Spring Outside Our 4th Home One Year Later

I made many mistakes naming our plants (which I planted) but you get the idea :)


Outside Home Spring 2010 from Musclecars & Meditation™ on Vimeo.

I'm loving this little bit of earth... Seriously, it is such a pleasure to have a bit of ground to plant and watch things grow. Our 2nd home in Sumita had gorgeous nature all around it... When we moved to Ofunato our first place had barely enough room to park our car... So, now I am kinda' into gardening. And composting...

This was our home

We have been so blessed! Today we signed the contract on our new home! It is actually our 4th home in Japan...crazy.
We found it about 10 days ago and now we can start moving in tomorrow! We got the key today and headed straight over to take some before shots.
It's so clean and smells so new. It has new tatami mats (grass mats) in three rooms and they fill the house with their lovely fresh scent. It was all recently re-modeled. It has 3 rooms a big kitchen and an empty store front that will become our new "shop" as Gabe and I call it. It is going to provide plenty of storage for all of our teaching materials. We are so thankful for that. With two teachers it has become pretty much impossible to have anyone over because all of our materials are spread out on every empty surface we have. Now it can all be organized OUT of the house!
Another huge blessing is that it has a fan system that runs under the house to control mold. Ofunato is a really moist city (it is a "port city") so we are truly thankful!
Well here is a video of the house room by room. It's 8 minutes long so... so watch when you like. Enjoy!




This will be our new address starting April 1st (but don't worry all of our mail from our old address will be forwarded to the new one):

38-10 Aza-Jinomori,
Ofunato-cho, Ofunato-shi
Iwate-ken,022-0002JAPAN

in Japanese:
日本岩手県大船渡市大船渡町字地ノ森３８－１０
And here is the link on google maps:http://tinyurl.com/gnsnewhome



View Larger Map

Change of Scenery?

Gabe here.
Steph has been researching the local area for a bigger place...
So, we've been looking around a little... but what we found were mostly high prices and small places :(

But, recently we saw a remodeled older home which has a store (like a little shop/businness) space attached in front...
Steph (and I) really like the space for kids and visiting family... plus there is a BIG front room for storage or whatever) and a computer controlled ventalation system tp prevent mold under the home (something that has been a real annoyance and concern for both of us in the last 3 years). Steph loves the place and we may be able to swing it finacially. So..., we might be moving soon :)
We'll see...

Video: Car/Flowers/Dinner in About 1 minute

A short update...

Video: "Spring Has Sprung" by Steph

Hey Everybody!
Gabe here,... I'm proud to introduce the first "Peanutbutter and Pickles™ " production ever!!!

Today, Steph made a short film which will give you the "nickel tour" of our little home here in Ofunato. There's also some silliness at the end too...

Just click the play button (you may have to pause it and let it "buffer"---just let the grey bar get to the right side) and enjoy the goofery.

Pot-Luck Party

Tonight we are having a pot-luck dinner with our Sumita English Conversation Circle. Steph is making "Enchiladas Potosinas"...

Preparing for Pot Luck:


Pot-Luck Spread: