Archive for January, 2012

Here’s my New Look for 2012

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Bynn and Ahn made these masks at their art school this week. Of course, serious person that I am, I could not resist trying them on and taking pictures of them 😉

Since I know not everyone cares about or wants to see photos of me, I included more of the boys modeling their creations.

Maybe I mentioned this before, but they’ve been attending an art school for maybe 6 years, or more. They’re not learning to be Da Vinci, but they enjoy it and the teacher is really wonderful. He’s kept them interested and happy and eager to go each week since they were in daycare, so he must be doing something right.

Remember that when you start learning anything, it’s really more important how fun and interesting the teacher makes things than how much you’re learning.

Each week they do different things. Sometimes they do projects that take multiple classes to complete, and they usually do some seasonal, holiday related stuff, but it’s not the same every year or for the same holiday each year. He’s a very good teacher and very prepared as well.

Anyway, here are some fun pictures of the masks they painted:

Bynn turns 12 – chocolate cake chocolate icing and Legos

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

January is a big birthday month at our house since 3 of our 4 members have birthdays then. We just celebrated Bynn’s 12th birthday.

It’s hard for me to believe he’s already 12, soon to be a teenager, already in many ways a very ‘big’ guy.

Not too big to enjoy a birthday cake, and Legos as a present though 😉

I’ve mentioned before that we celebrate birthdays a little differently at our house, at least for the boys, partly because my birthday and Sulseob’s are the same day, and partly because 1 remote control car is not fun when 2 really is, and partly because I love how much both of our sons enjoy and look forward to everyone’s birthdays at our house, there are presents for each of them, no matter who is celebrating the birthday.

It seems to be working still. Yesterday morning when I woke them to get ready for school went something like this:

Me: Hey, guys. Good morning. Let’s get going.

Ahn: Happy Birthday, Bynn.

🙂

Anyway, here are a few pictures. Chocolate cake with chocolate icing, the writing is just plain white whipped cream. You kind of have to hurry with that because it tends to melt fast.

They’re both big Lego fans, so that’s what they got for a birthday present this time.

Happy Birthday to me and my wife for 2012

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Well, they come every year, if you’re lucky, and so far I’ve been pretty lucky. For a lot of years I have been very, very lucky.

So, another year and another birthday survived. Quite an accomplishment for me this time.

As usual we celebrated our birthday together (it is the same day after all ;-))

This time around I decided to try something a little different for the cake. Sulseob has been trying out making square cakes, and I decided to throw in a little extra on the decorations this time.

I claimed that there wasn’t enough space on the cake for both our names like I usually write on the cake, but really I just thought it would be nice for Sulseob to have her own cake for once. (I’ve not had my own for some time, nor one I haven’t made for myself, but I’ve had cake and a celebration with some of my students – thanks guys!! – so thought I’d do it this way this time).

This was waiting to greet me on Tuesday when I entered class:

A very, very large Birthday card for me

A very, very large Birthday card for me

Here are a few photos of the cake and such from our little celebration at home:

Heiwa Koen Walking Course Path in Nagoya

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

These days I am trying hard to stay fit, and active, and of course, have fun while I’m doing it.

One of the things we’ve been doing as a family has been going for walks at the park near our home. It’s not all flat walking, but it’s not exactly mountain climbing either since you don’t have to use your hands anywhere along the way, but some of the paths do have their physical challenges, steps, rocks to step over, up, that sort of thing.

We’ve been going a couple of days each week, early in the morning. It’s cold now, but walking early is a great feeling. It’s also nice to see the other people who are out walking and yet not be crowded.

It sure beats walking on a treadmill. That is of course if you have the time to get out of the house or office.

Here are some pictures I took a few days ag0.

New Year’s Skating fun

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

During break time we usually have a chance to get together with one of Ahn’s friends from back in his daycare days. She and her family actually moved away several years ago, but her grandfather still livesa few houses down from us, and they come to visit.

When she visits, the boys try to meet her and at least go to the park to play or invite her over to watch movies or eat or play here at our house since she’s usually here for a few days.

When they come, we also usually try to get together as families for some kind of fun. We’ve gone to the river, BBQ’d with them, and out to eat in the past.

This time we decided at that last minute to go iceskating.

Yep.

Iceskating.

When I was a boy, we used to skate on the ponds on the farm. Yes, I’m one of _those_ guys. We even sometime had people over for skating parties.

I remember sometimes skating when we couldn’t skate next to each other for fear the ice would break, too 😉

We didn’t have those kinds of problems this time though, hehheh.

We’ve gone several times to the skating rink out at Morikoro park (where the Expo was held a few years ago).

That’s where we headed this time, too.

Here are a few photos from the day on ice.

Me being helpful :-)

Me being helpful 🙂