Hearts Full of Joy

8 years

mia is 8 today. she was born on tax day, but it wasn't tax day in japan. the 15th was easter that year, everywhere. easter isn't celebrated in japan, but it was celebrated by us, a particularly happy and memorable easter that year, and three days later we got a phone call about a healthy, genki (happy) baby girl....did we want her? ummmm, YES! we had to think about it for approximately .0000001 nanoseconds. it was pure magic, an easter miracle, and  it still is.
on friday we cut off her 12 inch ponytail of beautiful hair to donate to locks of love.

before
 
after

she had a bit of a panic when the ponytail came off. but i just love her new look, the way her hair frames her sweet face. and it's wonderful to be freed from the brushing and brushing and washing and washing.....painful for both her and i.

shingo

we have been treated to a 5 day visit by one of our most favorite of people in the world, shingo.

the first time i saw shingo, he was a missionary, singing a musical number in church with a large group of young missionaries. when i saw him, i knew that our plans to move back to the u.s. after receiving mia's visa from the u.s. government needed to change. the spirit told me strongly that i had a son like shingo coming, and i needed to stay in japan and find him. it was an overwhelming experience, unlike any i had ever had, and it changed everything. shingo was serving as a missionary in the ward that shared our building, and so we had the opportunity to get to know him. he loved mia, who was 17 months old, and we discovered that his family was best friends with dr. samejima's family (the doctor who gave us mia). shingo had left medical school to serve his mission and planned to work with dr. samejima after he graduated (medical school begins right after high school in japan).

after this experience, and a few others i won't take the space to list, we called dr. samejima, and although we felt tremendously selfish and brazen in asking for another baby when so many other families were waiting, we found the courage to say that if he ever had a baby that he couldn't place for any reason (racial mix, handicaps, etc) to please let us know. he laughed and said there was another baby for us, a boy, and he would find him.

if we were to adopt again, and pass the u.s. home studies required, we needed to move out of our one bedroom home in tokyo. we felt guided to move to maihama, just outside of tokyo, and walking distance from tokyo disneyland and disney sea. and we did so about a month and a half after meeting shingo. and to our surprise, in our new japanese ward (we had spent the last 7 1/2 years in an english ward), we met shingo's family who lived just blocks away from our new home. we loved them immediately.

there is so much i could write, but to keep it simpler, 18 months after meeting shingo, i received a phone call that woke me early on a sunday morning. brock was gone, already at early church meetings. dr. smaejima's voice said "omedeto" (congratulations), "i've found your baby". it was march 7, 2004, the day of shingo's mission homecoming. we celebrated that day for two joyful reasons. and at shingo's openhouse that evening, sister samejima met with us and told us all about noah's birth mother. in april shingo went back to medical school and noah was born. these two (noah & shingo) are intricately tied together, and although i don't completely understand it, i know that it is significant. the spirit tells me so. we've seen very little of shingo since, as his medical school was in tokushima, shikoku, far away from tokyo...and nauvoo. i was thrilled to answer the phone in early december and hear shingo's voice. he would be graduating from med school in march, and would like to come and visit us then. we've been eagerly anticipating his visit, and it was even more enjoyable than hoped. he is amazing, and brought a wonderful spirit to our home. we hope that noah will be as much like him (as the spirit whispered to me) as possible....they look remarkably alike.

noah following where shingo leads....

it was a painful farewell when we put shingo on the train back to chicago. but he promises to visit before too long with his "new family" (the family he plans to have). we'll be waiting.

saturday we realized that it was the 5 year aniversary of the day of shingo's homecoming, and we were all together again.

update....shingo's dad just sent me this link.   (shingo flew to utah from chicago to visit his mission president, mission companions, and the university of utah med school)

grateful

things i am loving (and so grateful for) about my life:

living so close to a temple (and not just any temple)

my backyard - ahhhh

watching noah's face as he gets on the school bus, and gets off again when arriving home - happiness!

alone time with gracie while noah is at school - so fun to sit and play with her! she is a sweet & tender mommy to her baby dollies.

hanging out with the rodenbergs, and driving along the mississippi and through cornfields to get to their home.

early morning seminary - i wasn't looking forward to this, just the opposite. but, (so far) it seems to be helping my girls to be more centered, and i love that they are more motivated to settle down and go to bed on time, rather than staying up and playing on facebook, etc.

