Christmas 2011

 This Christmas started when Chieko taught Tanners kindergarten class about what children do for the Christmas and New Year holidays in Japan. She also taught them how to fold an origami cup. I was surprised by two things: Twenty-five students were in this class, and they were very well behaved and were eager to answer and ask questions (even if they couldn't remember what question they wanted to ask when they were called on). I admire Ms. Guest for doing such a great job with them. 

Next was our ward Christmas party. We had soup bowls, salads and desserts. Then the Primary reenacted the Nativity. Stanton was a shepherd. 

On Christmas eve eve we went to Paul and Cindy's for Tiffany's Christmas Eve Party. We had appetizers and desserts. Then we reenacted the Nativity with Dad narrating and everyone sort of singing. Annie was the angel that appeared to the shepherds. 

On Christmas morning we attended Sara and Jared's one-hour sacrament meeting (because Christmas was on Sunday, sacrament meeting was the only meeting held churchwide). Then Sara and Jared cooked gingerbread waffles, scrambled eggs, and sausage. They also had real maple syrup and a homemade syrup that was really good on waffles, but I forgot what they made it out of. 

Then we went downstairs to see if Santa came last night. 

 Jared is assembling a water bottle holder for a bike. 

Jackson got this cool Frank Sinatra hat that he loves. 

 He also got a bicycle. 

In the living room. 

 On the road. 

 If you could see the backs of Tanner's bicycle gloves, you'd see that they have a glow-in-the-dark skeleton design. 

Oh, yeah, like this. 

 Tanner got a three wheeler with free-turning rear roller-blade-like wheels for spinning 360s. 

 Here he is on the street. Still pictures don't do the 360s justice, but he does them really well. 

 Annabelle. 

 She needed a minute to figure out this whole Christmas morning thing, but she quickly realized the kitchen was hers and started cooking stuff in the sparkling frying pan. 

 Chieko is helping Annie with a backpack we gave her. 

Next we went to Dad's for his annual Christmas buffet that is his present to all his family. I'm going to try to remember who all were there. If you were there and your name is missing, let me know. Spelling corrections also accepted. (Sorry, but this is the only picture I took all afternoon): 

Dad, Nancy, Cecil, Andrea, Jordan, Maddison, Kaitlin, Hailey, Lindsay, Ryan, Thomas, Emma, Nathan, Kelley, Janet, Jennifer, Stanton, Michael, Chieko, Sara, Jared, Jackson, Tanner, Annabelle, Paul, Cindy, Marcus, Megan, and Amanda. 

Merry Christmas

New Haven Visit October 2011

Chieko wanted to visit John's family in Connecticut, so we decided that if the full-time job I was looking at didn't work out, we'd go this October, when the leaves would most likely be at their fall peak. (As you can see, the job didn't work out, but I picked up another client, which has turned out to be a much better opportunity.)

On Saturday, October 15, waiting and waiting for out luggage at JFK airport. The plane landed about a mile from the baggage pickup, so we thought for sure it would be waiting for us here. But we still waited 30 minutes or so. 

Larry seemed to fare okay on the trip. Just kidding. He actually decided our open suitcase was a great place for a nap. So Chieko closed the lid over him. He just poked his head out and looked around but had no intention of moving. 

On Sunday morning we drove to Essex, Connecticut, while John and family went to church in Madison. Oops. We didn't wake up early enough to get our spots in the shower in time to go with them. 

In the late 1700s and early 1800s Essex was a major shipbuilding center. During the war of 1812, the British burned several of the new ships, valued at $180,000. That was the biggest damage during the war to that point. Many homes in Essex have the original owner's name and date the home was built, mostly in the early 1800s. 

Chieko on the pier at the end of Essex Main Street.

When I move to a coast (East Coast or Puget Sound), this is the boat I'm going to own, the Nordic Tug 37. It's only $450,000. 

This barge was dredging the harbor. 

The Griswold Inn is in this building, which was erected in 1776. 

We ate Sunday brunch at the Griswold Inn. Lots of fruit, salads, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, cornbread muffins, bread pudding, chocolate volcano cake, cooked-to-order omelettes, and small fluffy waffles with fresh strawberry and blueberry toppings. 

The Astles in Essex Park: Mialisa, John, Wells, Elliot, Mei, and Caroline. 

After brunch we took a ride in a steam-engine train through the countryside. This is not the train we rode, but this one is parked at the station. 

This is the train we rode. 

This is the train ride. 

The leaves weren't as brilliant as we'd hoped, but they were still pretty and fallish. 

Wells on the train. 

When the train reached the end of our line, it couldn't turn around, so it disconnected, went down a sidetrack, and reconnected, with its nose at what had been the back of the train. The locomotive then pulled us backward to the station. 

A little lawn mowing mishap we saw from the train (this is Halloween month, after all).

This is the home I plan to live in when we move to the coast and buy my Nordic Tug 37.

At the end of the day we walked and played a bit in the New Haven city park. 

