The Alumni Meet Minus Taki

Three of the 4 Sugiyama boys swam in the Alumni meet 2009. The next chance for a Sugiyama relay will be 2012 as Toshi will be on his mission for the next 2. I think that Tim's facial expression signifies his feelins about Taki's absence. Let's hope we can pull off a Sugiyama relay in 2012 or one of the girls (or dad) is going to have to don a swimsuit!





Here are some clips of the Sugiyama relay. I think I got everyone except the honorary Sugiyama: Tyler Weatherwax. Tosh was still a little tired from his 6 minute 500 freestyle. Yeah Tosh!!!

OK, OK, Just one more try???

Somehow I couldn't get the site to post more than one video so I hope I have her line here.

A Second chance

I got to go back to see Annette's musical one more time and I got some better clips. One is of one of her 2 lines ( I missed the first) and the other is of her singing and dancing in her cute hat and coat... Love it.

Good Week

It all started last week sunday when I had another lesson for sunday school. I didn't want it to be another bad lesson so I prepared but when I got to class I decided to go a completely different way and I don't think I even got through half of the lesson but I did a great job. Then I had my band concert and that went really well. Two days later me and Conklin (my roommate) went and taught a first discussion to somebody. Besides forgetting the names of the people I was teaching everything went well. They only had good things to say about me because they were members but I had never seen them before. It was a great experience and now I can't wait for my mission. And if people don't know, I should be getting my mission call by hopefully the 18th or 19th. I can't wait. I ended with another great lesson on building up zion. I taught the same way as I did last sunday and I feel like that was the best lesson that i had taught. I ended the night by making Poucki (sorry I don't remember how to spell it.) I did pretty well, I didn't get the sauce exactly right and my rice was a tiny bit dry but it wasn't bad for my first try. I thought I did really well on the meat. It just fell of the bone. I may not have gotten the sauce right but the people I made it for didn't know any better so they all liked it. All in all this was a great week. Hope everyone's doing well and I'll be home in 4 days. It's been a fast first semester.

Preston Turns Thirty

The big Entry!!!! To Preston's left were 15 or more people yelling 'surprise'. Annette planned the party and made some yummy treats.











His Ice cream pumpkin cake was ablaze with candles and Nets had decorated the table with photos of Preston in years past.




I brought Preston Corn chex because he likes them and one of their Kalamazoo friends made him a ceramic bowl to eat them out of.

Annette had a poster "30 reasons why we love Preston". There were some nice and some humorous comments. He looked very happy when he opened up the Wii.

Annette's musical

I tried to take a couple of clips of Annette's musical but I ended up with only one being clear and it is LAME!!!! but here it is.

The turning of the Turkey

Annette had the idea of cooking the turkey face down so that it wouldn't dry out. This worked well, but since the pop up timer is on the top, we needed to turn it over. I tried a couple of times and then ended up putting on winter gloves with latex gloves on top of them and then turning it over by hand. Alas.... we ran out of memory card before the actual turning took place.

Unexpectedly Somewhat Awesome Thanksgiving

Just as work and school ended, and as we happily looked toward our Thanksgiving break, Connie came down with a nasty flu bug. I was wondering about H1N1, but Dr. Connie ruled out that differential after reading about its symptoms on Web.md. It's her new favorite website whenever someone gets sick. Unfortunately she acquired a monster cough the day before Thanksgiving. That night we hit up Walmart's pharmacy pulling every cold/cough/flu drug known to man. Despite being pumped with dextromethorphan, we had to cancel our invite for Thanksgiving dinner. Connie was quite upset thinking as though she ruined Thanksgiving for the both of us. Little did she know, the best/fastest Thanksgiving dinner was just around the corner. We started the morning off with our 2nd annual turkey pancakes breakfast. As you can see the first few came out looking more like elephants, but after a handful I started to find my turkey groove. Since all we had planned to bring to our dinner was corn and olives, we had a little shopping to do. We decided to treat ourselves to food that we normally wouldn't buy, so we each picked out our own dessert, and these sweet Bertoli frozen entrees. As you can see prep time was a breeze, and our lovely dinner turned out fantastic. Both of our dinners tasted absolutely delicious, and the apple pie and fruit torte for dessert was simply divine.

