A certain kind of trees around here (cottonwoods, I think) have seeds that float lazily in big white puffy puffs. When I was a kid, we called these "Santa Clauses", and if you caught one, you made a wish then sent it back on its way. I taught this to Anthony.

They're fairly common, so whenever I was out with Anthony and he tried for one, I tried to photographic the sequence. This gave me much-needed practice with quick-response manual focus, and after a bunch of tries, an okay result with what should be in focus almost in focus....

They're [...]

After we had washed out the boat and I had taken a boat ride with Josh and Anthony, it was time for Mike and his family to go out....

Anthony, having been allowed to steer the little tractor if I'm on it with him, wanted to spend every waking moment doing so. So, I had him drive me around the lake while Mike was out there, so I could jump off and take pictures from various angles.

Here's a picture my sister took just about the time I was taking the photo that leads this post...

Sometimes I shot from [...]

After cleaning the boat, we could finally go out for a ride...

Anthony wanted to row, but I didn't want to let him do that while three-year-old Josh was in the boat, so we saved that for another time...

As part of the Summer of Cousins at my folks' place earlier this month, we pulled out the old rowboat we've had for 40+ years, but not used for perhaps 10....

Continued here...

Winding down to the last week of visiting my folks in Ohio, I'm starting to think about the long flight back to Kyoto.

On the way over, we flew out of Osaka via Tokyo and Chicago. Flying into Tokyo's Narita International is likely a surprise to anyone who hasn't done it before... Tokyo is the world's most populous urban area, so one might envision skyscrapers and concrete, but flying into Tokyo is all about rice fields.

The approach into Narita doesn't exhibit the concrete jungle of Tokyo because it's about a thousand miles outside of Tokyo (well, 35 miles).