Happy Day - O - Luv

I just wanted to send out a little love to you all for Valentine's Day. My true love sadly is leaving for New York tomorrow, so I'll be flying solo with the puppy for the big day. BUT, he planned a super great dinner out last night to celebrate early and today I got some gorgeous flowers. He's such a sweetie!

We decided to go with no gifts or anything this year, but while we were out and about yesterday we broke down and got ourselves a joint present.....a white strawberry. I have been in a massive strawberry craving phase at the moment, so these were too tempting to pass up despite the fact that in order to try this tempting fruit we had to hand over an equivalent of $15 for the one berry. If you're saying that is ridiculous, I will totally agree, but hey....it's Tokyo. It was very tasty, but I have to say I'm just as happy with the slightly cheaper variety that we get in the grocery store. But it was fun.

Oh, and I'm throwing in one more belly pic...Baby Stanley's way of saying Happy Valentine's too.

Until next time...Jenn

Budda Belly progress

So, just to provide you a little update on the increasing belly here are a few pictures of the progress...

The one on the left was my birthday, so early January and the one on the right was at the end of January. The little peanut is getting bigger and bigger.

Until next time...Jenn

London Times

Right before we came home for Christmas we got to go to London again. While it was absolutely freezing, we had the best time. I love seeing big cities right before Christmas....all the lights and Christmas cheer.

Since we had been there before and hit most of the tourist spots, we got to check out some cool new things that we hadn't seen before. We managed to check off another item on our "sports to do list" by going to see a Chelsea football game. Despite my complete ambivalence toward soccer, I absolutely loved it. We sat in the home team fan section and it was wild. We also took a tour outside of London to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath. Stonehenge was absolutely incredible and such a mystery.

The only crazy thing was the riot over rising tuition fees. If you remember, when Prince Charles' car was attacked.....we were in London for that. Good times.

We had the best time and I hope you enjoy the photos that we took.

Until next time...Jenn

Welcome to Chinatown

So after talking and talking about how we just had to make it to China, we finally took a trip to Beijing. I was so interested to see the differences between Japan and China and there are just so many. We so loved seeing all the cool historical sites.

We had a really great tour guide who helped us out with understanding what we were seeing and getting us around the city. First we went to Tienanmen Square. It's just so strange being in different places where you know so much violence has occurred. Just makes you sad and thankful for all the freedoms that we have experienced in our lifetime. We got to see Chairman Mao. He basically looks like a wax figure...rumors are that it is a wax figure. Sadly, no pictures are allowed in the mausoleum, so no seeing him. Then we moved onto the Forbidden City which was massive.

The next day we went to see the Temple of Heaven where all these cute old people go early each morning to do their morning exercises, which in most cases was Tai Chi. We saw some dancing and other sports going on to though. After that we headed out to my favorite spot, the Great Wall of China. There really just aren't words to describe how amazing it is to see. It just goes on and on as far as you can see. It was fantastic.

We also got to see the terracotta warriors, which we both loved seeing. To even think about how much effort went into creating them. They said there were estimated to be like 7,000 warriors and the sole purpose was for these statues to surround the emperors tomb and protect him in the afterlife. Each warrior was made individually and had it's own features. Wild, right?

All in all, we had the best time. It was a nice little pick me up after our first trimester and a great way to announce to our family and friends that we were going to be increasing our family.

Enjoy the pictures!

Until next time...Jenn

Jill's Experience

So, pre-dating the F1 race and Oktoberfest my friend Jill came to visit us. We had the best time and got to see some very cool stuff that I hadn't seen before. We went to Hakone, which is near Mt. Fuji. Sadly, the weather left much to be desired, so we didn't get to see the great mountain, but we had fun regardless.

Is always so nice to have friends come and see you....like a little bit of home.

Until next time...Jenn

Oktoberfest 2010

While our friends were here we also made our 3rd appearance at Oktoberfest in Yokohama. Hard to believe that we've already been in Japan that long....man how the time flies. It was an interesting experience. This very "over served" Japanese man sat next to me and wanted to chat despite the fact that he clearly didn't really know much English and we all know I don't have the Japanese language mastered, so it was pretty funny.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

Until next time...Jenn

F1 Racing Away

So, my blog is basically been defunct for so long it's hard to get back into it these days, but I figured I needed to catch you all up on what's been going on with us. I'm going to start with our first (and most likely only) F1 racing experience.

We had some visitors come into town this past October and they are huge F1 fans. So, we decided to go to the big Japan race. It was really cool, however, the first day which is the qualifying round was completely rained out, but that wasn't decided until after we had all set in the rain for basically the entire day. Needless to say, no fun. The next day however, were perfect skies and made for a great race.

Not a whole lot else to report on that, but wanted to share a few pics so you can see our experience.

Until next time...Jenn