Of course it's not a Thanksgiving break without an early morning Black Friday extravaganza. When we woke up at 3:15, Connie wanted to stay in bed. After a little convincing about keeping with tradition and hitting all the sales, we were out the door. Four hours later we were pulling back into our apt. complex with everything checked off our list. So all in all, an awesome Thanksgiving that unfortunately Connie wasn't able to fully enjoy.

Quantity - Definitely Not Quality

So Halloween came and went with little effort on our part. Connie's work again had their Halloween costume contest between floors. Connie's floor dressed up as Snow White and the "Twelve Dwarfs." Connie was Bashful, and with the help of my polo shirt, semi pulled it off. Needless to say, their floor didn't win.


Next came the Ward Halloween Party. Connie really didn't want to dress up, but I insisted. We googled "last minute Halloween costumes" and I came up with mine. Any guesses? (See below for answer). Connie went as a "One striped Zebra." Yeah, both were pretty lame, and nobody knew what we were.

Finally, there was the dental party with a bunch of the LDS couples in my class. Again I took an idea from the website and tweaked it just a bit. This one is a little more obvious, and everyone knew right away what we were. Of course it's always more fun dressing up together.

I'm not quite sure why we didn't carve pumpkins last year, but we did this year. All we had were steak knives, so the attempt at any detail was quite challenging. Con's definitely came out much better. We kept them on our patio and lit them up each night. Just the other day we noticed them wilting, and decided to launch them into the woods from our 3rd floor balcony. Connie made me go first. She then chucked hers out, and hit every tree branch possible making a whole fuss of noise. We jumped back inside giggling our little heads off.


Answers: 1. Refrigerator Magnet. 2. Chick Magnet

Lazy Pants!

So being the insane-o busy bee that I am I actually do not have time to copy and paste posts from our blog to this one (I know I know, SUPER lazy). But there are some new posts on our blog that I think you all might enjoy and one includes a video (which you can't just copy and paste...yes I'm trying to rationalize my laziness now...) so check it out if you're wondering what's up with us!

Quilting with Bee

Annette and Preston came up for the weekend and we jumped into the task of finishing their t-shirt quilt. It was no small task considering we had just sewn a few of the squares together before that day. When it became apparent that we weren't going to get it done before their departure.. and Annette was starting her musical the next week... we unleashed our secret weapon!!!

In the form of Dr. Shumway... the most speedy stitcher of all. Give the man a curved needle and vice grips and watch that needle fly!!! He sewed us all under the table... The quilt was done in just a couple of hours. Amazing.

First time

Hey what's up, I finally got on to blog it up. Just wanted to say hi. WHAT!!!

Too Legit to Quit

So, if you go to my facebook page, you can click on the video of the skit we did and the dance. It's kind of crappy quality and make sure to turn your speakers down cause its hecka loud. But basically we had the church in the 90's and so we did the family proclamation, 100 temples, and 1o million member mark. So we did a Mormon commercial-you know with the "family, isn't it about time" and then a spoof on the mastercard commercials with the "priceless" deal and the last is just funny. I'm the first Japanese girl to walk past. Then you can't hear it, but right before we start the dance, it says, Missionary work continues to go forth and were never gonna quit. And then we do a dance to too legit to quit. It was tight!!!

HOLY NIGHTMARE!!

I just realized that our first "tech run-through" is on SATURDAY NOVEMBER 21st!!!!! And if you don't know what that day is then you are shunned from the family.
Unshun if you're willing to text me FREQUENT updates!

Happy Birthday Dad and late Birthday Mom

Here are just two pictures of our awesome parents. Now, no picture can top the asian fruit fly gameshow picture, but here are two pearls. Feel free to post memories, funny or sentimental about our parents. I will get this rolling. I caught my self yesterday saying, "My bag" and missed hearing dad's crazy sayings. I also told dad that I missed when he had the open faced phone and we would get random butt calls from dad. I also miss seeing dad in his chair, "watching tv", head back and mouth wide open.
Mom, I have a choice picture of you throwing blueberries, but can't find it. First, I miss bread and homemade jam. I also miss when you would laugh so hard that you would run out of the room cause you were gonna pee ya pants.
Well, lets let the good times roll and remember these two crazy old fogies!

