Look at this:

Us  in 2000:

Us in 2008:

Just a little plump for all those years.

We are starting a new chapter soon. A change of pace and a change of place.

I posted pictures of Japan & China on my flickr site.
LINK

Check em out!

I will write about China eventually. I have news.

Tonight, I got another button mushroom from the garden today. They pop up next to the composter. It is SOOO cool.
The kids have been eating mad amounts of black berries from the vine out back. It is really impressive how loaded the branches are.  Garden is humming along. tomatoes setting out. Potatoes not doing well in the vertical boxes. I got a bowl full of string beans, ate them while I was cleaning the house this past weekend. It is going well.

It looks like we will be moving to Seattle. I got a new job at the Zon. We are all really excited. There is so much to do. We should be completely moved by August.  We have someone that is going to rent the house while we prep for buying in the Seattle market. Hopefully, prices will drop a bit.

Anyway, that’s the skinny…I am off to drop the news on my neighbors, they will be really sad to see us go. But, I don’t think anyone is as sad as Sarah & Ben.
Breaks my heart.
Excites my heart.
It is the rub.

In waiting for the edition on China, here is something I found this morning that I saw frequently on my travels around China & Japan.
http://www.engrish.com/category_index.php?category=CHINGLISH

The funniest one I saw was a woman wearing a shirt that had big red lips on it with flowers all around, in scrolling style letters “I fell petty”
I wanted a picture but did not want to be rude.

I am in China today. Traveling again for work. I will post
pictures on my flickr site to save time & space here. Plus I can’t down
load my pictures until I get home.

I was in Japan last week, luckily taking in a weekend there.
I am traveling with a co-worker who happens to be a first generation American
Chinese man. This causes a few moments of confusion as folk approach him,
speaking language he can’t understand. It seems even Asians mistake one another
for another ilk, too so don’t be hard on yourself if, White Bread American,
make a mistake. So the first night in JP, we headed out for dinner. There were
a lot of bicyclers everywhere. We walked to the mall and looked for a spot. We
settled on a packed Japanese style place. We sat at the bar, not what you would
think of in America, such that one would order a beer type of bar, but rather a
similar bar that you would see in a Sushi restaurant. Though behind the bar
there was a rather different scene that that of a Sushi restaurant. There were
about 6 guys in white with white caps & chef coats on. They each had a
station. One was grilling, he was right in front of me, so I watched hiom
mostly. He had this long grill that was essentially a U shaped tube in which he
stuffed long charcoal sticks into the cradle of the U, on this grill we placed
meats that were skewered, the tops of the U shape supported the sticks from
falling into the fire. There was another grill that he manned as well. This one
was square and sitting on a high table so the cooking surface was just below
his shoulders. On this grill he made large cakes of sticky rice, grilling them
crispy on the outside. He also placed large whole fish on skewers, seasoning
each one with a sprinkle of something. 
This tiny area behind that bar was so busy, these fellas worked around
eachother with  ease that was amazing.
There were high stacks of pottery that these pretty food items were presented
with full Japanese creative expression. 
My dinner mate & I looked at the menu. The server brought an English
menu, it did not help much. I mean what is “Skewered Chicken Tail” anyway? Well
we ordered. Food came quickly. There was a couple at the end of the bar that
had decided that we were their entertainment for the night. Which is to be
expected, right? It had been a while since I used sticks to eat, so I was a bit
rusty. The watchers got a really big kick outta watching the American struggle
to eat. We made it through, I dropped only a few things on the floor and
sparked laughter from the watchers at least three times. I decided I did not
like Chicken Tail. It is fatty.

