A Walk in the Park

After two weeks of avoiding blogging I am running out of excuses why I can't park myself in front of the computer and let everyone know what is happening in our lives. The weather has been so wonderful lately that I have been trying to keep the boys outside about as much as their little bodies can handle it. However, seeing as William decided to wake up at 5 am this morning (again), I find myself with lots of free time in which to blog. We have been pretty busy in the past couple of weeks so I might have to post every day before I am caught up to current events. I hope William doesn't take that as his cue to wake up at 5 every morning!

I have been enjoying spring to no end. Usually, April - May in Manitoba was a time of melting snow, flooding, mud, brown grass, and chilliness. Just to remind myself of what it was like, I checked out a post I had written almost exactly a year ago in Manitoba. Here in Fukuyama we transitioned in a span of two weeks from relatively chilly to warmth, green life, and a profusion of flowers.  There are so many plants doing wonderful things that I finding hard not to stop and inspect them all. The sakura have long since dropped all of their petals but since I am so behind in posting, here are a few pictures of a picnic we took while they were in full bloom.

We traveled with our neighbours to Senkoji park in Onomichi, which is about 10 minutes west by train. The park is on the top of a 140 meter hill and has a cable car that you can take to the top. The kids were overjoyed to take the cable car.

Once we arrived at the top, we were treated to a breathtaking view of the town and harbour with pale sakura blossoms everywhere you looked

I don't think we will ever get a family picture where Theo doesn't look like a caged animal

William's favourite part was yanking the petals off

and Theo's was climbing the trees. What boys!

I found a patch of gorgeous shelf mushrooms

The cherry blossom season was short lived but I am glad that we were able to enjoy the beauty of the cherry trees at Senkoji park while they lasted.

Sera Park

On Saturday, we went for a trip with some friends of ours to a park in Sera Town, which is about an hour drive north west of Fukuyama. We had never been there, or even heard of this town before, but our friends, who have become like an adoptive set of grandparents for the boys, were certain that we all would have a fun time.  The weather started off pretty dreary, with little spatters of rain, but by the time we arrived in Sera it was warm and sunny with blue skies.

It was obvious that we were much higher up in the mountains since the sakura are falling from the trees in Fukuyama and the buds hadn't even opened in Sera Park. There was a large and very creative playground area for the children to play in and quite a few acres of hilly green space.

This is a view of the playground area where the kids spent most of the morning exploring and playing:

Surrounding the playground was open recreational space. You can see that all of the cherry trees are still naked.

William making new friends and checking out all of the fun playthings

There were even three miniature ponies. You could pay 30 yen (37 cents Canadian) to feed them a dish of carrots or 100 yen (about 1.25$ Canadian) to go for a ride. I don't know much about the nutritional needs of ponies, but it seems like a steady stream of children feeding them carrots all day is a bad idea. They seemed happy enough though.

Theo spent a lot of time riding the spinning saucer. I would have loved it as a kid, but now it made me queasy just watching.

After an hour or so of playing, we all stopped to enjoy a delicious picnic that our friends made for us. There was onigiri, barbecued beef, vegetables, sausages, pickled radishes, spaghetti, potato salad and omelet rolls. It was so, so good!

After lunch, William went down for a nap so Dustin, Theodore and I went for a hike around the rest of the park. Like a true explorer, Theo's first goal was to find an appropriate walking stick which he called his "wizard's staff".

On our walk we came across a man flying a super long and colourful kite.

The surrounding mountains were extremely beautiful, especially since there was not a sign of human habitation for as far as the eye could see. 

At the top of a nearby hill, we found another, smaller playground. Theo clambered around pretending to be the Spider King and that ladybugs where invading his spider castle. I don't think he will ever be bored.

We also found a super long slide.

Eventually William woke up and we decided to head home, stopping by the Sera Winery on our way. I assumed there would just be tours of the vineyard and wine tasting, but it seems they have really put a lot of efforts into attracting tourists. There was live music, a farmers market, a miniature steam train that the children could ride, all manner of desserts flavoured like wine for sale, and of course, many different wines to try and buy. To top it all off, we arrived just in time for a mochi throwing event.

In the end it was four happy adults and two very tired and content children that piled into the car for the trip back to Fukuyama. What a fabulous way to spend a Saturday. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Oshima!