New Roommate

Meet our two gallon kimchi jug, yes folks, that's ten pound of fun that you're looking at. Its the smelly new roommate that everyone wishes for. Actually I am used to the smell, except yesterday my roommate cooked with it and I almost vomited (mostly cause I thought how could you cook my new best friend.) Well, the smell was unlike anything I have smelled before and I have been to some pretty smelly places. Even though it is only 5o degrees outside, this smell called for instant window opening and evacuation from the apartment for an hour.
Another funny side note of my Chinese roommate is her lack of sharing. I can get that she wont share food, plates, knives, pans or basically anything. But I laughed so hard as I watched her walk to the bathroom with her toilet paper in hand. I don't share a bathroom with her, so this is why I never noticed her "camping style" toilet paper practices. It was a riot and I thought "Oh, we will never be a happy little family." Hopefully coming soon will be a foto of my other roommate in her footie pajamas. It's priceless. Just another funny day in my hood-be jealous!

Ninja warfare

Dad and I have had a large infestation of fruit flies in the kitchen. Last night I came up with a fun game for family night to get rid of them. At every commercial we donned our robes and head bands and fought fruit flies. Dad took the challenge seriously and nearly knocked me down as he sprang to his feet at each commercial. The really funny thing about this photo is that I had never used the delay and wasn't sure if it would work. Then, to complicate matters, we actually saw a fly while we were waiting for the camera to take the picture and both of us wanted to get it. As can be expected, Dad won 10 to 7 but I put up a good fight. Remember when we had a FHE swatting those little black flies from our wheat in the basement on Breckenridge?

Rollin out the Red Carpet

So, this was my first activity in the Stake YW's and it rocked! Well, let me include a bit of the drama before the event started. So, we were decorating right smack during the Michigan/Notre Dame game and so I first left to "run an errand" with about 7 minutes left before halftime. Then after receiving several texts about the craziness of the game, I left on my second "errand" with 8 minutes left in the game. And Wow what a finish on that game. Well, I returned to the set up and they hadn't done much and so I was thinking that all my errands were about to get me fired from my calling, but it all came together in the end.
There was a red carpet for them to walk in on and most of them were really struttin their stuff. Then, we had dancing and skits. The skits were super fun and most had some crazy dancing which often included the leaders-always entertaining! There was a backdrop for group fotos as seen below with me and the whole stake YM/YW crew and then stake
YW presidency. They made me sit on this stool-not flattering, but I am the newest and youngest member so I had no choice. My favorite part of the evening was when the President told all the leaders to watch the doors and then announced that the last two songs would be slow songs and all the guys had to ask a girl. Well, sheer panic ensued for most of the boys-they are not like the boys in Tonga. And I was sent to hit up the non-compliant boys. So, I went to a large group of young men in the middle of the dance floor who were dancing together and asked, "Oku mou fakaleti", which is are you guys gay? This sparked some to go find girls and I walked the straggelers over to girls to get them dancing. Anyway, the night was super fun and I am loving my new calling.

The Little Piano Player

Kylie learned to play "I feel my Savior's Love on the piano in 2 short lessons. Here she is playing the first part. She did a terrific job with her talk for the Sacrament Meeting Presentation and even added a little bit on her own. Her whole family came to watch her.

Tallest - Fastest - Awesomest

We faced our fears and took the plunge by heading northward to New Jersey, home of the Tallest - Fastest roller coaster "IN THE WORLD!!!" Connie was absolutely appalled by the $12 worth of toll roads just to get there. We arrived Friday night and made the mistake of starting w/ probably the most intense ride there, "Nitro." Connie almost threw in the towel at that point.


We went on a few smaller rides while we regained our equilibrium. We took a pleasant ride on the Skywalk across the park starring down our next Goliath: KINGDA KA. To sum it up in two words, "Freakin Fast." It blasts off from 0-128 mph in just over 3 seconds down a runway, shooting you over 40 stories into the air, only to come flying back down. The winds are so fierce you can barely keep your eyes open, which may be a good thing since it's quite common to smack into oncoming bugs.

