Volunteering

My sister is staying with me at the moment and yesterday she went along with my friend to take part in some volunteer activities at a drop in centre for evacuees and other people affected by the March 11 disaster. After that she went with my friend to visit some people who live in the prefab housing built for the people who lost their homes either to the power station or the tsunami. 

Here is her blog post. Please read it if you have time. The one thing that the people my sister met yesterday said was, that they want people to remember Fukushima and hear their story. Also that people's lives are still not back to normal - still in limbo, waiting for the government to make decisions.  My sister's blog is actually about her experience living in the UAE, also an interesting read.

Dog Parks and Hat Stealing

So Sebastian, my miniature schnauzer is a bit special. He is a bit of a scaredy cat and shows this by barking. This has not endeared him to every one we meet, but since he is so cute and fluffy a lot of people are kind to him anyway. We decided to finally take him to a dog park so he would have to interact with other people and dogs. We had been planning to do this since before the March 11 disaster, but then that happened and it got put off. So we took him along a few months ago. He barked a lot the first time - about 10 minutes or so, then got over it and played well with the other dogs. Now when we take him, he is a bit scared at first, but now goes up and "introduces himself" to other dogs and then plays well, only barking when the other dogs won't play with him back. So here is picture of Basti socialising. One thing we noticed is that the other dogs all tend to be dressed up when they are at the park. Basti has one outfit we were given but he doesn't like wearing it so he goes "au naturale".

Then Miss Amelia has become a real character, she looks so cute with a hat on I just had to have a wee play and see what she looked like in Mummy and Daddy's hats....

Shopping for Dolls

Today we went to a Doll shop, looking for Amelia's Girl's Day Dolls, or Doll's Festival dolls. This special day for girls is on March 3rd, and I was told today in the shop that the dolls are to be displayed for a month beforehand. 

So with that in mind, we looked around at what might be a good option for our family. The dolls range from expensive to crazy wildly expensive, from just 2 dolls up to a 7 tiered monstrosity that takes over half your living room.

We were allowed to take some photos, provided that the price was not shown, since my sister was with us and since she came all the way from NZ they said ok. 

So now you guys can see, too. 

This one is for Boys day on May 5th

We're Back

A belated Merry Christmas from Amelia The Elf

Hi Everyone, Happy New Year! 

Well it has been several months since I last posted. I really just didn't get around to it with Christmas preparations, New Years preparations and Amelia's new habit of rolling over and waking up every 5 minutes which means I kind of have to hold her down until she falls asleep properly or she will roll over and wake herself up again. 

So what have we been doing? Not much that is of interest I would have to say. But 2 days ago Amelia turned 7 months. She has her 2 bottom teeth now which is super cute and I think she is getting some more judging by her grumpiness and gnawing at things. She also seems to warming up for crawling by the way she tries to get up on her hands and knees now. 

Can you see her two little teeth?

Today we had the 2nd big earthquake so far this year. We also had one on New Years day. Today was a magnitude 5.8, 19 km deep and only 22kms away from Iwaki city. So it was a very sudden and rattly shake. Poor Basti was cowering under my chair for quite a while.  Amelia was watching her music videos on our iPad and barely batted an eyelid, apart from looking at me and wondering why I suddenly grabbed onto her! We haven't had any more since then, fingers crossed that was the action for the day.

Last photo for today is Amelia showing her new skill of eating teething biscuits, though most go on her face, hands, bib and the floor, much to Basti's delight.

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