October 2007

Hello friends and family!
Wow, we are really updating our blog. Maybe this will happen more than once a year!
We are enjoying a beautiful fall here in Japan. October was really tremendous for weather. We decided to take a trip to Tokyo Disneyland and see what all the fuss was about! We planned our visit for a weekday to avoid crowds. Little did we know, however, that October is the peak season(cooler weather + halloween parade) so we hit huge crowds even on Monday. We got there around 9am and stayed until about 4 pm and we really only went on 3 rides because the lines were so long (60-90 min. per ride!). We did get a "fast pass" for Buzz Light Year ride which the boys loved- about a 3 min ride thru dark scenes where you shoot a laser gun at posted targets. We also did a toon town ride and Ty and Mark did a mini roller coaster- a first for Ty. He held his hands up the whole time!
I was struck by how many adults were there for their own personal pleasure without any kids and how excited they got over the characters- ie Mickey mouse etc...They would scream there head off when they saw the parade trying to get them to wave at them and they all wanted their picture taken with them- we bypassed a pic with Mickey since the wait time was 90 min.!

Some other fun activities we've done in Oct was a field trip for Ty's school where I and Ryan and Ty went sweet potato picking with his school. Japanese sweet potatos are very different from American sweet potatos- they are purple on the outside and yellow on the inside, and more starchier than Amercian ones. Anyway, we rode the train about 20 min, walked about 20 min and picked for about 5 minutes ! They gave each kid a small plot of ground and told them they could dig and keep what they founf. Ty got about 10 small potatos. He had alot of fun getting dirty. After the dig we headed to the beach for a picnic lunch and some play time in the water- yes it was warm enough they Ty waded in and got comletely soaked- he had a blast! Boy, you should see some of these picnic lunches the Japanese people prepare- very elaborate "obentos". Our peanut butter sandwiches pale in comparison.
Lastly, we had a fun Halloween attending a harvest festival at the middle school with some friends. Ty dressed up in his superman jammies- which have been taken away from him for 1 week due to a MAJOR tantrum involving not wanting to remove them in time for school the following morning! We went with Kathleen and Sydney Watts. Kathleen's baby was due that day so we were all on "baby watch" wondering when baby Julia would arrive. Sydney even spent the night and helped the boys pass out candy at the door - which was more fun than trick or treating I believe. Plus we avoided the whole candy overload melt down syndrome which was a relief for me since Mark was out of town!
Anyway, baby Julia did arrive a day later and we got to visit her on her birthday. She's a cutie and doing well.