sorry about that. not much to say, i guess. we had an undokai, only one more to go. it was actually quite interesting, and with only 100 students in the entire school, everything seemed to go by quickly. in fact, the morning session ended 30 minutes earlier than scheduled! i think hiro had a great time, and he actually participated cheerfully (at yochien, though he improved by his third year, he seemed so shy all the time and hardly did anything--especially singing.) it was really great. the weather cooperated as well, it was sunny, but not humid and overly-hot, though we did need some shade. i asked yoshi to bring one of our beach umbrellas, so he got the one we haven't actually used yet. it was tied up and needed to be cut free, but we didn't have scissors. yoshi finally got the ties off, though, and we tried to set up the umbrella. the pole has a kind of screw on it and you're supposed to 'screw' it into the ground, but there were too many rocks, or there was a slab of concrete 4 inches down, because we could not get that thing to set up! the family next to us tried to help out (starting with the ever-helpful, 'are you turning it the right way?' uh, yeah, i know how to turn a screw. and after a few minutes, of course i tried turning it the other way. i'm not an idiot. although, when grandpa came over to try his hand, the first thing grandma said was, 'are you turning it the right way?' so obviously, we're all idiots eventually grandpa found some metal stakes and with a few large rocks yoshi found, we got the umbrella set up. phew!

after the undokai, hiro had two days off. on the first day, we went to costco and then enjoyed an hour at an onsen. on the second day, i took him to the city pool and we had fun splashing around. it was nice having one-on-one time with hiro.

i guess i had a birthday since the last time i posted. yay, one year older! i made my favorite cake, that was great! and i got lots of birthday wishes, especially on facebook, which was really nice. i didn't go to HRC, but might go in november with kuri, as a kind of halfway between our birthdays.

other than that, nothing more to write about. perhaps i'll have some pictures soon!