The aroma of Christmas

My Christmas has indeed started when I found 50% off Christmas tree at Zeller's in October. I could not wait putting this tree up so long despite of the someone's opposition.

We occasionally went shopping for Christmas tree decorations. He often took me out to calm me down whenever we had a fight. So, now you know our each decoration has some kind of special memory behind it.


My nicest husband also took me out to see some Christmas lights and we also attended some Christmas special musical numbers. I was so amazed with some musical talents those people around us had.

We sang at the Messiah with Brandon, Connie and Megan. This was the highlight of my Christmas this year because of the nicest husband who acted like a lamb about to be slaughtered for sacrifice.

One night, my visiting companion and I visited some inactive members with some Christmas carols and cookies. I cannot forget the bright smiles suddenly shone out from their tired and lonely faces. They took in two total strangers oddly singing off note out side of the doors and treated like old friends. The coldest night of the year could not beat our 4-hour caroling and visits at that night because our hearts were so warm.

I did not enjoy Christmas shopping part at all. That rather destroyed the Christmas spirit. I always thought about going to the mall and looking for stores over a month. Funny enough, I spent a lot longer time to think, find, and buy someone's gifts than the one for my husband.
I wish if I could only spend time for Christ and my loving people to show love and appreciation more than materialistic display.


http://www.youtube.com/user/MormonMessages

"The spirit of Christmas illuminates the picture window of a soul. To catch the real meaning of the Christmas we only need to drop the last syllable and becomes the spirit of CHRIST."

クリスマスのクッキーお化け屋敷

僕も愛もブログの更新を怠けてるみたいだから、これから少なくとも、週１回記事を張り出すようにしようかなと考えてる。

でも、今のクリスマスの季節が最高潮に向かって素早く飛んでくにつれ、まるで時間が後ろ前に流れてるように見えてる事もある。

道理で、「３週間以内に最もクリスマス活動に参加した」世界新記録を樹立しそうになってる。そんな気がする。しかし、その報いは疲れ以外のがないのはとても残念。

今週の参加したクリスマス活動のなかで最も記憶に残ってるのは、ワードの夫婦の家でのジンジャーブレッド・ハウス作りのパーティーだったと思う。読んで解ると思うんだけど、前提は参加するカップルの皆が好きなジンジャーブレッド・ハウス作りキットに、他のカップルと分かち合えるキャンディーを持って行き、ジンジャーブレッド・ハウス作りで競争するとの事だった。

愛が選んでくれたキットはディズニーのもので、クマのプーさんの顔が付いてるクッキーが、ジンジャーブレッド・マンのかわりに２個入ってた。あ、白いアイシングの上に、紫色のアイシングも入ってた。

（ところで、紫色のアイシングが嫌いになっちゃった。もう２度と関わりたくないものになっちゃった。）

ハウスの建築を極普通に始めた。壁と屋根を、僕の想像的な（不実用的な）提案に関わらず、本式な形に立ち上げる事にされた。最初の時点では、クッキーの住まいが上手に立ち上げられそうだった。壁も屋根も巧みに立てられた。

これが愛の初めてのジンジャーブレッド・ハウスだったため、他にハウスを作ってる夫婦達に絶対に勝ってやるつもりだった。稀な紫色のアイシングもあるから、朝飯前だと思った。

キットの箱の図を参考にして、屋根を紫に塗り、それに白い縁を作って、独自で趣のあるキャンディーの模様を張ろうと計画してた。このハウスはなんて渋いものになるだろう！


．．．と思ったら、災難に遭った。苦労して立てた壁の１つが倒れちゃった。慌てて壁を直そうとしたら、セメントとして塗ったアイシングがバンドエイドを使って自転車を直そうとするぐらい効果的だと分かっちゃった。

結局、それぞれの壁と屋根が基礎を失って、ハウスが何回も崩れちゃった。紫のアイシングで濃く塗った屋根が軽いキャンディーを支えられないぐらいドロドロになり、パーティーが終わる頃にキャンディーと紫と白のヘドロの塊になってた。

こんな有様になってたら、キットの後ろに書いてあった作り方のポイントのひとつが目を引いた。「アイシングのセメントを塗ってから１５分間を待ち乾燥させてください」という忠告だった。

ぱりっとしたハウスの夢がぶっ壊れたけど、常に朗らかな愛ちゃんが「お化けジンジャーブレッド・ハウス」と名づけて、ハウスの飾りを好きにしてもよくしてくれた。

僕達が作ったハウスが美術大失敗か過失快作かよく分からないけど、どっちにしても、愛の初ジンジャーブレッド・ハウスは一番思い出になるひとつに違いない。

Cookie Monstrosity

Mana and I have apparently both been slacking on keeping this thing up to date, so I've decided to try and get at least one post done per week.

