Saipan

photo credit: John

We had a lovely time in Saipan. The days were warm and sunny and the nights warm and breezy. What a nice change from Misawa! I saw on a friend's Facebook page while we were away that they had enough snow there to merit plowing, which means that diggers with caterpillar treads drive over the city streets to give them greater friction. Bumpy!

None of that in Saipan. We swam in the pools or the Philippine Sea every day


and into the evenings

photo credit: John

The older kids enjoyed snorkeling and windsurfing.

photo credit: John

photo credit: John

Joseph liked the snorkeling so much, he went again with me the next day. We are really hoping that Patrick's underwater photos turn out so we can see all those amazing fish again.

The little ones loved the splash pool


and the smooth sandy beach (so clean! not at all like Japanese beaches), where they found shells, stones and pieces of coral from the reef that makes the lagoon along this side of the island.

photo credit: John

Matthew built a large sand castle, which he told me was at the top of Mt. Crumpet. Clearly, we watched a few of the Christmas videos way too many times this year. ;)

photo credit: John

We think the hotel's complimentary pool towels made Meghan's eyes look even more blue.

But thanks to her long-sleeved rash guard shirt and sun-blocking hat, she didn't spend much time wrapped up in a towel.

One afternoon, we took a break from swimming, and all the kids tried drinking coconut milk directly from coconuts. Afterwards, the bartender scraped out the fresh coconut and the we tasted that, too. Yummy, but not the sweet, shredded version we are used to.

photo credit: the bartender

John and I were even able to have a dinner date Wednesday night

while Tommy and Patrick took the other kids to the hotel's buffet dinner. We arrived back at the room to the calls of a lively game of Pit. Matthew was taking great pride in announcing, "The market is open!" with each new round.

Our family has reconnected during this vacation. The younger children basked in Tommy's attention,


and Patrick was able to relax and put aside the college/scholarship application stress for a little while.


When she was dry enough to read, Katie had a hard time putting down her book (which is what happens when your aunt and uncle give you The Mysterious Benedict Society for Christmas!).


Joseph enjoyed each new experience from snorkeling

photo credit: John

to chasing lizards,

photo credit: John

and even the Lazy River, which he was certain he would find painfully boring when we talked about it before we left home.

Meghan learned many new words and phrases including "flower hair",

"flower shoe"

"swim", "pool", "swim pool fun", "drums loud", "Birds fly", "cave", "bumpy road", and "game room".

I have to applaud this hotel, by the way, because the game room contains pool tables,




table tennis, foosball,



giant chess,

photo credit: John

and tables with Jenga blocks and backgammon on them, but not one video game. Halleluia!

There was so much to do at the Pacific Islands Club that we didn't leave the resort until Thursday morning. We took a half-day tour of the island by van, experienced Saipan's highly structured highway system

Believe it or not, there were highway signs for this road. It even has a highway number. I wish I had caught that in a photo!

saw beautiful scenery

Banzai cliff

Bird Island

along with some WW II sites,


and learned a bit of Saipan's tragic history from our guide. Mt. Topatcho, the highest point on the island was a point of great struggle during the World War II battle for Saipan.

At the top of the mountain now, there is a statue of Jesus. There is also a wooden cross nearby. Our guide told us that Saipan is more than 90% Catholic and that on Easter Sunday morning, they gather there for a sunrise Mass, then take branches from the area in procession into town. No cars are allowed on the roads until after 9 a.m that day. After living for the past three years in a non-Christian country, finding a reminder of the risen Christ on a mountaintop instead of a Buddhist or Shinto shrine gave me an unexpectedly comforting feeling.

The view was misty at first, but cleared as the day went on.

photo credit: John

peace park monument at the site of an old gun emplacement

at the peace park

downtown Garapan

Among the more interesting things we saw were the caves and grottos. Saipan is a coral reef island, and over the years, rainwater has eroded many caves into the limestone.

Skull Cave

wild chickens in the jungle near Skull Cave (I am not joking.)