To finish off the night we rode a couple more coasters, maybe just one too many. We ended at the newest of the 12 roller coasters, BIZARRO. It turned out to be a super cool ride full of mist, fire, and loop-d-loops. But it was the loops that got the last laugh as I galloped down the exit chanting, "Bizarro, Bizarro, Bizarro," I noticed my pockets felt a bit lighter. My heart sunk as I told Connie I lost my phone. She thought I was joking, like I usually do, but soon realized this was no laughing matter. Our search was to no avail, and we drove up to our hotel defeated.

Determined to not let it get the best of us, we set out for an exciting Saturday. We started off with an awesome drive through safari. My favorite part was when the ostrich came up to Connie's window. As I told her to get the camera, Connie started screaming as the Ostrich pecked at the window. I wish I had it on video cause it was absolutely hilarious. One of Connie's favorites was the baby monkey we saw in the arms of its mother (if you look closely you can see his little head).

SHOCKER!!

Well folks...after 4 years of watching movies on Preston's 12 inch laptop we finally took a small step forward and ganked one of the 4 tv's from my parents house (since there's only 2 of them now). I got creative and tried to make my own antenna type thingy, which basically didn't work at all (I did get some sound on one channel:).
Then I bought a cable cord thingy and hooked the tv up to the wall thing and success! it worked! This was all inspired by the start of football season and I finally got it up and running in time for the season opening Michigan game (which rocked). Well...apparently Preston wasn't satisfied with the boxy, 18 inch sitting on the floor...which lead to the purchasing of this bad boy. I think Preston's face says it all :) Go big or go home folks.

A Flash From the Past

Regretably, I decided to treat myself to a "free" museum in York before leaving for home. By then, I was soooooo tired of driving! It was interesting to see pictures of the first settlers and to read about the history of the area. I saw a couple of old 'treddle' sewing machines that reminded me of the one my Grandma Mathews had in her attic. I used to go up and sew with it at times. You pushed the treddle back and forth with your feet and it made the needle go up and down. I paid for that time later when I got home at 1am after my flapping and dragging fiasco, but I still am glad I took a little time to do something interesting. I also learned at one rest area that it was Horace Greeley who inspired Josiah Bushnell Grinnell to "go west, young man". Grinnell went on to establish Grinnell, Iowa. It appears that Greeley, a prominent New York Journalist (who actually took the quote from someone else) , never did go west.

Highway Hazards and Heavenly Helpers

On the trip out, I think we picked up almost every bug between GR and Rexburg. At one time the bumper was solid bugs and you could barely see the paint.

Before leaving for this trip I prayed for safety ... for guardian angels if needed and even the 3 Nephites if times got really tough. What I got was Harold and Ren. Just before York, Nebraska where I stayed for the night, a big truck tread was turned sideways in the middle of the road. In the dark I didn't see it until it was too late so I straddled it rather than hitting it. I felt it hit the bottom of the car but all seemed well. The next day I drove all day and heard flapping at times but I thought it was the wind. I stopped at La Salle at about 7pm to get gas and discovered that the plastic under part had broken loose and had just started dragging. Still 5 hours from home, I didn't know what to do... so of course I called Tim. He asked if anyone was around and I said 'just 2 old guys and they are ignoring me'. He told me to get under the car and when I did, they finally came over. Lucky for me I had my 72 hour kit. Ren was the brains of the operation and barked orders... He put rope through the holes of the torn plastic and pulled them up so that they wouldn't drag. He put a hole through the last piece with a jack knife and tied it up also. When they were through, I tried to thank them and he said "just do something nice for someone else some time". They were pretty impressed that everything they asked for, I had in my 72 hour kit. I made it home with no problem.

The New Freshman!!!

Here we go with the car packed and bike bouncing on the back.

Smile for the camera to get your I-Card!

These are the roommates: Austin, Tosh, Michael, Daniel, Austin, and Garrett. Garret (blue shirt) is Toshi's roommate. He seems like a really nice kid.

