Okazaki Jo (Castle)

Hello everyone! Sorry it's been a couple of days since our last post, we took a little trip to Tokyo. We're back now and have lots of pictures to show you, so we'll get them all on here over the next couple of days. These pictures are from last week when we went to visit the Okazaki Castle, which they call "Okazaki Jo". It is the place where one of the most famous rulers of Japan was born and raised during the 1500's. It's situated on a river and there are beautiful cherry blossom trees all over the grounds. It was a gorgeous day when we went to visit and we all enjoyed it!

Easter book

Sterling got a couple of Easter books from Gigi and Papa Nelson and this is a video of him playing with the one that plays a little song. After we took this video he's even started to try to sing along. The song is something about a bunny on Easter morning, and when he sings it it's really cute!

Update on the tooth

We took Sterling to the dentist yesterday and it was a mother/father's worst experience-- we had to force Sterling to lay down while the dentist put some sort of seal on his tooth to make sure that the nerve doesn't become exposed. He only got one layer of the seal on (he wanted to do two) before he had to quit because Sterling was getting hysterical from being restrained. It was all around a not fun experience because the dentist didn't speak very much English at all, and he was really rough and slow about everything. I felt so horrible for Sterling! But hopefully he won't have any trouble with his teeth, and now he can just have a broken front tooth for the next 6 or 7 years until it falls out! Thanks for your prayers for him, it's been a rough couple of days!

Funny

This is Sterling and Tony playing a little game of hyper active hide and seek. Sterling was getting so worked up that his face was turning all red. He was loving it!

An Eventful Weekend

We have begun our two week spring break with lots of action--we've already been to two parks, played lots of games, and broken a tooth...Here are some pictures to give you a glimpse of the first few days of our break! (videos coming soon!)
On Thursday we had Tony and Andy over for chili and then we went over to Mike and Erin's to hang out. So when we all went to get in the car, Tony and Andy were attempting to get Sterling's seat buckled...He looks thrilled about it doesn't he?! I thought it was funny to see the two of them trying so hard to get a baby seat buckled!

Sterling also helped me do a little bit of our usual weekend house cleaning- he got really into vacuuming- he took his responsibility very seriously.

Before we went out to play at the park Sterling put on his Sterling Trucks hat from Uncle Kyle- he calls it that- his uncle kyle hat, which is really adorable, but he only wore it for about 5 minutes before he threw it off :)

We went to a really cool park on Saturday that had rides for little kids. It also had ponds, cherry blossom trees, a ferris wheel, soccer field, tennis courts, baseball field, etc. It was really fun and there were tons of people there. These two pictures are him riding the carousel and the train.


That afternoon after his nap, we went to a different park with some people from our team and Sterling had a blast running around with the big guys catching the little bitty Hawkeyes football.


That night we went to the Thai Restaurant with Mike, Erin, Andy and Tony. This is Sterling and Brayden playing together. Most of the time they play well together, but they also have their moments when they fight like little 2 year old boys do!

We had a little Easter service with our team and one other girl from the language school. This is Caitlin and Andy playing some worship songs for us.

And last but definitely not least, Sterling fell down this afternoon on our way out to the car and broke his tooth. It was horrible and I cried because I felt so bad for him, but I think he's going to be okay. It cracked both of his front teeth, but the one on his left is much worse. Almost 1/2 of his tooth is gone. He cried most of the day about it, but then ate some food this evening, so we are pretty certain that there is no nerve exposed or anything. The only thing that worried us is that his gums have continued to bleed throughout the day, which makes us think that he must have knocked them loose a little bit. We're going to see if we can get him into the dentist first thing in the morning. We'll keep you updated!


I know this is a funny picture, he was pretending to fly his airplane from cousin Zion over my head when I snapped the picture :)

The video as requested...

One more picture....

I wanted to make sure you saw us looking at the picture you sent us. We put it on our fridge! I had to make a whole new post to get this picture on here. Thanks again Kendall family.

Thank you Kendall Family

Thank you to Lettie and your crew for sending Sterling the whoopee cushion. He loves it! Thanks also for sending him the musinex. He was really excited to open his present.

Playing

I took these pictures over the last few days. The first one is from when we were at the park and Sterling found this little girl to play with. It was really cute, they played together for a long time.

He fell asleep the other day in the midst of playing with all of his toys, so here he is with all his animals, his cars, his ball, etc. I thought it was pretty funny.

We got all the kids together to play the other night and they started doing this game where they hid behind the curtain and then jumped out and yelled really loud. I kept trying to get a picture of all 4 of them at once, and this is the best one I got. It was really cute watching them all try to hide behind the curtains.

Jay and Caitlin had a St. Patrick's day party on Saturday night and it was really fun. Caitlin fried fish and chips for everyone and we all brought appetizers. We invited people from school and everyone wore green. Jay even put on Irish music and they decided they are going to make the party an annual event :)

Team Pictures

Here are some pictures from the last couple of things we've done with some of our teammates. We went to Nagoya a couple of weeks ago (when we went on the wrong train...) and these first three pictures are from then. The first is Sterling in the train station, and then all of us outside looking around at Nagoya. The next ones are from when we went to the zoo.

Nagoya Zoo

We went to the zoo on Friday with our whole team and it was a lot of fun. It was kind of chilly, but the kids enjoyed seeing the animals. The first picture is Tony and Sterling inside turtles, then the others are Brayden, Owen and Sterling checking everything out. We have a picture of the whole team together but we are waiting to get it from someone else's camera, so we'll have that soon!

Nothing much...

Well, I don't really have much to post, but I took these pictures the last few days just because I thought he was really cute. He's been into washing his hands and playing in the sink while I make dinner- so that's the first two pictures. The last two were from after school today. He just looked so stinking cute carrying his little lunchbox out of school like a big kid that I just had to take a picture. He got that lunchbox for Christmas from Great Grandma and Grandad Birt and of course, it has tractors on it.
For those of you who are wondering what I decided about school-- I decided to go ahead and go for the next quarter. There are many reasons; I'll list a few. One, if we want to enjoy and thrive in this country, we all need to learn the language, and the best place for all of us to do that is in school (Sterling included). I don't feel that I have enough of a base of the language right now to start with tutoring and continue to make good progress- maybe after the next four months I will though, at which time I will re-evaluate again and decide if I want to continue with school or just do tutoring. (After 4 months there will be a new quarter starting). I appreciated all of your thoughts and prayers, I think it really helped me to think through all sides of the issue. I decided a couple of days ago and since then I've felt really excited about my decision and what it means for all of us.

The weekend

We had a pretty fun weekend, at least from Sterling's perspective. On Friday we took him to a little park to play. It definitely wasn't the nicest place, but of course, he didn't care at all. He just ran and played the whole time. He liked the swings and we brought his excavator so that he could dig in the dirt.
On Saturday we went and bought him a bike. We have been wanting to do this since we got here, but the weather hasn't been great and we didn't have a car to get it home. So after getting some b-day $ from Grandma and Grandpa Chase, we went to the bike shop and found him one. He's still not great at riding, but hopefully he'll get better with time. he hasn't quite gotten it down that he has to peddle forward in order to move :)

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!