This one's for the Shima!

As far as homemakers go, these countryside moms in Japan sure put the rest of us to shame. They don't need Martha Stewart just give them the project and they get it done beautifully. Whether it is making a killer Bento for their child's lunch or teaching us all that you never can have too many coordinating bags. Japan will make a homemaker out of me! I have to give my mom credit too, she drives a mean sewing machine. She taught me all I know, whether she wants to claim it or not. So my guilt for not having coordinating school bags got the best of me and I have been busy trying to redeem myself with Spencer Hos as he is the ONLY kid at school without "mom made coordinating bags".


This year Hos' new favorite is Mario. So here we have the Mario School Ensemble: a cup bag, a bento bag, a place mat, and the tall one in the back is the reusable snack bag. Of course, once Holden saw brother's "set" he picked out his fabric on the next trip to the fabric store.



Holden will be 3 this November, so he will enter school in April. Yes, a little frightening and liberating at the same time. This isn't the American preschool 2 X a week for 2 or 3 hours. We're talking Mon. to Fri. from 9 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. So he will need a coordinating bag set as well and I decided to get a jump on it. Holden's pick: ANPANMAN! Here we have the indoor shoe bag in the back (because they have shoes for indoors and outdoors and bags for them too), with the cup bag on the left, and the bento bag on the right, all on top of the place mat. Now he can be just like brother!



It can't end there because you have to have another bag for all your bags (seriously, this is the land of bags!). Usually they call it your "Monday Bag" because you have to haul all your things to school on Monday and bring them home on Friday to wash, so you need a bag to carry them all in, right? Well, here is the Mario Monday Bag for Hos. (I still have Holden's to finish;) Then, I got sidetracked....



We spent a day organizing Hos' room and we found his favorite crayons, which had been missing for a couple months (amazing what can hide in a futon closet), were barely keeping it together in their tattered box. So I took some tips from a favorite blog and this is what I came up with.



I think Hos & Holden have more fun taking the crayons out and putting them back in their new holder than actually using them. Guess that makes it a success! So here's to the Shima for her excellent sewing training which helped me rise to the this Japanese Homemaker Challenge!

Summer with Grandma

We were so happy to have Grandma Margie here with us for the month of July! I don't know that she was as excited for the heat and humidity, but we taught her some tips and she managed to survive the rainy season and the beginning of the summer!

We tried to travel as much as possible in between teaching, Hos' school (until July 20th), church obligations, and everything else in our crazy schedule! We spent an evening in Takamatsu at Ritsurin Garden. It was so hot that we decided to wait until the last admission to try to beat the heat, but it really wasn't much cooler. But the views were beautiful!



Our students and friends were almost as excited to meet my mom as we were. Her social calendar filled up with lunch appointments and tea parties. My mom and I went to lunch with some friends and the restaurant had a beautiful garden. It was right here in Marugame and I didn't even know it was there!



The last time my mom came to visit, she didn't get to ride the BULLET TRAIN! I'm not sure how we missed that, but this time we made sure she experienced it! Holden was just as excited as my mom to ride the "fast train"! We made it from Hiroshima to Marugame in less than 2 hours!



While in Hiroshima, we took the ferry across to the island of MIYAJIMA! We spent the day visiting temples, pagodas, and climbing to the top of Mt. Misen. Even little Holden hiked all the way to the top (it was so hot I refused to carry my 30 lb. baby!)! It was a great day and we topped it off by hitting the Itsukushima Shrine at Sunset!



Along with all the site-seeing, we tried to give Grandma a good sample of all the delicious food! Our students and friends helped out with lunch invitations and food making demonstrations. One of our favorites is Okonomiyaki, which is kind of like a japanese pancake. Full of cabbage, egg, ginger, seafood, sometimes pork or beef and yaki soba noodles. Topped off with yummy sauce, fish flakes, and seaweed! Hos did a great job showing grandma how to cook it on the grill! The month went by too quickly, but we all enjoyed the visit! I will try to get some more photos up soon!

HA! HI! HU! HE! HO!

For those of you not familiar with Japanese Cartoons, you are missing out! One that has been famous for years is called Anpanman. That is also the name of the hero in the show. Oh, and did I mention the Hero is a bread man filled with anko beans? Well, Holden gets a kick out of the villian. His name is BAIKINMAN, which means bacteria man. Why? Because he introduces the bacteria which causes mold to destroy Anpanman, the bread man. We took a little trip to the Anpanman Museum here on our little island and the favorite was the picture of Baikinman!

Even outside Hos and Holden managed to find Baikinman! And Holden can do a pretty good imitation now "Oresama des!"

Our Family Continues to Grow!

Ok so you might be wondering why we would announce to everyone on our blog that our family continues to grow.... Well, we have Mom (Dre) Dad (Z) Brother (Hos) Baby (H.Z.) and Auntie Goober for a total of 5. We are excited to announce we have a NEW member. Armani, yes the same as the designer brand. :) He weighs in at 2.4 kilograms and is growing like crazy. He has black hair and the cutest dark brown eyes. He is sleeping for about 3 hours each night. Such a cute boy. The older brothers are ecstatic about him. They love to play with him and tease him. We are working with H.Z. on being nice to his little brother. He is a bit jealous! We can understand as he will be turning 2 years old this next week. We know it is a bit early to have a new addition but we are only getting older. WE will post pictures shortly. He is such a great addition to our family!

