Hearts Full of Joy

gracie growing

baby grace, or "susanna ballerina", is six months old. it seems that she must have been feeling very big on the eve of her birthday, because she suddenly pulled herself up to standing at the couch. i continue to feel resistance towards her growing, but i can't deny that she just keeps getting more & more fun. last week she started jabbering in little syllables (not just excited screeching and squealing anymore, although that was adorable too). i snapped these photos on her birthday, the 26th.

this little one is sheer joy bundled in soft, beautiful, and irresistable packing. it is such a blessing to have a happy baby that lights up whenever she meets your eyes. it's often said that the mother sets the mood for the home, but brock and i have observed that it is mostly impossible to be unhappy when you have a happy baby in the home.

family photos

it's time to get family photos taken for christmas cards (unless you are very on-the-ball, and have done so already). we are eagerly anticipating the results of our latest photo shoot with kelly, hoping that it won't  be obvious that most of us had colds.

i volunteered to use my new camera to take photos of brock's youngest sister's family on thanksgiving morning. and who could resist taking photos of such a darling family? jacob, the oldest, looks so much like brock as a little boy. ben, who looks a little concerned in all the photos, looks like my natasha, and cole...well cole is just his own beautiful self.

forget about the turkey, couldn't you just gobble these little guys up?

thanksgiving blessings

we were twice blessed to be able to celebrate thanksgiving on thursday with brock's family.....

almost ready to eat (naughty girls snitching turkey - a tradition on this side of the family)

mia's puppet show

ready for pie! i made two old favorites - apple and chocolate pecan, and tried two new recipes - cranberry cream cheese and pumpkin praline. the pumpkin praline was very pretty, especially with it's layer of cheese cake on the bottom, but i didn't like it as well as plain old fashioned pumpkin.

.....and on friday at our home  where we had my siblings and their families join us. all but one person (who had to work) made it, for a total of 32 of us (21 kids!). of course we missed my parents who are serving a mission in guatemala, but we were able to have a group telephone chat with them.

our centerpiece (you've seen these items before, in different groupings)

 

sam & grace, twin cousins

emily enjoying the great roll making contest: paul vs nancy (emily's parents), rhodes frozen dough vs homemade. which do you think won? the rolls are being dipped in butter and cinnamon, in my grandma's tradition.

this year i found myself especialy grateful to be with family, and to be nausea-free so i could enjoy the food (last year i was pregnant). last year i was very grateful to be pregnant. this year i am very grateful to not be throwing up all day  :)

be we thankful

as i have already shared with you, i LOVE thanksgiving! i love the cozy warm and relaxed feelings, being with family and close friends, eating lots of things with cranberries and pumpkin as ingredients, the anticipation of christmas around the corner, and most of all, feeling thankful. this year, not being in japan, i have treated myself to seeking out thanksgiving decorating treasures. my beloved fitz and floyd ceramic turkey, a birthday gift from wonderful friends in japan, broke a few years ago, and i haven't had any other inspiring thanksgiving decor. but this year i found this pre-printed panel, designed by sandy gervais, and made a quick and easy thanksgiving wall quilt. this is the second quilt. the first one sold at the craft fair.

more fun little items i have collected...some from the store (pilgrims and indians), some from our garden, some from the craft fair, one embroidered long ago (shelf scarf), and one borrowed from mom (candle).

the photo doesn't let you seen the acorn and leaf wreath the orange squash is sitting on.

more thanksgiving decor on my posting "giving thanks"

ready, or not

  i have a confession to make.

i have tried to delay my last two babies' development, or at least not encourage it. they grow and change so very fast, and now that i have a 16 year old, i almost feel whip-lashed from the speed that it has all flown by. how, oh how i wish it didn't happen so fast.

about two weeks ago gracie started letting me know hat she was ready to sit. and i really, really didn't want her to. all of my babies have sat by 5 months, and my last two sat before they were 3 1/2 months old - that's just too soon. it was so wonderfully fun and exhilarating when alexa sat and crawled and walked, and natasha too. but i want my gracie to stay little. and now i see why oldest children and youngest children can be so different.

i remember thinking that i wouldn't raise my younger children any differently than my oldest. i would be sure to treat them all the same. i didn't have patience for older parents who talked about how much easier they were on their younger children (i am an oldest, and i just didn't think that was fair - to the oldest or to the youngest). that was 16 years ago, and i have since discovered that it was a completely unrealistic expectation (like so many of my expectations in early parenthood). parents can't help but change any more than children can, and it wouldn't be right if we didn't - that's what we're here to do, grow and change. when i was 22 and had a 1 year old and a baby, i had a friend who was my mother's age, in her early 40's at the time. she had 5 children who had been born very close together in her early 20's, finishing up with twins. then a 6 year space and a caboose. and finally, another 6 year space with another caboose. she told me that having a baby at 40 was the best thing that had ever happened to her. because her perspective was so different than when she was younger, and she could enjoy her baby and let go of all the things she used to worry and stress about. in short, she had grown up, and she could enjoy being a mother more than she had before.