The hotel room had a few interesting points to talk about.
First it is a partner hotel with Disney so there was a lot of Kid friendly
stuff hanging around and well as families. This dug at my side the whole time.
Seeing families while I am traveling makes me really miss my family. It was
hard on me. The room was small, there was no closet to speak of and there was
not a space to keep your folded clothes so they stayed int eh suit case. There
were two small twin beds, each with two pillows, one hard with some sort of
beans or husks of something in it and one soft and fluffy.  There were two sets of PJs nice thick white
cotton ones with drawstring pants and a button shirt. There was a Flat screen
TV, of course! And a small couch. The Bathroom was interesting.  As you enter there is a sink directly in
front of you and two doors on either side. One on the right is a small toilet
closet. The toilet was somewhat of a mystery for a couple of days, much like a
new toy. There were buttons for keeping the seat warm, setting a sprinkle for
your tush and some sort of girlie sprinkle and then there was a powerful odor
remover. The public toilets had a noise button that would make a flushing sound
for you so as not to disturb your neighbors with your body functions. It was
all *way* polite.  The door on the left
side contained a shower & tub room, so that when you closed the door behind
you, it was water sealed. The tub was very deep in comparison to US tubs. There
was a little stool and a bowl made of the same material the tub was made of and
there were two spigots. One for the bath and one for the hand held shower
head.  It was very nice to take a bath
every day.  The water camp out fast as if
falling from above, thick column of water. The water warmed immediately too! So
drawing a hot bath was a quick effortless job.  The bed was hard and I would have had a
similar sleeping experience sleeping on the floor with a thin pad. But I kinda
like that. I also love our Tempurapedic back home, don’t get me wrong.  The view from the room was awesome, you could
actually see Disney, the mountain and the hotel.  We went to Tokyo the next day. We first
headed to the Sensoji Temple, it was very crowded.  We had some tea and moved on to the Imperial
Palace. I found that I am not particularly fond ofo Japanese tea, whether it is
green or roasted, it just tastes like grass or burnt grass to me. I think it is
an acquired taste that would grow on me with time & sugar, lots of sugar!!  Interesting thing about sugar, they use a
liquid sugar, that is not so sweet. I think it a simply syrup or something.
Anyway, the imperial palace was really great. I liked it the best. I saw a
forest of these beautifully manicured pine trees in a sea of trim lime green
grass.  In Perryville MD, whne I was
growing up, there was a pine tree like these pines trees. They are a special
kind that is completely flat at the top of the tree and the branches cascade
downwards, like a bonsai, only extremely large. The one in Perryville was
beautiful. It has forever been burned into my memory. It was located in an
awful spot. The front yard of a home turned beauty parlor on Rt 40 just after a
seedy bar called Bob’s Crab Shack. Last time I was home, it had been cut down.
I almost cried.   Well, we went into the
gardens and saw a lot of traditional Japanese gardening in action; however,
there are a lot of garden or green spaces tucked in everywhere. I was very
impressed to see a bunch of old men out on their bikes with hand tools clearing
weeds from public flower beds. Some of these guys had to be in their 80s or
90s.  They had little white towels on
their necks to cool themselves and they had work suits on, as it seems everyone
in JP has some sort of uniform. I was deeply interested in their toil, to know
their implements, however, I am here on Business and not able to stop.  The imperial garden was quite simple in
design, simple structures and winding pathways. I was amazed to see bamboo
sticking out everywhere. There are many kinds of bamboo. The short thin stuff
was trimmed like grass as it grew between the trees in a small forest section.
I saw a Japanese maple in Japan, I took a nice picture of the canopy of the
tree, like being surrounded by a million paper stars. It was truly breath
taking for me.  All of the pathways in
the garden are flanked by neatly trimmed square hedge of azalea. I can only
dream of what this must look like in full bloom. At this point, the summer heat
is on and the flowers have fallen. Only a few blossoms remain tucked here and
there, alluding to the master plan.  As
we turned the corner on the pathway, there was a sound of trickling water, then
a large pool that had some sort of irrigation mote in a figure 8 shape that
went around the whole thing and the raised beds within were also filled with
water forming a shallow basin, within this basin, there were large leafy stalks
with the most perfect flowers atop. The flowers ranged in hue from deep purple
to lightest pink and even white sprinkled in. There was lot of old folks
gathered around with gigantic cameras taking shots of the flowers or
dragonflies that were buzzing about. 
Beyond this there was a shady pathway, which we took to also get out of
the burning sun.  As it wound around,
there were huge hydrangea, I took a self portrait here.  I could not belive the size of the flowers,
these too were not fully bloomed, but whew, what a site this would be. On the
opposite side of the pathway there was a row of Crepe Myrtle that were thicker
in the truck as my thigh. Never have I seen such Myrtles. They were also not
blooming yet.  As we continued down the
path we came to a small pond with a bridge, there were koi fish that were as
big in body  as my leg from the knee
down, if not larger. Things are always distorted by the water.  We walked for what seemed like hours around
the garden.  It was stunning. Then in a
flash crossed a few streets and jumped a train towards the hotel. We decided to
get off at Disney for dinner & shopping. Apparently, Disney Tokyo has a 25^th
anniversary this year. I spent a ton of money here.  We then went down for dinner, we tried the
Indian food. Tim confessed that his wife doesn’t care for Indian, so he tries
to eat it whenever possible while traveling. I have the exact problems, so I too
gorge on Indian when traveling. This particular experience was strange, unlike
any Indian food I have ever had, and no rice. We were a bit confused, but ate
heartily anyways.  We then went to the
FC. There was a great welcome sign that announced to all that we had
arrived.  We spoke at the FC team meeting
with the Director of Fulfillment about ourselves and our work there. We then
toured around the site. Later, we got our pictures taken and added to the wall
of Foreign visitors to JP FC. The next night, we went to dinner with the JP
Manager team led by Tomoki-san, they wanted to get us drunk on food & sake.
They tried hard & we all laughed hard throughout the toasting. It was a lot
of fun. One of the Managers walked us all the way back to the hotel, just to
see us off properly. Just yet another way of being polite in the Japanese
style.  The next day we went to Narita,
to the other Fulfillment Center. We took a very long car ride. It was nice to
see a less urban side of JP. I saw large and small homes, vegetable gardens
everywhere – large & small and rice fields in the valleys.  Lots of green and traditional Japanese curved
roof tops. It was beautiful and curious and I wanted to walk instead.  We did our business at the site then we went
off for dinner. We were taken to dinner by the site leader Masa-san. He decided
to show us something different than “raw fish”, I highly recommend this
experience to everyone. It was a “tofu” restaurant. Mostly everything had or
was tofu. The server brought out two warming plates, one that made tofu at the
table and the other made a tofu that is called: Yuba. It is when you heat soy
milk until it produces a skim, then you chopstick this off and dip in green
chile sauce and eat. We also had fried tofu, sushi, salad and other things. It
was the best dinner I had in JP.  I
really love tofu anyway. Masa-san explained to us all about Sake, how it is
made, what it is made of, what the cheap-shit is made of, how to tell the
difference. We had some really great sake and we drank heartily from those
little cups.  Masa-san also gave us a
traditional sake cup made of wood that was presented to everyone when the FC
opened just a few months ago.   While at the site, Masa-san had a toy on his
desk that had our logo on it, but it was really a cartoon charactor called:
“Cardbo”. One of the volumes in Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba series has a
great little story about two older girls making him as a costume and then
fooling the title character into thinking that he’s real.

