Summertime

This summer hasn't truly started yet and July is coming to an end.

For some reason this year the rainy season decided to stay past Spring and all through summer. For two months it has been wet here. Usually by this point the weather is hot, hot, humid. So much so that children hide in the house all day every day. But this year they've been in the house to avoid the rain fall. Sometimes they go play in the rain and come home soaking wet. But even when it's not raining the ground is often soaked through.  

However, we've been getting bits of summer when we can...

Athena played in the kiddie pool a few times when it was hot out and not raining. She enjoyed blowing bubbles one afternoon as well.

 At daycamp at our house we had an Unbirthday party and the kids decorated their own little cakes.
Our next door neighbors had been participating in daycamp but decided to quit to prevent them getting the Corona Virus. So on this particular day we invited Brandon and Lumen to join us. Brandon couldn't but Lumen came over.

 We go to the natatorium for free swim once a week. We usually take some friends with us. Ty brought Escher and Luke brought Ethan. Athena prefers to play alone in the pool or to play with her mom. She brings me toys and tells me the pretend story of how we are playing. She loves to talk these days ! She goes on and on and on.
She also likes to pretend to be sea creatures and has me toss balls far away for her to fetch in the water.

 I have continued selling cakes this summer:

 On Pioneer day I made Athena dress one last time in this outfit I sewed her a couple years ago. She won't fit in it next summer. She's such a cute pioneer girl! She wore this to church that weekend.

 Currently the goal in our house is to eat healthy all week and share a dessert on the weekend. We started it off with Nutella croissants. We purchased the croissants from a bakery off base because my croissants don't come out flaky like this.

 Ster bought some sea snails to cook and eat. They were still alive!!
Athena said, just before helping dad cook them, "We are going to be mean by eating them." She wasn't sad about it. She knows how life works.

 Brandon, Lumen, Tiberias, Ethan, Luke and Athena at the swim center:

Tama Hills

Tama Hills is a U.S. Military base in Japan designed for military families to go have fun and relax. Camping, archery, horse back riding lessons, etc.

We decided maybe a month and a half ago we wanted to go to Tama. Their first opening was July 15! So we booked it and had to wait. At this time, due to COVID-19 restrictions/precautions, Tama is only accepting a certain number of guests at a time. A lot less than is normal for them.

Wednesday was a rainy day. It has been a rainy month+ and we are tired of the rain. We want summer! We want it to be so hot and blue skied that we can go to the beach.

Wednesday we drove just over an hour to Tama Hills. It should not have taken that long but we got lost. The GPS took us somewhere we didn't mean to go and in Japan we get lost easily.
We arrived at Tama Hills around 1:30pm and we took the kids to ride the horses and ponies. The kids loved it! Seeing the horses, petting them and ridding them.
Then it started to rain a little. We played in the game room at the hotel where we check in for our cabin. Ster found that the claw machine was giving us prizes. So the kids and Ster played until we had four plushies from it.
We checked in at 3pm and went to the cabin. Such a great little cabin! With a fun loft for kids to sleep in and a real bedroom for Ster and I.

We ate dinner at the restaurant at the hotel...just a short walk from the cabin.
The food was good and we had a good time. We went back to the cabin and it just rained the rest of the night. So, we didn't go hiking that day. We played at the cabin. We watched "Mighty Ducks" and played card games. Ty's favorite game is "Telestrations" and we played it. Ster's favorite is Disney and Pixar's Memory game. Athena and Ster kicked our butts at that game!

When it got dark I brought out tons of glow sticks. We ate a lot of sugar that day. Athena and Ster had been fasting from sugar for over a week and were so excited to be able to spoil themselves for this trip. Athena behaved so much better when she got the sugar out of her system. She started listening and following the rules too! It helps that I started bribing her with a weekly trip to the swim pool when she follows the rules.

That night was a rough one in the cabin. Luke couldn't fall asleep and it got really warm in the main area where the kids were. I had to figure out how to make the AC work properly at 1am.
The wood walls and floors looked awesome but when you walk or climb, open a door or touch a wall or turn over in bed or move at all it makes noise! So all night there were creeks and noises making it hard to sleep. I think Ster and Athena slept the most soundly.

In the morning everyone ate sugared cereal except for myself. I waited until 8am when the restaurant opened so I could have a nice meal by myself. I had waffles with syrup and cream. Nobody else was in the restaurant with me until I was finished. That was nice and quiet.

It was so wet and muddy that day! We checked out of the cabin and Athena was sad to leave it behind. We went on a little hike trying not to get too muddy. Trying not to sink into the ground too much and make our shoes covered. Trying not to slip even though it was very slippery a lot of the time. And trying not to slide onto our bottoms at the part of the hike that went downhill. LOL
We all got  a little muddy atleast.

Athena tried to run when leaving the playground and she slipped and got really muddy on day one.
During the hike Luke and I both fell on our bottoms trying to go downhill slowly.

We played mini golf and then drove to a 7eleven nearby to pick up lunch. We each chose different foods. Then we picnicked on base.
We paid for the kids to ride the horses one more time. I have never been a horse person but...there was a gorgeous white horse that I bonded with.

Athena hated to leave the horses, the experience and the whole place.

It was just over 24 hours that we spent at Tama Hills. The kids loved it so much they can hardly wait to go back. I wasn't planning to go back but maybe someday we will. We have almost three years left in Japan.

It took less than an hour to drive home. We were worried about hitting traffic at 3pm but we didn't! In fact we hit less traffic than we typically do going anywhere ...even just around the outside of Yokota.

Phone images: