Josiah's 10th Birthday!

Hello! :)

Another birthday has passed...this time it was Josiah's! He turned ten years old! 

Week of Pictures, Five-- Us and Life

Hi! How are you all doing? Sorry it has taken so long to get another installment of these posts up!

Month full of Birthdays

You may know by now that our family has three birthdays in March-- Abigail's was on the 6th, Malachi's the 17th, and tomorrow, the 22nd, is Zebulun's. 

As for me, I'm having a blast, because it means I get to make three cakes almost all at once! :) I really enjoy making cakes so it's a lot of fun for me! :) 

Days of January, Abigail style :)

Konnichiwa!
I hope you are having a wonderful Sunday and beautiful one as well. :) The sun is starting to stay out a little longer now....



A couple mornings ago, it was all misty outside and looked quite cold. So, I opened up the window to snap a few pictures.

Week of pictures 1

Hello! 

We have enjoyed reading the responses to the survey. :) Thank you for doing that for us! If you haven't done it yet, it's still up for you, so don't hesitate if you want to do it! :) 

We have several posts lined up, but you'll have to forgive us if they are slightly slower in coming-- we're in the middle of an exciting project! Daddy and us girls are in the process of finishing our room. We have been busy and enjoying doing that! :)

I thought I would share my photos from the first of January to the 6th. I know it's not a full week, but I have a couple extra, so it kind of makes up for that. ;) 

"Thankful"--Brother's handiwork

By request from various readers, we will be showcasing our brothers "Thankful" projects. :) I think they all did a great job, and were very creative! 

Campfire, missionary style!

The day before my birthday, Daddy got this rather spur of the moment idea to have a cookout. He took the legs off our little grill and the boys put rocks around it so we could have a quick "fire pit" type thing. It made the grill look a lot more campfire ish that's for sure!
Our neighbors probably wondered why we didn't get out more than a couple times this summer and now that it could snow any time we're out there all evening in coats cooking marshmallows, lol!

Windy at the beach--our visit to Teshio

When most people think of going to the beach, they picture a cloudless blue sky, bright sand, and lots of sun. So it's rather funny that most of the times I've been to beaches in my life the day has been beautifully gray, to match the water, and the sand is black. And the water is frothy and cold.

Spaghetti Ice Cream....

How about a little peek into Japanese culture? :) Today we are showcasing the novelty item, Spaghetti ice cream.
Now, spaghetti is one of my favorite foods...and ice cream is also one of my favorite foods....but together? When we first saw this several days ago at a convenience store (we call them conbini (ko-nn-bean-ee) here.) Mama was so turned off by the idea she told us not even to talk about it! Lol!
Yesterday however, Malachi, Minks Kid number three, oldest Minks boy at thirteen, got permission to buy it with his own money.
I thought it would be perfect for a blog post. ;) I mean, who else does an entire post on spaghetti ice cream?? :D It's ridiculously novel.
Well....I'm afraid however this rating will not be very high. Malachi brought it out last night....
Here he is with his happy face before he tries it! He was pretty pleased to have something new to put on our "strange foods we've eaten" list.



This is the package. I'm afraid that with a package looking like that and advertising how yummy the tomato gelatin chunks in the ice cream are, we probably should be considered forewarned. Lol


Two bites later...Malachi stopped eating it. We started to tease him a little. His first announcement was..."it's SALTY!" ....Well naturally I guess spaghetti wouldn't be sweet. But it is still odd for our American minds to wrap around.


I asked to try it so I could give my opinion too. I tried a bite. If it was anything but a dessert it would probably have tasted good. But I'm not too keen on the idea of salty tomato ice cream with tomato gelatin chunks. Soo...it wasn't bad tasting, just too strange to swallow. Haha, get it? Swallow? Ok that pun was half on purpose. Lol.
Zebulun (number six, age five) also decided to try it. His first reaction was a thumbs up...then he really tasted it, and his expression changed so quick it was absolutely hilarious! Josiah also tried it, but pretty calmly handed it back. No one else wanted a taste. :P
Daddy wanted Malachi to pose with it, wearing funny expression, but Malachi, probably wondering why he spent 100 yen (one dollar) on it, didn't really want to.
Haha, big sister in for the rescue. I made this face, but right when Daddy took the picture I couldn't hold it any longer, and I burst out laughing! So, it's a rather strange picture. In fact, I think I'm being pretty brave putting it on our blog! Lol! But we all thought it was pretty funny so I thought maybe others would like a good laugh too. :)


Well, I hope this post didn't make your stomach turn somersaults. :D Japan has a lot of really amazing food, and so when we see something unusual, we like to try it. We do have a pretty good list going on too. ;) It's kind of silly, but maybe it's almost a hobby :D We always like to try things though...not only is it fun, but it also expands our minds to other cultures and our tastes to learn to appreciate other countries' food. And honestly, I think every country I've tried food from I've liked at least one of the things from that country! :)
Anyways, have a very good day!
God bless,
Victoria, the funny MK ;)

Gone green

It just makes sense that Malachi, number three kid in our family, likes the color green best. After all, his birthday is on St.Patrick's day!
We always wear green for those two reasons. :) It's fun!
He is one of our comedians, a tech-geek, and cruncher of numbers and facts. He says it's fun. He wants to fly...as a missionary pilot, someday. He thinks space is awesome. And he has been surrendered to preach since five years old.
We girls are kind of proud of him :D





Flashback two years ago. ;) Victoria's "pride and joy" cake. It was really fun to make :P with the most delicious bugs we have ever eaten. :)





Speaking of bugs, some random news.... We just finished our last meeting, which happened to be a missions conference. At their international dinner, we girls ate some silk worms from Vietnam! Victoria thought it tasted kind of like dirt inside of a sausage casing... pretty bland, but claimed it was not bad. She says she could eat them easily as long as she had water to kind of moisten it but told the people they would be good with ketchup :D I, Abigail, liked them very well! I said if I lived in Vietnam and had them often I would like it a lot.
There was a lot of other interesting things there, too. In fact, many countries were represented that we had never tasted food from! Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Germany, Scandinavia, Greece...as well as Chinese and Mexican. We also brought Japanese. ;)
Another miscellaneous snip of information...did you know Patrick of Ireland was really a Baptist? He held to all the Baptist distinctives, although with one of them there is a little question on for lack of information. At any rate, he definitely wasn't Catholic!! :)
Well, I warned you it would be random. :)
Have a good day!
Abigail and Victoria