Thank you!!

Thank you for all of your comments yesterday. I thought about last night and today and I don't really want to quit blogging...

The reason I started my blog in the first place was to keep my family and friends back home in touch with what was happening in my life. Most of the time I don't get any comments from them so it did make me slightly unmotivated to keep blogging. It doesn't bother me as much now though! I know they are reading, that's all that matters!

But my blog has moved up a rank since I began it. It has given me somewhere to make friends with people in similar life situations as mine. I have met in real life two wonderful girls who are now a couple of my really great friends. I have also made a lot of online friends that I would love to meet one day.

I guess I just lost track of the real reason I was blogging... not because I live an exciting life, but because I wanted to share my day to day stuff with people who wanted to read it.

So I am going to keep blogging but I have decided to move my blog over to wordpress. I'm not sure if I am ever going to use the password protected post option but at least it is there if I want to. I'm not sure if I am doing the right thing by moving my blog there because I going to lose a reader that I never knew about until yesterday! But I was playing around with the designs and stuff on wordpress and I like what I have created... It seems a little bit more 'me' then this blog does.

So my new blog can now be found at: http://nayandnao.wordpress.com/

I was able to move everything from my old blog to my new blog so I won't be losing anything from changing to wordpress, YAY!! My life might be boring, but I like having a record of it!

For my family - please delete my old blog's link and add this one instead!
For people who have my blog linked to their blog - please change your link to my new blog!
For all the friends I have made/lurkers who might be reading - please continue to read about my adventures on my new blog!

Just a few comments I would like to say to two people who commented yesterday:
Marie O'Conner - I wonder why you can't read wordpress blogs in China... I know a lady who uses wordpress and she lives in China... curious! I am sad that I never got to know you!

the fukases - thanks for the ideas, just to please you (and because it will give me something to write about) I will answer them all, one by one!

If only my life was a little more exciting!

There have been a few things going on my life at the moment that I can't write about on my blog just in the case the person this involves ever stumbles upon my blog. Actually I really needed to hear the good advice that I am sure you would have all been able to give me. Yesterday I looked at changing my blog to wordpress because it has the option of password protected entries. I even got up to transferring all of my posts from blogger to wordpress when I gave up and pressed the delete button...

For a while now, I have completely lost my blogging mojo. I really don't feel like I have anything important to say - I don't have kids so I can't share their unique thinking, I'm not pregnant so can't write about the wonders of pregnancy, I don't hate my husband or have any major issues with him to rant about, nor is my life that exciting that it leaves you sitting on the edge of your seat in suspense... More importantly, my writing style isn't anything to rave about...

That's why I pressed the delete button on my 'new' blog...
That's why I am thinking maybe I should just give up on my blog...

It's just a thought at this stage though because my blog has created a place where new friendships can be found, advice can be received and laughter shared.

Today would have been my brother's 31 birthday... I couldn't let the day pass without singing him happy birthday.

So here goes...

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Cameron,
Happy Birthday to you...

Happy Birthday Cam...

I miss him so much...

My bed is calling me...

We just got home from a full day of skiing. I am SOOOO exhausted - I think every part of my body is aching... We were up at 3.45am, left our house by 4am, arriving at Kurumayama Kougen Ski Resort by 8am to then hit the slopes 30 minutes after that. We didn't stop skiing until 4pm... by that time I just couldn't hack it anymore, lol!

We had a great time though. This is the second year in a row that we have taken a ski trip with Naoki's fellow work team members and their families. It looks like it is going to become an annual event, YAY!!

The only thing that could have made this trip better was if there had of been more 'real' snow. Real snow definitely provides a better cushion for all of the stacking I tend to do! A lot of the stacks that happened today was due to me trying to improve my technique. I spent of a lot of time trying to copy the people in front of me today. To think positively though, all the stacking I did today gave me a LOT more practice in standing up from a laying position, lol!

I'm just about to get into a steamy hot bath to soothe my weary body and then off to bed I go....

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Good night!

Treasuring those traditions

I don't know if you ever really think about what family traditions you want to continue until you think about starting a family of your own.

Today I thought I would write down the family traditions that I loved when I was a kid and hope to continue the tradition after we have children of our own.

• In our family birthdays were a special event. The one day of the year that we got out of doing our chores. The one day of the year that we could have whatever we wanted for dinner (as long as mum was able to cook it). I remember for years and years I always chose sausages, eggs and chips for my birthday dinner. You would have thought I would have chosen something a little bit more exotic, hey! I nearly forget, we also got to choose a birthday cake out of mum's birthday cake magazine! Although... I don't think I ever really got what I wanted because mum also had this rule that she wouldn't make the same cake twice... well considering I'm the youngest of four and there was only ever one magazine, most of the better cakes had already been done before. This is one tradition that I want to continue...
  
