Tomorrow my wife and I will have a garage sale.  We've never done one before, so I hope that it turns out well.  Among the things that I intend to sell are some of the vegetables from our garden.  I have more tomatoes and cucumbers than I know what to do with.  (I'll have more to add each day.) Here's tomorrow's offering: While we're sitting out in the garage, we're planning to watch a few videos.  We picked up a few of our favorites from our local Japanes...

Today we took baby Kenny and MeiMei (Madeline) to the zoo.  Once we finished with the petting zoo, both babies had had enough.  The zoo is awfully stimulating for babies.  (Poor Kenny slept through his favorite buffalo exhibit.) Mei Mei Kenny

Today while I was looking through my garden, I noticed that vegetables (in addition to my tomatoes) are already beginning to be ready-to-eat.  In fact, a few of my cucumbers were already too big to enjoy.  (I hadn't even checked to see if any were ready yet.  I thought it was too early!) Here's what I gathered today.  Three cucumbers, and two green peppers. There will soon be hundreds of tomatoes in my garden.  Here are a couple of biggies, waiting to tur...

It is almost time for me to go to bed, but I see that my weblog has returned. A couple of weeks ago, we went to a parade.  Our son loved the horses, fire engines, and getting candy.  I don't recall seeing him having more fun. Getting the candy: Putting the parade candy into a bag: Enjoying the parade: Baby loves plastic animals.  All day long he talks about, plays with, and pretends about his plastic animals.  We found a bunch of plastic animals ...

Today we bought a tricycle for our little boy.  We brought it home, and put it together.  Once I got it together, we learned that the tricycle is too big for our child.  His feet don't reach the pedals. We'll put it away for a little while.  I hope that he'll be tall enough to use it by the time that it snows.

A few months ago, our local grocery store expanded its international offerings.  Among the new foods brought in were some prepackaged Indian dishes.  I bought one, ate it, but wasn't impressed.  Since I really like to eat Indian food (and the Japanese variant: "Curry rice"), I gave the prepackaged stuff another try. The second time it was really yummy.  It is a fried cheese in red sauce dish.  I had it for the second time as tonight's dinner.  Here's what it look...

Last night while my wife and I were grocery shopping, we found some baby back ribs.  We decided to buy them, as they were really inexpensive.  We would try cooking them Korean-barbecue style. We marinated the ribs in: soy sauce, sake, sugar, onions, garlic, sesame oil, pepper, and sesame seeds.  With that, we had made Kalbi .  I brought them outside and cooked them on my grill.  They were very good.  Now we have one more delicious meal that we can prep...

Today my wife and I were at the hospital for an ultrasound.  We found out that our second baby (who will be born in November) will be a boy.  We will have two little boys at home.  The good news about that is that we won't have to buy any clothes for a while.  The difficult thing is that it'll be tough to decide on a name for this one.  Kentaro (the name of our first son) was easy to decide.  We'll have to put a lot more thought into the name of the second ...

This afternoon my wife, my son, and I returned form our week-long vacation to the Black Hills. It was an awful long drive from central Minnesota, all the way across South Dakota, but I really enjoyed it. (South Dakota actually flies by with that higher speed limit! The Minnesota leg of the trip was the long part.) Nearby Rapid City, we had some fun at a place called "Old MacDonald's Farm." Kenny is CRAZY about animals lately. He spends all day every day playing with his hard plastic animals. ...

For those of you who regularily read my weblog, you've probably noticed that I haven't posted for a while.  My family and I took a trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota.  We saw lots of interesting things there.  I will write a log about our trip once I get the pictures off of our camera. Here is a blurry scan of an "Old West-style" picture that we had taken.  (My wife won't let me take it out of the frame to get a better scan.  That's okay.  You can get the fe...

Over the past few weeks/months, I have been working on an upstairs bedroom for me and my wife.  (We intend to turn our old bedroom into a play room for the kids.)  I tore off wallpaper, scraped off glue, primed, and painted two colors (bergundy and touched-up a little white).  We put up some curtains this afternoon, and we were ready to move our stuff up there early this evening. After weeks of work we finally had our bedroom.  We moved the mattress upstairs.  We...

Over the weekend, my wife, my son, and I went to Chicago and Wisconsin Dells.  In Chicago: we visited some friends, picked up my wife's passport, ate LOTS of Japanese food, and visited a Japanese grocery store.  In the Dells: we went to the deer park, we went to Storybook Gardens/ Animal Park, we went swimming, and we visited "The Wonder Spot." It was a nice trip.  I enjoy driving to Chicago and visiting Wisconsin Dells.  My biggest surprise was a drive to downtown Chicago...

Today when I returned home from teaching a class, my wife greeted me with some interesting news. Apparently our little boy can recognize a few letters. My wife told me that while in the bath, our baby identified the letters A , O , and W . I didn't really believe it at first, but sure enough, he named the letters when I showed them to him. (The pronunciation of "W" is kind of funny.) I was surprised that he had been paying attention to letters that much. ****************************...

Recently our little boy has been crazy about animals.  All day long he carries one of his many plastic animals.  Everything he says seems to have something to do with animals too.  He is always talking about: moose, zebra, giraffe, elephant, sheep, goat, and horse.  (He is really good at finding pictures of animals in his environment as well.) Yesterday we decided to take baby to the zoo so he can visit some of his beloved animals.  He had a really good time at the fa...

Today for the holiday, my wife, my son, and I went out for a picnic.  We had some chicken, and some Korean sushi.  It was nice.  While we were at the park, poor Kenny ended up hurting himself.  Baby fell off of the bench on the picnic table, cutting and scraping his forehead on the cement.  The benches are a bit far away from the table for a baby. After we dusted him off and cleaned him up, he was ready to go again.  He only cried for about four minutes. ...