Autumn News

November 2012 marks the start of Monterey Peninsula College's season. I didn't miss seeing a game last year, and don't plan to miss a game this year! This year Zen is one of the Captains. This year only seven of the players are returning. Zen sounds good and positive! Sounds good!!!

Naomi is doing belly dancing, for three years now?  (You can recognize my daughter Naomi? To me she looks the most natural!!!)

In Japan it's become SO popular- belly dancing! Along with hula dancing and... more?
Naomi sent these photos for us

Yes, on stage too!

Other family~ at Grandmom's... she's got this great bird feeder. It always makes me think of an apartment style feeder! It's outside her front door. And the birds and squirrels eat up the seeds so fast the feeder has to be refilled every three days perhaps.

I've seen as many as eight birds, no...ten or eleven birds sitting on or around this feeder. In Japan they call apartment buildings "Mansions" (Japanese friends, "Mansions" are really almost Castle like houses)

We don't get to have Zen home much this time of year. Between studies and basketball training he's so busy, though he's only 45 minutes away.

Yes...Sheon's hanging out with him...and his "look" is probably cause I'm taking a photo.













Halloween, (ALWAYS Halloween is October 31st- Japanese friends!![Somehow they can't remember that!] )  wasn't hardly over when I saw CHRISTMAS trees. I mean... I just still wish, we didn't have to think SO much about Christmas before Thanksgiving which is November 22nd this year.

But I took this photo cause Grandmom doesn't want a big, live tree this year. 

Three sizes here...and they SMELL so good. 

In Japan I looked so hard for trees that smelled like Christmas and could never find them. I actually had one terrible experience, because I didn't want to kill a tree for Christmas. 

I bought a tree that was POTTED. 

We had it for Christmas and it started to die. 

It died by New Years and I felt terrible. 

I thought I killed it by having it inside the house with some heaters on. 

But by Spring I realized...maybe someone had chopped off the roots of the tree?!! 

The tree was still in my back yard and I went and pulled the dead tree out of the pot and sure enough- there were no roots. It had just been stuck in the pot and sold to us for 7,000 yen (about $80.00) . 

I was infuriated and took that poor dead tree back to where I'd bought it (HOME EXPO) and tried to tell them that they were SO terrible to sell a "tree" that had no roots. 

Japanese aren't used to admitting guilt, or giving refunds. 

I made a scene, and just hoped that someone "got it". 

For me, I've hated killing trees in the "spirit of Christmas". 

This Christmas, at our home, we'll get to have a living, 

potted Christmas tree to celebrate loving one another.