Yu Have Come to the Right Place.

Life moves fast.  Nobody reads blogs anymore.  Nobody even wants to read Facebook posts anymore.  Now it's a picture on Instagram or it's too much.  I understand that.  So this is just a random quick splattering of some stuff that's been going on in our lives.  Of course, it's all happy because that's the best part to reflect on.  But I'll just add that like any normal family, we have our shares of setback and unhappy moments.

Taisei is in Middle School now.  He's at an age where I can clearly remember what I was doing at that age.  It's crazy.  He has become a responsible, young man now.  I believe during this summer he has learned to plan his work (such as emptying the dishwasher, mowing the lawn, cleaning the toilets or vacuuming) before he goes to have fun (mostly FortNite these days). He has received the Aaronic Priesthood and is serving on Sundays by passing the sacrament.  In church, he is also taking his turn to play piano for the 3rd hour meeting.  He's settled on his sports... kind of.  He currently most enjoys lacrosse, basketball, tennis, and skiing.  Taisei won a tennis tournament in the summer, beating kids way older than he is.  This summer was also his first attempt at Track and Field and he did fairly well.  He chose to focus on the 100M, 200M, 4x100 Relay and the long jump.  He made great strides on the long jump and even made it to the highest level competition, which was the all-county track meet.  He didn't have his best jump there unfortunately, otherwise would have placed easily.  His relay team only lost one race all year and it was also at the all-county meet, where they placed second.  Taisei took 1st several times on the 100M and 200M.  Seems like he has some promise in this sport.  He'll just have to figure out how to squeeze it in with all his other sports.

Here he is working on his loft this summer.




Mirei is doing well with her Chinese, soccer, piano, and swimming.  Also tried tennis towards the end of summer and learned quite quickly.  Since she started much earlier than Taisei, maybe she can continue to pursue this sport if she's ever here in the summers.  (I'm finding that there is no tennis to be played during the school year!)  She's the healer of our family and is always empathetic and wanting to make people feel better.  She's popular in school and also gets lots of praise from her teachers (which surprises us greatly).  We'll keep working on her inability to listen to parents at home, which is better than being unwilling to listen to teachers, I guess?  :)  She's actually very good with her siblings and always fights for them when needed.

Here is Mirei after the school's one-mile run.  As a second-grader, she came in top three overall for the girls.


Leina is our baby who's turning out not to be a baby anymore.  We've found that she's one of the leaders in school.  It's amazing to she her little friends rally around her.  In her soccer team last season, she scored nearly every point in every game, as well as played all the defense.  Granted, her team wasn't very good, she was effectively running the ball down on every defensive possession and dribbling the length of the field on every offensive possession.  Her highest in one game was 7 out of her team's 9 goals.  This aggressive behavior shocked us in a pleasant way.  Now if I only knew something about soccer so I could help her be a better player.  She's just started Chinese.  Her first grade Chinese teacher is a Russian lady.  I really hope she can get a good foundation in her first year.

Both Leina and Mirei joined the school choir and sang together.  They were awesome!  They knew all the words and sang all the time at home.  It was fun to see them enjoying it together.


So I'm just bragging about the kids here, but I'm sure I'll be happy to read this in a few years from now.  Wami is enjoying having the kids all out of the house for half the day.  I'm staying crazy busy with the Bishop responsibilities (year 2 just in the books), handing all of Canada and Korea at work, along with a smattering of other projects, and staying as active as I can with Ultimate.  Life is indeed flying by. I'm doing everything I can to enjoy the journey!

I know, it's been forever and this is random.  Leina has been saying funny things lately and we wanted to preserve them like we have for Taisei and Mirei.

L: Papa, I learned W in school.  W is for "wall-wuss."
P: Huh? Oh, "walrus."  That's right!

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L: Mirei, you-member?! You-member?  Papa, you-member?

This is her made up word. When she's really excited and wants to say "Do you remember?"

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M: Papa, Carol gave me this nail polish. I'm so excited. How do you read "CK"?  Is it a word?
J: Mirei, does it have a vowel?  There has to be a vowel for it to be a word.  Do you know what a vowel is?
M: No, what's a vowel, Papa?
L: I know what a vowel is!  A-E-I-O-U.  My teacher taught me.

Mirei was subsequently very upset that she hadn't learned something her 3-yo younger sister already knew.  She went on to blame her pre-school teachers and her current Kindergarten teacher.  Leina, of course, proceeded to recite everything she could think of that she had learned, such as counting 1-20, etc.  It made Mirei even more mad.