my family - in the last week three airplane crashes have injured and claimed the lives of people i know or know of - one crash in guatemala and  two in the western u.s. a new father who died had just blessed his newborn daughter. another couple died, leaving three teenagers without parents, and  yet another couple with four tiny children survived, but are severely burned. and another family i know, who has faced many struggles, has lost their father to cancer. many mre died & were burned in these three crashes, whose stories i don't know, but i'm sure are just as compelling. i am feeling blessed & grateful to have my family with me, and to be here with them - we never know when that may change.

this blog post by kelly reminds me of more reasons to be grateful for my children - infertility and the miracle of adoption and long awaited pregnancy. this was my reply to that post:

"you know i can't resist commenting on your infertility postings. i relate to all of it so intensely. and everything you said is beautifully true..."the best food ever tastes is after a fast. the best water ever feels going down your throat is when you are parched. and i know someday when i am holding a newborn in my arms the feelings of joy will be magnified for all the waiting and struggling. it will be just another blessing of infertility."
when we finally got mia, i was so grateful for my infertility, because it made the wonder & magic of that miracle so much more intensely perfect.
and about enjoying cate.... i remember well watching 5 year old natasha run on the play ground while we waited for lexi to get out of school one afternoon, during my infertility years, and being overcome with the wonder and miracle that she was in my life, and being grateful.
one more thought, which is just a thought.... brock was ready for adoption before i was. it is so true that "adoption has to be an intensely spiritually motivated thing, i think. to accept a baby as your own completely, well, you'd truly have to feel that they were "growing in your heart" and have a peaceful and compelling desire to find your child." so true. i have seen someone take a baby that they didn't feel that way about, and it didn't go well for them or the baby, and it broke my heart, because we would have been so happy to have that baby....
it took me longer to get to that point (and have a peaceful and compelling desire to find my child) than brock. i'm not trying to say that you will definitely get there, nor am i recommending that you eventually adopt. it's just a thought....it may be right for you someday, or it may not."

thank you kelly for reminding us of another reason that our families are to be cherished now and at every opportunity.

i could also make a list of the things i would change about my life right now, but those things are all overshadowed by my grateful list. and really, i should be most grateful for the things i would change, because they offer me the greatest opportunities for growth.

reunions

this is an interesting few weeks for me. as we are packing up and saying goodbyes, we are also reuniting and saying hellos to friends we haven't seen for years & years. we had two reunions over the weekend. our moving truck pulls away one week from today. and we have two more reunions before we leave twelve days from now. i'm so grateful that we get to see people before we leave. not only is it wonderful fun, but it keeps our life from being completely consumed by boxes.

on friday & saturday we had a fabulous time getting together with my siblings, their spouses, and their kids. all but 1 of the 33 of us were there - 21 cousins. there's nothing like being with family and seeing the cousins play. living next to cousins, even briefly, has been such a treat!noahhaley-boo
on monday we  got together with friends from our english ward in tokyo. our friendships there have been some of the most amazing of our lives. when we made the decision to move to japan 13 years ago.... in fact, we were in tokyo for brock to interview for that job 13 years ago this week, as he was graudating from grad school.... we expected to have amazing cultural experiences and make lots of japanese friends. what we didn't expect was the incredible bond we would form with the member of our english speaking ward. we didn't even plan to go to an english speaking ward, but after a few weeks of complete japanese submersion, i realized that i needed to be able to speak english, at least on sunday. after 7 1/2 years in our english ward (probably the happiest time in our life so far - lexi & tashi think so too), we did make the move to a japanese ward, which became a branch, and then became a ward again. that was an amazing experience too, in different ways.
i guess something about being in a foreign culture with a foreign language and having no family in the same hemisphere helps people to to appreciate each other. we needed each other, and we would do anything to help each other. i learned from example how to really serve and really love, how to really share the gospel, and really fellowship, and how to really be a friend in this ward - from the examples of these friends. and i learned how to overcome cultural and language barriers. at one point we had people from 13 different countries, who spoke 10 different native languages in this ward. members traveled (by car, bus, or train) up to an hour and a half to get to church, and up to two hours to do visiting and home teaching. people sacrificed for each other and for their testimonies.

but it was more that just the need for each other. the people in this ward were exceptional, some of the best people i have had the privilege of meeting. truly. and i love them.

