Mr. Pancake!

Flipped over the pancake to find a smiling face, complete with banana eyes, heart shaped nose and big smile! Do you see it?
After the pic, Russell decided that three pancakes were too much, so he took him off the top. The next day, the bananas turned brown and it looked like Mr. Pancake was wearing sunglasses! haha!

Suzume no Gakko!

Oh yes, I am so behind in postings, that I am still in summer! A large part of our summer went to Suzume no Gakko! Cody, or Koji, as he was called in Japanese school, said he loved it because it was short! (As in, they got out at 12:00, instead of 2:40 like his regular school!). Geez!

Here he is with his teacher, Yang Sensei.

Morning Taiso exercises! I LOVED watching this! I have been trying to download the video of this, but it doesn't work. Every morning before class started, the entire school would go out and do taiso exercises! They are looking up at the instructors who are demonstrating each exercise to the most charming Japanese songs ever!

His "Me Doll" project. Cody called it his Build a Bear project.

Here are some of the other class projects. Those are rice plants in the 2 liter bottles! The theme for his grade was rice. They learned about how it grows, what products are made out of it, and they even cooked different dishes with it! They did a lot of other fun activities like watching a karate demo, the Taiko drummers, visiting different places in Japantown, as well as learning some Japanese words & songs!
At Open House, each grade had a performance. Cody's class sang a song about a horse. He was one of the lucky ones that got to be a horse (running back and forth with a horse head stick.)!

Standing at his seat in his classroom. Behind him is the "rice board" that has items the students brought in that were made from rice. The scroll hanging above is a tree picture made from colored rice. All the kids' projects were so cute!!!

Lil' Devil

Most people do bath time mohawks, but in our tub, this seems more fitting...

Memorial Day Weekend

I panicked a bit when I saw all this snow driving to Lake Tahoe on Memorial Day weekend. I wondered if I had packed enough warm clothing. The night before had a big storm that dumped a bunch of snow on the mountains. It was beautiful!

And Cody was thrilled! He had never touched real snow before! We pulled over into one of those snow play areas near the highway.

Tanner couldn't believe how cold the snow was when he touched it! And yes, we were too cheap to buy snow boots! The galoshes worked fine for a quick romp in the snow!

As we dropped down toward the lake, there wasn't as much snow. Whew!

Russell's sister Lani booked us some really charming cabins in Zephyr Cove.

Grandpa relaxing by the fire.

Kind of neat to be playing on the beach with snow on the mountains!

The boys and grandma going for a paddle boat ride! Tanner wanted to come back as soon as they got out on the water!

Thanks for a great trip, Lani and Bob!!!

Cody's Birthday, Part 2

Since we didn't have a party for Cody, the Party in a Box (Michelle, RJ and Reiko) didn't have a chance to give him his birthday present. In normal circumstances, people would just drop the present by the house. Not Michelle! She had a full blown dinner party for him! As a bonus, Mika and Lesly stopped by after dinner! Cody was very excited (and sweaty) about the whole thing!

Cody is 6!!!

Cody turned 6 on May 5th! We didn't have a big party (again!), but
Grandma Chen came all the way up from L.A. by train to celebrate with him! It took her 10 hours!

He celebrated with his class as well!
They all sang to him and made a book of birthday wishes for him!

And his teacher, Mrs. Cittadino, lets the parents bring in a cake!

Old Home

From Disneyland, we passed through our old home base, El Segundo. Actually, first we stopped in Culver City to get Tito's Tacos! Our favorite tacos, chips and salsa!

Driving back toward our old apartment, along Vista Del Mar...

Those "Cat in the Hat" smokestacks (the Scattergood Steam Plant) to the left are where we would turn left to go to our old apartment on Loma Vista street.

We stopped and ate the tacos at the park where we used to take the boys. It's been renovated since, and they didn't recognize it.

On our way back out, we passed Tanner's Coffee Shop! I barely snapped the pic as we passed by it!