthday! We had a great day together. This first picture is yesterday when he was wearing underwear for a couple of hours and did really good in them! The rest are b-day pictures.

These are from this morning at breakfast. We made his favorite- pancakes and eggs. He got to open his presents from us, Gigi and Papa Nelson, and Bama and Grandad. He got the Lion from my mom and dad, some John Deere equipment from Gigi and Papa, and a Japanese (Komatsu) track excavator from us.





We went to McDonald's for lunch, and then this evening we had a party for him with all of our teammates and some friends from school. It was so much fun! The kids all played, Sterling got some really fun presents, and the adults had fun hanging out, talking and eating tacos! (Thanks to those of you who sent taco seasoning for the occasion--everyone really appreciated a taste of home!!) One of Sterling's favorite presents was some green slime that a kid from our school got him.

Play place at Wing Town

There is a really fun kids play place at the shopping center near us. Yesterday while I grocery shopped, Luke and Sterling played there and Sterling loved it! This was actually his second time to go because if I have a lot of groceries to get, I need Luke to help me take get them home.






Yesterday Luke and I got to go on a date while Jay, Caitlin, Andy and Tony watched Brayden and Sterling. We went to the mall and had a great time and ended up getting donuts from Mister Donut while we were there. We thought it would be a fun treat to have for breakfast this morning. So I took pictures of the boys eating them, but it turned out that they were really gross! They were hard and tasted like they had colored crisco on top of them instead of icing...Not anything like donuts in America, that's for sure!

Trip to Nagoya

We are having a 3 day weekend this weekend (Yeah!) because there was a holiday this week in Japan (I'm still not sure what holiday it was). So Thurs. night Tony and Andy came over and we ate dinner and just hung out together. This picture is Tony and Sterling watching some kind of Japanese Ninja movie together-- you can tell that they were both very into it :)

Then yesterday Jay, Caitlin, Tony, Andy, us and a girl from school named Cara (from England) went to Nagoya on the train. The first place we stopped was starbucks so that we could all meet up because we went on different trains (and so that we could get some much needed caffeine since Sterling had woken up at 5 that morning!)

Sterling fell asleep soon after we arrived at Starbucks (after he had finished his cookie and milk, of course) and so I took this picture of him sleeping on Luke's shoulder amidst all the hustle and bustle of getting on a subway to go to a different part of the city. He slept right through it!

Later when we were on our way home from Nagoya we got back on a regular train and there were tons of people so Jay had to stand- and Sterling really wanted to stand like a big guy and hold onto the handle too!
Unfortunately, we took the wrong train...So yes, we've already experienced making a big mistake and having to get off at a random stop, try and figure out which train to get on next-- but luckily a nice Japanese man who spoke a tiny bit of English pointed us in the right direction.

And these are Sterling's new boots. He begs every day to wear his boots so I got him these little "cowboy" boots. They are pretty cute. He has his feet up on the back of the seat on the train in this picture, which I'm sure is culturally insensitive, but after that long of a day, we were just glad he was still happy!

School

Sorry about not having new pictures for a while-- our days are very busy with school, homework and just trying to keep life together (cooking, cleaning, etc.) It has been VERY cold here and riding our bikes has been kind of miserable lately, not to mention that it rains quite frequently here too. So we've been looking at cars lately (we have a built in stipend with MSGF if we choose to buy one) so we're thinking about getting a cheap used one. Living here is kind of like living in any small town- there is very little to no public transportation, it's impossible to get everywhere you need to go in the city on your bike, and when you go to the store you can only get home what you can carry in your bike! We both feel like we could make it here with just bikes if it were just the two of us, but since we have Sterling, we really think getting a car for the bad weather days is a must (because there is an entire monsoon season here where it will rain for a couple of months straight). He has a really bad cold now, and yet still we are getting him out every day and many nights and taking him in the cold, windy weather on our bikes...so we're feeling kind of bad.
That's the new news with us, otherwise, here are some pictures!
This is Sterling having his snack yesterday. I thought it was funny that he was lounging like that.

This is Luke's class at school. His teacher's name is Tsunoda, and Mike and Andy are in his class too.

This is my class. My teacher's name is Yoshiguchi and Nick, Tony, Erin, Jay and Caitlin are all in my class. We are all enjoying classes, but they are VERY hard and are challenging us in a whole new way than Thai did.