In our defense, though, with the Christmas season hurling faster and faster towards its inevitable festive climax, time around us has begun traveling so quickly that it sometimes appears as if it's going backwards!

Indeed, I feel like I must be on the verge of setting some kind of new world record of 'most Christmas activities attended in 3 weeks.' It's really a shame that there doesn't seem to be any real reward for this feat other than exhaustion.

Among the social holiday activities this week, perhaps the most memorable was a gingerbread house decorating get-together that a couple in our ward held on Monday night. The premise is exactly as it sounds, and each couple in attendance was asked to bring a gingerbread house kit of their choosing, as well as some candy to share with everyone else.

Mana chose a Disney-themed kit, that really had little to do with Disney, other than a couple of circular Winnie the Pooh cookies instead of gingerbread men. Oh, it also came with a bag purple icing in addition to the standard white.

I hate purple icing, and I will never have anything more to do with it.

Construction began on our house as a standard project. The four walls and roof would be assembled in a highly orthodox fashion, despite my suggestion of trying something more creative (read 'less utilitarian'). At first, production of the domicile appeared to be going expertly, with walls and roofs being cemented in place with expert skill and speed.

This would be Mana's first gingerbread house ever, and we were eager to outclass all the other gingerbread houses being put up around the living room. Easy as pie, we confidently believed, and immediate plans were laid to put our oh-so-rare purple icing into play.

Using the back of the box as a reference point, we determined that the entire roof would be covered in purple, with classy white borders touching up the look. Candy would then be placed in creative yet tasteful patterns, giving the house a commanding sense of style.

Initially, this plan appeared to go smoothly, until disaster struck. One of our carefully erected walls collapsed in. Panic-stricken, we attempted to restore the wall, only to learn that the icing we had used as cement was about as effective as trying to repair a broken bicycle with band-aids.

Inevitably, each wall and both halves of the roof lost their foundations, and cave-ins were frequent. The heavily coated purple roof was so slimy that it could not support the weight of even light candies, and at the end of the night, our house was a sloppy mess of purple and white goo dripping off of everything, and patterned candies sliding in whichever way gravity saw fit to pull them.

It was around this time that we noticed a set of instructions on the back of the box that we had neglected to read: let icing cement dry for at least 15 minutes before decorating, it warned.

Realizing our efforts at a classy gingerbread house were defeated, Mana, ever-cheerful, dubbed it a 'haunted' gingerbread house, giving us freedom to use its slimy, collapsing frame in whatever horrifying way we saw fit.

I'm not sure if our house was a creative disaster or accidental masterpiece, but either way, Mana's first gingerbread house will undoubtedly be one of our most memorable.

Brandon out.

Family: my parents and siblings

Kanji murakami: he likes baseball. He wakes up 4am every morning to the practice more than 40 years. He likes eating and traveling the world.
He is such a patient and kind dad that sometimes makes kids wonder how in the world my mom caught him! He has been faithfully working at a bullet train company for 45 years and will be retired soon :)













Yumiko Murakami: she is a funny lady.
She likes house interiors and furniture and gardening.
She loves collecting jewels and Swarovski crystals.
She is working at a real estate agent and preparing to open an office.
She is pretty brave and fight or argue with Chinese or any other creatures in Japanese.


















Kokoro Murakami (Yagihashi) : she loves making beads and pearl accessories.
She has two pretty babies and busy with house work.
She used to work as an accountant and finance is her favorite field.
Her husband is working in a cell-phone company and coming back late at night everyday.
Probably he is the only one who can catch up with all games and high-tech topics in my family.
You may not want to mess up with this karate black belt lady.
















Shipei Murakami: he is my favorite brother and now he has two children, too.
After coming back from his work, he gives bath to all his children and put them bed every night.
He met his wife when he was in his dentist apparentice and now she goes back to school to complete her graduate degree in nursing.
He likes working out, reading, and fishing.
















Shiho Murakami (Takuma) : she has been working as a registered nurse for 10 years.
She loves shopping and putting make up. Being pretty is one of her passions. She has a really nice husband and two super cute dogs. They just bought a house in Tokyo and enjoy her time with her husband. Her husband was a great base ball player once broadcasted national wide when he was in high school. He honorably completed his master degree in Physics.
P.S. she is also a black belt lady.
















Mana Murakami (Low): she is pretty unpredictable and stubborn
one in her family. She recently changed her life plan from a dirty small restaurant chef with her dad and suck all her parents property without any mortgages to an illegal immigrant, I mean a bride in Canada. She likes cooking, eating and Christmas. Now her hobby is her poor husband, Brandon. Her husband is the nicest man on the earth and so loving and caring gentle man who did not know what to say when her father asked him if he was taken in by her.





















