A new year, and I’m committed to contributing family letters more frequently. But let me caveat that with a personal anecdote that repeats itself about once a year: whenever I visit the dentist for my annual exam and cleaning, the dentist or hygienist asks whether I floss regularly. My response is ALWAYS a resounding “YES!” When they ask how frequently, I let them know that I floss at least once each year as part of my dental exam and cleaning. (Don’t judge me....) So we’ll see what the actual frequency of family letters is. In the meantime, here’s one for January 2013.
Sometime in early December, Samuel started writing a family letter for November telling all about William’s ninth birthday, Thanksgiving with church friends and other happenings from that month. Unfortunately, I asked him to revise it, I didn’t follow up, and now I’m not sure where it went. But I know it’s my fault you missed out on the happenings here in Japan. For me, it was a wonderful break from traveling for a bit. I took a trip for work in early November and have been home since and won’t be traveling again until the end of Jan.
So what did we do in December? Not much. The first few weeks were the typical routine of school, scouts, Mutual, and other activities. The real fun came when the weekend before Christmas rolled around. I had nearly the entire school winter break off from work, so we made our list of things we wanted to do, and then did most of them. The projects ranged from the essential (Tokyo temple session) to the traditions (adorning the walls with Christmas cards and photos received from family and friends) to the mundane (setting up the spreadsheet for our 2013 budget) to the exciting (painting over some of the walls where scrubbing just won’t get the dirt and hand prints off).
Unfortunately, the paint project was one that wasn’t completed. But not for lack of desire or effort: here on base there is a “self-help store” for housing occupants to pick up maintenance items and do jobs themselves instead of scheduling facility maintenance to do them. The basic idea is that most people don’t want to wait 30 days for an appointment for someone to screw in a base-housing specific light bulb, so the facility management staff makes the supplies available so residents can do things on their own timeframe. Because the walls are painted with specific paint, I picked up a couple of gallons along with a roller and some other supplies so I could mud the holes then paint the walls. I patched a few holes, then painted over a few small areas, and let the paint dry only to find out that the paint I picked up is a shade darker than our walls despite being labeled as the “bedroom” paint color. What we have on our walls is, I think, the “kitchen & bathroom” color. Rather than repainting all of the walls in our house, I stopped painting. But the self-help store was closed for the holiday and relocating on base, so it wasn’t until after the break was over that I could go and trade paint for the lighter color.
Other projects for me included “hacking” Ikea bookshelves into a standing desk. For years I’ve had back pain, and for the past year or so I’ve made it a habit to work at the bar separating the cooking area of our kitchen from the eating table to help ease some of the strain. That counter is just a bit short for me and there are some hanging cabinets right at head height for me to smack into when I’m not looking. And Eden would often pull a chair up next to me and mess with my stuff, too. Not to mention that Kaylyn wasn’t too fond of me cluttering up part of the kitchen with my laptop and other “junk.” So I set out to build a 20 inch platform for my existing desk for about $50 when Kaylyn mentioned that it would be hideously ugly and further draw attention to the nasty old hand-me-down desk I’ve been using for awhile. So I looked around for a ready-made standing desk, and decided that I didn’t like what was out there, especially for the cost for that kind of furniture. Then I stumbled across a few web sites showing how people took Ikea furniture pieces and repurposed them or rebuilt them for new and creative uses, and I was hooked. Eventually I found the set-up I was looking for, and checked online to see if our “local” Ikea (2+ hours away despite only about 50 km driving. Notice I wrote kilometers not miles!) had the pieces in stock, and sure enough they did. So a few evenings later I “ran down” to Ikea and picked up the stuff, then spent the rest of the week rearranging the office area of our living room. I had to modify one of the pieces to turn a dresser drawer front into a keyboard tray, which took me over to the base woodshop, but all-in-all the desk turned out well. I’ve been using it now for about a month and I’m pleased with how things turned out.
Speaking of the woodshop, one of our other projects was shaping pinewood derby cars for the boys. Although William is the only one we have in Cub Scouts right now, the pack encouraged other siblings to make cars, so Howie made one, too. My philosophy on pinewood derby cars is to let the kids do most of the work and not try to relive my childhood through them by making cars for me. I have them design their cars by drawing what they want the cars to look like on paper, then we draw the designs on the wood blocks. We all troop over to the woodshop and they watch and help clean up while I do the cutting and rough sanding (because the kids aren’t allowed to use the power tools. (if we were at Kaylyn’s dad’s place, they’d be using the power tools, too). Then they paint the cars with minimal help and we nail the wheels on. None of the cars we’ve built the past few years will win awards for “best show car” and I don’t remember any of them winning the races (weights? what weights? graphite or other dry lubricant? never heard of it), but I can truly say their cars have been unique. This year William wanted to make a bus, a yellow school bus. Sounds pretty easy, right? Just cut a chunk out of one end to make the shape, right? Well, William drew an aerodynamic but unrealistically shaped bus that looks more like a shinkansen (bullet train). I asked him several times if he really wants the front of the bus rounded like that, but it’s what he wanted and he seems happy with it. I’m glad that neither Kaylyn nor I have a need to assert our own ideas of what a pinewood derby car should be.
[Insert transition to Christmas here (too lazy to come up with a better one right now)] Our Christmas was as good as we expected it to be, and better in some ways. On Christmas Eve, we had some friends from our ward over for the annual reading of the nativity story, complete with two Marys (or one Mary and one angel, but who was who?) and our flatbread-and-fish dinner. The kids went to bed surprisingly well (will they always be this good at going to bed on Christmas Eve?), and we didn’t stay up too late arranging last minute gifts under the tree and such.
In the morning the kids awoke and opened their stockings, much to Eden’s delight: “Santa bring me lip gloss!” She’s been telling us for months that that’s what he’d bring, so the novelty had worn off of us, but not her. Other presents for Eden included a princess baby doll and four pairs of plastic dress-up shoes. Her Christmas really was magical; she was so delighted with everything that she kept coming back to pay us with spontaneous hugs and kisses. In fact, her shoes have been her snuggle-companions when she doesn't want to take a nap or go to bed.
The other kids were similarly enthused with their gifts, especially William who received the gift of a hand-me-down Kindle. A few months back Eliza won a Kindle as a prize for some things on base, which she traded to Sam in exchange for something more the speed for a 2-yr-old. However, it wasn’t nearly as useful to Sam as he thought it would be, so I offered to purchase it from him for a modest sum if he wasn’t going to use it, which was right around the time that William said he wanted a Kindle like the ones they use at school. A few months later and the Kindle reappeared, and has seen heavy use since. I'm glad he enjoys reading now--for the longest time he refused to do it even though he was capable.
Other activities from the work and school break included games with friends, notably Quelf (party-type game that’s fun for kids and adults) and Munchkin (a quirky but amusing card game). In fact, we wrapped up the old year by inviting a couple of families over for games on new year’s eve and let the kids “run amuck” (as Brian Regan would say) until 10 minutes after midnight when we promptly said goodbye to our neighbor friends and hastily cleaned up the perishables while leaving the rest of the mess for 2013.
I won’t spoil my intended family letter submission for next month by relating now the rest of our holiday break--you'll have to wait until then. Meanwhile, we eagerly await hearing from and about all of you.
Love,
Adam, Kaylyn, Samuel, William, Howie, Eliza & Eden
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