We found snow!

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, some friends invited us to go sledding. We hesitantly agreed.  You see, we haven't seen any "real" snow for over five years.  In that time we have added a handful of kids and thus don't have warm gear for everyone.  We decided to bite the bullet and make it work.  We didn't believe that Japan actually got "real" snow, so when we committed to go sledding, we honestly thought there was going to be 2-3 inches of manmade snow on this little hill.  When I got a text from our friends who were about 30 minutes ahead of us saying they hadn't chained up yet but the roads were getting bad, we realized how wrong we were. We drive a little Japanese van with tiny tires. We have no chains.  Imagine our surprise when, not more that an hour from our house, we run into this:

 

 

And that was before it got bad. Thank goodness for Ken's mad snow-driving abilities and prayer.  We got stuck a couple of times, but eventually made it up to the Megahiro Ski Resort. There looked to be at least 18 inches of fresh snow on top of the base that was already there. It was gorgeous! I didn't realize how much I had missed being in the mountains after a good snow. We all had a blast. The kids were in heaven sledding and throwing snowballs and playing whatever snow games they created. One thing that was really great about the resort is that they had a room just dedicated to relaxing.  You take off your boots and can rest, sleep, or eat. You'd never find something like that in the States.  It was a super fun excursion and was worth every ounce of stress trying to outfit everyone and get up the mountain.