The Best Is Grandma's House

Eri is digging in the sand to create an ocean. The boys and I are taking her sand and using it to build a giant volcano.

Ohhhhh the metaphors!

The dinosaur exhibit at the Horseshoe on the Las Vegas Strip was made for Kenzo and Osamu. Mechanical dinosaurs, dark passageways, and coloring.

This crazy digital sandbox was the best. I could've played with it all day.

We visited the Bellagio Hotel and took in its wonders, one of the most notable being the dude outside smoking a serious jazz cigarette. Woooo weeee we're talkin' contact high level smokin'. We watched the Bellagio water show and Mr. Reefer provided the "atmosphere".

I'm going through pictures from the day, as I often do, and delete the duds. I have to take between five and ten shots of everything with the boys in it, the reason being at least one of those is bound to be a decent photo.

Sometimes I'll take a dozen and every one is a bust.

Today at the Bellagio Hotel conservatory Eri and my mom were browsing some shops with lots of breakable items, so I took the boys down the corridor to see what we could see and we ended up taking some pictures in front of the amazing flowers.

As I was going through these twelve shots I suddenly realized they're all perfect. As stand-alone pics and as a collection. There's a story.

The day before yesterday we saw sharks. Today was dinosaurs. Las Vegas has it all.

But the best is grandma's house.

I grew up with cats. I love that my mom and my sister have wonderful dogs that Kenzo and Osamu can play with. I want them to be unafraid of animals.

For dinner tonight we walked down the street to a place called Lazy Dog. It's a dog-friendly bar and restaurant. Very American. Eri and I have finally acclimated to 'Murica and ordered the boys one dish off the kids' menu to share, and it was perfect. At the risk of editorializing, do these restaurants actually consider the nutritional value of the meals they serve? Or is it just the good ol' American frontier spirit?

The boys never miss a chance for shenanigans...

Comments

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I absolutely should not be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep. But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...

Sendai vs. Tokushima

Osamu said he had to go pee, and I make it a habit to believe him most of the time. Another habit I have is taking him to go pee, much of the time. When we came out of the restroom I decided it was time for a beer, so with Osamu holding my hand we waltzed over to the food concession and I was checking out the selection, and the prices. Seven hundred yen for a draft beer. I had a feeling. It was only 500 for a whiskey cocktail (whiskey with water on the rocks) but I wasn't about to be that much of a derelict this early with my four-year-old son in tow. The tickets were free, the seats aren't bad, might as well spend seven bucks on a beer. The problem was that the dude next to us with his little boy about the same age as Mumu-chan loudly and with braggadocio you don't often see in these parts ordered a Blue Hawaii snow cone for his kid. I heard this and panicked. Last weekend at Michinoku Park I got a Blue Hawaii snow cone for Osamu and he loved it. I looked down at my l...

This'll Just Take a Minute

Search This Blog