I am so behind posting on my blog. I have been making lots of layouts and adding finishing touches to kits. We are so excited because this week we are opening the SumScrapper store and have an introductory sale going on now. We will have our official Grand Opening on April 24th. I will be writing more about it here. I realize that I have a blog schedule and will keep to it as much as possible but there will be times I get behind or can’t keep up. I may be designing behind the scenes, making pages, spending precious time with family and doing the things I do. But I realized that it IS ok. So I will try and keep to the schedule and at least write something and share pages regularly even if I fall away from the scheduled topics a bit. Through the course of the weeks you will get the topics and I will have regular weekly freebies. They just might not all fall on Tuesday.

My last entry was my Easter page, and I thought these roses again speak of New Life and remind me that new life is through Christ and what beauty God surrounds us with. I think I will pick a verse about new life or life for this week and get a page done for it. That is on my To Do list.

I do also want to be putting more of my gallery pages here. I am having such fun creating layouts and look forward to sharing more stories through my pages.

This page is made using my Periwinkle Rose Companion Pack coming for Grand Opening along with my Periwinkle Rose kit and a template from Hummies World.

credits: Hummie’s World Subscriber Template #10                                                                                  Periwinkle Rose Companion Pack

I just wanted to put a word in for my friends who follow me on this blog. It means so much to me that you check in regularly whether it is to see what freebie I have for the week or to read one of my stories and see my pages.

I have so many stories and pages I want to do about my experiences growing up in a foreign country and about Japan the country where I have spent most of my life. I love doing pages and writing stories about them and so I hope to have more and more entries of a variety of sorts.

I am running behind these few days though and I apologize for that. As I get my pages done I will  back date them for the date they should have been in so be sure and scroll down to see the latest entries. I wouldn’t want you to miss something if you are interested. Today is actually Wednesday morning the 8th of April. I date all of my entries and have my computer time set to coincide with Dallas, Texas time in order to keep up with family and scrapbooking schedules in America.

I am new at this blogging concept but finding I enjoy it very much.  I try and title my entries into groups so that you can also go to the right and click on one of the sections under categories and read all the entries I have that relate to that subject or title.

I hope you will enjoy reading the things I have to share. I do also always try and include a digital scrapbook page to go along with each entry except on Sun. when I post the scripture for the week. As I make the time and get pages ready I hope to have multiples of stories for people to follow so you will want to scroll through my blog. It is my goal that at least 5 or 6 days there will be something new and that some days will have more than one entry as I try and get some stories told I want to share about being a grandparent and missionary.

I have been very busy as we are trying to get SumScrapper up and running and getting kits ready for sale there. We are almost ready to announce our grand opening and it is getting very exciting.

Presently I am taking care of my sweet little granddaughter many of you have met through my scrapbooking galleries or here on this thread. My son and daughter-in-law are very sick with a viral flu and so I have had Ameri here since the end of last week taking care of her. She has also come down with the flu and so I have been taking care of her, trying to keep fluids down her and monitoring her fever. Fortunately she has had a mild case because she had gotten two parts of a three part flu shot prior to coming down sick. Yesterday was the first day for her to go without a fever so I am hopeful we have passed the critical point. It is just so hard when little ones, who do not understand, do not feel well.

I am hoping to catch up today and get my late entries posted. Again, thank you for stopping by to follow my blog and thank you for your patience these past few days when you have seen no new entries.

Not all of the entries that I will post in this Window on the World category will be things about Japan. There are so many interesting stories out there around the world, some I have experienced and many I have only heard about. In these beginning entries though I want to share about my second country where I have spent most of my life and which I am most familiar with. These will often be stories to peak your interest as well as  stories to learn from.

Today,  however I am sharing an early layout I made when I started making digital scrapbook pages. It is a page about my own first impressions and first memories of America and so it is also an “About Me” page.  No kit was used in making this page, just Photoshop Elements 4 which is where I started. I was learning how to use  brush type to decorate a page. The large Japanese character you see on this page is the one for love and some of you may recognize it because it is often in jewelry either from Japan or China since both countries share some of the same written characters. Imprinted on the background paper is the Scripture: John 3:16 “for God so loved the world…”.  My story for you today will be the journaling I wrote on this page and is a window into the world of a missionary kid. The photo on this page is my family minus my brother who was probably in the nursery. We were on furlough in the States at Glorieta, New Mexico and sharing about Japan, hence the attire! As you will learn from the journaling, I am the one bent over intrigued by something other than the photo taking!