• Saturdays were always mum's baking day. Mum and I used to spend the morning baking all different types of cakes, biscuits, slices etc to then separate into their own containers and carefully store them away in the freezer to have as lunch box fillers or afternoon snacks. We hardly ever had bought snacks and this is something else that I would love to do with my own children. I think the reason I like cooking so much is from those days spent in the kitchen with mum.
  
• When my brothers and sister weren't too old to hang out with their family (lol!) we used to have 'games night' on Saturday night. It was great fun! This was when dad still lived at home so all 6 of us would spend the night playing some sort of card game or board game while snacking on some sort of yummy treats!! I'm not sure if this game was played on Saturday nights or not, my memory is failing me, but we always used to play a card game called, 'Hand and Foot'... I would have no idea how to play it anymore but I recall it used to be lots and lots of fun. I'm going to check online for the rules later on this afternoon!! I don't think I will ever be TOO old to play board games...
  
• The next family tradition I am going to write about isn't actually my own 'immediate' family's tradition. Or not that I know of anyway... In my grandmother's house, above their TV is a huge photo of my grandparents on their wedding day. In my aunt's house, just before you enter their kitchen is a lovely picture of their wedding day too. I don't know when actually I decided I wanted to do the same thing but I really liked the idea. Last weekend we finally got around to doing it and now we have an A2 sized photo of us on our wedding day hanging on the wall in our lounge room. It was a tough decision deciding which photo I wanted up on our wall for the rest of my life but I finally decided on this one:

I love looking at this picture and to be honest I do seriously go and look at this picture every day. It's not because I think I am vain because seriously that's not the reason we put up on our wall. Having our wedding picture up on the wall is predominantly to remind us of the promises we made to each other on our wedding day. The busyness of our lives, the homesickness I experience, the lack of family around me, cultural misunderstandings can sometimes make us forgot the important things in our relationship- but with this photo on the wall, I will never be able to forget how much Naoki means to me, how excited we were for our life together to start, the promises we made together and the hopes that we share for the future. I hope that in 5 years time, 10 years time, 50 years time this photo will still means as much to me as it does now.

What traditions do you hold close to your heart?

The joys of having long hair...

When I was a child I suffered badly from 'bird's nest hair', in other words extremely mangled hair every morning when I woke up. It never seemed to matter what I did with my hair the night before I would always wake up with my hair resembling a bird's nest. It was horrible. Brushing my hair every morning was a job I couldn't do alone and after numerous attempts to brush my hair myself I always ended up having to get my mum or sister to help. I shed so many tears from my stupid hair...

I eventually grew out of my bird nest hair and until just recently in fact haven't had a problem with knotty hair.

But it has come back with a vengeance.... now my hair is getting mangled and knotty every single day.... Actually it seems to be continuously knotty. Seeing as my mum and sister aren't around to help, poor Naoki has the job of brushing my hair every night. But even that doesn't work... I don't know what has caused my hair to become like this again.

I wish I could cut my hair to above my shoulders to give me a break from my hair, but I have Lulu's wedding to attend in May and my sister's wedding to attend in August and I don't want to have short hair for either. So until then I guess I just have to put up with my knotty hair!

Going to the cinema is always fun!

Naoki has been pretty worried about me lately but he doesn't know the best way to deal with my tinges of homesickness. Last week he felt awful because he couldn't do anything to cheer me up so when he got home from work on Friday night he unexpectedly offered to take me to the cinemas to watch 'Mamma Mia'. Just the thought of Naoki sitting through a musical based on a whole bunch of Abba songs made me smile, LOL!! But I took him up on his offer and we ended up having a pretty great night!

The movie was exactly what I was looking for. It had my feet tapping along with the music, my mouth miming the words of the songs, but better still it made me laugh - a lot. It was a great movie (for someone who likes Abba anyway)! It was definitely worth the 36kms it took to get to the cinema!!

Friday night also coincided with our 5 month wedding anniversary! I know 5 months isn't that big of a deal for most of you, but for us, it's still something worth celebrating!! So here are a couple of photo stickers that we took...

Australia, the movie, comes out in cinemas in Japan on the 28th of February and we have made a date to go and watch it together! I can hardly wait!