to me the most amazing thing is that we can get together with these friends, no matter how much time has passed - 1, 6, or even 9 years, and pick up again where we left off like no time has passed, nothing has changed - except our kids getting older. some of us are still in japan, some have been in thailand, england, taiwan, turkey, canada, and many are back in the u.s. it doesn't matter where are are or what we have been doing, we still connect and understand each other. we have known most of these teenagers since they were in nursery & sunbeams with lex & tash. it was so fun to see them back together again.

even if our life in japan hadn't been an amazing experience, and we hadn't gotten our mia & noah.... even if i hadn't loved japanese people & culture (most of it anyway), i would still be grateful for japan just for these friendships that we have made.
these girls were my lifeline. and the memories are so fun.....crazy karaoke, train trips, scrapboking while our kids played, costco shopping (american food at close to american prices = heaven), trips to hong kong, etc. if only more of the girls could have been there with us. five of my blog links (to the right) are bloggers from this ward: gloria, jeni, mary, mcintyres, & val. only val is in the picture above.


seeing the hansens & their two oldest (plus nick, who jumped in the photo - dang you nick! :) ) was a highlight! we haven't seen them since we visited them in nagoya nine years ago this week, and celebrated the 4th of july & parker's 7th birthday with them. they have stayed at our home (two different homes in Japan) twice since then, but both times we were in the u.s. and didn't get to see them. the second time they stayed in our home they were on their way to live in thailand. their kids were lexi & tashi's first friends in japan. tashi wanted to marry parker. i told her it was ok with me.

another highlight was when friends who were in this stake, but not this ward, stopped by because they saw the "tokyo reunion" sign posted. they adopted a japanese son that is lexi's age. i had long talks with them about how they adopted in japan, and it was such a "fluke" (blessing) that they had gotten that baby, that i feared it could never happen for us. the agency they worked with wouldn't even work with us because we were "too young" (still in my 20's) and already had two kids. but it did work out. it was wonderful to see them!

feeling fit

i am in a fitness groove. hopefully moving won't throw off this groove. i had my third ballet class today, and have two more this week - loving it! and i am also loving, in approximately this order:

 1. jogging with lexi & tashi - so much funner than doing it alone!

2. the new york city ballet workout. if you can't find a ballet class, this is the next best thing.

3.tamilee web: i want that body - two different 15 mintue workouts each for abs, buns, and arms

4. best of tamilee web - again, great workouts for abs, buns, and arms. this is a brand new one, and i'm enjoying it because i have done #3 so many times and needed something new.

5. island girl hula cardio dance workout - when you want the beach, but can't be there. tashi & i enjoy doing this one together.

i also have a belly dancing workout that i want to try, but haven't yet.

it feels so amazing to be getting into better shape. gracie is a year old, and i suddenly have a lot more energy a year after giving birth. my pregnancies are so rough on me, it takes a long time for me to bounce back. a year from now, i'll be feeling so much better than i am now. i did that for seven years after tashi was born. every year i would say, "i feel so much better than i did a year ago, i had forgotten that i had ever felt this good." honestly. today, as i was running kids all over, i had a flashback to how much energy it takes for me to do something like fastening my seatbelt when i am pregnant. i throw up the ENTIRE time, and with gracie i would break all the blood vessels in my face from voilent vomiting about once a week. i also threaten pre-term labor, so have bed rest, and i am so low energy i can barely move. but i'm not complaining, the results (yummy babies) are completely worth it. and i would love to be pregnant again. honestly. (so yes, adoption was a great option for me, since i LOVE babies and children, and i got two delicious bonus babies, pregnancy-free)

mia's birthday

yesterday was tax day, and mia's birthday. seven years of mia's smiles, laughter, and silly sweetness. read more about the day mia was born on this post , & her adoption here, & more about mia here & here.

the yard is bursting with daffodils, and we had a photo shoot in spite of a freezing wind.  lexi & tashi had a track meet in the terrible weather. lex took 2nd in the 1600, and tash took 3rd in the 400, and i ran out of battery and didn't get any photos at the meet.

we are grateful for this girl!.....and love the missing front teeth.

