Into Summer 2017

Taka picked a bouquet for me, the sweetheart. 

The iris's smelled so strongly that I had to put them away in the bathroom! ; )

Right, Taka takes care of all the decorative plants, and the weeding, trimming...big time.

In front of Taka there, is a big patch of strawberries. When it rained so much in March and April, the strawberries got SO BIG! But birds kept eating. What was a pain was they'd only eat HALF a berry!

Well, I tried making this scarecrow:

It looked so good! With Zen's old clothes on it... and it sure kept surprising me! I never really did get used to it there, kept thinking it was really someone. And then the birds didn't give a shit! 

Oh HALLE! It was her 1st birthday May 21st. Her mama and auntie are amazing artists. 

And Halle totally looked like she got it!

Another day, Kieahla was at our house with Taka. The two of them have such a good time! Later Kie's papa told me that Kieahla will show him a picture of Taka on Naomi's phone and tell him "TATA!" that's how she's been calling him. "She loves her gandpa Taka" my son-in-law says



I couldn't resist taking this screen shot! I  really wish I got to talk with them more, the time difference between Japan and here makes it harder.


Then there was Zen with us back in California for a bit in the summer!
At first Kieahla was wary of him. Right, it'd been a year. First day I joked "Zen's here LIVE!"
Naomi said he could bribe her with food, and he did. I had to show how huggable he was...

That doll house is so excellent no? Taka made the basement for it. I'd bought it for Kieahla for her 2nd birthday and it came with so much furniture that that basement was really needed. Funny story though: Naomi and I were writing msgs back and forth about the birthday party and I was trying to figure out what kind of present to get her. The party theme was Winnie the Pooh, and I was going to buy a big teddy bear, and something else... then I got a msg from Naomi "I want more personal" and I thought "Gosh! Okay...a present that's more personal?! " Well, I did figure out~ this dollhouse! But it took .some thinking  THEN a little while later Naomi, suddenly wrote me, "No! I meant I want some more PERSIMMONS!" Ha haaaaa! those spell checks!!!

Finally, all fun and happy, then Zen left...

He'd signed for his third year playing for Sapporo. He had to get back training for next season.