Anthony again attended the birthday part of a family friend, Katie Patterson. Last year was bowling. This year was rock climbing.

Katie was turning six, and not intimidated by The Wall at all...

Anthony, on the other hand, was not so unintimidated, and it took a while for him to want to try it.

He quickly decided he didn't like it, and descended.

Most of the other kids were eager to climb...

Anthony eventually decided to try again...

In a previous life I used to do a lot of rock climbing, but I gave it up when I got married [...]

Our summer visit to The States is running down, and we've been so busy with family stuff and summer homework that it's hard to squeeze out time to process my photos and to write a post.

Last week, Anthony played at a community pool with a friend, 10-year-old Michael, and his next-door neighbor, 9-year-old Kenny....

I thought this photo reminded me of the three-year-old Anthony "Hunk" photo, but now that I compare directly, it's not quite there, but I'll put the photo and link here anyway.

Continuing along from yesterday's post about kanji-study apps and the previous day's app review by a toddler, this post is just some cute (to me) pictures of the kids playing Air Hockey on the iPad.

We try not to let the kids do too much with computer games, but it was the day Josh and Jena were returning home, so wanted to indulge them a bit. They knew air hockey from previous real-life experiences, such as this from last week...

... and this from a year ago...

I think I'm going to have to get into iPad app development... I just can't find the flashcard-type app I know should exist: to help Japanese kids study kanji ("Chinese characters").

There are about 2,000 kanji that an educated Japanese uses on a daily basis, and Japanese kids start learning in first grade. The Japanese Ministry of Education sets out exactly which characters are learned in each of the first six years of grade school (currently 80 characters in first grade, 160 in second grade, and so on).

By the time kids start learning kanji in the middle of first [...]
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Following on yesterday's Squirt Gun Water Fight, today Anthony and Josh had some water play on their own. They were out there for hours, but I stepped out just a bit to take pictures.

The picture above is from a game they played, where one sat in the car with his back to the faucet, and the other filled up and threw water at the first at unpredictable times. The one getting splashed would then yell "Hey, I felt something!". Repeat ad infinitum, switching places occasionally....

After "going vertical", Anthony tries to catch the water he just launched up. He [...]