and even as she said it, i had the impression that it would happen for me too. it has. not that i don't have more growing up to do. and not that i didn't love my first babies with all my heart, so deeply it almost hurt. but i am definitely a different mother than i was 16 years ago, more mellow and appreciative of the miracle of motherhood.

back to gracie. i eventually gave in and let her try sitting alone on monday of last week, and just as i feared, she could do it. i felt a twinge of sadness, because a stage was over. but i soon began to appreciate how simply adorable she was as she held her tiny, compact body upright. and more importantly, how excited she was to be doing it. a few days later i realized that she could stand with something to hold onto, and a few days after that, she got up on her hands and knees, and a day or two later, she started doing the army crawl. she is a happier baby now, and i was wrong to hope she wouldn't want to do these things yet. (yes, i still have lots of growing up to do). because she was ready to do them, whether i was ready or not.

perhaps it isn't fair that oldest and younger children are raised differently, but each style has its advantages, along with its disadvantages, and its all part of our individual life experiences.

today i miss japan

i miss japan today. maybe it's because i spent yesterday afternoon giving advice to someone travelling to japan for the first time. maybe because it's getting close to christmas and i'm thinking of twelve years worth of merry christmases spent there. it's funny little things i miss, like shopping with my girls for cute cosmetics at the korean missha store in ikspiari (the disney mall) a 15 minute walk from our house. (i would definitley snag me some of this lipliner if were there today). and christmas decorations at disney sea resort, a 20 minute walk from our house. and driving around to see the christmas decorations at all the disney resort hotels near our home. and getting crepes with my girls at the daiei shopping center on days that had a 9 in them, because it was discount day. and finding something fun and unexpected at the 100 yen (dollar) shop. and then there was celebrating thanksgiving when we knew that no one else in the whole country was, and so it was just our little family and some close friends, and the same for christmas and easter and halloween and the 4th of july. it's taken me longer than i expected to start to miss japan. probably because i've been busy having a baby. and during the summer i was just grateful to be missing out on the insane humidity levels and lack of central air conditiong. here is what i expected to miss and not miss as i was leaving in my post "some things i will miss...and some i won't".

last year in early november the kids and i spent an afternoon trying to take photos of people in silly hats at disney sea without being noticed - doing it in stealth and not being able to use a flash as dusk fell made it difficult to get good photos. here are a few of our favorites. these silly hats are something you can only experience in the japan disney resorts, and are worn by otherwise rational adults.

this is for natalie (and anyone else who loves to hate walmart)

natalie has brought it to my attention that the links on my post "love to hate WALMART" didn't work. i was a new blogger when it was written, and i linked to the blogs the articles were on, rather than the actual posts. i have fixed that now.

and.....by the way.....i have since found out why mandee finds that walmart always smells like "a fart". i apologize that this is not a nice topic, and yet i think it bears some discussion. it is unbelievable, and yet true. my sister and her son, and my brother and his wife have both had the SAME experience at DIFFERENT walmarts, far away from each other, which involved human fecal matter in the middle of the isle. one of them was not fortunate enough to avoid stepping in it.

and now that i live in the u.s. , i think i just need to go thrifting WITH kelly, or gloria, and hone my thrifting skills. gloria and i did go antique-ing in the midwest - very fun!

still enjoying

i'm still enjoying autumn to its last drop and can't resist sharing  a few more pics from our yard:

the cat seriously seems to believe he's part of the autumn ambiance...he's right.

for more pics of our yard this season, see my posting 'autumn in our yard'

tomorrow i'm off to a girl's retreat with my sisters and sil's - yay!

busy quilting

  i have been making quilted items: table runners, table toppers, wall quilts, christmas stockings, for a little shop in town that i just adore. i was so excited to find that they sold some of the same things that my favorite shops in gardner village sell, right here in tiny town, usa! this has kept me busy for the last few weeks, and i have mixed feelings about the busy-ness. i find that i need to do something like this to keep me happy and sane. but just a little too much of it, and i can become a 'not nice' mom. my priorities get skewed. balance is so key, and can be so elusive, but i'm finding it with slightly more ease than before....see my posting 'a personal challenge' for more on this topic. the first two photos, and another runner that i forgot to photograph were my own designs. the others were not.

the smaller leaf runner on the top is one i made for me.

halloween past

a few favorite pics of halloweens past:

2004....3 little pumpkins....on our way to spend an afternoon at tokyo disneyland!

baby bear wasn't sure about halloween, but indian princess couldn't wait!

2005....the first time we had ever seen noah's expression (quite famous now) that says "i'm so cute and i know it!"

lilo & stitch....both costumes were perfect matches for the personalities.