Nisei Week Parade 09 (#24)

Better late than never, I suppose. Here's some pictures of the 69th Nisei Week Parade. My first time to sit and watch it in over a decade at least. It was fun to bring Maiya. We came straight from the mountains to the parade.

Maiya on the parade route

Korean dancers

Maiya & Justin waiting during a lull in the parade

Hase-Chu's

Open your eyes, Grandma Machi!

Friends from Bombu Taiko doing "Ashura" on a flat-bed truck!

Kokeshi float

Nebuta dancers make a joyful noise! Such fun!

Please Nebuta twins, don't run me over!

Well, it was fun. I'm glad Maiya got to see the parade. I have memories of going when I was a kid. And this ends my 2nd blog post for today. Only a few more days to catch up. NaBloPoMo#24

Family (Literacy) Fun Night (#23)

Last Friday night, Maiya, Letty & I went to the Angelina Family (Literacy) Fun Night event at work, part of the celebration for National Family Literacy Month (November). It was a joint event with our Family Literacy, Male Involvement and DISKovery Angelina programs. We had a good time. After a fun circle time dancing to "We're Going on a Bear Hunt," we set about to join Maiya on 5-6 activity stations. Maiya spent over an hour on the first activity, but she made a fun collage that she was very proud of. I accidentally forgot her cereal necklace at the taco place where we had dinner afterwards. So far, she hasn't noticed.NaBloPoMo #23

Picture Needing No Caption Other than 36 Weeks

January, 2005. NaBloPoMo Catch Up Day#22

Four Hours of Ping-Pong (#21)

When the Ping's come to town, we get together. Period. On their way back home after a quick weekend in San Diego, Mary and her family stopped by to visit. So, 19 of us got together with Darin & Sao's family, Steve & Maile's family, and Kaz & Chris' families for a quick 4 hour visit.

Tony threw together a big pot of spaghetti and some snackies and we sat and laughed and caught up on the craziness of everyone's lives. The kids had a great time doing arts and crafts in Maiya's room, making a Fortune Cookie House (fort), playing with every toy imaginable, making plans between the older kids and the younger kids (except Kevin joined the older kids), and just running back and forth from room to room. Maiya had a blast playing with all the friends. Lauryn the oldest said, "I love LA and visiting all my friends." Here's some of the crazy energy of 19 people in our dining room at once.

Kids Tables

Parents table (Photo Credit: 8 yr old Grace)

Mary & Friends

Everyone at once! (Click to enlarge)

Ping-Pong! And then, all too soon, it was over. NaBloPoMo#21

Happy Leela Day (#20)

Happy 3rd birthday and adoption celebration to Leela! We loved your Red Cat Cake!

NaBloPoMo#20

My awkward relationship with sports (#19)

I never learned to like sports. I was afraid of most sports, especially those where people might be watching you (goes back to being a shy kid), and those where you might need coordination or skill or muscles or to have a competitive bone in your body. That's why I like the gym, cause you can read a book, listen to music, and no one's really watching you.

I have memories of elementary school where I was excused at the beginning of the year for being afraid to play socco (and my excuse was that I didn't know how to play), and then at the end of the year being yelled at by my 4th grade teacher because I said I still didn't know how to play (same lame excuse). I have memories of 6th grade softball and praying for dear life that no one hit the ball into far center field, and if it did, I would hope that it would veer more to the right or left so someone would come help me out and the disappointment at me when I would be chasing after a ball and not being able to catch or throw it... being consistently the last picked when setting up teams, to all the kids coming way in, when my dreaded turn at bat came up.

In middle school, my sister and brother would go outside in the morning to play and then come back at dark. I would sit upstairs in my room reading a book and hearing all the neighborhood kids play in the street. I would go to my sister, brother and friend's softball and soccer games, but never had any interest myself.

In high school, I was on the gymnastics team, but don't you know that I never competed, because after 8 or so years in the sport, I could not do the basic competitive skills in the routines, back hip circle, roundoff to back handspring, backroll to handstand, really pathetic if you are going to be a gymnast.

In college, I took racquetball, and liked it until I sprained my ankle... I never tried it again. I took a golf class, and also body conditioning. My family and friends skiied Mammoth together for years, and although I enjoyed skiing a lot, and braved the Cornice Bowl countless times, I was afraid of moguls, and honestly my favorite part of skiing was coming in for hot cocoa, and lunch, and coming back to hangout and chill with friends and family.