The Grotto (popular scuba diving ocean cave)

The thing that kept surprising us, besides the incongruity of the hotel's Christmas decorations with the warm weather and the fact that we constantly forgot that it was January, was that we never minded a little rain. It was so warm there and the rain so light that we just kept on with our activities. The sun usually broke through again after only a short while.

Sunsets were beautiful, even on cloudy evenings.



On our last night, we dined at the hotel's Seaside Grill, which offers sunset views.

photo credit: our waiter

We enjoyed one last round of umbrella drinks.



And then, one last day in this beautiful spot before we returned to Tokyo, sent Tommy back to Dallas, and rode the Shinkansen back to snowy Misawa.

18 inches of snow!!

In our memories, though, there is a warm breeze, music in the courtyard below us, and another peaceful day ahead. All a blessing.

photo credit: John

Epiphany

We went to Mass today. It wasn't the Mass for Epiphany. That was celebrated last Sunday. But in our hearts, we were celebrating Epiphany anyway.

Tonight we made our annual Epiphany procession through the house.

We begin by marking the front door with chalk: 20 + C+M+B + 10. This is for the year, 2010, with CMB in the middle standing for the names of the wise men, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, and also for the Latin, Christus Mansus Benedictus (Christ Bless this House). [Hopefully, I have the Latin right ;)]

We proceed to each room, singing "We Three Kings", led by Patrick carrying the Easter candle we made last spring and Tommy with the censor from our miniature Mass set. John blesses the rooms, sprinkling holy water and praying,

Lord God of heaven and earth,
you revealed your only begotten Son to every nation
by the guidance of a star.
Bless this house and all who inhabit it.
Fill us with the light of Christ that our concern for others may reflect your love.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

-Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers, USCCB, 1999

When we have blessed the house, we gather again at our home altar and sing more carols.

The youngest children dress in kimonos as the kings and carry gifts.

I love this devotion. The house smells like incense for a day or so afterwards and it reminds us that we are a domestic church, a small house of God.


We also opened the last of our Christmas gifts today. Gifts from friends of the family and everything that arrives in the mail after Christmas Eve, we save to open as part of our Epiphany celebration. We talk about the Christmas story again and the gifts that the Wise Men brought to baby Jesus on this day.



Happy Epiphany! Merry Christmas!

Thanks

for the new jumper outfit, Nana.

Love you,
Meghan

Happy 5

Happy birthday, buddy, we love you!
Mommy

(I confess to the sin of pride where this cake is concerned. I never thought I would be able to make a Larry Boy cake when Matthew asked for it, but it turned out okay, if I do say so myself!)

O, come, let us adore Him.

Merry Christmas to all. May you experience the love of Christ today and always.

Baby Jesus is here!

Cookie family

Coffee mama

Mih-muh. May-may mih-muh.
(see previous post)

Before Midnight Mass


With love from all of us and our prayers for a blessed New Year.

Homophones and other baby talk

As Meghan ventures into speaking multi-syllabic words, we sometimes find ourselves guessing (and giggling) at the things that sound alike when she says them:

Doggie--Daddy ( both are dahhh-dee) this can be confusing at bedtime when we're not sure what (or who) she is asking to cuddle with.

Teapot--treetop--and something else that I can't remember at the moment (all three are "tea pot" said very distinctly and with a pause between the syllables): very funny when Rock a bye Baby is being sung

up--cup (both are "bup") but it's usually not too bad since up is in the kitchen when we are cooking and cup is mostly at the table

Mary--Meghan: both are "May-may" Funny when she says "Tih (kiss) May-may" and wants to give a kiss to my kitchen Madonna rather than receiving one herself.

bow--bowl understandable, and not a problem in context

bed-bread: both are "Bem" but again we have context to help us

There are some others, which I will add when I remember them.

I love that she says "bank-bee" for her blanket.

