Catch Up

 t's been awhile, so I'm just going to ramble a little bit on recent happenings.
We ate at the Four Season's Restaurant where they make the food in front of you.

 My shrimp was amazing, but poor Steve. He ordered the fish filet and literally got an entire fish, bones and all. Gross! He didn't eat it. He needs to learn how to fillet out all the bones!

 Ew!!

I organized my yarn and crafts by purchasing a huge bookshelf, and putting cheap shelves in the upstairs armoire. It's working well, but I do share the space with the kids playroom, so I still have to do all my packaging/computer stuff downstairs. One day I'll have a whole room!

Noah's getting little curls in the back! It's not too hard with this humid weather. Can't wait to see what they look like in the summer.

Our super awesome neighbors noticed they weren't picking up our trash, so they came over, APOLOGIZED, gave us these amazing little cakes, hauled our bags of trash into their yard so they could be picked up with theirs on trash day! Talk about some good neighbors!

 Then, as were were walking in from bringing Avery home from school they asked if they could take Avery to the zoo for an hour with their grandson (almost two year old who the kids play with a lot).  I said...SURE! Avery had so much fun. I'm so proud of her. Remember, they don't speak much English. Next time Noah and I will go, but he had just fallen asleep, so we stayed back. She came home with cream puffs. Here she is holding the bag.

 Here's Noah chowing down.

Noah and I hitting up our favorite donut shop:

 Avery's ear warmer I made for her that she never wears...HA!

 We find ourselves at Makeman (the Home Depot type store), and they have these awesome flavored ices there:

 I tried planting pretty flowers by our window and they died (I cannot keep plants alive):

The kids helping...they planted plants to put on the outside sink....those aren't looking so hot either!

Went to the beach on a chilly, blustery day, which it has been far too often. It will be warm (70's) about 2 times a week. I miss my California weather!!!!

 Eating sand....

I

Sports Complex

Today we went to (surprise, surprise!!) another park! (We did some shopping beforehand at - what I consider - a Japanese IKEA, but I'm bad about taking pictures in stores). Steve had seen this complex off the road before and wanted to check it out. Again, another free outing that is less than 20 minutes from us!
We almost didn't go because when we pulled up it sort of just looked like a few big buildings for sporting events (hence the name Sports Complex). Then we saw a map. Wow!! This place was ENORMOUS. It had playgrounds, two running track stadiums, a slanted bike track, walking/biking paths, and observatory look-out, gardens, river with boat rentals, basketball and tennis courts, and just about any other kind of rental you could think of. We didn't even look in the buildings, so I'm sure there was much more.

We saw this sign as we were walking. haha We haven't seen any snakes or other creepy critters since we've been here...knock on wood!!

The crazy insane slanted bike loop. I didn't capture this well enough, but the slant was HUGE...I don't know how they didn't fall. We couldn't believe how fast the guys were going. The slant allows them to maintain their speed while riding in a loop. I think this was Steve's favorite part. He's never seen one before, but knew they existed.

Pretty gardens:

The map...lots to do here.

 Walking paths...

 The pathway to the Observatory:

Some pretty views from up high:

Avery and I laid down to take a rest while waiting for Noah and Steve to climb down.=)

 We heard lots of kid's voices at the bottom of the stairs....

 A Playground!! And a very cool one at that

 Noah loved the train:

 

 Avery loved it all. Very neat things to do. Like this bouncy thing (see the swings in the background...every playground has very differently shaped swings)

More steep slides:

And all kinds of climby things:

This was the one thing she couldn't do. I don't think I could maneuver around these swinging balls either. The Japanese do a really good job at making parks suitable for the older kids as well as younger. Older kids would definitely not get bored at their parks.

We continued along and found another playground:

This one had a huge ZIP-LINE!

 Avery going down it with Steve:

Then trying to do it herself:

Noah's still a little too young:

Here's a view of the whole zip-line. We'd never seen one that big.

  

 Noah smiling at all the bikes he saw.=)

 Watching the ducks and fish as we were heading out:

*Next time I'll try and write about something besides a playpark. haha!