Life is CRAZY! Last week Kaiya had her first day of, dare I say it, school! Well, it is a Japanese pre (pre,pre) school for children beginning at 18 months of age. So, really, I held her back a bit by waiting until now (she is almost 23 months - which is almost 2 years old). The program is called Daichi, and she will be going approximately once each week, from 8:30am until 11:30am. You can also choose to have them stay until 2:30pm, which means that they have lunch (provided by the school, but you bring your own rice) and naptime there. I'm thinking I'll probably have Kaiya stay through lunch once in a while, because maybe she will try some new foods that way. Recently she has started eating rice, but only brown rice. Healthier, yes. Easy to find in restaurants here, no.
Easter was fun but busy here. Our friend, George, sent us a Happy Easter e-mail the other day and was reminiscing on where he has spent the last few Easters - suffice it to say that he hasn't spent one in the US in quite some time. This got me thinking about where we've been these last few years. Since we've been married: 2004- Hawaii (we rode on our motorcycle across the island to SeaLife Park and ran out of gas on our way home); 2005- California; 2006- California (I don't remember these ones very well at the moment, I'm sure we spent 2006 in Monterey, but not too sure about 2005... I wonder if Hyatt remembers more clearly than me? I feel like we may have gone to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in 2005, actually, because I remember thinking that going to an aquarium/sealife park place each year would be a good tradition. The tradition has not lasted.); 2007- Okinawa (we did the Easter brunch at the O-club in Kadena with Mike McCarthy and I was very pregnant and ate a lot. I think we were actually eating for 2 hours.) 2008- Misawa, Japan and Hawaii (we actually traveled on Easter Sunday and so spent the day both places); 2009- Misawa, Japan. This year we started off with the morning church service, as always, then went to the church potluck, followed by a big Easter lunch at the Cross' house. There was much food, fellowship, and fun! I think one of the highlights of this Easter, however, was the fact that this was the first year that I got to dress our daughters in matching Easter dresses!!! My sister and I used to have matching outfits most Christmas's and Easters - different colours, but same outfit. So, this year, thanks to Old Navy, Kaiya and Evera were sporting little butterfly sundresses. I did my best to capture the moment on film (do you still call it "film" when it's a digital camera?), but we were having a very difficult time keeping Kaiya stationary for photos. After looking through all of them, I discovered that she was not looking at the camera in even one of the photos. Wow. That's skill. Also on the Easter weekend, we went for a walk at the Komaki onsen park and I got a few cute, very Japanese (in that the onsen was in the background) photos of Evera asleep in her carseat.
I will leave you to view the photos that tell this same tale... and I apologize for Kaiya's hair her first day of school. We got it fixed once we got home, but there just wasn't enough time to do it before going out:) At least Hyatt and I got to witness it laying flat after her bath, there just isn't any photo proof...
