Today's bits

This was the view from our room last time we
were there.

I'm racing to get lots done before we leave tomorrow morning for our mission's national conference in Hokkaido (big northern island of Japan).  (See here for last time we did this in 2013 at the same hotel.)

Today after church we celebrated Father's Day (it is Father's Day here and in many countries in the world today, unlike Australia) by going out to a cafe for morning tea. It was fun to get the boys to try to remember stories about their dad.

This photo of my family I took on our way from church to the cafe for our
Father's Day celebration. It lacking clarity. I was riding my bike and
just whipped my phone out of my bag in my front basket and
snapped one shot. David just happened to turn around at that moment!
He didn't know what I was doing and I didn't call his name! Amazing.

We stopped at a hardware store on the way home to get a chicken-type wire to make a lid for our turtle who's been trying to escape his enclosure recently.

We rested after lunch, as usual on a Sunday.

What caption would you add? This was how we transported our
turtle to our friends' house. It felt a bit weird but Tiny was fine!

Then three of us took the turtle to his/her turtle-sitters for the next month. They were very, very excited. With five kids in the house I'm not sure Tiny the Turtle is going to get much peace and quiet.

I then had to make 100 biscuits to take to conference. There's one thing about conferences in Japan (or Asia in general, I guess), is that they don't really do "snack time". Hence we've been asked to provide 20 portions of snacks per person attending = 100 for us!

Then it was heating up leftovers for dinner, eating, and reading the final instalment of our family read-aloud book for a while, Drowned Wednesday by Garth Nix. (It's obviously not coming to conference with us). I've since read and sent some important emails and am writing this quick blog post.


Packing has occurred at various times through the day and continues as I write (I'm not quite finished myself...)

It's exciting to be going away (except for getting up at 5am) for the week. The conference has many things we're looking forward to:

• great fellowship,
• fantastic meals (all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast and dinner),
• swimming pools in the basement,
• luxurious onsen in the basement and on the top floor (Japanese public baths),
• networking, and
• more fellowship.

Hopefully we'll get good Bible teaching too. 

It will be nice to doing something different and to not be stuck at my desk and for the boys to be occupied. Oh, and hopefully there will be some nice weather, especially on Wednesday afternoon when we have free time, so that we can enjoy Hokkaido's rural beauty too.

However I am aware that my work doesn't stop just because I've got something like this on. The magazine is hopping on various fronts at present (three magazine at various stages on the go at present) and other matters that will need to be monitored. I'd be horrible at a traveling job: I always find it difficult to keep up with email etc. when I'm away.

But while I continue to sit here and write this, I'm not getting anything else done. So, farewell for now!