The Great Quilt Project

At the beginning of the summer I just had a couple of goals... clear out stuff and have a garage sale, make t-shirt quilts for Tad and Tosh for college and try to have a family reunion. I thought the quilts would be a breeze, but I can think of other words to describe that project now. I now know just about everything that can go wrong with making a t-shirt quilt. In spite of the problems, they both turned out fairly well. This is Toshi's.

Loony bin

So, my apartment has some characters as many of you have heard. In order for you to stay with me, you will have to know the nicknames-Chinese girl, snowmen dishes, and UVU girl. The basics are that Chinese girl doesn't speak much english and UVU girl is a singer in a band and likes to lay in her bed with her boyfriend. But the real stories will come from Snowmen dishes girl who has these dishes marked with a lable maker that says "Miss Marie's snowmen dishes don't use" and she is 36 years old and works at the UVU kindergarden. The latest is that she had to move the knives out of the kitchen cause she was too scared to have them there and that's why she only has colored plastic Winnie the Poo silverware. Only me and my crazy life. But I have a great room all to myself and it was finally "dedicated" when I put up this lovely gift from Annette.
Also, for those of you who have jobs or lives or don't have to sit in 4hour workshops and haven't been able to keep up on the most important upcoming event, the start of the Michigan football season, I will fill you in. This week we play Western at 3:30 eastern time on ESPN2. It will be interesting to see the three quarterbacks-Sheridan, Forcier, and Robinson. Maybe we should start the prayers now that one of them will be able to complete a pass!! Whatever happens, keep the faith for the Maize and Blue!

Rockin' Camp Mia Shalom

So, for those of you who didn't know, I was assistant stake camp director. I was in charge of many things, including the 5 mile hike and this is a lovely picture of our group before we started the hike. They all look pretty excited and ready. I should have gotten an after shot but it may have been too scary. The right is a picture from the top ridge. It was so gorgeous but I think that most girls missed that fact since they were so tired.
So, later, I went to go visit my ward and imagine my surprise when I see a freezer at their campsite. I looked at it and asked Lupe, "what is that?" She looked at me like duh and said,"its a freezer." I had to take a picture. Other than that, I was the gopher or as Annette and I call it, the muskrat for the week. I built all the fires, cooked food, settled disputes in wards and just ran and got stuff for the leader. It was really fun though. The girls came up with crazy role call chants for morning and evening devotionals and they rocked. There were cheers, chants, stomps and much more. Here was the stake chant which we did variations of since we only made up one. You can't see me cause I'm on the end, but there were big booms with my booty. The camp also had really
fun games that taught you communication and team building. Like the trust fall n my favorite which is the A pictured on the left.

Sugi Reunion!

4 days of nothing but Sugiyamas was a recipe for TOTAL AWESOMENESS! Everybody flew in on Wednesday night and after Lori and Tad missed their flight we ended up with a late night on our hands. We picked up Taki and Connie, hit up a wendy's for some grub, and then headed back to the airport to pick up Lor and Tad. The drive home was extra BUMPY in the back seat of the minivan which apparently needs some new shocks! barf. Thursday morning we got to work making the T-shirts which was an enormous project! The iron ons were super finicky and it was kind of a total nightmare to make 26 of them front and back, but with some team work we got them done and they look quite good. The rest of the day was spent playing games and going through people's stuff that has been stored in boxes around the house. I LOVE getting rid of stuff, even if it's not my own!
Taki found a bunch of stuff that he's been saving since he was little in hopes that it would be worth something. He found an old Hot Wheels car that he remembers getting at a birthday party and all the other kids opened it and played (like normal children) but taki kept his in the package in hopes that someday it would be worth money. Apparently he's done this with a lot of things because he had a whole box of stuff that he had to look up on ebay to see if he could sell. We even found Taki's old Michael Jordan lifesize cardboard thingy which apparently had been pooped on by various rodents. yuck.
Taki and Connie made some DELICIOUSLY HUGE and TASTY burgers. All of the cousins, aunts, and uncles came over for a great meal and it was awesome to see everyone again. We busted out some family videos and played a few games of Corn Hole. It was a really fun night. Bud didn't make it until 9:30, but he showed up for some good laughs. (yeah, we have big mouths :)
Friday morning we drove out to Sparta for some blueberry picking! We got a tip off from the Richmonds for a GREAT place to pick and we were not disappointed. The berries were huge, juicy, and sweet. There were tons of them and it was great pickin.
Everyone kept claiming the biggest berry award and of course Taki claimed that all the biggest and sweetest berries were his. Some people obeyed picking etiquette and took their time making sure ALL the good berries were picked, but others raced ahead to get the biggest and best.
We were all startled to hear an extremely loud air cannon go off at random intervals. Even with warnings from those that were trying to track it's timeline we all still screamed (some of us louder than others). There was some berry throwing and a LOT of berry eating. After just an hour of picking we went to weigh in our booty (but not before the owner came out to check our bushes and apparently we didn't do so well because she picked 3 big handfulls off one branch that we supposedly had done...oops).
We were embarrassed, but we left with almost 25 lbs. of delicious berries.
After a brutal hour of working the fields we headed home to soak up some rays by the pool. Toshi even joined us for his first time ever laying out just to lay out! He did great :)