easter togs

easter outfits for the little people are finished! i had so much fun making them, and didn't let myself feel pressured about it - a major victory for me. if i did it over again, i would make mia's tiers less full, and gracie's dress a little longer. but since i combined several different patterns, made size adjustments and design alterations, i was probably bound to feel that way. noah already had the sweater vest that matched the fabric perfectly.  somehow i managed to get 7 different fabrics into mia's dress - i am such a fabric nut. these fabrics are from the "shangri-la" line by three sisters for moda. i chose them to match the michael miller fabric that lexi & tashi chose for their dresses. i bought their fabric for them (they generally are in charge of making their own purchases with their own money) with the deal that they make their own dresses. tashi's is well underway. lexi's is cut out, but lexi is in japan for the next 10 days to visit friends on their spring break and attend the tokyo stake youth conference.

i haven't made easter dresses since the year mia was born. we only had lexi and tashi then, and on that perfect easter day seven years ago, although we didn't know it yet, mia was born. it was a very spiritual day for me, and i felt that something important was happening, even though we didn't find out about mia for three more days. three years later, noah was due on easter (but he made his arrival six days late). easter is extra special to me now that i've had my easter bunny babies. and it will be fun to celebrate easter in the u.s. it isn't celebrated in japan, even among christians. they never know when it is because it is based on the lunar calendar (the same problem we have here with chinese new year)

so long, no post

i think that five family parties over the holidays, all at least two hours away (four hours round trip) may have been too much for us. we loved it, really loved it, but it was probably too much. we have all been sick for two weeks, gracie starting it off with a nasty cold, and finishing it up (we can certainly hope) with stomach flu. she hasn't let us sleep much, poor miserable sweetie, and that slows our recovery. add to that: blue screen on our computer a week ago, and i haven't had much time to blog. i have spent any computer time i could snatch backing everything up, between many many blue screen episodes, and finally finished before the computer gives it's final gasp of breath. now we are waiting for our new mac to arrive. that will be a big switch and adjustment. we were mac people at the beginning of our marriage, and loved it, but made the switch to windows to get all the software options. now we are going back to mac. the day after christmas we got much faster internet, so once we have a new computer, things should fly.

i feel very out of touch with friends and family and anything outside of this house. but we were invited to a fun dinner last night with four other couples and their kids last night, and that was a breath of fresh air.

now that i've given you our recent low-lights, here are some highlights....

last minute christmas crafting: i made this for my sweet 6 year old who is struggling to come to terms and a peaceful understanding of her adoption. she and i have had several hour long talks in the wee hours of the mornings recently on this topic.

a stocking for gracie....so fun to make! the center block is a reproduction of an antique christmas card. "here's santa in disguise to give you a surprise" the appliqued patch on the top left says "gracie" and is from a judie rothermel  "aunt grace" fabric line. i have lots of that fabric in both pink and blue and plan to use a ltitle bit of it in most things i make for my gracie. the fabrics are moda's "roman holiday" line.

our christmas eve nativity

christmas morning...the stripey jammies are a seven year tradition for us. we all wear them for christmas.

we FINALLY finished the remodel of our 1940s home, and got a great renterupstairs! lexi models the kitchen on christmas eve. love those cabinets that great grandpa built!

not sure why this is sideways....try to fix it later.

and finally, tashi's photography in the snow:

(mia in the background)

 

the miracle of infertility

i am touched and inspired by this posting on kelly's blog. i love her style of expressing herself, sweet & powerful.

infertility is a topic very close to my heart, and i can't resist posting about it too. i am grateful for infertility, 14 years of it in our case, and here is why:

i wouldn't have these two miracles in my life without experiencing infertility, and i wouldn't have felt the sheer joy these miracles brought. nothing else in my life has compared to that feeling - having a most fervent prayer answered so miraculously.  in mia's birth announcement email, i said something about her being a "miracle". someone, i believe it was brock's aunt, replied that "every baby is a miracle". i was caught somewhat off-guard by that statement at the time, because i was so swept away by the mircale of our adoption in japan, but have thought about it frequently since. and i know that she was right. every baby is a miracle. and infertility is the reason that i feel the truth of that statement so deeply.

