Early Happy Thanksgiving!

Festive Family Fall Greeting

Put your photos on your Christmas cards this holiday.

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Introducing Hyatt V!

Here he is...

Stationery card

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Random Gilroy Lunch

So much time has passed - the girls and I were back home for a few weeks, and Hyatt met up with us in Cali for a mega family reunion/70th wedding anniversary celebration, and I've spent about a week in the hospital with pancreatitis - and yet I'm just going to pick one afternoon visit to share with you all, because it was one of the highlights. And because the kids were so cute that I just have to share the pictures. When we were in California, we took two days to drive up to Palo Alto, our soon to be home, and on the drive back met up with Ellie, Sadie and Zeke (Brian was out of town - bummer, but we'll get to see them plenty soon enough, so we're looking forward to that) at In 'n Out Burger in Gilroy for lunch. Sadie is such a little girl now, and Zeke was running around all over the place. It was such a funny moment in time, as it had been a year since we last saw each other, and yet having lunch together just seemed so, well, normal. As things should be. Sitting outside, eating fries and burgers, keeping the kids away from the cars, and just being. After lunch we took a few photos - Sadie had found a nice red truck that she liked, and proceeded to pose as if she owned it. So, we are looking forward to many more such afternoons in the next year...

Easter Fun and First Day of "School"

Life is CRAZY! Last week Kaiya had her first day of, dare I say it, school! Well, it is a Japanese pre (pre,pre) school for children beginning at 18 months of age. So, really, I held her back a bit by waiting until now (she is almost 23 months - which is almost 2 years old). The program is called Daichi, and she will be going approximately once each week, from 8:30am until 11:30am. You can also choose to have them stay until 2:30pm, which means that they have lunch (provided by the school, but you bring your own rice) and naptime there. I'm thinking I'll probably have Kaiya stay through lunch once in a while, because maybe she will try some new foods that way. Recently she has started eating rice, but only brown rice. Healthier, yes. Easy to find in restaurants here, no.

Easter was fun but busy here. Our friend, George, sent us a Happy Easter e-mail the other day and was reminiscing on where he has spent the last few Easters - suffice it to say that he hasn't spent one in the US in quite some time. This got me thinking about where we've been these last few years. Since we've been married: 2004- Hawaii (we rode on our motorcycle across the island to SeaLife Park and ran out of gas on our way home); 2005- California; 2006- California (I don't remember these ones very well at the moment, I'm sure we spent 2006 in Monterey, but not too sure about 2005... I wonder if Hyatt remembers more clearly than me? I feel like we may have gone to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in 2005, actually, because I remember thinking that going to an aquarium/sealife park place each year would be a good tradition. The tradition has not lasted.); 2007- Okinawa (we did the Easter brunch at the O-club in Kadena with Mike McCarthy and I was very pregnant and ate a lot. I think we were actually eating for 2 hours.) 2008- Misawa, Japan and Hawaii (we actually traveled on Easter Sunday and so spent the day both places); 2009- Misawa, Japan. This year we started off with the morning church service, as always, then went to the church potluck, followed by a big Easter lunch at the Cross' house. There was much food, fellowship, and fun! I think one of the highlights of this Easter, however, was the fact that this was the first year that I got to dress our daughters in matching Easter dresses!!! My sister and I used to have matching outfits most Christmas's and Easters - different colours, but same outfit. So, this year, thanks to Old Navy, Kaiya and Evera were sporting little butterfly sundresses. I did my best to capture the moment on film (do you still call it "film" when it's a digital camera?), but we were having a very difficult time keeping Kaiya stationary for photos. After looking through all of them, I discovered that she was not looking at the camera in even one of the photos. Wow. That's skill. Also on the Easter weekend, we went for a walk at the Komaki onsen park and I got a few cute, very Japanese (in that the onsen was in the background) photos of Evera asleep in her carseat.

I will leave you to view the photos that tell this same tale... and I apologize for Kaiya's hair her first day of school. We got it fixed once we got home, but there just wasn't enough time to do it before going out:) At least Hyatt and I got to witness it laying flat after her bath, there just isn't any photo proof...

