Seikiro Isai and Halloween!

Growing up we would have Japanese exchange students come into our home and stay with us for brief periods of time and I loved it! I also lived in Japan and learned how to speak Japanese while serving an LDS mission. So when I met April Zushi this summer and found out that she was in charge of finding host families for a Japanese student exchange program I was thrilled and immediately told her that we wanted to do it! Then I convinced my good friend Shari that she wanted to do it too!

It was seriously one of the funnest things we have ever done!
They came on October 25th and left on November 1st. Our Japanese students name was Seikiro Isai and he was awesome!
When we picked him up I was surprised at how tall he is! When we got in the car I tried to talk with him in English. It was difficult to communicate with him. And I totally understand how that is. He's been learning English from someone with a Japanese accent and the words I'm using don't sound anything like what he's heard. So I tried speaking real slowly so that he could hear each and every word. I tried to only use the important words leaving out filler words that confuse things. I could tell that he was a little flustered and embarrassed. So I told him in English that I use to live in Japan. He tilted his head with a confused look on his face and said, "I don't understand." So I said it again but this time I said it in Japanese. Oh my gosh he was surprised! Then he rattled off a bunch of stuff in Japanese! I told him, "I lived in Japan a long time ago and I have forgotten a lot of Japanese!" He assured me that my Japanese was good. I'm pretty sure he was just being nice and a little relieved to know that I could help him if he got stuck.
Seikiro fit into our family perfectly! He loves sports and is very competitive. We did lots of fun things with him. We taught him how to sock wrestle and he was by far the best in the house. He would take on Bradon and Carsten at the same time taking off one of his socks to start the match giving them the advantage (he called it, "Handicap!") and he would still beat them both in no time flat! We took him to Trafalga Fun Center to play laser tag. He loved it!

On one of the days he got to go to school with Ethan.

Marcus, Ekshi, Seikiro, and Ethan.

After school they came home and crashed on the couches. I had to laugh because this is such a teenage thing to do! They are both growing boys!

One of the nights they had a BBQ and program for all the host families.

Some of the Japanese students preformed a Japanese dance while another painted a message of thanks in Japanese.

Then they had dancers from BYU preform dances from all over the world.

It was pretty cool! I liked the costumes the best!

After the program Shari and I took our boys to a spooky Halloween train ride, "The Nightmare Express!" They were so afraid to go on it but decided that they needed to be brave. They were so cute! No matter what it was, they were willing to do it, eat it, or try it just for the American experience.

Shari got stuck going on the ride with them while I sat in the warm car with the little ones watching the movie Tangled. They had to stand in a really long line out in the cold. When they finally came by I jumped out of my car and took a few pictures.

I love this one! Not so spooky after all that worry! However it must have been somewhat spooky because Seikiro wanted no part of doing it again!

We took him to the kids football games. Seikiro plays baseball and rugby at home so he has a good sports mind and seemed to understand the game pretty good. I wasn't sure how much he understood until I heard him explaining it to another Japanese exchange student that just so happened to be there too.

He was fascinated with the game and wanted to learn how to throw a spiral. He worked at it and worked at it until he somewhat had it figured out. We later bought him his own football and pump that he could take home.

We went to the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum.
All the kids had a blast! They enjoyed being obnoxious and teasing each other. Seikiro was quite the tease!

They had fun playing in the water and sand learning about erosion.

In fact they all did.

And then we took the traditional Shark picture with all the kids.

We took Seikiro to Salt Lake City.
We showed him the Conference Center.
The Visitors Center.
And the reflection pool.

Water is so irresistible to touch!

We looked at the Temple and I told him a little bit about it and our church trying not to be so missionary like since the exchange program asked us not to.

We took the traditional temple picture and then rode the train to the Gateway. Seikiro was surprised that it didn't cost us anything to ride the train!

We went to the Apple store since this is my kids #1 most favorite store to visit. And I use the word visit because that's all we do there. We don't shop! Seikiro wants an ipod of his own so he spent some time checking them out.