After college, my group of friends would take biking trips. I actually had a weekend job working at the YMCA taking inner city kids mountain biking, but my job was to always stay at the back to stay with the stragglers, but really I couldn't keep up with anyone except the kids at the very end. I got good at fixing flat tires of the kids who got left behind. As a mountain biker I was slow, but steady, likening myself with the tortoise who wins the race.

All that said, Maiya is lucky that Tony excelled in basketball, football, baseball and sportsmanship. And, here are some pictures of Maiya's first day at basketball clinic at the Y. They covered dribbling, shooting, and defense. She was pretty good at hitting the basket. And although a little tentative, she tried her best and had fun. So far so good!

NaBloPoMo#19

Saying Goodbye to Val

Fran with Val @ her 60th Birthday party in 2007

This is a hard post to write. Tony's godmother Valerie passed away yesterday, just 2 days after we heard that she was sick. My heart goes out to her only daughter Beth, only grandaughter Erin, and son in-law Brian. But also to Tony and Fran, Tony's mom, who has been best friends with Val since junior high school. Fran was able to fly in from Idaho on Wednesday and spent the night with Val, but had to go back to Idaho on Thursday. Tony and Maiya were able to see Valerie on Wednesday night.

Tony might have some stories to share about Val. In the meantime, a few "F" words I can think of to describe Val:

feisty.

funny.

fierce.

feminist.

fun.

frank.

friend.

fran.

family.

We will definitely miss having Val in our life.

Val, Beth, Erin & Tony on Maiya's 3rd Birthday in 2008

(#18)

We Can. We Will. (NBPM#17)

I post this in solidarity with UCLA students arrested and even tasered while protesting a 32% fee hike today. As background, I wrote this poem back in the depressing days of Bush in office, before I had ever heard of Barack Obama and his "Yes, We Can" slogan, after attending the 2007 Manzanar Pilgrimage and Manzanar After Dark program.
We Can. We Will.
dedicated to and inspired by mari, traci & tad

Today in the sun, my 2 year old ate watermelon and collected rocks at Manzanar. Too hot for a 2 year old, I thought. Tonight, After Dark, I witnessed the passion, heat & intensity of 250 people both young and old, eager to learn, hear, share, speak, heal…

Then later in the after-madness, I heard my sistah Mari say:

The president is never going to listen. To. Me.

Maybe not.

But We.
We have power.
We can change things.
We have the power.
We can start a boycott.
We can start ethnic studies.
We can rise up in the fields.
We can sit down at the front of the bus.
Not because we’re tired, but because enough is enough.
We can stop a jail in Little Tokyo.
We can fight redress.
We can write a poem.
We can make a film.
We can write a column.
We can. We will. We have the will.
We can start a letter writing campaign.
We can do our own petition. Online, myspace, mass email, in the paper.
We can organize the students, Nikkei, JA, Hapa, Latino/a, Chicano/a, Black, Muslims, gay, straight, transgender.

Mari also said:
It’s not just me.
There are a lot more people like me behind me.
They’re going to come here.
They’re going to be asking questions.

(It’s not a threat. It’s a fact.)

We have the power. We have the Baka guts*.
We can. We will.

4/29/07
manzanar, ca.

* Baka guts in reference to Manzanar Committee Chair Sue Kunitomi Embrey's family phrase about having the courage and guts to stand up for what you believe in, no matter what it is (baka in Japanese is stupid/idiot).

(NaBloPoMo#17)

Maiya's First Trip to Universal (#16)

I guess I never blogged photos of our visit to Universal Studios. Auntie Keiko took us... it was on one of those hot 95 degree October days. We went in the late afternoon and stayed through evening. A few hours was enough for Maiya. We didn't go on the tour or any of that stuff. It was my first time since COLLEGE in the 80s to visit Universal Studios, so all of it was new to me, except that I recognized the fountain in the entrance area.We had a good time in the Curious George water play area. But this mama got SOAKED to the bone, all day, with no change of clothes. It is something like a 10,000 Gallon water drop. They had a special Kids Club area, where they had arts and crafts, limbo dancing, kids games, photo ops with the characters, etc. It was a good time. NaBloPoMo#16

More Photo Booth craziness

Maiya is now going to the computer herself, and turning on PhotoBooth and taking pictures of by herself. The other night Lily & I were in the dining room and she was laughing hysterically playing with the effects, taking pictures and recording videos on the computer. Here are a few photos from the last 2-3 days.

