Some fun snapshots from Labor Day weekend. We spent most of it painting the girls’ rooms, with multiple trips to Home Depot!
My college friend Jon was in town visiting, and Pat and Theo kindly hosted a playdate for all of our kids to get together and for us grownups to catch up!
Here is a funny conversation between Mio and Anna that Theo caught on video. So adorable!
Labor Day was the last day the pool was open, so we made sure to get one last dip in!
Labor Day weekend was a packed weekend for us. We got to see a lot of friends and did a lot of driving around! We drove to Maryland three times in five days. We got to meet up with some out-of-town friends from Ohio who were in Maryland to adopt their first baby (such an exciting time for them! Congratulations to Hiro and Kayo, and precious Hazel, who was just born on Monday), go to a drone meetup for Dan’s hobby group in Leesburg on Saturday, followed by a couple hours at Clemyjontri Park with Pat & Theo and their adorable girls, attend a birthday party for one of Mio’s friends (Happy birthday Maya!) on Sunday, and then on Labor Day we had lunch with Masanori and Komy who were visiting Virginia from New Jersey, and then enjoyed delicious BBQ in the evening at the Stein’s. Our whole family was pooped by the end of it all, but it was so nice to get to see a lot of our friends, many of which we don’t get to see too often as they live far away.
I didn’t get to take too many photos from the weekend, but here are some snapshots of Mio from this past week…
Dan leaves for a business trip this evening to Orlando, Florida, and won’t be back until Thursday evening. I’m a little nervous because this will be the longest I’ll have ever been alone with the Mio, but my mother-in-law will come take care of her on the days I’m at work as usual, and I’ll just have to fly solo with Mio in the evenings when I get off of work, despite my usual exhausted state on such workdays.
We made the best of this long holiday weekend before Dan leaves, though — here is Part I of our eventful Labor Day weekend!
On Saturday, we decided to take a day trip down to Santa Cruz, for Mio’s first time at the beach! We picked up some delicious gourmet sandwiches at The Junket to eat for lunch at the beach, and headed down in the early afternoon. We hit a lot of traffic on the way (to be expected, because of the long weekend) so it took a while to get to Santa Cruz, but we promptly set up spot on the beach as soon as we got there.
(Random coincidence: I realized afterwards that the romper Mio wore that day, which is a hand-me-down from my cousin Yuko’s daughters, is the exact same one that Sakura was wearing exactly a year ago when we visited their family on Labor Day weekend. Except that Mio is 5 months old here, and Sakura was 10 months old at the time. Oh, Mio… you are growing way too fast.)
Anyway, back to Santa Cruz: after about an hour, it started getting pretty cloudy. Not quite the perfect day at the beach that we had been anticipating. 🙁
So the trip to the beach started out nice, but it definitely could have been more enjoyable towards the end — hopefully next time, there’ll be more sun and warmer weather! We’re glad that we got to go to the beach before the summer’s over. Since the Bay Area typically experiences Indian summers, I have hope that we still have some warm weeks left before we enter the rainy season….
We also stopped by Buy Buy Baby in San Jose on our way back home, and picked up something we’ve been researching and eyeing for Mio for a while now. But we’ll save the big reveal for another day. 🙂
For Labor Day weekend, Dan and I flew to Gilbert, Arizona to spend a couple days with my cousin Yuko, her husband Devin, and their lovely family!
To be technical, Yuko is not exactly my cousin… she’s actually my grandfather’s uncle’s adopted son’s daughter, or something complicated like that (we always talk about it when we see each other, but we’re never quite sure), so we are not even related by blood! Â Still, she’s the closest in age to me out of all of my relatives in Japan, and we used to always play together when I’d visit Japan as a child, so we always called each other cousins and I feel so much closer to her than any of my real cousins (who are all significantly older than me by at least ten years). It’s funny because people always tell us that we look alike (we’re both pretty dark in complexion), even though we’re supposedly not blood relations! I agree that I look more like her than any of my actual cousins.
Three years older than me, Yuko has always been like the older sister I’ve always wanted. Whenever we’d visit Hiroshima, she would take me around to fun places, show me new things, and tell me such interesting stories. She was the one who taught me how to put on nail polish and shave my legs, and would give me some of the cutest clothes that she’d outgrown. We used to write to each other pretty regularly, even though we only got to see each other every few years.
Imagine my surprise when Yuko married her long-time boyfriend Devin (whom she’d met in Hiroshima) six years ago, and announced that she would be moving from Japan to Arizona! I was so excited to have her in the same country as me, and Dan and I visited her and Devin back in July of 2005, when we went on a road trip. We had a lot of fun with them, and it remains one of my fondest memories! Unfortunately, we didn’t get another chance to visit until this past weekend — I couldn’t believe that I’d let five years go by without seeing my favorite “cousin”! Since we last saw them, Devin and Yuko have had two adorable additions to their family, and I was psyched to finally get to meet their beautiful daughters!
Upon arriving in Phoenix, Yuko brought us to her house and served us a delicious homemade Japanese lunch! She then took us to the Arizona Museum for Youth in Mesa, which happened to have a “Jump to Japan!” exhibit going on. We were excited to find that they had Totoro there!
Afterwards, Yuko took us to Taliesin West in Scottsdale. Taliesin West was architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and school in the desert from 1937 until his death in 1959 at the age of 91. It had a very unique look to it!
In the evening, Beni’s friend was having a birthday party in Scottsdale, so we tagged along and cooled down by the pool.
The next day, Devin was able to join us for the whole day, and we went to the Phoenix Zoo in the morning, hoping to go in the cooler hours to avoid the heat.
After the zoo, Devin and Yuko treated us to some delicious local Arizona BBQ! In the evening, we went to Devin’s parents’ home and had a great time catching up with them and getting to know them better — we had met them when we visited five years ago, and they are really the most genuine and hospitable people. 🙂 We can’t wait to visit again!
It was delightful seeing Yuko and Devin again, and I loved meeting their little girls! Yuko had a lot of advice and wisdom to share, and I was really grateful for all the time we could spend together catching up and talking about all kinds of things, just like when we were kids. Hopefully we won’t let another five years pass before we see each other again! I miss her and her family already!
Last Saturday, we went on a chocolate factory tour at Charles Chocolates in Emeryville. My sister Miwa (who recently relocated to the area) is doing a research paper on cocoa and chocolate, so we went in the name of “research.” It’s confirmed for me that chocolates — not diamonds — are a girl’s best friend.
(For more chocolaty goodness, click over to my Flickr album.)