Yu Have Come to the Right Place.

Life moves fast.  Nobody reads blogs anymore.  Nobody even wants to read Facebook posts anymore.  Now it's a picture on Instagram or it's too much.  I understand that.  So this is just a random quick splattering of some stuff that's been going on in our lives.  Of course, it's all happy because that's the best part to reflect on.  But I'll just add that like any normal family, we have our shares of setback and unhappy moments.

Taisei is in Middle School now.  He's at an age where I can clearly remember what I was doing at that age.  It's crazy.  He has become a responsible, young man now.  I believe during this summer he has learned to plan his work (such as emptying the dishwasher, mowing the lawn, cleaning the toilets or vacuuming) before he goes to have fun (mostly FortNite these days). He has received the Aaronic Priesthood and is serving on Sundays by passing the sacrament.  In church, he is also taking his turn to play piano for the 3rd hour meeting.  He's settled on his sports... kind of.  He currently most enjoys lacrosse, basketball, tennis, and skiing.  Taisei won a tennis tournament in the summer, beating kids way older than he is.  This summer was also his first attempt at Track and Field and he did fairly well.  He chose to focus on the 100M, 200M, 4x100 Relay and the long jump.  He made great strides on the long jump and even made it to the highest level competition, which was the all-county track meet.  He didn't have his best jump there unfortunately, otherwise would have placed easily.  His relay team only lost one race all year and it was also at the all-county meet, where they placed second.  Taisei took 1st several times on the 100M and 200M.  Seems like he has some promise in this sport.  He'll just have to figure out how to squeeze it in with all his other sports.

Here he is working on his loft this summer.




Mirei is doing well with her Chinese, soccer, piano, and swimming.  Also tried tennis towards the end of summer and learned quite quickly.  Since she started much earlier than Taisei, maybe she can continue to pursue this sport if she's ever here in the summers.  (I'm finding that there is no tennis to be played during the school year!)  She's the healer of our family and is always empathetic and wanting to make people feel better.  She's popular in school and also gets lots of praise from her teachers (which surprises us greatly).  We'll keep working on her inability to listen to parents at home, which is better than being unwilling to listen to teachers, I guess?  :)  She's actually very good with her siblings and always fights for them when needed.

Here is Mirei after the school's one-mile run.  As a second-grader, she came in top three overall for the girls.


Leina is our baby who's turning out not to be a baby anymore.  We've found that she's one of the leaders in school.  It's amazing to she her little friends rally around her.  In her soccer team last season, she scored nearly every point in every game, as well as played all the defense.  Granted, her team wasn't very good, she was effectively running the ball down on every defensive possession and dribbling the length of the field on every offensive possession.  Her highest in one game was 7 out of her team's 9 goals.  This aggressive behavior shocked us in a pleasant way.  Now if I only knew something about soccer so I could help her be a better player.  She's just started Chinese.  Her first grade Chinese teacher is a Russian lady.  I really hope she can get a good foundation in her first year.

Both Leina and Mirei joined the school choir and sang together.  They were awesome!  They knew all the words and sang all the time at home.  It was fun to see them enjoying it together.


So I'm just bragging about the kids here, but I'm sure I'll be happy to read this in a few years from now.  Wami is enjoying having the kids all out of the house for half the day.  I'm staying crazy busy with the Bishop responsibilities (year 2 just in the books), handing all of Canada and Korea at work, along with a smattering of other projects, and staying as active as I can with Ultimate.  Life is indeed flying by. I'm doing everything I can to enjoy the journey!