Other words:
dew--juice
mil--milk (in a cup)
Tommy--yep, she learned his name just a few days before he got home
boh-way--boy
Mah-moo--beginning to interchange with BoBo for Matthew
No--although usually not in defiance, just in answer to questions like "do you want some milk?" answered in a worried tone "No. dew." She's very sweet and funny when she worries that we are about to do something that she doesn't want us to do. Not one of us can continue with whatever we wanted when she does that. Ahhh....the life of the youngest child. :)
Bup-buh--diaper
bow (bowl)
pate (plate and placemat)
feet
hans
toes
cheek
mou (th)
tee (th)
hay (hair)
eye (s)
eah (ear)
tummy
poo! (for a wet or dirty diaper, as in "please change this thing ASAP")
go! (as in, "Hey, you people, I want to go, too.")
toat (coat)
mih-muh (mittens)
haaa (hat) usually she likes the idea of the hat, but pulls it off only moments after we put it on

bow (all hair clips, whether actually bows or not) she also pulls these out almost immediately if we don't sneak them in properly

shuh (shirt) and particularly "heh-ha shuh" for her shirt with the hedgehog on it which she asks to wear almost daily

pan--pants

sah (for socks or tights)

shoe--sometimes very insistently if we are going out and she thinks she might not be going along Meghan LOVES shoes. She is fascinated by big shoes and takes them out of the shoe cabinet and walks around in them: mine, Joseph's, doesn't matter whose really)

"Shuh" for "Sure" when asked if she will help with something or if she wants to do something she wants to do or eat something she wants to eat (otherwise, "No." See above)

"Tute" cute

"Nice" when she likes something--like her Christmas presents. Every time she opened one, she said "Nice" and sometimes she laughed with great excitement. We laughed when she spent the time between her turns to open presents by putting the gifts back in the bags, taking them out, putting them back in, taking them out, over and over and over. By this evening, she was actually calling wrapped presents "nice" even before they were opened. And she was almost as enamored of the tissue paper as she was of the gifts. Almost. It turns out she like clothes. A lot. And tries to put them on when she receives them. Who needs TV?

sho-shay (horse)
various other animal sounds and a few names that are more or less accurate
You should hear her roar for lions and bears.

angy--angry (for the baby's expression in her Baby Faces book)
sad--same as above
puh-pld--for the page that says "puzzled"

Dayce--for her friend Grace (although she sometimes forgets and calls her May-may)
Doshie--for her friend Joshua (never called May-may)

chay--chair
towtch--couch
bem--bed & bread

Read! said very insistently with books being handed to us. This is one area where we are working hard on attaching please to the request.

And probably the cutest thing:
"MAh-mee-mah, I neen you." For I need you. She only says my name with three syllables when she says this sentence. It's sort of a game in which I am supposed to reply "Meg-gy-gah, I need you." or sometimes, she goes around the dinner table inserting other names and adding an extra syllable (doh-doh-dah for Joseph, who is usually Doh-doh) It's adorable.

Other sentences or almost sentences:
She tells me what she wants to eat by saying the name of the food and mouth or bowl or plate
e.g. Mommy, cheese, bow. Or Mommy, tooh-tee, mou (cookie, mouth)

In a variation of this, today when she received a pair of pink corduroy polka-dotted pants she wanted to put them on immediately. She brought them to me and said, "Mommy, pan, tummy." Pretty good for a 19-month-old.

"Tute baby" for pictures of babies anywhere

Read boh-way. For books with pictures of boys in them or on them. And she calls snowmen boys, too. I guess there's some logic to that.

"Own bem" This is what she calls her new toddler bed, which she now gets into willingly, says "Head" as she carefully lies down to remind herself not to bump her head on the headboard. She still kicks off the covers, gets cold or lonely and crawls into bed with us in the middle of the night. But I now usually get my side of the bed all to myself for at least a few hours of comfy sleeping bliss at night.

A flash of her sense of humor. The other day, she, purposely I think, called a stuffed animal that was not a horse a "Show-shay". I corrected her and said, no, that one is a (whatever it was, not even close to horse). She said 'show-shay" again, and I said the correct name again. With a twinkle in her eye, she said "Show-shay" a third time. And waited. And grinned, almost giggling, for me to respond with the correct word. Another word-playing child.

