Liam turned 11 this week....
(Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes)
Over winter vacation we went skiing and Liam has talked about wanting to go again ever since that trip. We received a letter from the Takanezawa community center about a ski trip with the town. Kate and I discussed it and decided it would be a pretty cool birthday present for him and as a bonus the trip was scheduled on his birthday. Liam talked about it the entire week before. Finally the day arrived and Liam and I loaded onto a bus from the Takanezawa community center at 5:45 heading toward the Nikko mountains.
The ski resort was very nice and had some more gradual hills to practice on before trying a little more difficult hills. There was also some instruction available to help teach him better skiing technique. The weather was perfect and it snowed on and off through the day with very little wind.
There were a number of different runs available including a snowboard park. Through the day Liam and I talked about some of the jumps and there was one run with 3 more reasonable jumps on it. I told Liam I should try that run and he got excited so I figured I should follow through and try it. I handled the first two fairly well but the 3rd was very steep and caught me a little off guard. I at least landed skis down but bailed at the bottom. We both got a pretty good laugh out of it.
While we were gone Kate and Colleen hung out through the day and Colleen made the birthday cake for Liam.
When we got home Liam was shocked because the Shionome sans came over to surprise him and blasted him with confetti.
Colleen did a great job on the cake. It was basically gone by the time everyone left.
Everyone but Kate as she took the picture.
For Liam's birthday the Shionome sans gave him a number of gifts they made themselves. One was a hanko they carved from stone with his name in Kanji on it that he can use to stamp his artwork. It was all very impressive and he has already used it to stamp a number of his handmade art. They even gave Colleen two with her name that they carved out of erasures, one in Hiragana and one in Kanji.
Last week the book "Where the Wild Things Are" released in Japan. I guess there is a movie out and that has elevated the interest in the book. While at the bookstore there was a huge cut out that you could put your face in both children wanted to do it and so here is Colleen's in the cut out.
To close out the post, while Liam and I were on a bike ride this weekend we passed a kiwi vending machine. This is the first kiwi vending I have seen so I had to take a picture of it. There truly is a wide variety of things available from vending machines in Japan.
Have a good week..
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