Colette's B-day

Last Tuesday was Coco's 4th birthday, so we all got together for a party. This was actually the first time our entire team was all together in one place. It was a fun night together. The first thing Sterling did when we came in was give Coco her present and it was really cute, he said "Boytday!" (meaning, Happy Birthday!) So here he is in this first picture wearing a b-day hat.

All during the party he kept asking about the boytday cake, and obviously, as shown in this picture, he was a little excited about eating cake! But there really wasn't cake because we don't have ovens, so it was actually cream puffs and they were VERY good. Rachel also made mini cupcakes for the kids in her little toaster oven thing.

Here is everyone together for a picture, except me, I was taking it!


We got a ton of snow yesterday, which we found out is VERY uncommon for this area. People were saying that if it ever does snow here it never sticks, but it definitely did yesterday; there was probably about 4-5 inches on the ground. I videotaped Sterling playing in it, so if I can figure out how to get it on here, I will :)

My camera is dead

This is a pic I took a couple of days ago when Sterling fell asleep holding his tractor. The kid is seriously attached! The unfortunate thing is that my camera died a couple of days ago and I am still looking for batteries. Things have been so busy lately that it's been hard to get little things like that done! Sterling has had a good week at school and has even napped there the last two days. There has been a lady who speaks some English working there to help with translation so we know more about what is going on during the day with him. She is going to help him with his Japanese words, so we are excited about that. I just started school today (we put Sterling in before I started so that in case he needed anything I could come to the school without missing my school). We did very little today, just testing to see what level we would be in. Everyone on our team is in level one, but Luke, Mike and Andy will be two weeks ahead of all of us since they started early. Tomorrow we should get started doing a lot more. We were told today that studying Japanese here at Yamasa (the name of the school) for 8 weeks is like studying an entire year at a University- which is intimidating! They go very quickly and require that you study AT LEAST 2 hours every night after school. For most people coming through that is no problem since school gets out around 3, but for those of us who have kids, that extra amount of studying every night on top of 6 hours of school is a lot. Pray for us to have balance in our lives, to find the best schedule, and to be diligent students as well as parents.

Breakfast before school

Sterling got to have french toast and eggs for breakfast before his first day of school. He was very excited.

School video

Nursery School!

I don't have a picture to post right now, but Sterling had a great first day of school! I actually do have video of us dropping him off and him playing a little, but honestly, I'm just too tired right now to go get it and put it on here :) But I promise I will do it tomorrow. I just wanted all of you who are praying to know that he did very well, and when we went to pick him up, he wasn't even ready to go with us because he was having such a good time. The only hitch was that he wouldn't take a nap there-- which means an extremely grouchy and tired kid here at home this afternoon/evening. So pray for him to be able to relax and take a little nap from now on, it will help everyone involved, I'm sure!

Sterling the gymnast

Sterling's New Room!

Well, first here is a picture of Sterling in his new room-- and he slept in it all night last night! Some things with him can be really difficult, but sleeping has never been an issue, and I'm so thankful for that!! I took the picture like this so you could see how Luke decorated his room- with John Deere tractors all over the top (like a border) and all kinds of other John Deere decorations. He sleeps on a little Mickey Mouse mat, which he loves. Oh, and by the way, I was corrected by Carolyn from my post the other day, I didn't get Sterling a Koala bear, I got him a panda bear :) I've got to get my bears right!

These next couple of pictures are just Sterling at home with me while Luke was at school. Sterling starts his preschool/daycare on Monday, and I'm getting nervous about it! As I think through everything it will mean to have him be there all day everyday, I start to realize that's not really what I want for him...But on the other hand, I definitely want Sterling and I to be able to learn Japanese too , so I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. I know I'm for sure going to go to the first round of classes (starting next week and going until sometime in April) and after that I will rethink whether I want to stay home with him, or have us both continue in "school". Yet another thing I could use your prayers about!


Yesterday we got our two boxes that we sent from America and we were all SO excited, but esp. Sterling because it was mostly his toys. He has played and played with them all because for the last two weeks, all he has had were a couple of things we had packed on the plane with us-- he's been kind of bored! He also got a tractor in one of the boxes that he carried around with him ALL day yesterday and wouldn't every put down.

Yesterday we also went to a store called Nitori to get some bedding. Luke didn't know I was taking this picture, but I thought it was really cute of Sterling. We ended up getting this little cushion thing to go under our mat that we sleep on, but let me tell you, it wasn't much of a help, we still felt like it was hard as a rock last night! I'm sure it's just another thing that will take some time to get used to.