One Matthew note: The day before yesterday, the kids were playing Risk in the living room. Matthew was alternately being on Tommy's team and doing his own thing. At one point in the game, he said, "You know what I think of when I hear you say 'take over'? I think of a black guy leaning over with his tongue sticking out." (by 'black guy' he means a man wearing black--all people whose names he doesn't know are labeled with the color they are wearing, as in "Mommy, why is that green lady going up the stairs?") A random glimpse into the working of his mind. We get more of these for Matthew than some other children because most of what goes through his mind comes out his mouth. It can be very strange and funny, and we smile a lot over this.

Happy 18, Patrick!

chocolate raspberry cake
Good choice!

As long as there are friends....

Make a wish.

Got it!

May God grant you many years, Patrick.
With love,
Mom

"O" Antiphons

To learn more about these prayers for the last days of Advent, go to this link:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0374.html

Thanks for the link, Mom. We have a lot of fun with the "O" Antiphons. Today, for example, is the day that we buy our poinsettias for the house. "O flower of Jesse..." :)

Pious Sodality of...Marshmallow Shooters?

This is too good not to share. Should be a must-have for any family likely to be trapped indoors periodically.

St. Andrew Novena

Elizabeth Foss posted a photo of the St. Andrew chaplets that she and her family made last Advent. I was inspired to do the novena this Advent with our family. I might even order some beads and medals. :)

This fall, I have been feeling very stretched between my toddler and high school senior (not to mention the three in between and the one far away), and we've taken school down a notch for the younger children. During Advent, we will do our math, read lots of beautiful Advent and Christmas stories, and create beautiful things. Our Mother Church has given us this time to prepare our hearts for the coming of the Holy Child. I want to soak up the beauty and joy of this preparatory season and do as Elizabeth said,

"In our family, we have long set aside this season for digging deeply into traditions. We do much, much more crafting than we do at any other time of year. Our academic work is narrowed to math, lots of reading from great picture books and Christmas-themed chapter books, and lots of narrating. We focus on Advent devotions and drink deeply from the well of our Church. It's a busy time and we all learn so much.At some point, Michael returns from college and fits right in--more than any other time of the year, this time is familiar and warm and welcoming for him. After immersion in faith and family, we return to "school as usual" in January more relaxed and more connected to one another and to our Savior because of our Advent traditions. It works for us."

This sounds exactly like the place I would like our family to be this Advent and Christmas.

So we begin with the St. Andrew novena, a tiny moment for God each day in the midst of all the preparatory rush.

“Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in the piercing cold. In that hour vouchsafe, O my God! To hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen.

We are praying for so many things and people right now that it would be impossible to list them all here. Please know that if you are reading this, you are probably on the list, too, for all your intentions, spiritual and temporal needs this holy season.

And who knew that St. Andrew was the patron Saint for women trying to conceive? If you know of anyone who needs this prayer, you can add it to your own devotions, along with the prayer to Our Lady of la Leche in the sidebar. :)

Altar serving

This morning was Joseph's first time serving at Mass. He was a little nervous before Mass.



After Mass, he confessed that last night he had a dream that he was at church to serve for the first time, but we were there early--before the 8 a.m. Protestant service that precedes the 9:30 Catholic Mass. In his dream, he put on his cassock and surplice and was ready to serve, but didn't have a candle, and it was time for the entrance procession, so he went forward with the procession anyway, but then he realized that it was the Protestant service, and he wasn't supposed to be there, so he had to escape through a pew and out the side door of the church.

Whew! Thank goodness it was only a dream!

You did a fine job, Joseph. Dad and I are very proud of you.

Last Race

The last 5K race of the year was today. It was a fitting finish to the running season--windy and raining.

We learned a little bit more about cold weather running. One needs fewer clothes later in the race than at the beginning. If it's raining, it's rather pointless trying to stay dry.

