Walking stage 1: King of the coffee table

 

Since my last post, Beau has started pulling himself up on the coffee table, bed, chairs, and tv stand. He likes to try to grab anything and everything that is on them. He also likes to take the stroller for a walk occasionally. He is really brave and even tries to move from one object to another while standing. Sometimes it is a success and sometimes he learns a hard lesson about gravity.
His personality is coming out more and more everyday and he is a ton of fun.

Plumb Blossoms

 Today we decided to go to the Plumb blossom park with Lena and Chris! Follow the plumb blossom road!!

 The first thing you see when you get to the entrance is a bamboo forest, not plumb blossoms. Deceiving indeed.

   There were a lot of stairs, and when I say a lot, that is an understatement! Stage 1.

 Stage 2. I lost track after stage 2... haha, Dane took a picture of me "going down", I opted out of posting it! ;)

 Once we got to the top of the first hill we saw the trees, it was beautiful. Well worth the huffing and puffing!

There are lots of little pathways.

 Lena, Chris and Gabe directly above! To the right, just kinda shows you a little perspective of where we came from and how it just keeps going up! ;)

 We finally made it all the way to the top!

There are a few different kinds of plumb blossoms, but these are the type we saw the most.

 The top left is the highest point of the park. Top right is a view from the top!

 Here is a picture of the George Washington, it is a little hard to see.

 The top of the park, people are out having picnics and enjoying the 70 degree weather and warm breeze.

 Beau is trying to eat the bamboo, he thinks he is a panda.

 Time to go home!

 On our way home we walked through a tunnel, it was really loud.
The day was wonderful and beautiful. It is practically summer here and time for us to get some summer clothes!

Sea Paradise

 Wow I can't believe it has been 2 months since we have been in Japan! The time seems to be flying by. Today we decided to go to Sea Paradise which ended up being really fun. On our way there we passed by a shrine, we decided we aren't really interested in giving them much attention, we aren't into demon worship. They really do feel like dark places even walking by them, these are just on the sides of the road. On the upside of the walk, it was 70 outside and not a cloud in the sky! It is time for summer clothes in Japan! ;)

 

 Left is the monorail we are transferring to. Directly above this you can see the monorail out of the water heading towards sea paradise. Really cool!

 Dad and Beau on the Monorail. (The guy in the background just has a bunch of boxes of Kleenex. The Japanese are really into their tissues!)

 Mom with Ice cream! Yum! There was a stand when you get off the train, and since it was so warm outside I couldn't resist! I ordered the special, not nearly as good as American Ice cream, it was still good. Nothing is as good as Gelato.

We made it! You have to cross a bridge to get to the island and this is the scene off one of the sides of the bridge. There is also a very nice looking beach that we would like to come back and visit.

 We saw a lot of really neat animals while we were here. This is a Whale shark, there were two of them swimming around and looked really big. I told Dane if I saw one of those while I was scuba diving, I might have an accident! ;)




This is a large aquarium with sharks, sting rays, schools of fish and lots of other cool things.

  The biggest crabs I have ever seen! They are spider crabs and they are huge! Those front legs are probably 3 or 4 feet long! They are just so bizarre. The pictures were very hard to get, there was no flash allowed in the aquariums and the lighting was really poor for pictures. So there are a lot of things I didn't post, like polar bears, walrus's, seals, penguins, beluga whales, dolphins, sea otters, jelly fish, lots of Japanese fish, squids, etc...

 I was so scared!

 We thought this was super cool! T
his is a gerbil tunnel for people under water! The escalator actually goes up through the aquarium in this big tube.

 

While we were sitting on this bench taking some family pics, an older Japanese woman came up and held Beau. She couldn't get enough of him. She stood up and had Beau wave Bye Bye to us as if she was going to take him home with her... haha I don't think so! ;) People stopped us to wave at him and he smiled and laughed which just brought on the crowds.  Lots of people try to talk to us about him in Japanese but we just nod our heads and say, English...  People here are very friendly.

 

 We got to see a really cool water show! They had this seal do lots of super fun tricks, and a walrus came out and did some sit ups and danced and pretended to pose in a sexy flippers on hips action! ;) They used the tank with the two whale sharks in it. They had dolphins come out and jump and swim on their tails, they did flips and all sorts of cool stuff! They also had Beluga whales come out and the trainers rode on them and they would squeal and snort, they spit water and jumped. All a super experience, I stopped taking pictures because I couldn't look away!

After the water show we went to a part of the park called the furreal lagoon. We got to pet sea cucumbers, sand sharks, an octopus, this seal that looked like a bear, and a beluga whale! The whale was so soft, not at all what I expected it to feel like! All in all, it was a ton of fun! Really glad we went.

 The park is lit up at night with lots of lights and is fun to walk through. There are quite a few theme park rides here as well, which we opted out of.

Crawling Stage 4: The wobbly sailor

 He's almost got it! To add to the excitement, we caught the first time he ever sat up by himself on tape! Now he is a pro sitter!

Beau sure does think dad is silly!