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Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

2010 Catch Up

Apologies for being out of touch with most of you for the last 6 weeks or so. Here's a little bit of what's been going on!

Rio's Birthday: She's one year old now! She can walk (5-6 steps), talk (gu, ba, ma), beat up her brother (hair pulling and mental anguish). She has 12 teeth, weighs 8Kg and eats more than her brother most nights! She sleeps through the nights (since 7-8 months), goes to bed by herself (without crying most nights) and loves to copy her brother.

End of the work year: Well two full years working at university have now passed, and I've definitely got my feet now! Exams were marked, grades submitted, and most other administrative stuff was out of the way by the first week of February. For the first time ever I'll actually have two full months to plan classes, make materials, do research reading, and write some papers.

Work group shift for Itsuki: For the first time in 3 years, Itsuki has been moved to a new work team within her division at Toyota. She's up for promotion to 'Chief Engineer' next year, so this year in addition to working as Team Leader, she will be receiving extra training provided by the company.

Workout start: This is only 4 days old now, but I've once again started my 'get in shape' plan for the new year. This one actually stands a chance, unlike previous years, because of how quickly I could get my year end work cleaned up.

Photos are up: http://picasaweb.google.co.jp/Gdoggystink the latest is up (4 new albums) for your viewing pleasure, so check them out!

Christmas in Toyota

This was our first year 'at home' in Toyota during the holidays. Not willing to risk airport trouble in a flight to Canada, or 35km traffic jams in a 7hour plus drive to Kooriyama, Toyota was what we opted for.

(Christmas Morning)

It was a pretty relaxing! We did day trips to parks, the ocean, shopping sites and friend's houses. We also did a couple of overnight trips to Osaka and to a hot spring hotel. The kids loved having so much time doing whatever they wanted, and we loved having the evenings to ourselves. We finished watching LOST Season 5 and Dexter Season 1.

Still it felt a bit funny not to see the bigger families that we normally see at this time of year. We'll make it up with a trip to Kooriyama in Feb/March.

Birthday Bike

Way back in November, for his birthday, Fuzuki got a brand new bicycle. Until then he had be motoring around on a tricycle with hard plastic wheels, a bucket seat, and a steering lock, so this was a definite step up:



Equipped with training wheels and a push bar (definite must have item) we hit the street in style on cruises around the neighbourhood and to the park. The first month was mostly just steering practice. You'd never guess how hard it was to get him to actually look WHERE HE WAS GOING, rather than at whatever random object was on the ground around him.

In early January we started pedaling and steering at the same time. This was a steep learning curve to get over, but in the last week or so he has mastered the pedals, in combination with steering. All that's left now is teaching him how to BRAKE!!! Yeah this bike has hand brakes, but his hands are barely big enough to reach, and with gloves on in winter its twice as hard.

Looks like I'll still be "the brakes" for a while. Will keep you updated.