I should note here that Mirei is on her kindergarten class's reading program and her reading is progressing by leaps and bounds every day.  She can read (very) simple books fairly fluently now.  (It's interesting the wide level of disparity in kindergarten.  She has classmates that can't count 1-10 yet and can not write any letters or numbers. There are some that can't hold a pencil properly and others that can't cut with scissors. 

Mirei's wanting to do a climbing class, which she seems to be pretty good at, so maybe we'll start that soon.  She's also still doing the Japanese, just started piano lessons last week, and taking ballet during the day times.

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Taisei is still excelling at sports (football season at the moment), taking Japanese, piano and scouts.  His Chinese is improving quickly and now they're doing science and more advanced grammar, reading, etc in school. 4th grade really does seem like a big jump.  In football, he's primarily playing defense, lining up as tackle or nose guard, and playing a roaming position.  His team is 7-1 and will be playing in the playoffs this year!  He's been named a team captain for three games so far this year, so he's happy about that.  This year in piano, he was one of only 2 or 3 of Sophia's students that scored a "high honors" on his standardized piano test.  (Which I didn't want to take, but Sophia insisted, so we took it.)

It's been a busy year.  This new yard in Sandy is a serious drain on time.  Hopefully I'll be able to maintain the energy and time to keep up, at least to my neighbors' satisfaction.

At the Pumpkin Point pumpkin patch.  This wasn't that great because the pumpkins were all cut and piled up already.  Next time we need a patch where you cut them yourself.

One thing that's changed our lives recently.  The Luangraths moved to town and they only live about 10 minutes away!!

Friends and family,
I realized I'm going to have a 2 year gap in my family history if I don't start updating this again.  So I want to update, but I think I'm going to go private before I do.  Two main reasons:

1. Some of this stuff will be boring - only those that really want to know what we're up to will care.  (Someone actually complained to me about my posts - wow.)
2. Some of the posts might be personal.  It's better that I keep it off the net, especially now that, for example,  potential employers will Google you before interviews.

There'll still be pictures of the kids and fun things like that.  So if you want an invite, leave a comment or shoot me an email!

Summer has flown by and tomorrow is already Taisei's first day of school.  The family besides me spent half the summer in Japan with the in-laws.  Taisei went to 2nd grade there.  He loved it.  At the same time, he faced some mild bullying for the first time.  I guess it's natural that some of the boys didn't like this popular foreigner kid that speaks perfect English and is a big hit with the ladies.  At least, he says in a non-bragging way that the girls like him and some of the boys seemed to not like him.  It was strange to him - he didn't quite know what to make of it.  Hopefully he can hold his own going forward.  Not a big problem yet.

Mirei went to hoikuen, and Leina went a few time, but mostly didn't like it so much.
While everyone was gone, I hung out a ton with Braden, and tore up our upstairs bathroom.  I'm going to make it more ergonomic and code-friendly.  At this point, it's still just studs and insulation.

The second half of the summer was mostly about swimming.  We got the kids through two sessions of lessons as the SL Sports Complex.  Taisei finished the season at a Blue level.  He can jump off the diving board and swim back to the side now - good progress!  Mirei finished at the Yellow level.  She's totally comfortable with the water and is way ahead of Taisei at this age.  On the weekends, we went to the South Davis Rec Center several times and the Murray Park Center this last weekend.  They're loving the swimming!  I'm realizing now how much time my parents must have spent to get my swimming level up so early!  Also, our big disadvantage in Utah is that there aren't a lot of pools and lessons are only in the summer times.  :(

Today, we went to Spring Lane Elementary and met the new 2nd grade teachers, Mrs. Benevento, who I volunteered for several times last year as a "Watch D.O.G." and a brand new Mrs. Lai from Si Chuan, China.  Mrs. Lai's mandarin is perfect, obviously, but her English is pretty weak.  You have to speak slowly to her in order for her to understand.  She should improve pretty quickly, having been immersed in this situation.  I think she'll be fine, as she seems very comfortable with children in general.  Taisei is totally wide-eyed because Mrs. Lai speaks Mandarin so much faster than Ms. Ridge did last year.  It should be good.


After the school visit, Mirei said that she "wants to have something on her teeth too."  We were like "what"?  We thought about it and realized that she's talking about Mrs. Benevento's braces!  I asked her if she thought they were pretty and Mirei said "Yes."  haha

Also, tonight, when we were going to bed, Mirei realized that we have two Anpanman pajamas. She said that she wants to wear one at the same time as Leina.  She knows that Leina often gets her hand-me-downs.  I asked her if she means when Leina gets bigger?  She said, "no, when the clothes gets smaller, then Leina can wear them."  She hasn't realized that she's outgrowing her clothes.  She thinks that the clothes are shrinking to Leina's size!  haha

Leina is learning new words every day now.  Today her big thing was hanging clothes hangers on the door knobs and saying "kakette?"   That means "to hang" in Japanese.  I don't even know that vocabulary!