On Monday, Chieko and I drove to Vermont. This is the Chelsea Royal Diner, somewhere in Vermont. I just asked the clerk in the gas station if she knew a good non-chain place for lunch, and this was what she recommended. It was several miles away but worth the drive. 

I had a hot open-face roast beef sandwich, and Chieko had a hot open-face turkey sandwich. 

I'm sure there are many covered bridges like this in the East. We stopped at this one in Vermont near the Chelsea Royal Diner. 

The approach to Joseph Smith's birthplace.

The Joseph Smith birthplace monument. The house he was born in was probably on the left of the monument, looking from this direction, in front of the small tree. 

This is a bird feeder and probably looks like the house Joseph Smith was born in. 

Two stones from the house survived in the location where the house probably sat. This fireplace hearth in the visitors' center is one of the stones. The other stone was a step to the house and is outside the visitor center. Joseph's family moved from here when he was about two.

We stayed at the Marriott Residence Inn in Scarborough, Maine, on Monday night. On Tuesday morning I set the alarm for 5:30 (3:30 Utah time) thinking that if I could get up to see the sun rise. The alarm didn't go off, but I awoke right at 5:30, so I decided I should get up. I had intended to go to the famous Portland Head Lighthouse, but my GPS sent me to Long Wharf Road off Commercial Street in Portland. There is no Long Wharf Road. When I turned into a parking lot, the GPS said, "Board ferry." Argh. There was no ferry running. The sky looked like this picture, so I knew I didn't have time to get to Portland Head, wherever it was. I wandered over a bridge and found another lighthouse that wasn't Portland Head, but the sunrise was beautiful just the same. 

Sunrise at the Springpoint Ledge Lighthouse. Several boats were heading out, I assume to fish. 

Springpoint Ledge Lighhouse at sunrise. 

This is one of the lighthouses that you can see from Two Lights State Park. Both lighthouses are on private property, so not approachable, and the other one is in the middle of some houses. 

This beach near Two Lights State Park looks like petrified wood, but it's just petrified sand, I think. The East Coast is much older and rockier than the West Coast. 

Portland Head Lighthouse, probably the most famous lighthouse of the 60 or so along the Maine coast. 

Chieko at Portland Head Lighthouse. 

Bug Lighthouse is similar to the Springpoint Ledge Lighthouse, and you can see both from here, but Bug has Roman-like columns. 

Another view of Bug Lighhouse. 

For lunch on Tuesday we picked a little restaurant on the Portland Wharf. We walked down a wharf (near "Long Wharf") and ended up unknowingly going in the back door. The food looks good, but it wasn't that great. The chowder wasn't hot, and the onion rings were too thin and also not hot. The scallops were good. If we had walked another half block, we would have found several more, probably better, restaurants. 

I think this is a tourist cruise, which is heading back into Portland Harbor around Bug Lighthouse. 

For dinner on Tuesday we met Dave and Linda MacLeod at their nice New England home in Scarborough. Dave is my second cousin. We had a great visit and a great dinner at a restaurant whose name I forgot. I had a 12-vegetable dish that was quite yummy. But I forgot to take any pictures. I can't believe I did that. Meeting the MacLeods was one of my goals on this trip. 

On Tuesday night we drove to Danvers, Massachusetts, and stayed in the Comfort Inn that we'd reserved on Priceline. On Wednesday morning we drove into Boston to follow the Freedom Walk. This is the fist stop on the Walk from the parking lot under Boston Commons. Boston Commons is where my parents met at a USO club in 1945. 

Paul Revere's headstone. 

Samuel Adams's headstone. He is a first cousin to John Adams and one of the main rabble rousers that set the fires of revolution burning in Boston. 

This is the grave of Elizabeth Pain in another cemetery. She was born in 1626 and died in 1704. Elizabeth was from a wealthy family as indicated by the family crest on her tombstone. Because of what appears to be an 'A' in the crest (and maybe other reasons), some believe she was the inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hester Prynne in "The Scarlet Lettter," which he set in Puritan Boston and published in 1642.

Faneuil Hall was a major meeting place where the likes of Samuel Adams and James Otis gave their fiery speeches. 

Today Faneuil Hall is a great food court, with shops and restaurants (including a Cheers replica) attached to the outside. 

My chowder was hot and good, but the hotdog and onion rings were overpriced and not that great. I wished I had just gotten a bread bowl of the (and saved about $10). Why did I pick a hotdog when I could have had any number of seafood, Italian, Asian, and a hundred other foods? 

Paul Revere's house is one of the few (or only) house of the Revolutionary War period that is still standing. He lived in other houses, but this was his home during his famous ride and during the Revolution. 

