The Car and Lobsters

On January 5th we purchased a new(to us) used car. This is the car that replaced the car that was in the accident. It is a Honda Life. In Japan it is called a Kei car. This means it is smaller, cheaper, and slower then normal cars. That is fine with us because it was in the price range that the insurance people gave us. Upon buying this car we were given additional gifts as apart of the ongoing New Year’s sales. We were offered to pick a meat out of 8 choices. I saw lobsters on the list and it sounded so good to Lane and I so that is what we picked. They told us the lobsters would be sent to our house and they would be alive. We were excited. Our car also wasn’t quiet ready to take home so they were going to delivery it to us the following Tuesday. Now the real question was: were the lobsters going to come with the car or what? When the car came there were no lobsters. Then about a week later they finally came. When I open the lobster box they didn’t move. I thought maybe they are dead. Then they started to wake up and move. Lane and I didn’t like this so we decided to give them away to our friends. We didn’t want to cook live lobsters. I enjoy eating them but not killing them. Our friends were very excited for this present of lobsters. They even showed some photos of the last time they cooked live lobsters. Although we didn’t eat them it was a neat experience to hold and play with live lobsters.

Katie and the lobster.

Koseki and the girls with the lobster.

Our new car. With Sophia in the drivers seat.

Yes, it is our new life.

The Birthday Party

Last week we celebrated Grace’s 4th birthday. We had about 5 different families come over for pizza and cake. The kids all had a really fun time and Grace really loved having a birthday party. I truly feel that this was the first time she really got excited about her birthday. I am happy that she had a fun time with her friends.
I made pancakes for Grace's birthday breakfast. We even stuck candles in one and sang to her.

Here is the birthday cake that I made for her party.

Here are all Grace's friends that came to the party. They are all in her class at school.

Happy Birthday Grace!

Today is Grace's 4th Birthday. I can't believe how fast time flys. I know every parent says it, but it is so true. Tomorrow we are having a party for her birthday with her friends from school. Tonight we are taking her to a special birthday dinner at none other then McDonald's. As much as we hate this place, it has a play place which means Grace and Sophia can entertain themselves while Lane and I enjoy some nice adult conversation.
Here are a few pictures from 4 years ago.
This is my mom and I on Jan. 9 2004. The night before I went to the hospital to have Grace.

Grace sleeping with Mommy.

Grace's first conversation with Daddy. He kept sticking out his tongue at her and she did the same thing right back at him.

Grace's first meeting with Grandpa Shepard


The picture up top is our beautiful Grace today (well a year ago, but she looks the same) I love her so much and I am grateful for all the happiness she brings into our lives and grateful that she is a part of our family.

Kids say the darnest things.

I had to post this even though it happen a couple of weeks ago. Sophia, my almost 3 year old, talks a mile a minute. That is not an exaggeration either. Not only does she not stop talking she says the funniest things.
Two weeks ago we were driving down to Tokyo to pick up Lane's mom from the airport. We were using a rental car that had a navigator in it. Every time we drove into a new Prefecture (state) the navigator would state which one we were in. While we were driving threw Tokyo the navigator came on and said something else that we had not heard before. So I asked Sophia what it said. She said back to me, "I think she told me to stop picking my nose mom." I could not believe she said that. I could not stop laughing. She knows I don't like her to do that and she thought the Navigator caught her red handed. Just so you know this Navigator is all in Japanese; so we truly didn't know what it said.
This picture was taken by a friend a couple of months ago, but it goes along with her funny personality.

Ok the breaks over for now!

Ok I am back into the swing of things. We had a lot happen in the last two weeks of 2007 that gave me little time to write about anything. On December 15th at 8 pm we were in a car accident. My first one and very scary might I add. I hope this is the last one. I was driving our family home from our Japanese class in the next town over (about a 25min drive from our house). On our way home I would like to say a semi truck hit us, but I hit him even though he was completely at fault. I say this because just as I was coming up to the giant truck, that I thought was just parked off the side of the road going in the opposite direction; just started to back up into our lane. Well I hit the back corner of this truck. It totaled our car and did no damage to his car.

Lane and the girls were all in the back seat. Lane wasn’t wearing a seat belt and he broke the front seat and hit his head on the front wind shield.

Sophia was on the driver’s side and her door was smashed in and she hit her head pretty hard on something. I felt bad because even though she was in her child car seat she still got hurt. Grace was in the middle seat and was just sitting on her booster seat. She hit her nose on her knees. While my side of the car had the brunt of the hit; I didn’t receive an injury that was physically visible. I had cuts and scraps on my hands and that was it. To make a long night short we were taken to the hospital in Sendai. We were treated and released that same night. We are very blessed that I was not driving faster that night (which I tend to do on that very road we were on). It could have been much worse.

The truck driver later admitted to being at fault and said he saw us coming and decided to back up any way. His insurance has taken care of everything, including a nice rental car for the last two and half weeks. The truck driver even came to our house to apologize. Which I thought was a very amazing thing for someone to do.

Just six days after the accident Lane’s mom and sister came to Japan to join us for the holidays. It was nice to have them here. I was still sore from the accident too, so it was nice having someone wash dishes and clean up the house. We had a wonderful time with them.

We had a wonderful Christmas Holiday with them. It was a lot of fun to show them our way of life in Japan and have them meet all our friends here. I took them back to Narita airport on Tuesday and I was sad to say good bye.
Yes Santa does come to Japan. Here is the proof.

We also got some good news from back home. My younger sister Susie got engaged to her boyfriend Daniel. They are planning to wed next November. Also we need to keep him in our prayers. He is going to Iraq in the end of January as a part of the Marine Corp.

While we are still adjusting from the holidays we are hoping to have a new car by tomorrow. We are going to go to the car dealer tomorrow to seal the deal. If any one wants to know we are getting a Life, a Honda Life. It’s small and cheap.

The more I look at how our life has paned out over the last two weeks; I see that they were blessings in disguise. We were just about to spend 2,000$ on registering our car in February and now we just get a whole new car that we wont have to spend a penny on or at least that much. We are truly blessed and I am grateful for all the we have. To top all of this off. Two day before the accident I was telling Lane how we had gone threw so many cars in just our four years of marriage. We are now on car number 7!