Hearts Full of Joy

little spooks

halloween was wonderful. the only improvement i could have asked for would be the 70 and 80 degree temperatures that we've been blessed with this week rather than the 50 degree temperatures of that week. but it didn't rain, and we were grateful. trick-or-treating happens on beggar's eve here, the night before halloween. it is truly magical to walk the streets filled with other trick-or-treaters, and overhung with glowing orange and red maple leaves and brilliant yellow gingkos, and to feel safe stopping at any house we see.

the pumpkin walk fell on halloween this year, thanks to halloween being considerate enough to fall on saturday. i got some beautiful photos that were lost when i saved them to the computer. still having computer/photo issues. also some amazing photos of the kids buried in the leaves in our yard that afternoon as the sun was low and golden. ~i would greatly appreciate it if you would please try to imagine it in your mind :) ~ to our surprise, the candy corn princess costume got more comments and cheers in the parade, and again later as we walked the streets, than any other. it was chosen because is was such a match with the little princess' persona.

christmas cozies

always in search of fun projects for our hand made (or written, or second hand) christmas, i am looking for cozy pajama projects to use with this selection of flannels from my shop:

 

i love vintage, and feel blessed because that's just about all that's available in pajama patterns now. i'm considering some of these options i found on etsy for my littlest girls:

 

it would be so fun to live closer to my mom (for many reasons! including:) so that i could raid her vintage pattern stash for the perfect nightgown, like i did for easter dresses in 2008. 

i love this idea for little man,

but i'll use my own jenbei pattern i bought in japan to make summer jammies for my little japanese babes.

we had a lovely father's day

daddy is growing his hair and beard for the pageant in three weeks.
i really love father's day! i enjoy it so much more than mother's day. our daddy deserves to be spoiled. now he is off to japan, for the first time since january.

baby's birthday

susanna G is 2 years old.

because noah needed something to do, and i needed to get some things done, i encouraged him to get his giant construction paper pad, his gift from tashi on his birthday (and his favorite birthday present), and make some decorations for gracie's party. i envisioned him drawing some pictures. this is what he came up with:

i love it! he can be so surprising. i had gotten in the habit of having lower expectations for him because of his delayed speech and fine motor skills. he couldn't sit still for even one page of a book to be read to him until he was almost 4. but now he is really taking off, and wants me to do "school work" with him every day. lower expectations no more.

we love birthday presents that they can all enjoy together.

we were able to find one hour that we could all celebrate together, between the last day of school, scouts, achievement days, and young women's.

we were half way through the party when i realized that mia had worn this same dress on her 2nd birthday. brock points out that my subconscious must have realized it. gracie wanted to wear the same dress she wore on her birthday last year. she is wearing it today instead.

mia's quilt was a hit.

 

spring flings

some of the two hundred & twenty - something bulbs I planted last fall are peeking up and blooming. i have been looking forward to spring, and it is living up to my expectations. magnolias, tulip trees, cherry trees and my daffodils and crocuses are in bloom. everything is turning green, our early garden is planted, and the birds are singing.

a generous friend has taught me how to can chicken and dried beans, which i have been excited to learn. it is a tasty and convenient way to add protein to food storage, and are very handy to have on hand. i know that my dried beans in storage will get too hard to enjoy eating before i get to them unless i can them and use them. i never think far enough ahead to have time to soak and cook them for our meals, and so i always open a can instead of using my dried beans.
i have now canned 50 lbs of chicken, fit into 24 quart jars, and 56 quarts of beans. brock figures i have saved over $250 dollars on the cost of buying that much canned chicken from the store. i got this chicken in bulk at $1 a pound. and it is so useful and convenient to have it canned. the dried beans cost me the equivalent of 20 cents a can from the store, 40 cents for a quart jar (not including the cost of the jars, which i will re-use, and the electricity for the stove top canning). 56 quarts of beans equals 112 15 oz cans of beans from the store. the friend who taught me how to do this canning opened up her bottled beans and we taste tested them against bush brand beans, which are her favorite brand.... and we all agreed, the home bottled beans were much, much better. i am also amazed that the 56 quarts of beans barely made a dent in my 125 lbs of dried bean storage. so dried beans will go a long way, but they do get hard after 5 to 7 years and won't soften with any amount of cooking. so it's important to keep rotating them. beans are such a great source of protein, fiber, and many helpful vitamins. i feel much better after adding these items to my food storage.

my mom & SIL traci came for the nauvoo women's retreat last week, which was wonderful beyond words, both the retreat, and having them here for it.

the keynote speaker was mariama kallon, and to quote from the retreat info:

"The keynote speaker is Mariama Kallon, originally from West Africa, where she endured the horrors of a civil war, watching her parents killed, her brother taken and later killed, and her sister's legs cut off. Mariama will share her amazing story of how finding the gospel of Jesus Christ helped her endure loss and despair and become the happy, outgoing woman she is today."

that little blurb doesn't even begin to explain her story. her talk was truly amazing as were all of the presenters. it was all deeply spiritual and inspiring. i was surprised to find that this little retreat, in my opinion, far surpassed time out for women. i was expecting it to be a great experience, but not as incredible as it was. i'm so impressed by the talent of my friends in our ward who put it together.


lexi & my mom

we are savoring our general conference weekend, and our eyes lit up and exclaimations were made when we heard that katsumi kusume, our stake president in japan, father of lexi's first boyfriend, has been called to be an area authority seventy. so who will be the new tokyo stake president? we wouldn't be surprised if it is the father of our dear friend...

chihiro, (shingo's sister), who was married in the tokyo temple on march 28th. (shingo's face is obscured by the groom's in this photo.)

it's been a wonderful week.

