Happy New Year ~

"What's this?", Sean had lots of questions at the shrine.

Shake that thing!

Checking out what else is goin on.

What's up with children and rocks?

We want to get out, too!

My Mom made all these by herself!

Let's eat!!

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a great start to the brand new year.  Something took over me from mid December on and I was avoiding logging on to my blog.  I made countless excuses not to turn on the computer in the office.  Maybe blogging became another item on the countless to do list over the Holiday season, who knows.  But here I am!  Ready to blurb about all the chaos and joys my family regales me. 

This is the longest absent I had ever since I started this blog four years ago (wow, four years) and I don't know how I should be filling in the blank...  I hate to leave some things out since we did do a lot of memory-worthy stuff.  In this post, I will write about the New Year's Day since I want to my very first post of 2012 to be fresh and current.  I will write about Christmas etc... in the next few posts so that I won't leave them out. 

In Japan, we spend the New Year's Day eating the traditional dish called Osechi, which the women spend days cooking prior to the New Year's day.  This year, we decided to follow this tradition and asked my poor Mom (she was visiting from Japan) to make some for us.  I had to have it for the CHILDREN, you know?  My Mom did a very good job and the girls liked fish cake the best.  Sean surprised me and ate some boiled octopus and shiitake mushrooms!  I was very proud of him. 

After breakfast, we drove up to Granite Falls to visit a shinto shrine to give a New Year's prayer.  This is the shrine Mike and I spent about four days in late 90s for an Aikido camp.  I would have never imagined we would go back again 13 years later with four children in hand!  The shrine was packed with mostly Japanese visitors and a few wore kimono.  The children were wide-eyed and asking a lot of questions.  Sean and Alyson walked and Saya and Noah sat on the double stroller.  We first washed our hands and rinsed our mouth at the stone water basin and entered the main area for prayer to pay our respect.  We threw the money into the donation box, shook the bells, clapped twice and bowed twice.   I am not sure if it was the correct order, but I often got lectured when I mess up the order in Japan, too.  At least no one else knew how to do it right, either. 

The shrine has a beautiful river in its premises, so we decided to check it out afterwards.  The river bank was covered by rocks of all shapes and sizes and, of course, all my childrens' light bulbs lit up and decided to throw rocks into the river.  Mr. Noah charged towards the river and he looked like he wanted to practice the traditional purification ceremony of submerging into the freezing river,  so I stopped him and put him back in the stroller.  He did not like that at all.  He was screaming to be set free and I was getting a lot of stares, so decided to go back to the car with him and wait for the rest.  According to my Mom, Saya kept grabbing the little ceramic frog displayed by the pathway to the river and didn't want to let it go.  She kept running around near the river and scaring my poor Mom, making her run around, too, chasing the little chunker.  Sean and Alyson could have spent all day throwing rocks in the river, but they did come back not so long after I brought Noah back to the car. 

It was a gorgeously sunny day and we were happy we got to spend time together out in the beautiful countryside, teaching our children the Japanese traditions.  The orange pearl of the sky as we drove home was so peaceful, it made all of us feel blessed.   If how we spend the New Year's Day represent the sentiment of the entire year like some Japanese do believe, this year is going to be a blissful year.  I am not looking forward to entering the fourth decade of my life, but I am ready to conquer another year and inch towards the person I want to become. 

Thank you for reading my blog!  I will never quit blogging.  By blogging, I can look at my life from a third person's perspective and it makes me realize how lucky I am to have my family and friends.   Have a wonderful year, everyone!