Sohei Murakami; he likes karete and working out.
He also plays the flute for 7years.
He is obviously the tallest in my family
because of the price down of milk in Japan.
He likes to eat and sleep.

















Yuhei Murakami: he is the youngest in our family.
He likes music, games and clothes.
He also takes care of our nieces and nephew tenderly.
He plays the violin and trumpet.

Family: my oldest sister Kokoro

Introduce my family members:

Akira Yagihashi:




















Kokoro Yagihashi:















Ui Yagihashi:












Rin Yagihashi:

Dirt covered golden Buddha

Back in 1957 a group of monks from a monastery had to relocate a clay Buddha from their temple to a new
location. The monastery was to be relocated to make room for the development of a highway through Bangkok.
When the crane began to lift the giant idol, the weight of it was so tremendous that it began to crack. What’s
more, rain began to fall. The head monk, who was concerned about damage to the sacred Buddha, decided to
lower the statue back to the ground and cover it with a large canvas tarp to protect it from the rain.
Later that evening the head monk went to check on the Buddha. He shined his flashlight under the tarp to see
if the Buddha was staying dry. As the light reached the crack, he noticed a little gleam shining back and thought
it strange. As he took a closer at this gleam of light, he wondered if there might be something underneath the
clay. He went to fetch a chisel and hammer from the monastery and began to chip away at the clay. As he
knocked off shard of clay, the little gleam grew brighter and bigger. Many hours of labor went by before the
monk stood face-to-face with the extraordinary sold-gold Buddha.
Historians believe that several hundred years before the head monk’s discovery, the Burmese army was about
to invade Thailand (then called Siam). The Siamese monks, realizing that their country would soon be attacked,
covered their precious golden Buddha with an outer covering of clay in order to keep their treasure from being
looted by the Burmese. Unfortunately, it appears that the Burmese slaughtered all the Siamese monks, and the
well-kept secret of the golden Buddha remained intact until that fateful night in 1957.
As we flew home on Cathay Pacific Airlines I began to think to myself, “We are all like the clay Buddha covered
with a shell of harness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us in a ‘golden Buddha’, a ‘golden Christ’
or a ‘golden essence’, which is our real self. Somewhere along the way, between the ages of two and nine, we
begin to cover up our ‘golden essence’, our natural self. Much like the monk with the hammer and the chisel,
our task now is to discover our true essence once again.”
Jack Canfield

Life

"Life isn't about the number of breaths you take, it's the moments that take your breath away."

Author: Unknown

Mana!

I think everyone would wonder how their parents came up with the name at least once in a life time. When I was in my teen I went to the bible dictionary expecting to find something exciting. To my surprise or disappointment, the original meaning of Manna, "Man hu" was translated as "what is it?". That was what the people of Moses uttered when they saw Manna from the Heaven for the first time. I tried to come up with more positive implication, but "What is it?" was pretty tough to spice up.

My name also has a Chinese character means love and charity. So, when we read the scriptures we replace love to my name Mana.
The Mana of God means the love of God in our family. I hope this is not blasphemy, but I think it's kind of cool.

Later, I discovered other meanings of my name from St John chapter 6. Manna is the bread of life, the love of God, and that also means Savior, Himself.

" I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." (ST. John 6:51-53)

I really appreciate my parents name me after something so dear to my soul. I often ponder His love when I think about my name.

P.S. I heard a rumor that my parents already decided my name or Chinese character, but my cousin was born before me with the same name. (Chinese characters can be read in several ways, so it is possible to have multiple different names from the same characters) Then, they changed the phonetic pronunciation without changing the Chinese character. Well, my parents said they don't know or they cannot remember much if that is true when I asked about that.

*The first picture is our Temple trip to Edmonton Temple,
but we missed the session
because we shopped too much!

There is a kind of creepy cartoon called "Choroline" that made Brandon jumped up from his seat at the theater.

There is a lonely girl called Choroline and she wishes a warm and loving family instead of her busy and preoccupied parents with their jobs. By chance, she found a secret key to the other side of the world which looks exactly the same except that is controlled by night power.

There all her wishes come true and she is so happy being around her "night" parents of the other side. One day, they explain to her that she needs two buttons instead of her eyes in order to be a part of their "family".
The story goes on and she finally finds the importance of her real family not in the dark side.

I think there are many people do not mind putting "button eyes" instead of facing realities. We wish our realities would be somehow different and give themselves in to some fantasy in exchange of their real sense and true knowledge.

One of my favorite friends just sent me a message that now she knows the church is wrong according to the Anti-Mormon message and web sites. She honorably completed her mission and married in the temple, and she walked away from her husband when he left the church. She kept going and trying with her faith under so many trials, but now she feels "free like a little bird" because now she knows the church is wrong. Some other friends commented on her that what in the world that was when she testified of the truthfulness of the gospel so strongly and confidently at the Temple Square a few years ago.