Evera Belle's Arrival

Hi All! This is a long time coming, due to lack of sleep and trying to balance the task of taking care of two children now:) Anyways, I just wanted to let you all know that Evera (pronounced e-Vera) Belle Moore was born on Thursday, Jan.8, 2009 at 5:58am in Misawa, Japan, after 3.5 hours of labour. We definitely had the mad rush to the hospital this time! She weighed in at 7 lbs 14 oz and measured 21.25 inches in length. Our friend, Abi Corbett, was able to be here for the birth, as she had arrived on the 5th - and what a help she was after the birth, too, as she was able to help hold the house together and keep Kaiya occupied while Hyatt and I just had to worry about surviving the first couple of weeks. Abi went home almost a week ago now and we're just waiting for my mom's arrival on the 28th. In the meantime, we have some amazing friends here who have been a huge help with meals and Kaiya care. Here are a couple of pictures for you...

Salmon Festival

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Salmon Festival with our friends, Katie and Joe. This has been something that Hyatt has looked forward to since we moved here and he heard that there was an opportunity to catch a salmon with your bare hands. We had perfect weather for it and thoroughly enjoyed our time, although the actual catching of the salmon ended up being a little more tricky than anticipated. Joe, however, somehow managed to catch two - the second one with just one hand while already holding his first one in his other hand! Hyatt says that next time he would use gloves rather than trying to do the barehanded thing, as they were more slippery than he bargained for. It's hard to capture the time in a blog entry, but let's just say that Joe had Hyatt hold his second fish for him, and the fish got away from him... and Hyatt ended up getting a fish at the very end.... one that looked kind of dead and was sort of floating in the corner. I think it was a real prize fish, though, because this was one that escaped ALL of the other people that had been in there, and maybe he was just floating a little because he was plain tuckered out after dodging the crowds.

Of course, this festival had its fun quirky things, too, as you'll see in the pictures below - our favourites being the man dressed in the salmon costume - without any pants on, and the men's outhouses that don't have full doors:)

5 Years

This weekend, Hyatt and I had the most glorious time celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary. The anniversary itself was actually Nov.1st, but it worked better for us to go away this weekend, so we just went out for dinner on our actual day. Anyways, our wonderful friends, the Driskell's, had Kaiya stay overnight with them while Hyatt and I went to the Oirase Gorge and stayed at the Oirase Keiryu Grand Hotel. We arrived there to check in at 3pm on Saturday and got to see our "Japanese style" room. It was perfect - we had a view of the gorge, along with the beautiful autumn leaves (those that were still left on the trees), and tatami mats on the floor (no bed in sight, but I had been given a heads up about that, so it wasn't a surprise). Once we dropped off our stuff, we went back down to the lobby area to sit near the fireplace with the amazing view and enjoyed a decadent 700Y hot cocoa (really was hot cocoa, not hot chocolate, so wasn't quite the sweet taste we were anticipating), and 500Y little piece of cheesecake. It was a moment in time to be savoured:) Once we were ready to get out, we opted for a drive rather than a walk, because it was freezing cold. We drove up the 103 and then veered off on a mountain road to explore and saw some breathtaking scenery as the sun was getting lower in the sky.

Once we returned (via a different route than we had come) to the hotel, we headed to dinner, which was a Japanese buffet. Hyatt loved it, as there were all kinds of new foods to try, and I loved just getting to experience something different. They did have some incredible ice cream, though, as well as an apple pastry that, in my opinion, made the whole trip worth while. It was interesting, too, to see all the people who came to dinner in their onsen outfits (not the outfits that they actually wear in the onsen - which would mean that they wouldn't be wearing a whole lot of anything, but, rather, the outfits that they wear to walk to and from the onsen). By the way, this was an onsen hotel. Who knew?

We had a nice relaxing evening, and fairies had come to visit our room while we were at dinner and made up our beds, which consisted of futon mats and duvets. Let's just say that we loved the beds so much that we were missing them last night when we had to sleep in a "normal" one last night. And we're going to get some tatami mats for our house because we were so loving the feel of them on our feet - maybe we'll put some in Kaiya's new room instead of putting a rug in there.

In the morning, we had our buffet breakfast, which was also very nice - a combination of Japanese and more "American" food (they had biscuits and eggs). We followed this by a walk to a bridge that they had in their brochure, then some onsen time (my very first experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed it), and then we checked out. (For those of you who don't know, an onsen is a Japanese public bath.)

All in all, we had a great 5th anniversary! Here are some pictures... (there are also a couple of pictures from the Harvest Festival last week)...