We love you all!

Our New Chapel

Upon making our decision to move to Japan, Andrea agreed with one condition, that is that the meetinghouse that we would attend would need to be and feel like we were in Utah. She wanted the convenience of being able to walk to the church if she felt like it. She wanted the atmosphere of a meetinghouse in Utah. Well.... We are blessed to have our current meetinghouse just a 5-8 minute car ride away. Right after we arrived we were told that we would be blessed to have a new meetinghouse built. The current building is a rented space on the 3rd and 4th floor of a very old building. We were extremely excited about the news. We learned shortly there after that the new building would be built less than a 5 min bike ride from our home. The building would be able to handle about 50 cars in the parking lot and the chapel would be able to seat around 120 people. The building plans were shown and to our surprise and delight the building looks just like a "mini chapel" that would be in Utah. We are only lacking a cultural hall in the new building! We are sooooo excited! I know that the members here in Marugame have been praying and working so hard to get a new building. They have been meeting in the same old, smelly, building for as long as I have been alive! Yes.... 37+ years!

I am so grateful to a Father in Heaven who is willing to answer the prayers of the faithful saints here in Marugame. He is also willing to answer the prayers of a faithful mother willing to be as a pioneer of old. Pack up her family, sell her belongings and travel thousands of miles from Salt Lake City to a new land. A land where the Gospel of Jesus Christ is little known. Where Christianity is the minority. Where she would need to adjust to a new way of living! This mother is willing to support her husband in his calling in building the kingdom here on earth. This mother faithfully prays and reads scriptures with her children even when dad is not available. She is a true example of her Pioneer and Native American ancestry. She is willing and able to make her home a heaven on earth! I love this woman! She is an inspiration to me and my children!

Here are some pictures of the building progress of our new chapel! We will keep you updated with more!

Our new building is scheduled to be completed in February 2010! What a blessing to the Saints here in Marugame Japan!

Spencer Hos is HOME!

I just wanted to post a quick update on Hos and a big THANK YOU to you all! Hos was able to come home yesterday (Friday, our time) after a week in the hospital. He is still on his medications, but he no longer has an I.V., stomach cramps, or nausea. There are a few lingering "red spots", but we are hoping we are the tail end of the HSP. He still is on restricted activity to help reduce the chance of any more "red spots" and his immune system is still really compromised, so he has to wear a face mask and can't go out "more than necessary". It doesn't help to have 100+ students coming in and out of our house each week, but we are trying to confine Hos to the family room and disinfect as often as possible :) He now has the appetite of a ravaging beast and has already gained back 5 lb. of his 9 1/2 lb. loss. His kidneys seem to be looking better and they will continue to monitor them for the next 3 months or so. He still has almost a weeks worth of steroids left to take and will be on a blood thinner for about three months. IF all continues to go well, he will be able to try to go to school the week of Sept. 14th, with a face mask and on limited activity level, but it's been almost 2 months since he has seen any of his buddies, so I'm sure he won't care what he has to do to go.

Thank you so much for all your prayers, thoughts, and love! We are so grateful to have such great support and we have felt all of you over these last 3 weeks. We love you all! (I will get some photos this week and post them ASAP!)

Please Pray for Hos

So, I know my blog is extremely behind and hopefully I will get time to update you all soon as we have had some good times. But right now things are a little crazy! Hos came down with what I thought was a stomach flu just as we were leaving Utah to come back home to Japan. I figured it would just take a couple days to recover but unfortunately a couple days home it got worse. After not eating much, and what he did eat came back up, we took him to his pediatrician. We had noticed some little red spots all over his feet and ankles, but I thought they were freaky japanese bug bites. Zack was wise enough to mention it to the Dr. and it was the clue that put the puzzle together. He was diagnosed with Henoch-Scholein Purpura or HSP. They don't really know that much about the illness like what causes it or why some people get it. They do know it is an inflammation of the small blood vessels in the body which leads to bleeding, hence the red dots. Really all they can do is try to treat they symptoms and keep the patient comfortable. The first couple days we did IV fluids and Hos seemed to get a lot better. But then the beginning of last week things got bad again. Aparently the sickness is cyclical and usually occurs in phases so here was the second phase. This time around was a lot worse, so the Dr. decided to admit Hos to the Children's Hospital this last Friday.

Here is Hos on Saturday night after the fluids had kicked in and the medication was working. He is in a funky large crib-like bed, which is a necessity for children who have always slept on the floor on a futon! Ha! Ha! Ha! Luckily, the rails do drop down : )


This photo didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to, but the darker parts on Hos' ear are the "spots" I was talking about. His ears by far look the worst that we can see on his body.


This is a photo of the "spots" on his knees and feet. Usually they get a lot larger, so he is lucky that way. Unfortunately, I think his abdominal cavity is taking the brunt of it.


But he is feeling a lot better and he is finely eating and keeping things down. There are some complications that they are keeping their eye on and we are hoping that he does not have any other more occurances. If you can, please keep him in your prayers! I will keep you updated as often as I can! Love you all!