So August for Elia stretches from July 16 to August 15, so though she starts kindergarten in August, it won’t be until her September blog that we’ll write about it. The summer went by so quickly. The days are largely about the different camps at Congo, followed by weekends that we try to make meaningful as much as we can. Elia has grown tremendously and has learned to go from camp to camp and learning with the change. She loved being in Great Adventures even more than being in specialty camps largely because she got to spend time with her pre-school friend Ezra.
We were able to go to the sunflowers and take some great pictures there, though our sunflowers did not last as long as they had in the past. We were also able to get out to Bull Run Park and shoot some archery as well with the Watts family. The girls went from needing us to load each arrow and helping them aim, to shooting independently and on their own, it was quite amazing.
Before we knew it, the Luau was upon us at camp signalling the end of summer. Elia was so eager to get on stage to dance with the hula dancers, she had remembered the experience from the previous year and now, a part of camp, she was ready to go. She even asked us to bring her Moana dress for the occasion. We found out that day that Elia could already do the monkey bars. she was so proud of herself especially since she knew that she was ahead of Curie on monkey bars. Not unlike swimming, it did make Curie braver on them and now Curie can do them too.
We took the girls to the Fountain Pen show which had moved locations and they were able to appreciate some of the collecting that we did. We largely bought things for them there, though we did get a few other knick-knacks as well. The girls started wearing night gowns to sleep, changing the efficiency of wearing the next day clothes quite a bit for us.
So all of this to lead us up to Japan. it is fortunate that Erin made us book our flights and hotels at the beginning of summer or else we would never had gone. We used up most of our miles and points, but it meant that in mid-August we were going to Japan. We’ll try to write about this from two different perspectives for the two blogs, but there will be a large overlap.
Before we went to Japan we started watching YouTube videos about visiting Japan to start getting the kids excited about going. We also started talking to them about the long flight. We had originally wanted to go to Kyoto and Osaka in addition to Tokyo since we had been to Tokyo twice already, but we realized that while we had gone to Tokyo, Curie and Elia had not, and with only 6 days we weren’t really going to make it anywhere but Tokyo as the bullet train and luggage would have taken much of two days of travel.
We also realized that Tokyo Disneyland was half the price of Disney in the states and since the girls, especially Elia, love Disney, that we would make it a day. We would in fact attempt to go to Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea in a single day. We also found out it would rain the entire time we were there, so we packed accordingly. It turned out to be wrong and we only saw a little rain as the Typhoon passed us.
So when Albert would ask the kids what they were looking forward to, Elia would say “kumonos” in the park, since we saw little girls wearing kimonos in the park by the Meiji Shrine. Kimonos can be expensive, so we tried to temper this and thought about renting the kimonos. The girls were also excited about the toys and ramen, Curie has recently made the switch from udon to ramen, so we were going to try to get a lot of ramen while we were there. The other thing that struck Elia was the giant Gundam in Odaiba, and she was intent on going to see the giant robot.
The pictures of the trip largely speak for themselves, but the kids were amazing on the plane, sleeping when they were supposed to, and not complaining too much. We took a 6 AM flight too so they had to get up so early at the hotel to make the flight on the way out. We had planned on going to McDonalds to get chicken nuggets for the flight but ran out of time. We did have some mediocre ramen at our ramen place in the Detroit airport. The kids hated airplane food. In fact, Elia ate very little of it since she was so tired. Curie at least ate some cup of noodles that we bought, but Elia ate mostly snacks. They were too tired to even eat the ice cream that came by for the snack to wake us up.
We did see the Gundam, (Elia wanted to go back and see it at night since we saw that in the videos and it was what she had in her head) and Elia became enamored with Haro, the robot from Gundam. They loved the giant cotton candy and the ice cream at the red bean fish place – she also discovered she likes pineapple juice and Pokari Sweat. Elia also loved the expensive strawberry kabob at the fish market, and her favorite ramen was the kyushu ramen at Harujuku where Erin found her favorite too. We did find kimonos, or rather more correctly, yukata, the summer version at a discount store and a more formal longer one for Elia at the Asakusa market though we did not wear them in the park – we did find out that Elia likes green tea popsicles there though. At the Asakusa shrine we had to get five fortunes so that Elia could leave with her good one and leave all the others tied at the shrine, but they really liked the idea of Chens never give up when we did it and it was an amazing lesson for all of us that you don’t give up and that you make your own fortune even if you have to work at it.
At DIsney, she loved Ariel’s castle at Disney Sea, was scared of Star Tours and Snow White but told us she liked being scared. The girls loved the Peter Pan ride the best and the crushed ice we got in line there. Elia had been falling asleep right after dinner, so we also gave the kids unadulterated Cocacola at Disneyland for the first time so that they could stay awake for the visit. Even then, we had to let Elia take pictures at Disney Sea to keep her awake and interested while we walked. When we asked Elia what was her favorite part, she said when you poured cold water in my hat. We had a great time.