another miracle that was brought into my life by infertility is that when i unexpectedly found myself pregnant after 14 years, i felt so very differently about it than i had before. i treasured every minute, and didn't mind the 9 months of nausea, the fatigue, the violent vomiting, the intense heartburn, etc. i just felt grateful. and i didn't allow myself to feel pressured to do "everything" like i did during my first two pregnancies. i put my own and my baby's physical and emotional health first, and my family a close second, and did very little else, and i enjoyed it, instead of feeling guilty. being able to have that attitude was a miracle for me. being able to feel that pregnancy and caring for babies were a priveledge and not ever a burden was a miracle. it's not that i didn't enjoy my first two babies, and think that they were the two most amazing things that had ever happened. it's just that i had a new level of understanding after infertility.

the miracle is that i learned what erma bombeck expressed in "if i had my life to live over":

"Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every
moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only
chance in life to assist God in a miracle."(i personally would say the best chance, not the only)
"When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, 'Later. Now
go get washed up for dinner.' There would have been more 'I love you's',
More 'I'm sorry's.' "

(thank you melanie)

i've been tagged

i've been tagged by gloria and lexi, and so here goes.

10 years ago:

we had recently moved back after almost 2 years in japan, and were enjoying sharing the joys of autumn and its holidays with family. we had been gone for 6 years, 4 years in phoenix for grad school (starting when lexi was a newborn), and then japan. i was turning 27. lexi was turning 6, and tashi would soon be 5. we were hoping for another pregnancy (who knew that it would be antoher 9 years before that happened). little did we know then, but we would soon be returning to japan. brock (i'm leaving his age out to be kind, but if you must know, he is 5 years older than me) had his own business, and like now was working at home. life was simple and very good.

photos of our halloween party with brock's family, trick or treating with neighbors, dressing up our little princesses, and carving pumpkins with our black cat mimi - she adopted us just like our current black cats.

5 years ago:

i was turning 32. lexi was turning 11. tashi would soon be 10, mia was 18 months, and oh so cute! we were preparing for a life-changing move from sezokuike, ota-ku tokyo and our english ward and american friends to maihama, urayasu-shi, chiba-ken and a japanese ward. we had just asked the samejimas if we had any chance of adopting another baby through them, and were overjoyed to hear yes. we were moving to get a bigger house for another baby, and although we didn't know it then, to have lots of wonderful and lots of very challenging experiences. i took a fabulous four day trip with three wonderful friends to hong kong just before we moved. brock had to practically force me to go, and then i loved it and was so glad.

first layout: a the hong kong bird market with friends - noah plus our recent move have completely destroyed the beautiful bird cage i bought that day.

second layout: dimsum, our taxi driver, the antique furniture i bought, and an autumn festival. 

look at that precious mia! and lexi had so much fun with her 11th birthday.

mia the ladybug at our halloween party and photos with wonderful friends from our english ward at our sayonara party as we moved.

our empty house as we were moving in, lexi and tashi trick or treating, and enjoying the park on tokyo bay by our new home on a sunday afternoon.

1 year ago:

i was turning 36, and had just discovered that i was pregnant after 14 years of infertility. i was shocked, thrilled, tired, and nauseated. i was realizing that i would have to slow down the pace of my antique quilt business. i was also planning a trip to visit family with mia and noah, and to let them experience halloween and thanksgiving in the u.s. brock was on his way to the u.s. for business, and lexi and tashi had been in the u.s. during the summer. getting mia to school every day with all her required gear was one of my major adventures at the time.

mia's ninja dance at her sports day at yochien (japanese kindergarten)

vintage grandmother's flower garden quilt i was selling

noah at the 'traffic park'

  lexi, tashi, and friends at lexi's sleepover birthday party

1 day ago:

i posted twice on this blog, savored conference, enjoyed the snow, made cookies with mia and noah and didn't eat any myself (being good), made yummy banana blueberry bread with bananas that needed to be used, got cranky with my kids, got over it, picked out paint for the remodel of our house (the one on captol hill that my great grandfather built, and that we are anxious to get finished so that we can get renters in it again.... we are startiong a project of restoring it to it's 1940s beauty while updating a few necessary things), grocery shopped, finished two embroidery and an applique project during conference, helped natasha's friends abduct her, chatted with some of lexi's friends and watched some of their video creations (they make mini movies), cuddled lots and lots with gracie, and had good down time with brock (even though it was interrupted by abducting and chatty teenagers), readh my scriptures, and read a little in a library book i am enjoying.

silly kitties and pumpkins at our door yesterday.