Birthday and Peace Signs

My 25th birthday was a couple of days ago. It was a fun-packed day and I have some great memories from it. My tutor had invited us and a couple of other families on our team over to her house for the afternoon. 3 of us 4 girls on the team are studying with her, so we are all getting to know her and her family. All of our birthdays are in October, so she gave each of us a little gift. It was really sweet.

Here are the kids playing and getting all dirty for church!

Megumi and her students-who are all pregnant!

Settling in for a cartoon.

We had planned on going to an international church in Nagoya (where she lives) after spending the afternoon at her house, so we had invited her to come along. I was so glad that her whole family came. After church me and the girls on our team (minus one who was sick that day) found a little Mexican restaurant to eat at. I was so excited! It was a little expensive and had some weird options-like octopus mexican stew, etc. At first I was worried it wasn't going to be a good birthday dinner after all. But then we found the good stuff and it ended up being delicious. Here we are at the restaurant:



Then we went to Starbucks for dessert and hot chocolate. It was a great birthday and I had a great time!

As for the peace signs...its something new that Brayden has started! He wanted me to tie this ribbon on his head, so after I did, I went to take a picture of him. We told him to say "Cheese" and when he did he threw out the peace sign! He did it over and over again. If you did not know this already, this is a very Japanese thing to do. He must have learned it at his daycare or from one of the Japanese kids shows he watches. Most (younger) Japanese people do the peace sign in every picture. Check it out:



His peace sign might not be clearly recognizable because he's only 2 and doesn't quite have the manual dexterity yet, but, you get the idea he is aiming for!