All Hallow's Eve

Katie, Joseph and Matthew,

dressed as St. Claire,

St. Dominic,

and St. Francis,

had a blast trick-or- treating with friends on base this evening.

Every Hallowe'en, many Japanese children from the community and nearby orphanages are invited to come to the base for trick-or-treating, too. Every year, everyone runs completely out of candy, even though the event is limited to a two-hour period in the evening. The base is almost overrun between all the American kids who live on and off base and all the guests, but it is lots of fun to see the children and their costumes.

Patrick and friends went along with one of the g irls from the cross country team who had to take her little brother trick-or-treating. Most of them dressed up for the fun of it, but they didn't collect candy. Luckily, Katie, Joseph, and Matthew were willing to share with him. Patrick was "Capeman," a super hero. Because superheroes are really all about the cape. The connection to All Hallow's was that St. Joseph of Cupertino could fly (well, levitate, but you get the idea).



Even better, the little ones get to wear their costumes again tomorrow to the parish All Saints Day Mass.

Happy Hallowe'en!!

Pumpkin Time

Lots of fun had by all last night as we carved our pumpkins:

All he wants for Christmas...

...is his two front teeth!

Hooray!!!!!

Red Sox Sweep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And the fans rejoice!!!

Now maybe poor Daddy can get some sleep. :-)

In and Around Bude

The conference ended early on Friday, so I had some time to walk around in the afternoon and take some pictures. On Saturday, I drove down the coast and stopped at Tintagel and Mawgan Porth (and briefly at Watergate Bay). I walked about 6 miles back and forth to the castle and along the cliffs.




I'm staying at the Camelot Hotel...














As strange as it might seem, many people surf here! See for yourself...

The shore near Bude

A row of beach cabins

Inside the old church near Tintagel Castle...

Some of the remaining castle wall

A little bit of history

Here are some scenes from the walk between Mawgan Porth and Watergate Bay...

The beach at Mawgan Porth

A pasture above Mawgan Porth

Somewhere in between...

The beach at Watergate Bay


















Signs at Watergate Bay














A covered section of the footpath


















A large, black slug (on the right)

Another spot in between...

Go Red Sox!

World Series

We're watching Game 2 of the World Series on 3 continents today (Thursday in the US and UK).

International phone calls are flying, as well. Thank goodness for Vonage and the internet and mobile phones.

Go Red Sox!!

Piano Lessons

Every three weeks, a breath of fresh musical air blows through our home. Yuuko-san arrives from Morioka on the train to sing and clap and play piano with us. In-home lessons are one aspect of Japanese life that I truly appreciate. Need two piano lessons in the afternoon? Want to schedule during the toddler's nap? Teenage babysitter away at cross country practice? No problem; the teacher will come to you and teach in your home. It's brilliant.



Yuuko-san is a lovely person. She is a classical teacher and uses the Suzuki method, which we wanted to continue after our positive experience in the U.S. (thank you, Jonella!!) She also teaches us some elements of voice, as well as sharing a bit of Japanese culture at each lesson. Today, she brought us ripe persimmons from the tree in her yard: an autumn treat in Japan.

At the end of the lesson, we always have tea. I make American or English tea and we try always to have an American baked goodie of some type to share. And, as she asked when we first began the lessons last year, we help Yuuko-san with her conversation skills by chatting about the season or travel or music or some other general topic. Or Matthew entertains us with his toddler silliness.

Because our teacher travels so far to see us, our lessons are far apart. This means we have to work hard to stay motivated between lessons and keep up our schedule of practicing each morning after prayer time. It's the first part of the school day--even before math, which used to take priority. This is part of my renewed focus on the arts for this year, but it is important always to have a set time of day for practice or other things easily take over. We have learned this the hard way. On many days in the past, we found ourselves at bedtime without having practiced at all.

Suzuki piano is a bit different from other methods in that the children spend a lot of time with rhythm play, singing the notes of songs, and training their ears to hear notes and tone. Joseph plays many classical and folk pieces without reading music, but by Katie's level, note-reading is also an important part of lessons and practice time.



In addition, we try to listen to CDs of the children's music from their lesson books once a day. Katie is also listening weekly to the CD for the next book. It is my job to put the CDs on, but I have been having a hard time remembering to do this lately. It's another thing that needs to be tied to something we do every day, but the current plan isn't working. As with any other part of our schedule that gets broken, I will tweak it and rearrange and see what other plan will work better.

