Dangers of Scooters

Last Saturday I was working and racing the kids at the youth center on the scooters... medium length story short I was going very fast cause I HAD TO WIN... against 9 year olds... and my scooter ran into the wall and my leg ran into the scooter... I thought I was going to die... it hurt so bad at first I really thought I was going to puke... but I wanted to show you guys what this all really means

this is a scooter

 These are kids playing nicely on scooters... 

we don't play on them like this at the youth center... 

that would be lame

Now that you know what a scooter is and how it works... 

this is what they can do...

Battle wound Day 2

 Day 3

Day 4

Yes that bruise extends from my butt to my knee... wicked!

Easter Eggs

This is a project that I started over a year ago... I wanted to make some really cool easter eggs that I could use for a couple of years so I wouldn't spend tons of time every year making really intricate eggs... My thoughts were make some super fancy ones and then every year just makes some simple ones to go with them.

sooo...

I figured I could just blow out some eggs and use them for a while... blowing out eggs is a lot harder then people say... or maybe I am just bad at it... well now that I think about it everyone and everything said it is hard... but stuff that normal people say is hard is normally pretty easy for me... not this... it was hard.

AND this was all happening about a year ago... because of course I am always late... I started this right before easter... not enough prep time... and then Derick shattered his leg and spent two weeks in the hospital and 2 months on bed rest... so I had a bowl of blown out eggs sitting in my studio for a year... lame.

BUT the good thing is this allowed me to travel back to the states (for my sisters wedding) and purchase a sheet of vinyl while I was there... which was critical in my egg decorating plan... so here is what I did... I chose two different designs for my eggs... I chose plaid and blossoms... I was planning on dying them two different colors so I put on one set of vinyl stickers... like so...

I used a craft punch on the sheets of vinyl for the blossoms and then just cut some electrical tape into small strips for the stripes

Dipped them in yellow dye (20 drops yellow food coloring, 1 cup hot water, 1 tsp vinegar) And then I let them dry... took those stickers off put on a new set in new spots overlapping parts of the old spots... and put those in pink dye (5 drops red food coloring, 1 cup hot water, 1 tsp vinegar) but I only left them in the pink for a few seconds because it was so much stronger then the yellow. Let that dry then added a few touches of glitter!!!

Spring in the Garden

I am frustrated... a guess its a good frustrated... I have more adventures and sweet photos then I have time to blog about. Its better then having nothing to blog about... but still sad. There are so many cool things that happened this winter that I still have not posted about... and now its spring... and I cant bare to talk about winter anymore because I am SO EXCITED about spring that you guys will just never know what else happened this winter... oh well...

and on that note... ITS SPRING... here is look at whats going on in my garden! 

(everything is coming back from last year besides the pansies)

Pansies in a pot

Sedem

Lime Green and Black Clover!

More pansies

Hyacinth breaking through 

Hachinohe Port Tsunami Clean Up

Well... I know now that a housewife is something I can never be... maybe a mom/housewife... but I am still not sold (not dogging the people that are housewifes... just not for me). The Youth Center has been closed all week and I have been sitting at home... cleaning and lame things like that... so when I heard about this opportunity to go to Hachinohe to help clean up the port I was TOTALLY STOKED! First some some pictures of the devastation on the way into the port then pictures of us helping clean up after the tsunami.

Here is the first view of the port we had... two giant boats on docks... not where they should be... 

This was on the main road... just hanging out... 

Here is our group getting our instructions of what to help with... we basically picked up and sorted all the trash, metal & wooden pallets 

After we were done with this area... and yes it was snowing...  

Here we are digging sand out of gutters so that if another tsunami comes through or it rains the water has somewhere to go... 

I was so happy to be apart of something to help the country and people that I love so much... I am sure we will be helping until there is nothing left to do... I love you Japan!

Misawa Port -Post Tsunami

These are images from the Misawa Port just days after the Tsunami struck... I don't have much to say... they are too sad... some clean up had already started (like plowing the foot of sand that covered all the roads) but when I got there, no one was around... it was really creepy and really really tragic... this place was utterly destroyed. 

I thought this was powerful... coca-cola... something we all can relate to

Some how a light bulb managed to survive... 

This slab of concrete was massive... just thrown around like nothing

a buoy... maybe from out in the ocean, maybe from in the port

A road used to go across here connecting the swimming beach to the port

This huge boat is hundreds of feet from the water

Miss Veedol Beach Post Tsunami

We have a beach about 10 minutes up the road called Miss Veedol Beach; there is a replica of a plane and a huge tower at this beach. One of the pilots who flew in after the tsunami said he didn’t see the tower anymore so I wanted to go check it out. I parked the car clear of the tsunami debris and walked down to the beach. There were signs wrapped around trees… all this area used to be grass, now it is buried under a fairly deep layer of sand…

This used to be where the road went to the parking lot…

The tower was still there but not the plane. This is where the replica of the plane sat… just the support pillars are left… below is what this spot looked like before the tsunami

After Tsunami

Before Tsunami

This is all that was left of the plane… a chunk of the side… and you can see one wheel off on the fence in the distance…

This is a big concrete area where people would come and fly model planes… these cracks might be from the earthquake but my guess is they are from the tsunami… you can also tell that big crane in the background is all falling forward…

I wonder if the claw from the crane crashed into the concrete there and then got pushed sideways from the tsunami or if the tsunami put that hole there?!?

First Trip to the Beach after the Tsunami

 This is the beach I often go to surfing, walking with Kona, and for bonfires… it is 5 minutes from base… the closest one to base. It was the first place we went to see what kind of destruction was left in the wake of the tsunami. From what I know of this stretch of beach there were no people living here but there were a lot of fishing boats and shacks with supplies up behind the sea wall…  This tangle of rubble is maybe 300 feet from the ocean… finding a glass float just wasn’t the same with all this behind it…

Here is where the water rushed over the sea wall taking out part of the wall as it went… just ripping through steel and concrete!

A little further down the sea wall this is where the biggest shack on the beach stood. You can’t even tell anything used to be there except for the lack of trees… there is a before picture below this one…

After

Before

This is where we would drive our cars out onto the beach to surf or have bonfires… now it is a 6-foot drop off in some places

Back up in the trees… here is a boat that was left up in a tree, 15 feet off the ground…

And that shack I showed you that just disappeared… well I found it… 100 feet away…

If this is what it is like here… where these were no people and only small fishing shacks it hurts me to think about super populated areas and villages right on the sea that were just demolished…