Grandma's Gladness: January 2011

I know, I know! But I want to remember "the time of the dresses"!

Carried my sewing machine all the way to the church so the Young Women could make some dresses.

Finished the 5 corduroy jumpers - here's one.

Sisters Seabach and Sorenson came over early to help cut out the dresses so the YW could begin to sew immediately.

Most of the girls had never used a machine before. They did quite well!

The YW leaders also helped - here are two girls learning that pressing is an important part of sewing.

I think the girls had fun and learned some things too.

They didn't finish the dresses, so the next day a few of us gathered and completed the ones they had started. I think the girls will be very pleased to see the final products tomorrow at church.

Now for the second part of this blog birthday parties! Yesterday at noon, we women went to a Mexican restaurant (very rare around here) for Momoko's birthday lunch. She is the executive secretary to Elder Stevenson. She is so talented and a wonderful girl.

Here is Momoko ready to eat intestine soup - yuck!!

And sweet Emi who is the secretary to our Director of Temporal Affairs. She also ordered the soup - the rest of us had salads!

Here is the birthday cake.

And then last night, we senior missionaries got together to celebrate Elder Fillmore's birthday. Here is Elder Watabe with the ingredients for "naba" which we cooked right there on the table with the portable gas burners.

Lots of vegetables - cabbage, mushrooms, and other things that I haven't seen before. Also, there were tofu blocks, chicken or pork and "glass" noodles plus a broth that we cooked it

all in.

It's done! Elder Watabe dishes it out with chopsticks, of course.

And here's the cake and the blowing out of the candle.

The cake was delicious - pecan frosting on oatmeal cake. If you notice the ice cream - that much is about $12 US dollars!!!

We surely eat a lot together! We are glad that our apartment is large enough to fit us all in for such occasions.

Elder Fillmore making yakisoba for us. We are the Fillmores' home teachers - they always feed us something yummy!

The Scoffields came for Sunday dinner - caught him with his eyes closed!

Here are the Froelichs who also came.

And with Nathan Quinn who was visiting. It turned out that the Froelichs and Nathan knew each other!

Sister Goth preparing the apple crisp that we had for FHE dessert.

Yesterday I took a bus tour around Tokyo with the temple missionaries. They now have a two week vacation while the temple is closed.

Our bus - # 7!

Sister Pinckney, Sister Sonomura and me ready for a fun day.

The famous lantern at Asakusa-Sensouji as you enter the Nakamise Shopping area.

Our cute tour guide on the bus - she spoke a mile a minute in Japanese. I didn't understand but just enjoyed looking out the window. I had been to some of the places before and so knew where we were and some things about them.

I love seeing these brooms - here they are with the more conventional mops and brushes.

We followed our leader with her little yellow flag.

Greeting a friendly dog.

OK - be back here at 10:50!

Here we go!

Sister Sonomura and I in front of one of the statues. She was my buddy for the day.

Here is a friendly reminder - don't hang up your shirts or you may get dumped on!

One of the many little shops on the way to the shrines.

Sister and Elder Pinckney in one of the tiny shops. She was searching for the little headbands with the Rising Sun on them - like you see the boys wearing for karate. She also wanted a carp wind sock for her gazebo.