Summer Photos

From Summer 2014

'Tis the Season

The weather is now cold.

We've eaten some delicious turkey for Thanksgiving.

...And now it is time to start the holiday cheer at Casa de Los Lemleys.

I've started a new photo album for Winter 2013-2014:  (Here is the completed Fall 2013 folder).

Today, we've also started the Christmas Countdown with Christmas stuffed animals and Snowman pancakes.  Maximo has the extra special treat of the Lego Star Wars Christmas Advent Calendar to open every morning too!

Christmas countdown activities2013 from Julie Lemley

First Day of School 2013

This picture looks a lot more joyous than our morning really was, but we did get a nice first day of school picture.

Comparing it to last year...  

Our babies are getting big!

Hamamatsu Kite Festival - May 2013

If you are a FB friend, I already summarized this trip:  "Best Festival... Ever".

This festival is held in Hamamatsu, Japan in the Shizuoka prefecture.  Here is more information about the festival.

For us, it was an EASY two hour Shinkansen ride to reach Hamamatsu.  We stayed at Sorriso Hotel Hamamatsu - which our friend, Trish, found.  It was perfect - a block from the train station, so it was easy to get to with our luggage.  It was clean and really reasonably priced for a Japanese hotel.   Unfortunately, I didn't book a family-sized room, so we were a bit packed.  But, that was totally my fault, not the hotel's.

After we checked in on Friday, we meandered around the hotel and saw food stalls being set up, and some examples of the wooden sculpture floats set up near the mall right near the hotel.  Our friends, the Carrothers, were returning to the festival for their fourth year, so we let them tell us what we should see and do.  They did not steer us wrong.

We then caught up with them at the International Food Festival.  There was a DJ playing 70s and 80s dance rock and the kids loved running around.  We got a bit of food to eat.  When it started to get dark, we headed up to the road to find a place to watch the parade.  Hundreds?  of neighborhoods were donning matching happi coats and pulling their beautiful floats through town, while women and young girls would play music from the float.  It had such a nice community atmosphere.

After a while, we headed back to the hotel, for a not-so-restful night sleep and John and Pat headed out for a night on the town.

The next day, we headed out to the Nakatajimi Dunes.  The city provided buses for ¥500 to get out there.  As soon as we got there, we were blown away.  There were over 100 (very large - 3 meters long) kites in the air.  It was a really windy day, so there seemed to be a lot more "kite fighting" that day.  It was a little unnerving sometimes and in some areas as these large kites were coming down.  But, there were always people from the "neighborhood" who were running after the kites - to reduce damage to their kites and I think protect bystanders.

We went to the beach, but it was really windy and the sand was blowing everywhere, so it was hard to stay out there for two long.  Lola was fighting a cold and a nasty fever blister on her tongue, so she was a bit fussy.  Around lunch time, we headed back to the hotel for an afternoon rest.

After that, we ventured out again for some (more!) street food for dinner and to watch the parades.  First the parades started out as more traditional parades with bands and baton twirlers and then the floats came back out.  It was great to see little kids walking by their town elders and just thinking that these kids will be participating in these events for the next 70 years or so.

On the last day, we went back out to the dunes.  It wasn't as windy, so there wasn't as much fighting, but there were still many, many kites in the air.  We spent a lot more time at the beach and the kids had fun playing in the sand.  When we went back up to the field, we just hung out on a tarp with the Carrothers and let the kids play while we picnicked.

Soon we were back on the Shinkansen heading home.  It was an amazing trip.  We will definitely return next year!

Here are more pictures of our trip.

It's April!

We have a hectic month starting with O-hanami (picnicking under the cherry blossoms) and ending with Golden Week.  The weeks in between are jam-packed with a tech workshop, an overseas badminton tournament, conferences, Personal Project exhibition that John is leading, Maximo's music recital.

And the best part is, we've started counting down to our visit to the US.  We can't wait to see our families and fix up our new house!

Rokko Island Tulip Festival

And it's mid February

This seems to happen all the time... again another half month has slipped away without a word from Los Lemleys. It has been really busy the past few weeks. We went from report cards being due to me slipping off to Tokyo for a conference to John and I both enrolled in Masters' level course work to me leaving for Hokkaido for the middle school Ski Trip. I'm also trying to manage three blogs right now - one for my classroom, one for my coursework and this one!  No wonder we are tired!

Anyways, this will be short, but there are pictures to share. The kids are well. I'll try to spend time posting about the kids soon - Maximo is READING, and swimming and "speaking in English, and Spanish and Japanese". Lola uses her two year old stubbornness and ear-shattering volume on us on a daily basis, but it cute and talking up a storm, slipping between English and Japanese.

Here are some photo albums to catch you up on Los Lemleys:

My Trip to Tokyo for the Google Apps for Education Summit at the American School in Japan.

Google Conference - Weekend In Tokyo

Miki and Yuto's Birthday Party that we attended last weekend and had a great time:

Miki & Yuto's Birthday

My 365 (which will not be 365 in the end) photo album. I'm not going to quit, but it's not happening everyday... and I'm losing track of which photo I'm doing for which day. I'm going to try to start to label them with the date to keep it better organized!

