J Man is Six Months Old

The J Man turned six months old this week! Seriously, please stop time. I cannot say enough about how precious this sweet boy is to our family. He is so easy and we love him so much. We started on solids this week and he has not taken a liking to them yet. The big kids think it is hilarious when he makes funny faces. The J Man is starting to laugh a lot and interact with the big kids which is fun for everyone. The K Man is always trying to make him laugh. It is rather cute. Miss M likes to take care of him and pick him up when he is crying which can give mama a slight heart attack! He is sleeping through the night and an overall healthy happy baby. We have had lots of people say he looks like me but most everyone says he looks like papa, which I guess means he is a good mix of the two of us. I took him to the doctor today and he is 7.025 kg (15.5 pounds) and 67.4 centimeters in length (26.5 inches). He is our smallest baby compared to the K Man and Miss M when they were this age. He can enjoy tummy time and hold his head up for awhile, but he is not yet sitting up on his own. He can also roll over and has figured out how to do that while he is sleeping. Sometimes I find him on his tummy asleep and other times he cries because he cannot get back over in his tiny pack and play. He is such a joy and we went through a lot in the beginning to get him here, but I can say it was all worth it. J Man, we love you to the moon and back!

Summer Vacation 2015, Shimoda Beach, Izu

We took a four nights and five days to escape the city for a bit and play at the beach in Shimoda. We have been to Shimoda now several years, always staying in a little beach hotel across from the beach. However, with three small kids we have outgrown the hotel room and thought a beach house would be more fun for the kids and easier to have meals and such. We found a nice place on air bnb and rented the car and headed down to the beach. We did not have the best weather and got rained on a bit, but it was so nice to be away from the daily grind and routine in Tokyo. Our pastor and his family joined us for two nights and we enjoyed sweet fellowship with them. Then we had two nights just as a family of five, and the parents found themselves falling asleep on the couch by 9:30 both nights. Three children under the age of 6 will do that to you! The drive there and back was beautiful as you spent half of the time driving on the coast. It reminded us of the Japanese version of Highway 1. We enjoyed great food, with lots of BBQ and then pasta and pizza from the hotel we stayed at in years past. For the most part, the trip was uneventful except for J Man not really liking his car seat. As you can see from the pictures we had a great time. We did leave Little Anpanman, the K Man's favorite animal. We bought him a new one but he does not care for it as much as his other one. This make mama more sad than it does him. We searched everywhere for it before we left and simply could not find it. Maybe the owner will find it eventually and let us know. Oh well. Such is life. Enjoy the photos of our summer vacation, 2015. The beach, fellowship, good food, sand sledding...yes, there is such a thing and we found it...it does not get much better than this for vacation.

Tokyo Bay Hanami 2015

This year we got to experience Tokyo Bay fireworks in style from our friends' apartment who have a gorgeous view of the Tokyo Bay. It was such a fun night of fellowship with other believers, delicious taco rice, and of course fabulous fireworks. My favorite ones are the smiley face options and the white ones that look like Willow Trees. Leave it to Japan to make cartoon characters into fireworks. How they do that I will never know! I am so glad we got to see them up close and personal because this is the last year for them. Most of the Olympic game sites for 2020 are being constructed near the Bay area of Tokyo, which may be part of the reason of why they stopped them.

Tokyo Trick Art Museum

On Saturday we took the kids to lunch at our favorite bakery and then to the Tokyo trick art museum. We joked that we were the ones that got tricked because we went through the museum pretty quickly. However, the kids had loads of fun trying to take funny pictures with the three D images. Afterwards we let the kids play at a nearby play area. We paid for the K man to go inside but he spent a majority of the time outside pretending to drive a bus. Thankfully he did not realize that it was an arcade game and could do more for twenty seconds if we paid 100 yen. He just wanted to sit inside the pretend bus and drive us around. He has been asking us every day since then if we could go back to the art museum so that he can drive the bus. It was a fun way to spend Saturday afternoon. If you are ever near a Trick Art museum I highly recommend trying it for a few laughs.