Keeping up with the Tanakas

Visit to the doctor for runny noses. Dental check up. Swimming lesson. Decorating Easter eggs. To the pool again to make up a missed class. National holiday, pouring rain, Sam gets cabin fever, so we head to a shopping center with a good play area for the kids. Mina has a little cooking class at Sam's daycare center (they made crepes), mom has coffee and two hours to herself. Easter Sunday egg hunt. Overnight stay at an onsen with Toshi's parents. Walk on the beach, Mina splashing in the wake, soaking herself then changing into Daddy's sweater, looking cute as a button. Sam and Mina each have an ice cream cone, Toshi and I figure we will eat the remainder after the kids are done, but those days are gone, both Mina and Sam finished their cones. Soaking in the hot spring baths. Fabulous teppan steak dinner. Ocean view hotel room. Back to the dentist's chair. A day of cooking and crafts at the daycare center for the kids. I taught a lesson, then had lunch with Mina's friend's mom - I have known this woman for two years and just discovered she speaks English. HELLO?!?!?!?! The first cherry blossoms picnic with the sakura shyly just beginning to show themselves off. Swimming lesson, test day, Mina advances to a yellow cap! Downtown to pick up Mina's new Japanese passport. Toshi takes advantage of escaping from the office and we have lunch at the red brick warehouses, huge hamburgers from a Hawaiian chain, eating on the patio in front of a temporary flower garden set up for the spring. A trip to a park with seven of Mina's classmates, playing, playing, playing hard then eating a picnic lunch under the cherry trees now in their full glory. Bi-weekly trip to the library, checking on our local trees that line the river and grace the park. Subway ride to retrieve Mina's pink Webkinz horse from the lost and found office. Sunday picnic under the trees with another family, it is cold and threatening to rain, but the blossoms won't stick around so we stick it out. Final visit to the dentist . . . until June anyway. A train trip five stations down the line to see what was on offer at the import shop. Into Tokyo to the embassy to apply for Mina's US passport, while there I unexpectedly ran into an online friend from the Married in Japan group. Lunch with Todd, whom the kids adore - bad food, great company. A visit to Nogeyama zoo with a friend from school and another picnic under the trees (no, you can't get enough of the trees once they bloom). A play date at a friend's house where the kids all played together in English until we moms brought it up and then they switched to Japanese. The promised trip to the aquarium. The annual evening cherry blossom viewing party with my Friday night English conversation group. Ending with the grand finale trek to Yokosuka base for the "Spring Fair," pizza for lunch, the chance to purchase a few snack items (like double stuf oreos and chips ahoy cookies) and the showers of cherry blossom petals being blown from the trees by the spring winds.