"Several years ago a friend of mine had a young daughter die in a tragic accident. Hopes and dreams were shattered. My friend felt unbearable sorrow. He began to question what he had been taught and what he had taught as a missionary. The mother of my friend wrote me a letter and asked if I would give him a blessing. As I laid my hands upon his head, I felt to tell him something that I had not thought about in exactly the same way before. The impression that came to me was: Faith is not only a feeling; it is a decision. He would need to choose faith. My friend did not know everything, but he knew enough. He chose the road of faith and obedience. He got on his knees. His spiritual balance returned."

"You Know Enough" by Elder Neil L. Andersen

My husband ROCKS!

Sometimes he is a lawyer and sometimes he is a rock star.

I have a friend who tried everything she could do to be a Dr. She had a problem with her feet that caused her not being able to run and stand straight, but she achieved a half marathon last year. Her grade at the university is the same as mine which is not of course the best grade ever, but she kept turning in her applications to many med schools. A couple years later without any reply from those schools she was really frustrated; that's she did her marathon. She finally made one in Colorado this summer, so she sold herself to the army for her tuition.


People might say she is lucky or something, but that's wrong. Her strong will and consistent efforts opened the path. Her days are filled with some daily habits which everybody can do the same, and that made all the difference.

My dad is another example of those daily achievements, but his efforts do not see much fruit. He is kind of genius about that. But, well he raised an awesome daughter, so all his efforts might not be useless. (Do not tell this to my dad)
But I see how consistent and steady he is to achieve his goals. I think we can learn something in this life, but most importantly we can acquire consistent and steady learning habits which will carry us to the heights of God's intelligences most effectively since the time here on earth is too short to learn all things.
So, my dad is not a looser and we all can rock if we try :)

Of course we have privacy in our life...

Privacy and free agency are gifts and you realize how much you have taken it for granted once you are married; or in other words, when those are taken away.










But we realize after all, even our privacy and free agency are
moral victories of human mind. We can not only accept the facts, but also enjoy it by changing
inner world.

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom."

By Viktor Frankl

















That's how we can find joy in our life.

So, those who are curious...

So, this is our honey moon life...
We had a hard time to sleep together at the beginning of our marriage because of our hard mattress which we are not going to use any more and blanket fight (we needed to us all the blankets we have to boost up our poor mattress) . Brandon sneaked up ant took my picture around 4:30am.

リチャード G スコット長老

今日はブランドンと二人でリチャードGスコット長老のファイヤサイドにいってきました。　彼の証と話は霊感に満ちたもので、座っている一人一人の心奥深く訴えるものでした。
彼は”私の話す言葉は重要ではないので書き留めないでください。一番重要なのは聖霊があなたの心になにを訴えようとしているかです。”とおしゃっていました。
彼の話を通して聖霊の導きが非常に強調されていました。
また彼は、私たちが神に求めるときは自分の心の欲望のままにではなく、聖霊を通して主が一体私たちに何を望んでいるのかが大切であるといわれました。私たちはいつもおのおのの人生において何が必要なのか、何をなすべきなのかを求めるのならば個人の望みとその義とを主は受け入れ導いてくださります。
私たちがそのように正しい心と手をもって主の指導されておられるように求めるならば主は必ず成し遂げられように方法を備えてくださいます。それでなくては主はなんの導きも与えられないからです。
たとえ主の導きなのか、それとも自分の思いなのかわからなくても、義にかなった生活をしてる中で生じた望みや思いは思案してみる価値があります。
このストレスの多い社会にあって私たちは頭の中でやらなければならない事と心配してもしょうがないことをわけなければいけません。なにが一番ひつようなのか優先順位を見出すことにより、大切なことに集中することができます。

愛の最初のポスト

こんにちは！私の名前は愛です。

よろしくね。

Low Family Blog START!

Welcome to the Low Family Blog, The Low Down!

My lovely wife Mana and I (Brandon) hope to use this as a way to keep in touch with our close family and friends, and keep them updated on our busy - if slightly uninteresting - life.

Last week, we FINALLY got cable TV at Mana's insistence. And though it took nearly 3 hours for the Telus dude to set it up, we now have access to something like 10 million channels. Amazingly, none of which ever have anything interesting showing.



I am still happy to play Xbox 360 when I have the time, but Mana prefers TV.

Also, we are singing in Handle's Messiah, though we skipped practice this week.

Brandon is the most handsome and nicest husband ever!!! He is sooooo kawaii~~~!
I'm so happy that I can monopolize him forever. (by Mana)