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/19/amazon-box-robot-fig.html

Apparently, you cannot buy this in the US, nor can you buy
it from the jp site & have it mailed to the US. So Masa-san, ordered it for
me and had it waiting for me at the FC to pick up. It was the coolest thing
ever. Then the next morning we began our trip to China.

More about that later.

Hi there, Just a few random photos from the month of May

Georgia insisted on painting Easter Eggs for our guests on Memorial Day. This one matched her dress perfectly.

 
Georgia took this picture of Dwayne

Silly picture on Georgia & me

Awe…

This is Georgia floating in the bath. She was so proud of her self.

And for my favorite shot of the month…edited of course…
Nothing like gardening in the buff!

Whew. I had a long weekend. I took off Friday to take the
kids in to the doctors. They were due for their annual exam, shots & what
not.

We learned that Georgia is small & thin, in the 28% for height
& weight in her age group. She is ahead of her peers in learning her
shapes. The doctor was impressed with her answers to his questions.  We talked about preschool & how to get into
the magnet program in town. There is an elementary school that I would*love* my
kids to attend, as it teaches all of the students to be bilingual in English &
Spanish. Which I think will be hugely valuable in the future, hell I wish I
were better at speaking Spanish after take 4 years of it myself.  Apparently, there is a lottery to get into the
school, which the doctor did not win for his children. I will be putting
Georgia’s name in the lottery and praying that she wins. One thing that may
work in our favor, is that the elementary school feeds into a middle school
right down the street from us, so technically the school is in our zone.  At anyrate… back to the doctor visit.  We found out that Dylan is less than a pound
lighter that Georgia and 2 inches shorter. He is 94% for height & weight in
his age group, tall & heavy. I don’t think I needed the doctor to tell us
this, but it was still interesting.  I
told the doctor about Dylan’s lisp that has gone unchanged for 6 months now. He
referred us to a free speech assessment group here in town that conducts
testing on kids under the age of 3 to preemptively stop speech impediments.
Then we talked about Dylan’s knees and how his left leg is turned in at the
knee. The doctor said that he would probably out grow it, but referred us to
Shiner’s to be on the safe side.  I know that
he may grow out of it and still continue to have poor alignment.  If there is a chance to put a brace on him
now that will prevent a knee replacement when he is in his 60’s why not??  It really made me feel better that the issues
got addressed. They were weighing on my mind.  Next were the shots. UG. I hate this part. If
there is one thing that I truly HATE it is going with the kids to get their shots.
I usually make Dwayne do it.  We started
with Georgia first, she had to get the shots in her arms, so I held her on my
lap and held on to her arms so that they would move.  Then the two nurses whipped out the needles
& Georgia started to cry, then they plunged those needles into her arms and
she wailed like they were cutting her arms off. Then when they squirted the
vaccine into her arms there was another wail and then Mommy cried. I held her,  we rocked and we cried. It was aweful, I am
tearing up thinking about it. Dylan had been sitting on the little couch alone,
watching. By this time he had slid off the couch and was standing at my feet
looking at us with concern.  I am not sure
if he has ever seen me cry.  Then Georgie
got a treat and moved out of the way for Dylan to have his turn. He sat on my
lap with his head resting on my chest, legs out just as comfortable as can be.
He was not afraid. The nurses whipped out the needles and he looked at both of
them as they zeroed in on his thighs, the stabbed his legs and he sat there. It
felt like hours past, but a second later they plunged the vaccine into his body
and then Dylan let out a little whimper, and that was it. Mammy cried again, if
not for me but for Dylan that didn’t cry.  The picked out treats and we left.  

