On my way to orchestra. This is how I will spend my last hours of November. It has been a full month from concerts to Thanksgiving to growing a year older.
Looking forward to see what December has in store for us.

My girl tried to scare the bejeevers out of me today. I was supervising her "rest time" in my bedroom. It is a quiet room downstairs that we can warm for her. I had been checking on her regularly because she was her usual unrestful self. Finally I let her come to me to cuddle with me while I was supervising bigger brother's schoolwork. I got up to turn the kerosene heater in the bedroom off, and I discovered that she had covered the still running heater with a flannel sheet. I am so glad I am a penny pincher and went to shut the heater off. Scarey.

I thought that was the only thing she did, but I came into my room tonight to make my bed tonight and......
she yanked the pull cord off our ceiling light fixture.

This I why God made her so cute.

In keeping with tradition, just after thanksgiving we pull out our tree and put it up.  Our poor little tree has seen 9 Christmas' now.  For those who know me, you know that I was raised on real trees, and it is hard to put this thing we call a tree up.  However, it is a tree and it holds all our memories quite nicely.  A few of you might recall my Christmas ornament post here a number of years ago.  I was noticing today as we put up our tree that we are running out of room for ornaments.  Now that our fake tree is shedding like it is a real tree, we may be keeping our eyes open for another tree alternative.

Just last week, my boys were asking about when we would put the tree up.  I found it funny as they were strolling down Christmas ornament memory lane and reminding each other of certain ornaments that they really liked.  I love that my kids have developed that tradition.  Just a warning to grandparents, they did ponder aloud what kind of ornaments they would receive this year.  Expectations.  Yes, I think so.  It is the expectation of an ornament that tells me that this is a tradition that is sticking out as memorable for them.  Will Maya be any different?  I should think not!  She stood at the tree kissing the ornaments that had her name on them.  I hate to have to remind her not to touch the tree as she lovingly cups the ornaments in her hand.  She likes them too.  It was fun today watching her stand and just stare at the tree.  Oh the wonders!  

And another tradition at our house...my husband likes to take the leftover Thanksgiving turkey and make calzones.  He always makes some spinach calzones up for me too.  I like turkey, but I really enjoy spinach in my calzone.  He makes the dough from scratch and he smokes the meat and he also smokes the unbaked calzone in the grill to give it a smokey flavor.  

It has been sort of a quiet day, but it has been nice.

Today is America's Thanksgiving day. It is in my top three on my short list of favorite holidays. I enjoy spending time with family and friends, and I enjoy the food. Each year thanksgiving time grows more and more precious to me. I like to approach the year with a thankful heart. Really, I am so thankful and have so much to be thankful for. Every day is a precious gift. A chance to be a part of this world that God created. A chance to see be with my husband. A chance to see my children grow. A chance to see a life change to the glory of God the Father. Each day I put food on the table, I am thankful. Because that food was put on my table by the loving and generous donations of God's children. Sometimes when the account looks really skinny, I thank God for what I do have. Each time we put out a monthly accounting of our budget and news letter, I am thankful for our supporters. We couldn't do it without them. Seriously.

Tonight we spent Thanksgiving quietly as a family of 5. It wasn't what I expected because a number of other people had been invited. Some couldn't come because of work. Some couldn't come because of the hospitalization of a family member, and some just didn't show up. It happens, but I try not to let that get me down. We had a nice time enjoying Thanksgiving with just our 5. I can't think that we have ever done that. Not even when we were just 4 or 3 or 2. Nope, never. It was different.

Even though, no one came, I did take a couple of huge plates down to my friends who had a family member hospitalized. I wouldn't have taken out a few more plates, but those individuals lived a bit far just to walk the plates to them. I usually give food to my neighbor, but he has been gone a few days. He has a job that takes him away for days at a time. I wish he was home though because I would have loved to have him over for dinner. Tomorrow is a Japanese holiday. Perhaps he will be home tomorrow and I can take over some food to him then.

Like I said, it wasn't what I expected, but it was still so nice to have a traditional meal with my family. And I DO really have so much to be thankful for!

