Pictures from March- Travellin`

Before Ken started to become absorbed by trains, he has been on the train a few times. One day in early March the family hopped onto the local- akaden. Then we hopped onto a shinkansen (where I left my wallet, but long story short, after the trip recovered) to Centrair- the Nagoya Airport.
We hopped onto one plane bound for Honolulu where we had to transfer planes. Ken was great, he slept the whole flight.
And he pretty much slept the waiting period between planes...
-nothing was waking him up actually.
Until we finally arrived at our destination, Maui. The purpose? Our friend Carrie`s wedding! Most have seen the pictures, but I will put up my favorites over the next few posts all the same.

More miscellaneous pictures from February

Definitely was in need of some pictures with Ken and Canucks good on. Too bad the season ended the way it did. Something to build on? But we say that every year dont we?
Still early goings of his bipedal fortitude, but he was doing a good job back in mid-February at Misono park.
I brought Ken to my students home one day while Ritsuko had to work and I was off for most of the day. They have a daughter, Toa (pictured above with Shigeki, the dad) that is 6 months older than Ken. Even though it was Valentine`s Day, no sparks were flying on that day. Maybe they are still young, next time...
And here is Ken with Toa's mom, Miki. Enjoying a laugh together.

An early walking video

While he is checking out the store security scanner quite closely in this video, nonetheless, it is earliest documentation of his walking.

A celebrity even in Hamakita- February 2nd, 2009

Hamakita is kind of the country side of Japan. Don't get me wrong, I have seen ever more country-like areas around here, but we don`t often find celebrities out here. Well, a newer mall opened here in the last month last year and as a promotion, I think they dropped some money to get one to our neck of the woods.
And there he is. His name is Jero (given Japanese trouble with the letter R- I thought they were talking about J-Lo in the media sometimes) and he sings traditional Japanese Enka music- dressed like a rapper. I wanted to dislike him, but he was actually a pretty good singer and seems like a good guy. So it was kinda fun to see. Sadly, Ken fell asleep when he started singing.
Afterwards we walked around the mall- and the store staff volunteered to take a pic of us all. Yep, little guy was getting more and more mobile every day!

Beginging the catchup sprint! Jan 3/09

Hi there! Remember me? Well, lets try this again! At least I cant claim there isn't enough material to blog about. I have about 7 months of catching up. Back on January 3rd, as the winter holiday waned, we followed a seeming tradition of going to Ritsy`s mom`s place to eat Sukiyaki. Ritsy and Ken were in good spirits. Seems Ken is usually happy when juice is in his hand. At this point, he still wasn't communicating so much verbally, but his charm was coming out. Not sure where that crown came from. Setsuko and Yo-chan were also there (you may recall their wedding back in November?). Yo-chan was a bit distracted though as Setsuko had put a bit of a dent in their car on that day. I was unaware of this situation at the time so thought he was acting strangely. At least he was happy enough to take the above picture!