We miss Big Red!

For those who are unaware, "Big Red" is Greg's pickup truck (a red Ford F-150) who has been around through good times (i.e. just about anytime Greg can load up the bed and act like Red was an absolute necessary purchase) and bad times (i.e. several speeding tickets and just about every refueling stop). If you don't understand why a man would name a truck anything, don't - it probably just means you're not from the same geographic region as Greg.

Anyway, I'll admit that I wasn't always the biggest fan of Red (who is currently in a storage facility in New Jersey) at first, but this weekend we could have used her. Thus, this blog entry is to serve three purposes:

1. To show why there are so many "rock gardens" in Japan.

2. To show that since it is impossible to purchase grass seed in Japan, what one has to go through to have a lush and living yard (or in our case, what you have to go through for the second time).

3. To show life in a land with only small vehicles at your disposal...

The back of "Lil Red" (our Mazda Famila here in Japan) after removing enough sod so that we no longer had to worry about it tipping over... a disaster we experienced several times...

Cora playing "Fort" in the back seat of our formerly clean sedan. The BEST part of the way they sell sod in Japan is that it's in small little squares!

Bonny and Finn assisting Greg in replacing the grass that they helped destroy... Actually, we're pretty certain they were laughing at our futility, but I'm trying to put a positive spin on the weekend... Notice the pile of waiting sod in the background... we can't help but be shocked by how much grass is needed to cover our small yard... maybe by the time we do it for the third time, it won't come as such a surprise...