Only about 100 people showed up this month instead of the usual 300 to 400. Everyone stayed inside the gym until about 3 minutes before the start. The organizers yelled "Go!" as soon as most of us were at the line.

The first part of the race was the same as usual--jostling for position and trying to settle into a pace. We had the wind behind us for the first half. That wouldn't last, since we were running an out-and-back route. My glasses were just rain covered until we got to the turn-around. Then, with the wind blowing in our faces, my glasses fogged up. To avoid runners, puddles and other obstacles, I had to look over them once in a while.

With the discomfort of the weather, it was nearly impossible to settle into a good rhythm. Katie must have felt the same way, especially since her knees started hurting her a quarter of the way through. If the rain bothered Patrick, it was hard to tell. He and his friend Rye (also a cross-country runner) were near the front of the pack for the entire race. At the finish, Rye was second and Patrick was fifth. There was no official timer, so we don't know our actual times. There were about 30 people waiting at the finish when I arrived. Katie came in a couple minutes after I did.

The two of us looked for Patrick in the gym, then headed back to our car. We found him when we found Rye's car. The only thing on anyone's mind was getting home and taking a hot shower. The hot chocolate waiting for us was a perfect consolation.

The support crew at home before the race

Patrick arrives home again

Katie glad to be done

John still dripping in the doorway

The damp and dreary weather

Vocabulary lessons

Matthew, telling Joseph about some jack-o-lantern pictures that he colored:

"This pumpkin is astonished. That's why I drew his mouth like a big 'o'."

One more thing

Can I just share that when Meghan reaches up for my kitchen Madonna and signs "please" and when given the statue to hold, bestows kisses on Mary and Baby Jesus I think it is one of the sweetest things any of my children have ever done?

Okay, back to Patrick's transcripts and relative radio silence.

Halloween

I wanted to share an article from First Things that I saw linked on Melanie Bettenelli's blog.

Another Catholic homeschooling mom and I were talking about this very thing just before All Hallow's Eve. Our experience here is so different from the U.S. The base is flooded--literally: my friend went through 20 bags of candy in under an hour at one piece per child--with local Japanese children who want to trick-or-treat. Our evangelical protestant friends participate in church activities. Lutheran friends shared that they spent the day singing hymns in celebration of "Reformation Day". The chapel offers an alternative to Halloween "Harvest Party" on the 31st during the on-base trick-or-treating hours of 6-9 p.m.

Back in the U.S., we trick-or-treated at the homes of friends and celebrated with a big All Saints' Day party with our homeschool co-op. Our former pastor here invited the kids wear Saint costumes to the All Saints Day Mass for a couple of years, but the new pastor hasn't carried on the tradition. So the only emphasis on that will come from our own efforts. I miss the support we received from our parish back home in our efforts to infuse the Faith into our children's lives by celebrating the events of the liturgical year.

My only quibble with the First Things article is that I do think the connections between Halloween, All Saint's Day, and All Soul's Day are more clearly made if the children's Halloween costumes are somehow connected to a Saint. I admit that we apply that principle pretty loosely around here, but it is still the undercurrent of the feast. This year, for example, Katie was a baker (connection: St. Elizabeth of Hungary, patroness of bakers), Joseph was Luke Skywalker (St. Joseph of Cupertino, patron of pilots), and Matthew was a robot (St. Martin de Porres, servant in his monastery, as robots are servants of the people who use them--a stretch, I know, but there isn't any St. Roboticus...). Meghan was easier--she wore the baby angel costume I made for Patrick back when we lived in Turkey and the kids trick-or treated at the various offices on Ankara Air Station.

Anyway, the article expressed so many of my thoughts on the subject so well that I don't really feel the need to write anything else. But I wanted to share with you "The Drama of Hallowmas".

Pumpkin Carving

Here's a short look at our Halloween Eve pumpkin carving extravaganza.

(Password: jack)

Halloween Pumpkin Carving from John & Judith Riordon on Vimeo.