It's worth the time and effort to hear the beautiful music the children play and to hear them singing together during the day. I love to hear music in the house and nothing is better than music we make ourselves.

Elizabeth Foss has a very nice essay on Catholic Exchange today.

Joy in Mudville

Goodnight, Daddy.

We miss you!

Love you!

Patrick's home

And he had a great race. He improved his time again (by 50 seconds!!) and said that the course felt really short.
Congratulations, Patrick!

Happy Baptism Day!

Dear Christopher John,

Welcome to God's Family! We are so happy for you on this most important of days.

Even thought you won't remember it, your baptism leaves a permanent character on your soul. You are now God's adopted child forever. No matter what you do or where you go, you will always be a child of God. He will always be there to watch over you and to protect you. He wants you to be with him in heaven someday, and He will help you to get there.

Your parents and godparents have brought you into God's family and promised to teach you His ways throughout your life. Everyone in the family will support them in their efforts because we know it is impossible to get to heaven or to lead a child to heaven without help from family and friends both in heaven and here on earth.

The world will not be much help to your parents, C.J., and they may sometimes tell you that you may not do things you wish to do or that you should not look upon or listen to things you wish to look upon and listen to. We pray that you will trust them and listen to their counsel. God has entrusted your soul to them, and they will always have your best interests at heart, even if it doesn't make sense to you at that moment. Later, you will look back and understand and appreciate that they loved you enough to teach you to choose things that are good, true, and beautiful over the world's false glitter.

As you grow and must make decisions on your own, always remember that you have two powerful patron Saints to help you on your way. And you have a heavenly mother, Mary. Do not hesitate to ask them for help. They will pray for you whenever you ask. Do not forget to pray yourself, especially when it doesn't seem to be doing any good. God always answers prayer, even if we sometimes don't recognize the answer or are too impatient to wait for it.

Our family cannot be at your baptism today because we are far away on two different continents. But through Jesus Christ we can all be united spiritually. So, we will be with you in our prayers, offering our family rosary for you as you begin your life as a child of God. You will continue to be in our prayers whenever we pray for our family and for any special needs you have.

May you grow in grace and wisdom and always have a heart that is open to God's infinite love for you.

With much love,

Aunt Judy, Uncle John, Tommy, Patrick, Katie, Joseph, and Matthew

Swallows and Amazons

Reminded of this book by Melanie, I pulled Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome, (1930) off one of our children's literature shelves a few weeks ago. It had been there since Patrick received it in 8th grade. He never got a chance to read it, and I didn't either until last week.

This is a satisfying story, full of summer fun, adventurous sailing, and childhood imagination. The thing I like best about it overall is that the parents and children have a trusting relationship. In far too many current works of juvenile fiction, the parents are portrayed as stupid or unnecessary. Parents are either absent, overbearing, or complete failures at understanding their children.

In Swallows and Amazons, however, the children are honest with their parents. They generally ask before doing things, and they are given permission if their request is reasonable. Also, their parents listen to them in order to hear whether or not the request is reasonable before making a decision. The main-character family has a relationship of mutual respect, and the parents have final authority.

The story begins as the children are awaiting permission to camp out on an island in the middle of the lake on which their summer home is located. Their father is away, and they have written to him (Dad isn't stupid either in this story; there's much respect for his advice and opinion from both mother and children). The children are willing to live by his answer. There's no plotting of what they'll do to get around it if he says no. And he says yes, via a wonderfully-worded telegram, and the adventure begins.

The children are self-reliant and handle sailing and camping with great imagination and fun. It's an adventure story, not a moral tale, but respect for a dults, and the good grace to feel insulted when that respect is undeservedly not returned, is clear.

One of my favorite scenes in the book comes when John, the eldest, returns to camp from a sail home to discuss a problem with their mother:

"Just when they were finishing washing up after a tea that had been very native [meaning, the way it would be on the mainland with grownups present], probably because Susan was still not feeling happy about having let them stay up until morning, Captain John came home.
His first words were, 'I told mother about our being out all last night and not coming home till to-day.'
'Was she very upset about it?' said Susan.
'I think she was rather, inside. But she hid it, and it's all right now. Only, I've promised not to do it again.'
After that, Susan cheered up and became much less like a native and more like a mate."

