Month of birthdays

After celebrating 3 birthdays in January, we are a little bit tired of cake! I almost talked Cailey into cheesecake, but she couldn't pass up the pink frosting. Here are a few pics from Bryant's 3rd birthday on the 18th and Cailey's 5th birthday on the 30th.

Isaac's Blessing

Yesterday was Isaac's blessing. Since we live on the other side of the world and no one could be here, we thought we would at least snap some photos. We are standing outside of our church at the Yamate ward building. There is a monument in front of it because this is where the first Elders dedicated Japan for missionary work.

Fuji Birthday celebration

Mt. Fuji at Lake Kawaguchiko

Shane did a great job surprising me for my birthday this year. He took us to see Mt. Fuji. We hear that this is the best time of the year to see it. Most of the year it rains so often that there is seldom a day that the clouds don't cover it. We went to a lake called Kawaguchiko and the view from there was amazing. It really was beautiful, these pictures don't do it justice. We were surprised at how close it was to us. It only took us about an hour and a half to drive there.
We spent the day there and drove home in the late afternoon.

Around 5:30 pm our friends from Sendai, Katie Shepard and her daughter Grace (Cailey's friend) came to stay the night with us. They had to drop off family at the airport that day and so it was fun to be able to see them. Katie gave me a great present. She watched all of the kids while Shane and I went out to eat. We went to find a restaurant by the Yokohama eki (train station) where there are hundreds of shops and restaurants, but because it was New Years day(the biggest holiday of the year in Japan), almost everything was closed. It was so weird to see it like that! We finally did find some that were open and ended up eating at an Indian curry restaurant.
It was a great day for me. This year's birthday/New Year's celebration will be hard to beat.