Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
All in Family
After almost 20 years my family has sold Lyon Supply, their art supply store. While they're still working there and the name is almost the same (renamed to Lyon Art Supply), they are now employees instead of employers.
Stacia found a stash of photos from my Great Aunt Eiko, so I scanned them in. I eventually want to work them into pages for my family, but for now I'll put them into a post.
It's hard to believe we've already been here almost a week, but so we have. We've hit multiple 100+ days, and will be more than happy with the 20°F drop in temperature when we get back to Seattle.
Another day has passed, and it's hard to believe our trip here is more than half over. We stayed inside the store for the bulk of the day so we were spared the heat.
We just got back today from a quick trip to Spokane to see Melody's family. In addition to Irene, Neal, and Barbara, all the Knoepfel family from IL were there, and it was great to see everyone.
Every parent goes through milestones, and without a doubt one of them is watching your child graduate from High School. Last night Kellen went through his graduation ceremony from Puget Sound Community School, and while I naturally have high regard for him, it's great to see his classmates do, too.
Kellen and Tynor's school has a showcase every year, and this past Friday was the 2009 PSCS Student Showcase. All the senior projects were on display and several students got together to perform or give demonstrations.
Yet another article appeared in last Saturday's Seattle Times about the Japanese American internment during WWII. This time, Kimiko Nagaoka Mukai received her degree from Seattle Pacific University, over 65 years after she was forced to leave the west coast. She was awarded the degree during her 90th birthday party. SPU has identified seven other Japanese American students who were also forced to leave and has been reaching out to their families.
This past weekend the Seattle Times had an article about how the Iraqi-bound 34th Division honored Japanese-American members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The 442nd was a Japanese-American unit of the US Army during WWII which highly decorated, while many of the soldiers had families in internment camps at the time.
Melody's sister Celeste was in town for several days, so we went over to Spokane for the weekend to visit family over there. Celeste lives in Austin, TX and had originally planned to come over the Christmas holiday. However, the weather was bad enough that she postponed the trip until this month when the weather would be better. We always enjoy having her visit and spending time with her.
Every now and then the planets align and we end up doing lots of stuff over a weekend; this past weekend was one of those. We had dinner with some of my cousins on Friday night, did lots of stuff in the yard on Saturday, hung out with some friends on Sunday, and had dinner with another cousin of mine on Monday.
Spoke with my mom today and she said she went home from the hospital yesterday. She was in for quite a while, but most of the time was so she could have physical therapy several times a day.
Melody and I had Shabu Shabu for dinner last night. It's a little like fondue since everyone can put whatever kind of food they want into the pot, but instead of cheese (or chocolate) the liquid is a sort of broth (my mom used to do a fish stock, but I did a chicken stock last night). This picture is from 1987, and shows my dad getting ready. You can see several kinds of food on the trays and if you look closely, you can see a second pot on the near side of the table (there were several people at dinner that day).
My mom went back into the hospital on Wednesday the 21st. From what I can tell she's still having dehydration problems, and this time it caused her to be dizzy and have problems with her equilibrium. She's doing better now, although she sounded a bit tired when I spoke with her earlier this evening.
We're back in Seattle after spending the week in Southern California. It was a pretty whirlwind trip, but things went well. It was nice to thaw out with warm weather.
By the time this gets posted we had planned on being in Spokane with Melody's sister Celeste, but weather has changed plans. It would have been a slow drive over the pass, and we would have needed to turn around the next day and head back to Seattle. Instead, she'll sometime after the 1st, after travel is more sane.
I was talking with my cousin Kay earlier this week and we talked about how this was the time of year when as a child I'd go out with my Uncle Easy to go shopping for toys for the younger members of our family. Being a bachelor, he would say he needed help picking out the right fits. When the planned day came around, Uncle Easy would pick me up and we'd go have dinner, after which we'd make our way to Toys 'R' Us and he'd ask "would this be good for so-and-so?", checking his list to make sure he had something for everyone. After we were done, we'd drop the presents off with Kay so she could wrap them.
Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday. Jean (Melody's mom) and her husband Ron came over on Thursday for dinner and we all went over to Keith and Bev's house on Friday.
This weekend was a busy one, starting and ending with pears (and apples) while going to a couple parties in between. As I write, one last batch of applesauce is reducing on the stove, so I guess it's not over, yet.
Thought it would be a good time to summarize where things are with my mom and hopefully fill in any gaps.