This is the first in a series, and I enjoyed it so much, I'm going to have to hunt up a few more. I hope Katie will be in the mood for a good sailing story soon.

Update: One thing I forgot to mention was the one thing that bothered me in this story. The children tell each other to shut up on several occasions. These are words that we don't use in our family, and even though the children in the story are generally very respectful of each other, these words did not show it. Further, they weren't necessary to the story. Something else could have been said to show annoyance. It was the one minor blip (that could be deleted when reading aloud) and something I would want to mention to Katie ahead of time and discuss later to see if she agreed that the story would stand without the hurtful words. The parts do not condemn the whole in this story, and I still heartily recommend it with this alert in place.

Japan Post

While I was writing that last entry, this van pulled up across the street. Usually, the Japanese postal carriers ride small motorbikes (no, Tommy, you still can't have one). Lately, however, we have seen a couple of these awesome postal vans around. Notice how much shorter it is than the normal-height van in the neighbors' driveway. The driveway is slanted up, but only slightly.

Too quiet

It's too quiet around here with all the big boys away.

Patrick is in Tokyo for the last cross country meet before Far East finals. The top seven guys got to go, and Patrick is number 7 on the team. That means he's an alternate for Far East, too. The Far East meet is in Okinawa this year, which would be a great opportunity, but it is unlikely that two people in the top five would be injured in the next two weeks. For his first time in organized sports since he was 12, it has been a great season. He's even thinking of playing soccer in the spring. Patrick.......playing soccer again....

John is in Massachusetts at the moment, visiting his mom and family. He'll just miss CJ's baptism Sunday because he has to leave Saturday for his business trip to England. He'll be gone about 3 weeks. Whenever I'm tempted to whine complain about that, I just have to spend a few minutes with my friend, Mary, whose husband is leaving for training and deployment next month--November. He'll be home in June or July.

And we all know where Tommy is. They have a slideshow up from their camping trip in Eastern Washington last month.

Brrr...

It was 16 degrees celcius (60 F) in the kitchen when I came down this morning.

Time to turn on the heat!

In the past we almost always waited for it to get below 60 in the morning before starting up the heater, but I am older and wimpier now, and John is away, so on it goes this morning.

Thank goodness for directions in English and pictures. :-)

Mount Angel Abbey

After a challenging series of retreats at Mercy High School in Red Bluff, CA, Tommy and the Our Lady of Fatima team were at Mt. Angel Abbey in Oregon this weekend. Tommy's friend, Mark, is a first-year seminarian there, so it was a mini-reunion as well as a much-needed respite from their stressful week.

Here's a beautiful video of the Benedictine monks at Mt. Angel chanting Psalm 95. Thanks to Melanie Bettinelli for sharing this.

Please keep Tommy and the team in your prayers as their retreat schedule gets busier.

Mutsu Bay

Glass float at Mutsu Bay
Photo credit: Patrick 2007

About an hour north of us is a huge bay. Ever since we arrived, we have been hearing about "Shipwreck Beach," which is located on the southeast side of the bay. So on Sunday afternoon, we went up to try to find it check it out.

We didn't find the actual Shipwreck Beach, but after crossing a railroad track and climbing down a concrete retaining wall

Matthew walking along the tracks
and an art lesson in perspective:
there's always a lesson in there somewhere ;-)

(We were in the car for an hour, and we were not going home without walking on the beach!), we found a beach to walk along.


Picking up a baseball and some practice cones

The disappointing thing about the Japanese beaches we have visited is the amount of trash along them. At Mutsu Bay, it's mostly fishing trash: broken floats from nets, lots of rope, plastic parts of fishing equipment, and a few water bottles and beer cans.

Most of the stuff is high above the water line, so you can walk along and not trip over it.


For those of us used to fairly pristine American beaches, it is a bit disappointing. Maybe they don't clean it up because the beaches aren't used for swimming, just for fishing and clamming and such. And for American tourists to walk along and hunt for bits of amber and sea glass.



And climb around on the beach preservation measures.

In spite of the trash, it was a nice afternoon and good to get out of the house. Patrick took some great photos. Next time, we'll find the shipwreck.

Fishing float with surf fishers in background
Patrick 2007

Sunset, Mustu Bay
Patrick, 2007