During last month's trip to Amami Ooshima (a southern-Japan island in the East China Sea), the big attraction for Anthony at our hotel was a swing. Out behind the gift shop was a spooky-style tree with three swings hanging from it, and a bunch of netting above to allow kids to climb its expansive branches in safety.

His favorite by far was the orange buoy, which he sat on while I pushed or swung him around.

Of course, focus and composition were also a challenge, doing everything with one hand while pushing him with the other, all the while having [...]

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Anthony's US passport is about to expire, so we need to renew it at the US Consulate in Osaka. Hopefully the trip goes better than last time I had to go there.

We've got all the paperwork ready, but for a while had trouble finding his birth certificate. Eventually, I had to make contingency plans and check to see how to get a copy (from the State of California), and was shocked to find that it takes, on average, three months to get one!

However, that's nothing compared to how long it takes to get a simple copy of a [...]

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Despite having a cold during our vacation last week to Amami (a southern Japanese island in the East China Sea), I somehow found the energy to take a few pictures. 🙂

I'm busy now with other things lately (have you done your taxes yet?) so I haven't had time to go through our photos from the trip, so here are a few from the beginning, of Anthony playing on the beach in front of the hotel.

There was a bright overcast with only the occasional bit of sun peaking through, so there wasn't much color in the water.

Our hotel [...]

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Anthony and I visited Zak and his 3-and-a-half-year-old son Gen for a day of play, including a trip to the same park in Otsu City that Anthony and Monet played in last week (that I mentioned on my Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches post).

The two boys spent most of the time playing in the water.

At this point they started to walk away on the path (a path that leads down to a busy street), so I yelled down for them to come back. Three-year-old Gen, being the three-year-old that he is, turned heel and started running away, so [...]

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