Feels Like Spring

Looks like Spring is in full bloom 'round these parts.

Folks, we hit 70 degrees this weekend.

We spent quite a bit of time outside. Tom got sick last week and spent a couple of days at home trying to rest. Well, Brendan is loud. He's loud when he's mad, glad, sad, and sleepy. He's loud in general, so with him around it's impossible to rest. He and I went on lots of walks so Daddy could rest in peace.

 One thing's for sure:  We've gotten our money's worth out of the red wagon.

We walked to the French bakery.

This picture is terrible because I get nervous about taking pictures in front of people, especially in a foreign country. I hope they don't think it's rude, but I can't ask them since I don't speak Japanese. But you get the idea.

And we walked to the grocery store.

This store is called San-A and it's where I buy most of our produce. The produce at the commissary is terrible, in addition to being terribly expensive. Every once in a while I'll get something decent there but for the most part, our fruits and vegetables come from here.

And I love this Chinese restaurant.

Notice that "Chineserestaurant" is one word. There are lots of mistakes like that here. My favorite so far has been, "If you have any guestions, please ask." Anyway, they serve gyoza (pot stickers) here and it is so good. If you see it on a menu, order it. This is one of my favorite places to eat because it's good and it's cheap. They also serve ramen here (we had bean sprout ramen) and it's so much better than that crap in the packet.

We came home and did some drawing.

And Brendan ate some chalk.

Last week at his one year check-up the doctor told me he wasn't passing a couple sections of the developmental questionnaire. Well, he wasn't passing because some of the questions were things I had never shown him. One example:  Does he scribble? Well, he eats everything that you give him so I don't give him crayons. But we tried it with the chalk and yes, he can scribble.

Tom had a dinner to go to Saturday night. We didn't have a sitter so I stayed home.

He was feeling better Sunday so we headed to Round 1. Round 1 is an indoor sports complex unlike anything we have ever seen. They have pretty much any sport you can think of. We played ping pong, golf, and bowling. Be forewarned - the lighting inside was TERRIBLE, and I couldn't figure out how to get these pictures to not be blurry, but you'll get the point. You pay for 90 minutes or 3 hours and then almost everything is included.

We rode a mechanical bull.

And I got thrown off.

Twice. It wasn't hard to stay on until that sucker started spinning around.

Tom did some boxing.

They have a big playground for kids.

See that orange thing behind him? You fill it up with balls and it sucks them into a basket up top. Once the basket gets full, it dumps them down.

Fastest slide I've ever gone down.

We sang karaoke.

Well, mostly Tom did.

Party of one in the party room.

I couldn't get Tom out of the karaoke room, and I couldn't get Brendan off this trike.

I was exhausted from pushing him around on it. He likes to go fast. And he likes it when you make sound effects.

They have these awesome massage chairs next to the kid's section. When Brendan's about three I'm going to take him in, turn him loose, and relax in one of those chairs. It was amazing.

After we left Round 1 we needed some lunch. It was so beautiful out that we needed to eat outside.

This was our view while we ate.

Monday morning we watched the Super Bowl. It was nice to not have to stay up late to see it. Afterwards, we went for another long walk. At first Daddy was going to go for a bike ride and then he decided he would rather walk with us.

This is along the "main" street where we live.

This boy is always excited to see his daddy.

We ate at this pizza place a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me that night. We were the only people in there at first. Tom went to the bathroom and when he came out the three young Japanese girls who were working there had Brendan behind the counter making a huge fuss out of him. They had to take pictures of each other with him. It was hilarious.

We finished our walk along the sea wall.

And we stopped to see what we could see in the tide pools.

See that bright blue fish? We can't wait to get in the water. We hear it's like swimming in an aquarium.

I found more sea glass, and Brendan found some treasures.

Hope you had a great long weekend. Enjoy the short week!