We went to Lowes & bought some flowers & garden
stakes. I also bought some tomatoes to replace the ones that Savannah crushed
chasing squirrels. The dogs gets sooooo excited chasing squirrels, I am not
sure what she would do if she actually caught one.   When we got home we did a little gardening
and the kids slept.  Saturday the kids
& I went yard-sale-ing, it was  a lot
of fun. I found a bunch of great stuff for cheap! There was a yard sale that
had all of these Men’s clothes; apparently the man having the sale is a
clothing store manager, so most of it was new, with tags.  I got my brother a bunch of button downs
& some work clothes. He really needed them. 
I found some cute things for Georgia and that was about it. Sarah had
gone to free clothing give-away at a local church but apparently couldn’t get
much because there were so many people there.  I also went up to Lowes & bought Dwayne an
early birthday present. A weed eater with different attachments, since it was
Memorial day, they gave away an edger attachment and I bought an extra pole saw
attachment. He promptly weeded the whole yard then cut off a bunch of limbs
that were hanging over my garden. It was GREAT!  Sunday, I prepped salads & such for our
cook out on Monday. I made: seasoned hamburgers with cheese in them, potato
salad, cucumber & onion salad, seasoned corn on the cob & an ice cream
cake. We also had watermelon, as well as some hotdogs.  Sarah & Ben came over, Ben wearing one of
his new shirts. He looked really good! Sarah will definitely post pictures on
myspace. Sarah’s friend Nikki, who recently moved to Kentucky, came over with
her daughter Nadia. Reece & Shuron with little Kyon came over in spite of
Shuron’s hard day with her grandfather passing on this day several years ago.  Debbie from next door came over & got her
husband a plate, as he had foot surgery and is bed-ridden. Mike came over too.
Over all, it was a really nice weekend

Today is my Birthday.
For the first time I got the b-day blues. It was really weird. I was able to give ‘em the shake with some coffee & a chat with my dearest friend Faith.

My family & I went of a hike, it was 3 miles round trip. A little longer than I think the kids were ready for.
Dylan rode on the backpack child carrier and Georgia hated every moment. It was  a bit of a struggle. I don’t thin she understood the purpose of the hike. All was good when we were inspecting tiny things in the woods, but straight hiking up or down hill to get to the next stopping point was *not* something she wanted to do.
Along the way she came up with some pretty funny comments, like, “I just want to LEAVE the woods.” or “This is a nightmare.” and then followed with random, “Nightmare!” every now and again. Then at one point, she dropped to her knees and says, “I just can’t take anymore of this.” Dwayne carried her for a while, and I carried Dylan. Then at one point Dwayne carried both of them, a good 70 additional pounds schlepping up hill. It was hard, sweaty, funny and even beautiful but it was truly priceless. We picnicked afterward.

I don’t want this crap today.

I don’t want this work today.

I want to be at home with my children.

I want out of this cycle.

I want to be home with my children.

They get such a modified version of their mother.

A version that is not exactly what I had hoped & dreamed of.

I can tell that they want me home, not working.

They tell me the same story every morning, with their hugs & kisses at the babysitters doorstep.

It breaks my  heart.

Happy Mother’s day!

I decided that I would be lazy today. It is never a good idea to do that, as all you really get out of it is a dirty house.
Georgia had diarrhea from eating about 2 lbs of grapes last night for dinner, so I got to play clean up.  She did not understand why I wanted her to wear a pull up for the rest of the day, she thought it was a punishment for crapping herself. It wasn’t, I just would rather change her pull up than her underwear if she had another accident.  Dwayne and I then had to explain the concept of a dirty fart.  How it happens to everyone  and one time Daddy had to come home from work early because he had an accident like that.  She didn’t have any more accidents so she forgot all of this pretty quickly.

I finished up the grocery shopping while the kids laid down for a nap. There were a lot of folks out shopping.

We had a pretty wicked windy storm off an on all day today. there is tree carnage *everywhere* . The electric company has been out in force to clean up the branches and downed trees.  One of the the trucks stopped near the house, so I ran out to tell him about a downed tree nearby, he told me that further down the street a tree fell between two utility poles and actually broken both poles from the tension on the electrical wire between them.
There is still quite a bit of wind going around out there. I pray that the big maple tree in the back yard stays intact.