Statue of Paul Revere with the famous North Church in the background. One of two men or both men who worked in the church held up two lanterns to let the Patriots know the British Regulars were coming across the Charles River (faster route) rather than over a narrow land route (slower path) on their way to Lexington and Concord to capture munitions stored on a farm there. (The colonists had moved the munitions, by the way, but that's a whole other story. See my blog from June this year.) This signal was a backup plan in case Paul Revere didn't make it across the river to warn them. He did make it across, and the Patriots had also seen the lateens, as had some British guards in the city. But they never caught the men who held up the lanterns for 60 seconds.  

Inside the North Church. Worshipers rented these pews, which have short walls to keep out the cold. Some pews cost $15,000 to $20,000 per year in today's dollars. 

We also toured the bell-ringing room in an upper floor of the church. The teenage Paul Revere was a bell ringer here. Otherwise, he was not high enough in class to ever step inside this church. 

The stairs from the bell-ringing room. We also toured the cellar, where no photography is allowed. About 130 crypts in the cellar hold about 1,500 bodies. People paid dearly (in cash as well as with their lives) to be buried under the church. When the crypts became full, the priests moved the remains to a sanctified common pit somewhere on the church grounds. 

We stopped at Mike's Pastry shop in Little Italy, near Paul Revere's house for the most yummy Boston Cream Puff, cheese cake, and some other pastries. 

The Freedom Trail was the only all-day outdoor activity we had planned on this trip, and it was the only day that rained, all day. We enjoyed it anyway. This is Boston in its rainy fog.

For dinner we ate at Sapporo Ramen, a tiny shop inside an office building. It was pretty good. While looking for it, I discovered via the GPS that sacrament has ramen in it. I don't know if that's significant, but I do like ramen. 

On Thursday we visited John Adams's houses. This is the house in Braintree where he was born. 

Next door to his birth house, is a house John Adams's father, a minister, land owner, and farmer, also owned. His father gave John, the oldest son, this house when John married Abigail. He gave the other family home to John's brother, because he had paid John's education at Harvard and couldn't afford to pay for any other children's education. 

When John and Abigail returned from Europe, Abigail couldn't bear to live in the little house again, so they bought this house, which was also much smaller than it is today. Abigail had a large room added for entertaining and a back section. This is a side view of the house.

The Adams's house was nice, but it didn't compare to the Cornielius Vanderbilt (railroad baron) summer cottage called "The Breakers" in Newport, Rhode Island. This 65,000-square-foot house cost about $350,000,000 in today's dollars to build in the 1890s. The bathtubs are carved from solid marble and had to be filled and emptied several times to warm them. The bathtubs also had four faucets, two for fresh water and two for health-giving seawater. This is a side and back view. 

Why it's called "The Breakers." From the back veranda you can watch the waves crash against a rock cliff at the edge of the backyard. 

I think The Breakers is where Chieko will vacation when I buy our house and boat in Essex. She liked this place. This is a front view. 

On Friday John took Misa to New York for her birthday. The three older kids headed off to school. 

And we took Wells into New Haven to see Yale and to buy some souvenirs. 

At the end of the school day the kids came home, and we headed off to dinner. 

We went to a place called Fish Tale, which has good fried clams, as well as stuff the kids like. This place also has a carousel that you can ride for a $1 donation. The restaurant gives the money to charity and so far has raised more than $650,000. The carousel was closed for the season when we were there. 

Chieko and I ate clams and fries. 

On Saturday we headed out to pick apples. But first the kids played around the yard while the adults got ready to go. 

A swing that I think Elliot made in the front-yard tree. 

This is a good climbing tree. 

At the apple orchard, the trees were loaded.

Elliot picking apples. 

Wells picking apples. The owners didn't care if we ate apples while we picked. We should have eaten an apple from each tree, as we discovered the tree closest to where the hay wagon dropped us off had the best apples. But of course we wandered all over the orchard before we discovered that. 

The orchard also offered pumpkins. 

Wells found his pumpkin right away. 

I think everyone got the pumpkins they wanted. 

We then ate at an Italian restaurant called Joey's Garlics, or something like that. They should have called it "Enough food for three meals in one." The food was good, as well as plentiful. 

Near sundown we went to a hill in New Haven, where the kids rolled down. This is Mei giving Wells a start. 

He got the hang of it pretty quickly and had a great time. 

Wells heading up the hill to roll down again. 

These kids get along with each other really well and seem to always be having fun. 

Elliot with his electric blinking glasses that he bought with birthday money from the Weavers. 

Readying the glasses for eye protection. 

On Sunday morning we went to church with John's group. The primary put on their annual program and all put on a very wonderful performance. Misa is the primary chorister, and she did an amazing job getting the children to learn the songs and then singing the songs really well. I was impressed. 

On the way back to JFK airport, we stopped on Hillhouse Street in New Haven. Charles Dickens and Mark Twain called this the most beautiful street in America. Today Yale University owns all the buildings (mostly stately homes) except a church. The Yale president supposedly lives in one, but we could only guess which one. We're thinking one of the houses that has the address on a small sign on the corner of the building rather than a big sign next to the door. 

This might be the Yale president's home. Or not. But this is our rental car.