A Photo A Day 2013

More Photos

Report card grades and comments are due this coming Friday morning, so we have been busy finishing up semester one.  Luckily, my project 365 - a photo a day has pushed me to take a lot of photos.  One really great outcome is that I take a lot more photos of our everyday life, which I don't want to forget.  I don't always upload the photos each day, but I am definitely taking them each day.  Many days, it's a struggle to figure out which one to upload.

Here is the album to date:

 Here is our Winter photo album:

Winter 2013

Maximo's First Ski Trip

John and Maximo had their first boys trip, although they joined David and Kiyona to Okuibui Ski Resort about 2 1/2 hours from Kobe.   They spent the night in a double wide trailer, although a lot nicer than you may be imagining (at about $200 a night!).

Since it's a three-day weekend (although not for us) due to a Japanese holiday, the slopes were packed and they got stuck in a lot of traffic and lines getting started in the morning.

Maximo had a two hour lesson.  He didn't do a lot of skiing, but learned a few basics.  He came home super excited and wants to go back.

Project 365

I am going to try to post a picture a day in this photo album.  This means that probably 95% of them will be from my iPhone, but I think it'll be a good challenge nonetheless.   Even though I think they are oh-so-cute, I am also going to try to not have pictures of just the kids.

There are so many great things we see every day.

A Photo A Day 2013

I really hope it doesn't turn into project 15.

Bali - Family Trip 2012

We spent half of our Winter Break in Bali.  There are so many great WARM locations in Southeast Asia, to pick fun places to spend our Christmas holidays.

The kids looking for snails and crabs

Kate, Maximo, Denis

Kate & Maximo swimming - Maximo insisted on wearing his swim cap,
so his goggles didn't pull his hair.  Delicate soul.

Lola and Ceri playing at the beach

With Maximo and Lola, beach vacations are the best.  They are very content swimming, eating, sleeping, repeat.  John and I are pretty happy with vacations like that as well, with some beers, massages and reading thrown into the mix.  The beach was nice and calm, which was perfect for the kids.

Lola in the pool

Lola in the ocean

The hotel we stayed at was great for us.  It was really kid friendly (without being over run by kids).  The larger pool was almost empty, except for us.  The food was good at the hotel, but we did get tired of it after eating at least a meal a day there (usually lunch by the pool, before naps).

Besides deciding weather to "beach" or "pool" it, we did a couple of things around Bali.

We went to the Bali Safari Park which was FANTASTIC.  It was a well done zoo with great natural looking enclosures for the animals, who looked healthy and happy.  It even included a safari ride through different areas showing animals from Indonesia, Asia and Africa.

Lola and Dima making funny faces

Los Lemleys Chicos

Checking out the elephants on the safari.

A few days later, we ventured off the hotel grounds again to go on a boat trip.  I saw a flyer at the airport, and we arranged for it.  It was good for the kids, because it was a half day event, but it was a bit of a crazy business and it was in a really busy area of Bali - Nusa Dua.  We were able to go snorkling and ride a glass bottomed boat, which took us to Turtle Island.  While the animals looked healthy, and Maximo and Lola enjoyed looking at the animals, we arrived at the island, where there were at least 100 boats anchored at the shore.

Baby turtle

Maximo snorkled and saw fish!

Linda spun the girls around and around over and over again to happy squeals!

And this trip was so great because we traveled with our good friends,  the Tyler-Hilbrechts and the Schatzkys.   It was relatively easy with 3 two year olds and 3 five year olds.  

Everyone had playmates!

Sunday Shots

We took the local bus to Shin Kobe Train Station, then we worked our way south and playground hopped along the way.  We walked back to Sannomiya Station and hopped on the bus back to Rokko Island, all before lunch time.

It was a great way to spend a sunny, fall morning.

Here are some (iPhone - excuse quality) photos of our morning:

The First Days of School - 2012

It's still about a billion degrees here, which is only truly felt in the hallways of our school or running errands on the weekends.  It's usually cool enough to and from school.

But, we have begun our tenth year of teaching...  Maximo has started KA (Kindergarten A - the four year old program) and Lola is still (LOVING) attending Yume Club (Japanese Daycare) across the street.

Day 1 (after three days of Teacher Days)
Morning Quote: "7:15 Family Photo, 7:30 Out-the-door".  And this was accomplished!
One of my favorites, but Max is now a clown during photos:

 Another one, with Lola playing coy.

 Our Funny Faces:

 Lola insisting on using a backpack - even though it is completely empty on her way to "school".

 Peeking at the bike barn.

 We had to tuck Mono into bed before we left for school.

Picking this little happy face up at the end of the day is one of my favorite things!  She's so happy to be dropped off and squeals and comes running when she sees us at the end of the day.

 Riding the train together for our annual check-ups today.

 Playing peek-a-boo with the pediatrician's rooster:

 Both of these kids took two shots each like champions!