Kinda normal....

Open wide for the dentist or else!

Crazy swirl action

No ethnic jokes, please.

Spider hair

Why the long face? or My hair, can't do a thing with it!

Stay tuned folks, we got about 270+ of these, plus the videos, OMG. NaBloPoMo#15

Home Improvement: DIY Bathroom

I never posted some of the DIY work we did on our old house to get it ready for renters. Our bathroom was a pretty disgusting place for several years, and not because of what happens there. When we moved into the house 13 years ago, we vowed to do something about it and the awful wallpaper and medicine cabinet which we lived with for 12 years, but never did until we had to get the house rented. In our defense, we did change the shower curtain at least 3 times, and there was a lot of cute 2 year old artwork with soap crayons in the shower, including a "Tony Loves Jenni" note scrawled near the shower head, which was there for a couple of years. Here are some before and after pictures.

BATHROOM BEFORE:

Doesn't seem too horrible, huh?

Note the beautiful cabinet and faux marble porcelain countertop with random kiddie stickers.
Got to love that awesome medicine cabinet with a mirror I could only see from my neck up on my tippy toes for 12 years. Greenish yellow rose wallpaper was the highlight of the 1950s bathroom.

BATHROOM AFTER:

A lot of elbow grease went into the remodeling of this bathroom. It wasn't a complete renovation like our kitchen, but it was an inexpensive fix of what was pretty awful to start with. We have to give big props and thanks to Mike Mura for all his help in sanding, removing wallpaper, removing the old cabinet & sink, putting in the new mirror medicine cabinet, priming, painting, and installing lighting fixtures. Then, Noe & his crew who did parts of our kitchen remodel 3 years ago and our floors in the den, put in the new cabinet/sink in about 30 minutes I believe. We also had a plumber come and take care of some leaking in the shower and recaulking some of the tiles and floor. I did a lot of scrubbing, scrubbing and more scrubbing, and buying matching towels and neutral shower curtain for the Open House.

All this while Tony was taking care of his dad several times a day, shuttling him to dialysis, closing escrow on the new house, and working on other parts of the house at the same time during the Christmas/New Year holidays, a very stressful period in case you were wondering. In all, I think the remodel costs for supplies, decorations and professional help, was probably about $500. And there you have our bathroom remodel. Coming soon, more DIY projects on our old house.

NaBloPoMo#14.... and counting.

Maiya & Devin

Here is Maiya with her friend Devin (Davis & Allison's Devin), who we have carpooled with a couple of times. I work with Devin's dad, and Maiya & Devin are in the same class at preschool. Maiya knows that Devin likes cars, and the first thing when he comes over, they go to her room to get the cars to play with. It is fun listening to them play cars in the hallway together. The first 2 pictures are from April, and I just found them this weekend.This picture is from Friday night, sharing a dinner for two. So cute.
NaBloPoMo#13

Rocking the Red Carpet

Me & Maiya at the Red Carpet event for for Read Early, Read Aloud, part of the celebration of National Family Literacy Month at our local library, sponsored by First5LA. Our family literacy program at work attended, as well as me & Maiya.  And excuse the bad hair day, please. (Photo Credit: Ben/First 5 LA) NaBloPoMo#12

190 Years Young

This afternoon, Maiya & I went to a birthday party for Nobuko, Tarabu & Mike, to celebrate their combined 190th birthday party. But first, we went to the Farmer's Market to get some things for the potluck. I'm not usually very good with potlucks, often picking something up at the last minute, pitching in money, or asking Tony to make me something. But I think I have hit upon a great new recipe. I've eaten this a few times, but I didn't even know what the name was, but when you google "broccoli salad," you might find it, like I did. I pretty much followed the recipe, but made a few alterations.Broccoli (dunked in hot water for a few seconds), sunflower seeds, raisins (added some mixed pepitos from the farmer's market), onions, celery, bacon (soy bacon bits), mixed together with a dressing made of 3/4 cup mayo, 1/4 cup sugar and 2 TBS vinegar, and you get a pretty yummy and healthy salad.
Every party at Senshin has to start with music...
It was a beautiful and fun celebration for Nobuko, Tarabu & Mike. Everyone in the room got to get up and say a little something for the birthday kids. It was great (leap) to see so many friends. I hope when I am 190, that I can look like them too!NaBloPoMo#11 (Behind by 4 days)