I'm not sure which is worse.... being sick for a week, or, after getting better, having to face the mountain of email and work that accumulated during that time. (And how is it that a month's worth of stuff can accumulate in just eight days???)

Here are some more photos from our trip to my folks' place in Ohio during the summer, following along after previous posts "Hosing Down a Dirty Boat", "Boat Ride for Anthony and Josh", and "Grace and Luke's Turn in the Boat". In this installment, Anthony and I went out in the boat with my sister, [...]

After a week with a most unpleasant cold, I finally felt better this weekend, just in time for the sports festival at Anthony's school. Now that he's in first grade participating with 500 kids from K1-6, it's a much bigger event than when he was in kindergarten, and the emphasis has switched from the mere enjoyment of participation to teamwork.

First on the agenda of the all-day affair was one of the few non-teamwork events, a 60-meter dash for the first graders....

There was also a first-grade obstacle course, involving things like riding a tricycle and scooting a short distance [...]

One bit of homework Anthony and his first-grade friends have every day is to write an entry in their 絵日記 (enikki -- Picture Diary), where they fill half of a page with writing about something from the day, with the other half getting a related picture. I assume its main purpose is for practice in writing Japanese, but it also gives them a chance to stop and think about their day, and good practice for expressing themselves in writing.

Today was the first day back after a long five-day weekend and he couldn't think of something to write, so Fumie [...]

Having just returned from a trip Stateside with Anthony, I'm reminded that I neglected to post these photos before leaving. Before the trip, I had posted about Curious George's new passport; these are from the same photo session in early July, where I took the photo for Anthony's new Japanese passport. (We'd renewed his American passport last year.)

Anthony was hamming it up, as you can see, but we eventually got one for his passport. Even in the one directly above, he's still smiling too much for a Japanese passport, so we had to tone it down.

Until you actually [...]

Last year I apparently neglected to get a picture of Anthony in front of the tree he planted when he was one year old, or if I did, I neglected to post it. This year, almost six years after planting, I was thankfully reminded by kind readers (not only once, but twice) not to miss the chance.

And then we were done, and he drove away to play...

Bags are packed... heading back home to Kyoto first thing in the morning, after having spent a month here in Ohio. Door-to-door will take 22 hours.