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)

random updates & observations

we received the good news, on new year's day, that we were accepted into this summer's nauvoo pageant. my parents will be joining our family in the pageant too. we are excitedly anticipating!

brock's facebook status monday:
"Brock was obliged to help tackle/restrain a violent passenger on a plane over the Pacific, and felt United employees were very professional during the 6-hour ordeal."
yes, it was for real.

alexa announced yesterday that she was double cast as the lead role of "kim" in her high school's performance of "bye-bye birdie". this is of particular interest because she didn't really even audition for the musical. she has just joined the scholastic bowl team and doesn't have time for the musical. her choir teacher asked her to consider being a silly screaming fan girl, which would only need to be at rehearsal once a week or so, and she agreed to consider, did a few readings, and next thing you know....

natasha's comment on the topic when i asked for her thoughts last night:
"i think it will be difficult for all of us."... said simply & matter-of-factly.
i think tashi is right. lexi doesn't handle pressure or restraints on her time well, and tends to take that out on those she loves :)
we love her anyway!

noah's words:
...said in a sweet, plaintive voice yesterday morning at 5:30 as he came frantically rushing in to wake me up:
"my dreams are bad."

...said in a contemplative tone today as we drove to warsaw to pick tashi up at school, drove to keokuk to take her to the orthodontist (to begin the 5 step!!! process of removeing her braces), drove back to warsaw, and back to nauvoo, trying to make it in time for noah's preschool bus:
"when you are far, far, far away, you are somewhere else."

lexi's recent observation:
"the older i get, the more i realize that i am like marianne and tashi is like elinor (in sense & sensibility)."
amen to that!

last week i drove along the mississippi as the ice was breaking up, and there were huge bald eagles sitting on the river at each opening in the ice, watching for fish. today the river is frozen again, except at keokuk where it has deeps lochs and dams. and there were dozens and dozens of bald eagles and various hawks circling over the river there this morning, looking for something to eat. it is amazing & magnificent to see so many large birds of prey in such a small area.

this silk has arrived for me to begin work on reproducing a 1841 national flag presented to joseph smith at the laying of the cornerstone of the nauvoo temple for a michael bedard painting.
wish me luck!

all is calm, all is bright

i love this space between christmas & new years. it may be my favorite time of year. the rush and hustle are over, all is calm, all is bright. time isn't over scheduled. kids are at home and relaxed. there are new games to play and new puzzles to put together, and new books to read as a family. the warm glow of christmas lingers the newness of a new year beckons.
i learned to love this time during our life in japan when everything would shut down for a week or more before and after new years. our first year there, '95/'96, we were shocked to find that everything was closed: banks - including atm's!, grocery stores,post offices, every type of store, absolutely everything. we were shocked, and we liked it. we spent time together as a fmaily, without any outside pressures. msot of our american and foriegn friends went back home for the chrismtas season. our japanese friends went to their grandparents' inteh countryside. we were left alone in tokyo. and we learned to treasure it. the pollution subsided, because there were no delivery trucks on the roads. we could see glorious views of "mountain fuji", as tiny tashi called it, without the pollution clouding our way.

i did get to some of my sugar plum sewing, finishing two projects up after christmas, so they well be ready to be enjoyed next year.
i have wanted to make this little gingerbread guy since i first saw the pattern in American Patchwork & Quilting, dec 2004. i did make one last year, but gave it away. this one stays with us. just as with the pillows, the felted wool works up to quick and easy. the red heart was a wool skirt that someone gave me and i felted in the washer & dryer. all but one of the fabrics in the patchwork border were in the big bag of fabric that landed on my porch. i love that. the eyes are tiny antique bone buttons - i collected some of the funnest things while i was running my antique quilt business.

the quilt is a printed panel, cheater cloth. this isn't me preferred method of making quilt, but it is fast and easy. and i can assuage my conscience by remembering that cheater cloth existed even in the mid 1800s. i love that this panel focuses on christ, not santa or snowmen (or gingerbread men). i made and sold two of these last year. and cut one apart to make christmas pillows. this one stays with us, for now.

thunderstorms that shook & rattled our cupboards like an earthquake on saturday washed away all of the snow and ice, leaving green grass and clear blue skies. it is difficult to believe it is the same landscape we looked out on and photographed last week. i went for a walk today, and felt like it was early spring. but i'm not fooled... the ice and snow won't stay away for long.

christmas morning

we have had a beautiful christmas, and hope you have too.

i'm willing to risk being reported for child abuse in order to share this photo from christmas eve....

noah has been asking daily for weeks to go swimming in the back yard. we, very wisely of course, explained carefully why that wouldn't work. he would seem to understand, but then start asking again the next day. so brock staged this in an effort to help him understand. it didn't work. he was sure that after we got the water in the pool, it would warm him up - he just needed to go in the house to get warm clothes on until then. the hose couldn't be used to fill the pool, as everything was frozen up, so he still isn't a believer in the impossibility of the situation. but he did settle for swimming in the bathtub yesterday.

cozy christmas

we are settling in for several cozy snowy, icy days at home as a family, through christmas. my perfect dream come true - snow falling outside, and nowhere we have to go. we have a few gifts to deliver, a few to wrap, some yummy baking, and lots of enjoying each other to do. and we're looking forward to it.
i'm catching up on some christmas sewing projects. i took these pillows (supplies purchased last year & left untouched) on my trip to utah and was able to whip them up by the time i returned. wool felt is so fast and easy. now i have other visions of sugar plum sewing to do, but only if it doesn't interfere with enjoying my family & feeling the spirit of christmas.