And then it was time for Halloween!
They don't have Halloween in Japan and so it was fun to show Seikiro all the silly things we do for Halloween.

We carved our home grown pumpkins.

Seikiro was in deep pumpkin carving concentration!

Of all the pictures he could choose he went with The Grim Reaper!
Pretty good for his first pumpkin ever!

We took our pumpkins out on the front steps to display.
From top to bottom and left to right...Talan, Reagan, Ethan, Seikiro, Carsten, and Bradon.

Then we dressed up and hit the streets for some trick or treating fun!
Seikiro and Bradon were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Talan was Winnie the Pooh.
I love the turtle costumes! And so easy! The turtle shell is one of those disposable tin roasting pans. I formed it to take on a shell shape and then spray painted it green. I braided brown fabric strips to make a strap. We found the shirts at Walmart. Seikiro loved it!

Oh and look real quick because this is about all we saw of Carsten all night. He's holding the pillow case with balls on it. Don't ask what he's dressed as. I'm not quite sure what he is! He wore his football uniform to school but I guess that wasn't good enough for trick or treating!

Ethan ended up going as a leafy suit hunter guy.

And Reagan was an adorable Vampire!

Seikiro was hilarious!
He literally ran from house to house. Occasionaly he would say in Japanese, "Give me some candy!"

There is just nothing better than seeing full grown adults having fun with the holiday. This is Brother Lamb as Buzz Lightyear! I think Talan was impressed!

These two got along so good all week. They were sort of like two peas in a pod! They loved nothing more than messing with each other full time. It only felt appropriate that they should dress alike!

Wow it's incredible hulk!
A blind incredible hulk!
Literally he was blinded by his mask!
He would hold the candy out and if you didn't place your bucket right under his hand he would drop it on the ground!

After a fun night of trick or treating the kids stayed up late with Seikiro. They put some hair cream in his hair giving him a fauxhawk! Rock on dude!

And then when it was time for bed Seikiro and Talan said their goodbyes! It was so cute! Talan jumped on him giving him a big hug and then said, "Mom, take a picture!"

The next morning all the kids got up super early to eat breakfast with him and to say goodbye. It was sad! We had so much fun with him we didn't want to see him go. Seikiro is and always will be our Japanese Brother! We love you Seikiro!

Symphonic Band

What a good looking kid!
At the end of Ethan's 7th grade school year he decided to try out for the Symphonic Band. At his Jr. High they have Beginning Band for first year students, Concert Band for second year students and Symphonic Band is the band you have to try out for. It's the highest of the bands. It's made up of mostly 9th graders. I was surprised that he wanted to try out for it because he doesn't exactly do a lot of practicing here at home. I knew that he liked band, I just didn't know that he was necessarily good at band. Anyways, he tried out and made it! I was impressed! Not only because he made it, but because he was willing to try out in the first place. Later on he told me that he wanted to be in the Symphonic Band for the TUX! No joke! He was really excited about the tux! And especially excited for the bow tie! And I have to say, he looked pretty darn good in it! Such a cute kid!

A few weeks ago they had their first band concert of the year. It was fun to hear the differences in the bands. The Symphonic Band was really good! We are proud of Ethan and his band accomplishments.
Way to go Ethan!

The one and only game

Every year we take the two little ones to
ONE BYU GAME!

This year it worked out perfect. They had an afternoon game against Idaho State. So the kids weren't cold and BYU scored a lot! Scoring a lot makes for an exciting game when the most important thing about football is listening to the fight song and watching the BYU flags get raced around the field! Well that and keeping a close eye on Cosmo the cougar!

We let the kids get a treat from the BYU creamery.
They picked cookies and cream ice cream and a cougar tail.
Talan just told me, "In this picture I'm like, Oh YUMMY!!!"
And then he said, "Write that! Write that!"

Reagan was excited that her BYU cheerleader outfit still fit her!

