グリーンハウスターバンでの誕生日会

East 4th Street

12月には我が家族では多くの誕生日があります。兄貴ダンが12月2日、母が15日、ありさが19日、甥っ子が20日だ。ありさの父も12月です。この誕生日がお月にクリスマスがあります。今年はババラさん（母: +Barbara Hawkins ）とありさ( +Arisa Hawkins の誕生日を一緒にお祝いするということでダウンタウンクリーブランドに行って外食するという形にしました。

母の家に行ってピックアップして高速道路にのってクリーブランドのダウンダウンに行きました。日曜日の夜だったのでクリーブランドブラウンズの試合が何時間前に終わっていて試合を見に行ってた方々既にダウンタウンから離れていたので簡単に駐車が出来ました。

Happy New Year from the Neohawk.org Family

I tweeted and posted very short messages at midnight. However, those were scheduled as I really didn’t want to struggle to get them through to the network as the rest of the United States did as well. I wanted to take my time for a real New Year’s greeting.

Hopefully this post will fulfill that greeting.

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2011 was a year of transition for the Neohawk.org family. Overall a good year but what’s a good year without some stress to make sure the gray hairs arrive. Here’s the rundown.

Elly finished her freshman year at American University on the Dean’s List and now an “Honor’s Student”. She spent the summer at home working at Target but took off for AU as soon as she could. And this time she pretty much took everything with her, sort of a message to us that she ain’t coming back to Cleveland “to visit”. It’s bittersweet. I cannot help but be proud and excited for her. At the same time it’s sad to think that it’s over already and that she’s her own person now and not my little Elly.

One of the best things for us her parents was the fact that Elly has had the chance to take up dancing again. She is taking a Ballet class as part of her schedule but she also participated in two other performances as well. Arisa and I went to see the AU in Motion (Facebook page) in November. The show overall was tremendous. Given there was wide array of dancers from good to bad, from classical ballet to hip hop and Bollywood. The dancers clearly had worked hard on everything and the show was fun. To be honest though Elly stood out. That’s largely because her piece is designed that way (she was the Sugar Plum Fairy) but also because she was the by far the best ballet dancer.

ハイランドハイツホームデーでの資金繰り

昨日、ハイランドハイツのホームデーがありました。ホームデーというのは夏祭りみたいなことです。8月になるとそれぞれの町でホームデーが毎週末に行われます。我々の周辺では、各町のホームデーが重ねないように調整しているらしいです。メイフィルド学区はハイランド・ハイツ、メイフィルド・ハイツ、メイフィルドビレッジとゲーツミルズという町を含んでいることで、ハイラインド・ハイツのホームデーでメイフィルド高校男子サーかーチームが資金繰りの活動をしました。

Gardening

This year I'm trying my hand at setting up a vegetable garden. We are trying to start almost everything from seeds, but since we started late, I did breakdown and by some at a store.

We have radish, green beans, tomatoes, chingensai, bitaminsai, onions, green onions and sunflowers. All of these were grown from seeds. We also have store bought plants including corn, green peppers, japanese eggplants, watermelon, a grape vine, strawberries, and pumpkin. We have a big back yard so we tilled two areas for the garden. We were able to fence in one of the gardens, but the other one we just have to hope that the fact that the yard is fenced will keep the bad bunnies out. Unfortunately, I already know that this is a failure. In particular there is a really big ground hog which appears to live under the shed. I am transplanting some mint from the front garden, and may move some our plentiful chives. I'm hoping the chives and mint will help be a natural pesticide. Thinking of getting some marigolds as well, since I was unable to get any to grow from seeds.

I hope to update the photo album as the garden progresses. I'm hoping it'll be successful, even if we did start late. In particular, I'm interested in how the tomatoes do as I started them from seeds and was quite successful. We have about 26 of them. I hope I wasn't too late in starting them...