I played in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament, earned the reputation for being the fast guy, guarded the fastest guys on the other team, and scored some points.  No one even came close to beating us this year, even the best team from last year, BD Medical.  We got the gold!

First score of the championship game.

It wasn't our typical summer of flying all around and enjoying different parts of the US and world (except for my family in Japan), but we have fun hanging around, going swimming, and just spending family time together.  Lots of good memories!

On June 29th, 2013, our beloved Grandma Lin peacefully passed into the next world while she slept in her bed at the Harmony Nursing Home.  She was 94 years old.

Just a few months ago in March, her hearing and physical motor skills had deteriorated, but she was able to help us identify unknown faces in old pictures we'd been collecting.  We were glad that our kids were able to spend time with her and get to know her one last time.

The service was held in the Taiwanese church that she attended.  There were probably 100 people in attendance, the first two rows of which were her family.  My cousin, Frank, gave a touching eulogy that gave insight into my grandmother's humor and nurturing side.  We viewed her body on July 2nd, and my aunt decided to have her cremated on July 3rd.

Overall, it wasn't a sad occasion.  She lived a long and good life.  She died peacefully and with dignity.  She was always stylish, right up until the end.  My belief is that she is now in the next but not final stop of our immortal existence.  She's in a place where she can see other deceased friends and family.  She's happy now, and is waiting to be reunited with many others - all of us who are still living out our mortal lives here on Earth.

Here are some old pictures of Grandma Lin.
Grandma and Grandpa

Young Grandma in Japan

Grandma, Grandpa, Great-grandma, and all the kids.  Mom's the smallest one - cute!

Grandma and Auntie

 If you'd like to learn more about what I believe she's up to, click here here for more information.

We noticed this kind of stuff happens when she doesn't get enough sleep.

Today Mirei woke up earlier than she liked.  She recounted an experience she had last year in Japan when she was only 2.  She told us about waking up in the middle of the night (probably ~10 pm - we were going to bed at 7 pm).  She couldn't find her mama.  Luckily, Mimi (grandma) was there, so she snuggled up with Mimi to go back to sleep.  Back then, we thought it was cute to find her sleeping with Mimi.  She didn't think it was so cute, apparently.  Mirei, this morning, then proceeded to scold Wami. "When it's time to go to sleep, you go to sleep.  Everybody together - Taisei, Mirei, Leina, Papa.  Ok?"  And then she sobbed.  I guess it was a traumatic experience because she's brought it up one or two times previously as well.  Funny girl.

This morning, when Wami was at the dog park with Hiro and the two kids, Mirei suddenly said, "Mama, if you give me a Tinkerbell blanket, I would be very happy."  (She doesn't have a Tinkerbell blanket and I don't think she's ever asked for one previously.)  And then she started to sob.  Next she said, "I miss papa."  It's 9:40am now, so I have only been away from her for a little over 1 hour.  What the ...?  Maybe not enough sleep last night??

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to you.  If you are reading this, thank you for still coming around to read.  I'm infrequent and don't get around to reading many other blogs these days myself.  Leave a comment and let us know that we should post more frequently.  :-)

We're always sad when the Christmas season ends.  This year, a sudden change in our favorite Christmas music station surprised us.  106.5 fm suddenly started playing classic rock like 1 week before Christmas. What the heck?  No announcement, nothing.  It was disappointing because this year was a first for Taisei.  He started singing!  We have no idea what happened, but suddenly he was on key and knew a lot of lyrics.  We still don't know if it was friends from primary or influence from his 1st grade class.  I think it was probably more the latter.  But suddenly, he could sing practically every Christmas song that came on the radio.  He knew way more lyrics than I know.  What the...?  He sang full blast on stage for our ward's Christmas sacrament presentation.  This is an interesting but nice development for our normally reserved and shy boy.


Also, Taisei's reading seems to be taking off.  Although I know there are still many others that are way ahead, like Amy at church who's nearly a year younger and sits in a corner reading young adult novels.  Taisei has read his first few non-picture books.  He's read three or four of the "Nate the Great" books.