And Talan as you can see is much like his
big brother Carsten... Always acting silly!

When the little ones come to a game we tend to show up a little late and leave a little early. And this game was no different. As we were heading out of the stadium we stopped to take a picture with the Y. Reagan looked on the ground and there she found four dollar bills! So what do you do with four dollar bills sitting on the ground with crowds of people all around? I don't imagine they have a lost and found. So we chalked it up to Reagan's lucky day!

Ahoy Matey!

Talan is becoming extremely opinionated! He has ideas that come into his head and it's almost impossible to get them out.

I bought him a shirt that had a pirate on the front of it and all he could do is talk about how he wanted to be a pirate! He would point at the picture of the hat and the eye patch on his shirt and say, "I want these!" in a very demanding voice. He told everyone that he was going to be a pirate for Halloween. I found a really cheat pirate accessory set at Walmart and he was thrilled to pieces to be a pirate! And I must admit that Talan makes a dang cute pirate! But then he decided that he was going to be Spider man.

He found a Spider man costume in our basement that was a few sizes too big for him but he didn't seem to mind, because he was SPIDER MAN!!! He announced to his preschool class that he was going to be Spider man for Halloween and I was thrilled to pieces because Spider man was FREE!

Then some stranger suggested that he could be Lightening McQueen for Halloween. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Lightening McQueen! Well of course Talan would LOVE to be Lightening McQueen! But I don't have a Lightening McQueen costume and I'm NOT buying one either! Huge golf ball size tears were shed over the thought of not being Lightening McQueen! Oh my gosh! Could Halloween be more dramatic?

With tears in his eyes I walked him down to the basement to see what his Halloween costume choices were. Winnie the Pooh, a turtle, a frog, a snake, a pirate, or Spider man. It was amazing how quickly his sad face turned to smiles as he scooped up all his choices and took them upstairs to try them all on!

For the next several days Talan dressed in each of the costumes several times a day. I personally thought he looked the very cutest in the Winnie the Pooh costume so I did what any really good manipulating mother does. I rented the new Winnie the Pooh movie and had him watch it. I didn't suggest that he should be Winnie the Pooh, oh no! I let him make the choice all on his own. And of course he wanted to be Winnie the Pooh!

Bradon holds the Priesthood!

I know, I know, I probably shouldn't be taking picture of my children passing the sacrament, but it was his first time! And iphones make it so easy! And technically it wasn't me that took the picture.

But isn't he so cute!

Turning 12 is a big milestone in life and we couldn't be more proud of our Bradon. He's growing up to be a wonderful young man!

New carpet!

Let's get something clear...
I have hated the flooring in this house since day one!
The carpet is a light cream color and shows EVERYTHING!
I have refused to get it professionally cleaned because I refuse to dump money into something I want out of my house! I have used my personal carpet cleaner on it and I swear it only went from bad to worse! It's like cleaning it only caused it to attract the dirt more!
As embarrassing as it is this is a picture of the carpet after pulling back the rug.
Of course this is the worst of it but still, super bad!

New carpet is a huge project! To save a little money we chose to remove the old carpet ourselves. We only replaced the carpet in our family room and master bedroom for now and it was still an overwhelming job!

Talan thought it was fun! As we pulled the carpet up a little light bulb went on in his head and he ran outside to get him little dump truck. He played on the hills of carpet like they were little jumps for his truck!

It was tough getting the carpet out of the house.
Thank heavens our boys aren't so little anymore. They were a big help!

Pulling up the pad was a cinch!

We got it all pulled up and cleaned up...

And out to the front yard!

I'm pretty sure our neighbors were loving us as we left it out there for a few days in nothing but pure white trash fashion!

And there it was all ready to go!

I feel like our house is always a work in progress.
The question is, will it ever really be done?

Talan couldn't help himself but to lay and roll all over the new carpet!

Heck, I had a hard time restraining myself!

I love the new color!
It looks good and feels good to know that it's clean!
I can hardly wait to finish the rest of the house!