Journaling:  First Impressions

Sharing Japan with my new friends in America was such fun. Though I was more interested in playing with the New Year’s game than posing for this picture! I went to Japan when I was four and my memory life began there. This trip,when I was in the fourth grade back to America was like going there for the first time for me. Everything was new and strange and EVERYONE spoke English! What a shock! There were so many strange and wonderful experiences on that trip. I had gotten to spend my first quarter in Hawaii where I learned that there were many flavors of icecream in America. I had met more relatives than I could count and learned that Texas really is flat; flat as a pancake! I learned my father really is a Texan when we crossed the border from New Mexico in to Texas and he had to stop and walk on Texas soil. I had also ridden my first airplane as we had gone to Japan the first time by boat. My two most vivid memories though, were that everyone spoke English and people kept asking me to speak some Chinese even though they only speak Japanese in Japan. What a trip!

Choosing A New Car To Buy

When you buy a used car in Japan there are many used car lots with the actual car you will purchase on the lot. Buying a new car is a different story altogether.

Because land is so scarce, especially in the cities, a dealership will often have only 5 to 7 vehicles on their lot. These are usually housed inside of buildings nestled between high rise office structures. When you want to see a specific car and test drive it you make an appointment and go and try it out. it won’t always be the color you are hoping to buy and may even be an employees car. Often these test cars are shared between several different dealers and make their rounds throughout the city or prefecture.

All decisions are made without ever seeing the actual car you will purchase. Even the color must be chosen from either the manual or the toy car samples they have at each dealership. When you visit a dealership they always offer you tea, coffee or juice and there is a pretty young girl to serve it. Some things never really change in Japan and drinking tea and chatting is all part of any business transaction so you need to be prepared to spend a lot of time talking about…well… anything.

If you are buying a Toyota there is a wonderful museum in Tokyo where they have almost every car they make for you to view. You can also see the very color your car will be though not necessarily in the same make and model. Of course this museum is indoors. They do also have road cars you can make an appointment to test drive. One really nice thing about this museum is that there are no sales people to try and sell you the car and you can climb in and inspect all of the cars to your own pleasure. They also have a fun track to ride drive a mini car around along with many similators of different situations including race car driving. I was very interested by the many game and interactive activities they had for you to test your eye and hand coordinationa as well as your reflex reactions.

After having tagged along with my daughter when she purchased her new car in the US last year, you can imagine my surprise to learn that in Japan it takes at least one month for your car to be delivered once a purchase is made and the papers all signed.

They don’t have cars stock piled waiting for someone to claim them but instead when you place an order it goes to the very factory where the car is then assembled and readied for delivery!

I have made two pages today showing our trip to the Tokyo Toyota Museum with Ameri who was very interested in everything and had a grand time helping her Grandma pick out a car. You can see where her interests were too. I used my Parrot Jungle kit to make these two pages. This kit is made from a painting of my Cousin’s Parrot that my mother did. The parrot in one of the above pages was taken fromher painting and the papers and elements have been made using her design as a base.

credits:  Painted Parrot by Audie Bennett                                                                                                                                                                  Parrot Jungle kit by Rhonda Wright (coming soon to the SumScrapper store)

This week they called to tell me that my car has a Vin #. I can now use this # to get a parking permit, which is necessary in order to purchase a car in Japan.

I am getting excited and my car is becoming more of a reality to me. This is the first time I have bought a New car and been able to pick out the color, the options and even the navigation system! Wow! My RUSH is a RHONDA car for sure!

I will be sharing more about my experience buying this new car in future entries here on my Blog so tune in to hear more about it! There are some interesting tidbits about buying a car in Japan.

credits:

Kit: By The Pond and By the Pond Extras- Rhonda’s TreasureBox

Photo: from the Toyota Manual