Our Man in Japan

For anyone interested, head on over to the McIntyre's blog (see sidebar) - there is a picture of Elder Andrew down at the bottom of the January 5th post - be patient scrolling down, there are a lot of McIntyre family pictures above him. Andrew is second from the right.

Snow, Snow, Go Away

I looked out the window and what did I see? More white stuff coming down. I am not a happy camper. We missed 4 days of seminary before the Christmas break - I'd really like to get back down to business. I've been prepared to give the same lesson 4 times now...enough is enough!

The snow is supposed to turn to rain sometime during the night - but if it doesn't do it soon enough the schools will decide to have a late start. Late start for school means no seminary.

At least Danny will have his regularly scheduled school day - that's one of the advantages of attending a virtual academy. No snow days. Very few sick days either. We just plow on through.

Time for Change

We are fortunate to only have 2 wards that meet in our building. Not only that, but our building is a former stake center, so no problems parking two wards at once. It's an older building with some weird design choices (there are no inside halls connecting one side to the other - it's either the gym, the stage or outside). For the first few years that we only had 2 wards (after the NEW stake center was completed), our two wards took turns with 9am and 11am. Yes, we overlapped, but the only real downside was hearing Priesthood opening song from one ward during the sacrament in the other ward. Not really a deal breaker in my book - I liked hearing the guys singing.

The other ward got new leadership about 3 years ago and all that started to change - they decided that they didn't like overlapping, so when January came around we didn't move to 11am that year...we moved to 1pm. I spent most of the year being disgruntled about that. The next January came around....happy day...we were back at 9am. Yea!! Was the other ward at 1pm?? No. They were at 11am. Hmmm...

That brings us up to today. It's our wards turn to be at the later time. Will it be 1pm? (I've spent two years lobbying against that-but there are a lot of strange people who like to sleep in really late), will it be 11am???

Our new time is 11:30am. I'm okay with that - it could be worse.

Happy Happy Birthday!

Alex is 18. ALEX is 18. Alex IS 18. If I say it enough times I might start to believe it.

What is it with Alex and bundt cakes? I asked him a day or two ago what kind of cake he wanted...and after a little research he came up with this Lemon-Cheese Cake. The main cake is made with a yellow cake mix base (slight alterations), then I made a lemon and cream cheese filling to go in it and a lemon glaze on top. It turned out fairly yummy (definitely not as rich as last year's Tunnel O' Fudge). I made it yesterday so that it could chill in the refrigerator over night.

It's always nice to add to my repertoire of bundt cake recipes. Thank you, Alex.

The Ghost of Christmas Past....

I think we are officially done with Christmas. We got our last two packages this evening. At 8:10pm. Yeah. You heard me. 8:10pm. UPS has come later - we've had them dropping off stuff as late as 9pm. Yes, 9pm.

Danny kept checking the tracking online. Nothing. We started keeping an eye out the windows after dark. I had just about given up when they finally showed up. Steve and Danny went out to the truck - it took the guy a few minutes to find our packages - we didn't just have his new netbook computer, we also got our Christmas package from David.

Among other things, David sent us a photo calendar with multiple pictures for each month. I forced him to divulge his source - he finally admitted that he gave the pictures to Xuehui (his girlfriend) and she put it together. So...thank you David AND Xuehui! It's awesome.

Steve and Danny are having a great time installing more memory in Danny's new netbook, charging the battery, installing programs, reading the instructions...not necessarily in that order.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I was getting ready to check my email on Yahoo, when I saw this article - it was about a poll taken to see which celebrity people would like to have as their neighbor. Sarah Palin was the surprise front runner - she beat out Oprah.

She would be a cool neighbor - the kind that has plenty of kids - so she would understand when little Piper comes home needing stitches from a little roughhousing/snowball fighting...She also strikes me as someone who could handle the paparazzi. A shotgun resting thoughtfully on one's shoulder would perhaps make annoying photographers think twice about crawling around in the bushes to get a picture.

Who would be your choice for celebrity neighbor? (no fair picking church leaders, or family members).

Our Man in Japan

Dear Family and friends,

I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas and are having a Happy New Years. It`s been a while since I last got a chance to do email, so I`ll have to use my journal to remember what happened.

Umm... On December 20 I bought a baked sweet potato from a street vendor and ate it plain. It was pretty good and filling. There was also a ward Christmas party that day. It was pretty good. Though every family in the ward took pictures with Santa and the missionaries so we had to just stand behind Santa for about 45 minutes while everyone was doing the cake decorating and stuff.

The ward gave us a bunch of presents for Christmas. All of it was food. Mostly candy and a bunch of curry packets. One of the members runs a small restaurant, we stopped by there on Christmas Eve and she made us some delicious food.

Things are going well with Maria. She had her baptismal interview yesterday and it went well. She should be baptized this coming Sunday after church.

I haven`t been taking many pictures because my camera while being a perfectly good camera wasn`t very convenient. So on Christmas I went out and bought a fairly inexpensive smaller camera. (IXY Digital 2015). Since getting the camera I`ve taken a lot of pictures, too many to email. We also went out and ate Tonkatsu with a couple members. Besides that Christmas was a fairly normal day.

I got assigned a 10-15 minute talk in Sacrament meeting on January 18. I think it has something to do with making goals for the New Year.

The weather is pretty cold here. I`ve been doing a fair amount of bike riding I guess. It`s hard to judge how much, and I don`t want to buy a speedometer for my bike because I think it would get stolen. I am used to the food. I have made chocolate no bake cookies. I don`t know what I want for my birthday yet. I have been to some places I`ve found interesting but I really don`t have much time for email today.

Next week I`ll write more. Thanks everyone for your letters. :)

Sincerely,

Elder West.