Perrywinkle

Hello!
Let me introduce you to our new friend and pet. ;)

Paleontologist Fun

Whew! It's been a while since I posted on here, hasn't it? 

To be honest, I was kind of struggling for a while with what to write. I had ideas, but I kept wondering if it was really that interesting to others. But sometimes a little break is nice and you come back refreshed and revitalized--and that's the way I feel about this blog right now. Super excited to get back into posting, even if they're short little things like this one is going to be. :) The style of my posts might be a little different now, but...I'm not going to tell you what exactly I mean by that. You'll just have to wait and see. ;)

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!

Zebulun's Birthday, Daddy's Return, etc

Hello! I hope you are having a beautiful day! :)

First off, I want to thank everybody who wished me a happy birthday. It made me really happy and was very special. Thank you! :)

Last Sunday was Zebulun's birthday. He could not wait to open his presents. :D Victoria made him a vanilla cake.

Week of Pictures, Four: Tea parties, Coziness, and Comfort Foods

I don't have very many pictures this time, I'm afraid, but there are some. :) They're also not the best... many taken with an ipad, lots of strange slants etc. But at least I'm still taking pictures, right! :) 

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. ;) 

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

We just wanted to take a moment to wish a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of our readers! We hope you have the best of days celebrating the birth of our sweet Saviour and enjoying time with family. 

"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 ;)

Happy birthday...to Josiah and (very late) to Zebulun

Howdy!
The 15 of April is Josiah aka Joe's birthday. He turned 9 years old.
He has always reminded us of Curious George. He's pretty shy, but he's the corniest little kid out there! His latest favorite things are cowboys, and he has always liked his bicycles. Therefore,I made him a cowboy cake! One of my hobbies is cake decorating and I was eager to try out making my own fondant. While I didn't care for how it turned out (our tastes since coming to Japan 13 years ago has changed to where we don't like super sweet things very much), it was an interesting experience and I'm going to try to find a different recipe someday. :) It was fun to work with however.
The design was really last minute, and I worried that it looked too "Viking" but everyone else didn't think so, so that was good. :)
















And it was only today I realized that I don't think we ever posted about Zebulun's birthday! He had his birthday three days before we left for Japan, and things were pretty crazy. I honestly thought I had gotten that post published, but I guess it was one of the ones I never got around to.
Zeb is very energetic and independent. He is also very smart. He learned his first two kanjis at age three. He likes to help people vacuum and ever since he got saved a couple months back, he loves to tell people about God, getting saved, or going to church. One time when we were staying around our home church, he told a young lady at a restaurant how good our church was. "We have a neat nursery too", he added. Lol!
Zeb on his birthday....Malachi likes to do snap circuits (electricity and batteries and what not...I certainly don't know how to work it) and he arranged them just so to play Happy Birthday for Zeb.



He likes little dogs and animals....(this is my aunts dog)


Especially his stuffed animals!




Have a great day! :)
Victoria <3