Here was our menu:
Roasted turkey
Mashed potatoes
Stuffing
Gravy
Corey's "grandma's noodles"
glazed carrots
green peas
steamed green beans
cranberry sauce
rolls
cornbread
pumpkin pie
pumpkin bread
persimmon pudding

Save for the stuffing (which came from a box) and the cranberry sauce (which came from a can) everything else was made from scratch.
If only the dishes would wash themselves....
Time to jump in the ofuro and relax!
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends

***Warning***

Pardon the flour covered table.  Excuse the persimmon pulp all over the place.  Step over the cord for my stand mixer.  That mixer and I have been working hard today.  Two pies and a persimmon pudding later, I feel like I am in a good spot in my preparations for our special meal on Thursday.  Turkey is thawing quite nicely in my refrigerator as we speak.  Tomorrow I will tackle making rolls from scratch.  Yes, another day of working the stand mixer.  That thing is going to get its workout because I intend to do my potatoes in them too!

Tomo had a little bit of schoolwork to do yesterday, but he has the rest of the week free.  He keeps telling me that he is glad he worked hard so he could have some extra days off school.  I am proud of him and the hard work he puts in at school.  Skyler is a bit behind where I would prefer him to be at this point, so Corey spent the day trying to keep him on track and focused but away from the house.  Hopefully, tomorrow, we can get some god time from him, but it looks like he will have to return to the books on Friday instead of having a planned day off.  I sure hope he has learned a thing or two the past week or two, because these life lessons are sometimes so hard to learn.  Maya has been happily playing with Tomo.  I like to see these two playing more and more lately.  

Nothing to exciting today, just schoolwork and dessert making.

I am hoping that I will blog more from now on.  The reason why?

I now have a keyboard for my iPad!!!  It was a birthday gift from my husband and kids last Friday.  The ipad is mine because I taught English classes and saved the money to purchase this iPad for me.  Now, before you call me selfish, if you look through my apps, you will discover that most of the apps are kid related educational things.  So, yes, my kids use my ipad daily.  The boys do their Japanese studies through some pretty cool iPad apps that I bought.  Maya does the variety of preschool related apps that includes puzzles too.  Nonetheless, it is my iPad, and I use it for work and homeschool related things and for my record keeping and such.  

We have no desk top computer.  We do have a Mac and a Dell laptops.  The Mac works and is the primary computer that my husband uses.  The Dell, it works marginally well, but it has its moments when I am sure that it is little better than a paperweight.  There are just times when I want to to type but the Mac is with my husband, and I just can't get my head or my fingers around typing on the iPad or my iPhone. It is slower and harder for me to do since I struggle with carpal tunnel.  I try to stay away from things that end up aggravating me or my carpal tunnel.  SO, this wireless keyboard for my iPad is just perfect! 

My husband laughs at me and says that I am the gadget girl.  Yes, I suppose I am.  I did go online and look for the one that would be best for us both in what I wanted and in the price.  I did all the research and simply placed the item on my wishlist.  I can't say it isn't what I wanted because it IS exactly what I wanted!  Do I have a great family or what!

Now, the only excuse for not blogging will simply be a matter of time.

In the meantime...go, go gadget...keyboard.

I realize that I haven't written much lately.  It seems like there are always reasons why I can't seem to write whether it is the time or just that the phone line doesn't work...there is always something.  

In not writing for a while I realize a big part of what has been happening lately in my life has gone on simply unmentioned.  Sure I keep up on Facebook, but I fall so far behind on Xanga.

Here is the scoop.

At the very end of August, I checked out on orchestra that is located in the next big city south of where I live.  It was an amateur orchestra that I might be able to join.  After about a month's worth of deliberating, I decided to join the group officially.  

I play the viola.  I started playing the viola the summer between my 4th and 5th grade year of elementary school.  I got asked over the weekend by an orchestra member if I started out on the viola, and the answer is (unless you count the flutophone), yes, I started out on the viola.  I realized that in my answer it seemed odd to the hearer that I have never played anything but the viola.  Really, the viola?  Who just wakes up one day and says, "I'll play the viola!"  And I know there may be some out there who are wondering what a viola is in the first place.  