This year was an interesting Christmas for Taisei.  He wasn't sure if he should believe in Santa or not.  He was pretty sure he didn't believe it, especially since he hadn't seen a single convincing Santa AND we don't have a chimney.  He even went so far as to starting to convince his friends at school that there's no such thing as Santa.  That made us sad and we had to tell him not to ruin other kids' dreams.  But a funny thing happened.  Mirei absolutely has NO doubt whatsoever that Santa would be coming and bringing her gifts.  She did ask about the lack of a chimney, but there was no doubt in her mind.  We would be leaving out cookies and milk for Santa.  Here there are doing that.


Taisei wanted to make sure Santa didn't miss any of the plates we put out, so here is his note to Santa.

All quiet on Christmas Eve.


Here are Mirei's latest vitals from her 3 year old appointment:  28.2 lbs (25%) and 36" (25%).  The good news is that she's proportional.  ;-)

Mirei really pays attention to what's going on.  She's always listening to what we're talking about, even if she's busy drawing or doing her own things.  In her once-a-week Japanese daycare, she told teachers about papa.  She told them I drove to the airport, and took the airplane to go somewhere.  For drawing that day, she drew this (airplane on the upper left):



This is papa looking like a koala.  haha

The big one is Mirei.  The little one is papa.  She loves her papa.  ;)



Here are two from Taisei.  A snake thing:

And I really think all boys draw death and destruction at one point or another. Not sure why, but he just did this the other day.  I think he must have seen some commercial or cartoon on TV.

Leina's vitals at 1 year:  17.2 lbs (3%), 28.5" height (30%), and head circumference of 45 cm (50%).

Leina's not a baby anymore.  She's officially a toddler now, clearly with wants and dislikes.  Something she's been doing lately is grabbing mama's face and turning it towards whatever it is she wants.  Today she wanted a drink out of her bottle, so she pushed mama's face to the side towards the bottle and grunted her famous "maa maa!"  We used to think "maa maa" meant "mama", but it really means "I want that!"

Also, the sister competition has begun - a little earlier than we expected.  Leina's 1 year and 1 month.  Today she was sitting on Wami's lap and Mirei immediately came over to take a seat as well, right next to Leina.  Leina did not like that.  She started yelling and pushing Mirei away with two hands.  Another time today, Leina saw Mirei sit down on mama's lap.  Right away she came over and wanted a spot too.  The big competitions right now definitely seem to be over parents' attention.  Mirei has always wanted to get up into my arms when I'm holding Leina.  Now, Leina's starting to do it too.  I remember when Mirei felt like a feather compared to Taisei.  Now, Mirei feels like a rock compared to Leina!  It's going to be some rough times for the next year as Mirei adjusts to a newly sprouting sister (not a baby anymore!) and mama and papa trying to maintain peace around the house.  Taisei usually just ignores what's going on.  haha

Here are some other things about Leina:

• I told her to bring a box to mama in kitchen and she did it.  She's definitely listening.
• The other day, she brought panties to Mirei when she knew Mirei was going potty.
• She seems to want to talk and uses the same inflections.  She just doesn't seem to be pronouncing many sounds yet.  She communication mostly with grunts, pants, and "maa maa!"
• She loves to be chased, especially by Taisei.  She goes crazy laughing, running, and looking back.
• She's very interested in food, and wants to eat whatever we're eating.  But it seems like she's a bit picky.  He she is going bonkers on chicken at... yes, Chuck-a-rama.  We don't like the place, but it's easy for the kids, relatively inexpensive, and I don't have to worry about the mess.  I can't wait until we don't have to come here, but for now, it's easy.
• She comes down the stairs herself.  It's funny how cautious she is.  She gets down face first on her tummy like 2 feet away from the stairs, and then crawls backwards until she gets to the first stair.  She starts so far though, we always wonder what she's doing when she suddenly gets down on her belly and starts scooting backwards.  Funny stuff.
• She likes to climb into the sink in the bathroom.  She discovered that she can climb up the kid's stool (it's a big step from the stool to the bathroom countertop) and several times we discovered her sitting in the sink with the water on.  Yikes!  Edit:  We just caught her climbing in.  We didn't realize it's such a precarious climb onto the counter.  She could easily fall back and bonk her head on the tile!  (Edit to the edit: Uh oh, just now as I was typing this, apparently she climbed up again, climbed over to the light switch, and fell to the ground...!  She seems to be OK though.)

• Leina loves tubes - toothpaste, wasabi, lotion, whatever. She plays with them, sucks them, rolls them around and generally likes to go after any tube in the bathroom, fridge, etc.  Strange fetish.  haha