Taki and Con had some fun in the pool with a little shark attack (very little because Con ran out of breath)and some slide action. Mom even joined us by the pool, while dad vacuumed up his loose rocks! What a nut.
After we got a little pink we went in and started working on the Japanese food! It was NEW YEARS in august! All the rest of the family joined us and it was a big ol' party with matching shirts and all!
The food was AMAZING as always and we all enjoyed some HILARIOUS old videos of our family "nerf wars" from years past.
We enjoyed a LOT of laughs. Afterwards we hit up some games in the front lawn but the fun ended when the mosquitos came out! Then we all sat around the table and enjoyed some family stories.
Saturday was CRAZY AWESOME! We started it out right with a brunch at CRACKER BARREL! A day started with their french toast can only be a great day. We followed it up with some POISON COOKIE!!
It was completely exhausting, but ridiculously fun, as always. Once we were all hot and sweaty we headed out for some BUCKET BRIGADE (or holy bucket) whatever you call it, it's awesome!
We filled 2 tubs with water, and had 2 buckets with holes in the bottom of them which we filled, put over our heads, and ran over to the 2 empty buckets that we needed to fill.
It was nice and refreshing for those of us that did it correctly! We followed it up with a water balloon toss that was easily won by the team with the smallest balloon (Lor and Tad).
And finished it off with some good ol' TUG OF WAR.
We headed back home to meet up with Bud and Jane for some fun at the lake. One of the super nice neighbors let us borrow her kayaks, canoe, and row boat. The ladies chose to take a ride in the stable row boat, while the boys went out in the other boats to race.
Bud and Tak had some trouble and decided to hand off their valuables to us, but things went better once they got the canoe turned around the right way :) Tosh ended up on the wobbly kayak which he lost control of during one of the boy races and into the lake he went, glasses and all! It was pretty hilarious. Kylie arrived and basically showed us all how kayaking is done.
A rousing game of badMINTon followed and although Lori claims it's a Japanese sport, apparently none of us inherited that ability :) Although apparently it's not a white person game either!
We arrived home in time for some DELICIOUS grilled steaks and an assortment of salads and sides. The steaks were great, but a little hard to cut around the bone so Taki did what he had to to get ALL the meat off. Classic.
Also classic.

Sunday we found that Connie's careful placement of a mouse trap was a success! But no one wanted to get rid of the poor little guy. We all had a chance to go to church together, which was great. Taki and Connie had to leave after sunday school and since our class went over we didn't get a chance to say goodbye...lame. After church we played some games, although people were so tired it was hard to get into it. BUT Preston stayed alert long enough to BEAT LORI AT SCRABBLE. It was basically a momentous occasion. Afterwards most people took a nap while I got some kabobs started.
Tim came over to grill them and it was delicious. Suddenly it was 9:00 and we realized that we had our crap spread out all over the house so we got packing. I tried to stall for Tad to get home so we could say goodbye, but he never showed, so we had to go to him and I got a quick hug on the street.
It was SO MUCH FUN to see everyone, including the extended family for a few days. I LOVE MY FAMILY and we had a TON OF FUN. Yeah for reunions!