Welcome Iris!

We've been really busy getting things ready for our Japanese foreign exchange student.  We have decided to call her "Iris" on the blog because, though her name has no meaning, there is a Japanese homonym for her name that means "Iris".  

The main project I've been undergoing is changing her room from a nursery to a girls' room.  This will be Peach's room once Iris is gone, so it is a bit young, but I tried to keep it mostly white so it wouldn't feel like it's too too young.  I realized that I never took a real picture of how the nursery has always been, but I do have this picture of when we briefly had a toddler bed up for The Frog in the same room.  You can kind of see the end of the changing table just to the left of the doorway.  Normally the tall dresser would be in the corner where the crib is here, and the crib would be shifted along the wall where the toddler bed is (you can barely see the foot of it.) As you can see, my photography skills, though still aren't that great, they have improved somewhat in the last year.

I changed the curtains for some long white ones I found at Down East (and I lined them to make them block more light).  I tried to keep it pretty spare because I wanted Iris to be able to have her things around to make her more comfortable, and I had no idea what kinds of things she would be bringing with her.  I thought that mirror would make a good little place for putting on jewelry, because there are pegs below you could hang necklaces on and i put a little PB jewelry box my older sister gave me a long time ago on the shelf next to it.  When Peach moves in next year, I will lower the mirror to her height.

 The white bed and cupboard were refinished by me- thanks to my awesome neighbor lending me their sprayer.  That bed was IMPOSSIBLE to brush well.  I plan to eventually embroider something in the white embroidery hoop (yet to be determined) but for now, it stays like it is.  The fabrics on the wall match the quilt I now only need to finish hand sewing the binding.

 NW exchange sent us a few family photos of Iris and I framed 3 of them for the room.  I also used my Silhouette to cut out her kanji.  Doesn't it look like a work of art?  (thank goodness I am not Japanese- my handwriting is sooo bad already.  I can't imagine having to write kanji legibly...)

 Some flowers from the yard.

 Iris got in Friday morning and we've been keeping her busy and feeding her lots of typical "American" foods- hamburgers, spaghetti, pizza...  Iris brought us Japanese gifts.  Here are the kids in their awesome pajamas!

We've been having fun trying out some Japanese snacks.

 For some reason we thought it was a good idea to hike the Y on Saturday.  The Frog walked about 1/3 of the way, and then I carried him on my back the rest.  (I am quite sore today...)

 Iris was a trooper and didn't complain nearly as much as I did :)  I couldn't believe how out of shape I was!  I also couldn't believe how many people passed us who were RUNNING it!  We stopped to rest a LOT and one of the bends had this huge rock.  A couple of girls were posing on it for a camera and when they got down, The Frog said he wanted to pose too:

 Here we are at the top:

We decided to reconfigure the kids so we wouldn't have to constantly stop for every rock The Frog wanted to examine and "hide" somewhere.  As you can see, he wasn't pleased.  He ended up on my back again, about half way down the mountain.