Viola
It is a member of the string family that is lower in pitch and slightly larger in size then the size of a violin. It is higher pitched than the cello and much smaller than the cello.  It is held in the same way a violin is.  Violas read their music in alto clef.  This makes violas in a league all their own.  Yes, please commence the viola jokes now....

What drew me to the viola?
I liked the tone of the instrument.  It many ways it just simply pleased my ears.  The violin is to high pitched for my strange ears, and playing anything larger than the viola just looked mendokusai (like it would be troubling or burdensome) to me.  I always liked the idea of playing a stringed instrument and have generally felt that blowing and or spitting into instruments is absurd.  Please note!  To all the winds and brass players, I mean you no ill will, they just don't interest me.  Percussion is also not really my thing either.  My elementary school brought musical instruments to our school and people played them so we could hear how they sounded.  I heard the viola and I knew it was the one for me.  Do you have to be weird to play viola?  I suppose you can draw your own conclusions on that one.  I don't think that is really for me to say.

At any rate, the past weekend the group I am a part of held a family concert.  The group is called the Nagaoka Symphony Orchestra.  Officially, there are two violas in our group.  Because we are not a particularly large group as a whole, we borrowed some help from the big city to the North of us.  This filled out the whole orchestra and made the violas swell to 7.  The first half of the concert were more classical numbers that included Pachelbel's Canon in D and the Sabre Dance by Aram Khachaturian.  I am sure you would know the songs if you heard them even if you do not recognize their names.  We also played some Wagner and Handel.  The second half of the concert was more popular songs.  We played the theme to the Thunderbirds Anime and a medley of Disney songs.  I am sure that these might sound familiar, but the bulk of the songs were squarely rooted in Japanese culture.  It is possible that some of you would recognize the Miyazaki movie songs like The Naushika Requiem and a song from the Laputa movie called Kimiwo Nosete.  I personally only know the Miyazaki songs because I live with a Miyazaki fan.  To my daughter's absolute delight, we played the Anpanman March.  She was over the top excited about this song.  I have written about the Anpanman cartoons before here on this blog, but I neglected to tag those posts and would have a time trying to find them again.  We also did some music from an anime call Space Battleship Yamato which came out in the 70's but turned live action movie a few summers ago.  I watched the movie to get my bearings on the songs, but scifi is not my thing....let alone Japanese scifi.  We rounded out the concert with some themes from some Samurai dramas.  I have to use the words some, because I really do not know the dramas they belong to because I simply do not watch samurai dramas.  Samurai dramas are known as old man shows and the only one whom I personally know who likes them is my son Tomo.  He has an old man's soul and he's super cool that way.

The weekend was very tiring as we had a lot of last minute rehearsals, but it was so much fun.  Was I nervous?  No way!  I was just enjoying being up on the stage and playing music with a group.  I enjoyed that team play aspect of being a viola.  We seldom hold a melody, but without us the fabric of the song just sounds a little bare.  You don't notice us, but you would miss us if we weren't there.  Just how we violas roll.

We have had some poetry assignments here at the house lately for homeschool.  We thought that we would share some with you.  Please don't groan too loudly.

Maya, Maya, beautiful girl
Wears her dresses and gives a twirl.
Maya, Maya, friendly gal 
Gives a smile and makes you her pal.
Maya, Maya, curious thing
Loves her puzzles, and dances and sings!

Greg, Greg, grape grabber,
Had a dog and couldn't stop her.
He put her in a grape skin
And there the dog stayed within.

Video games like Star Wars
Shoot and fight and play some more.
Move the Jedi's and use the force,
The battlefront is like an obstacle course.
Star Wars Battlefront is one big fight,
Clone troopers use guns to line droids up in their sight.

and finally...

Sanity, Sanity, you allude me.
Oh my brain, where can it be?
Sanity, Sanity, I think I need help,
for this I cry and yelp.
Sanity, Sanity, it ain't no joke,
But I might cure it with a can of Coke.

Ok, so poets, we may not be.