My blog's list of posts for this month gives a hint as to just how busy this month has been, with Anthony's birthday, a server hardware upgrade, two new Lightroom plugins (proximity search and, earlier today, geoencoding), a bunch of kindergarten events including the “Sports Day” Festival that I haven't finished writing about, or yesterday's train and boating event whose pictures I haven't even looked at completely.

It's been a particularly busy month.

Today was no exception. Anthony's preschool/kindergarten holds an after-school party each month for the kids with a birthday that month, and today was October's. Wednesday is normally a half day that lets out before noon, so today, the October birthday kids stayed for a lunch event orchestrated by their mommies. All the teachers come as well, so an event for seven kids turns into a big production for 25 people. All planned and put on by the mommies.

This year, I showed up and took pictures. And ate. 🙂

Having spend much of the evening writing up the previous post on my new geoencoding plugin for Adobe Lightroom, I haven't even looked at all the pictures from today's party, but I wanted to post a few...

I love how Japanese culture does not shy away from cuteness. Things like Hello Kitty are overly commercialized to the point of garnering detest, but especially at a kindergarten, cuteness is wonderful.

After more than two hours of food-and-crafts preparation by the mommies, it started. Each of the birthday kids got a crown and a medal...

After lunch, it was time for birthday cake. The mommies had prepared three cakes, one for each class of the preschool (with kids turning 4, 5, and 6)...

After that, it was time for fun and games. The mommies had prepared several events for the kids, including bowling. In the shot below, Anthony is moments away from a spare...

In the background, the kids are “fishing” with magnets for various origami sea creatures.

Later, Anthony went back for another round of bowling, and being silly, I set up for the photographic opportunities in front of the pins. He, in turn, took on a superhero “I will smash you” persona...

The frames that followed were all out of focus and blurred, so I have no clear evidence to present, but it's safe to say that I was.... er... removed from the lane. 🙂

After a while, the final event was for them the draw something on a square of plastic that would be heat-shrunk into a medallion for them.

Anthony drew a fighter jet plane, flying at night.

Here's a closeup crop...

You can clearly(?) see a fighter plane, with pilot, an American flag (one of the red smudges), flames coming from the rear, a crescent moon, all over the backdrop of the dark of night...

It's been a busy month, but with reasons like this, it's a good thing.