Father's day...a bit early

It is the expat tradition in Tokyo for many wives and children to flee Tokyo soon after school gets out for the summer. What remains is a lonely fraternity of bachelors who loosely assemble during the week to keep from missing their families too much. I've joined that fraternity for the first time as Shelley and the kids flew home to LA, and then to Evansville last week. I am nearing the end of week 1 (5 weeks total) of being "home alone."

Consequently, we celebrated Father's Day a week and a day early. Anthon has been preparing to celebrate Father's Day for weeks, and has been really excited about it. One time, upon overhearing Shelley and I talk about one of my gifts that I stumbled across (a case of Dad's root beer) Anthon thought it was important that he gets himself out of bed, walk into the kitchen, climb up on my lap and say that he had something very important to tell me. He proceeded to whisper in my ear what my present was - a laminated necktie he made in school with his picture on it. Anthon really has owned this year's Father's Day - overruling Shelley on the style of umbrella they were giving me and insisting that he hide the gift himself. His reasoning is that it's Father's Day and I'm HIS father...not Shelley's. You can't help but be flattered.

And to top it all off, I got two songs sung to me...the best presents of all.

The photo shoot

We have a neighbor, I guess an ex-neighbor as of today, who might as well be a professional photographer. Basically he's my idol. He agreed to take a few shots of Ella and Anthon - this in the middle of all their packing up and moving, mind you. Impeccable timing, once again, by the Cannons!

Anyway, Ella fared pretty well, readily flashing her cute smile. The flash took its toll on her eyes, however. She kept rubbing and covering her eyes, even folding herself in half to get away from the flashing light.

The photos I'm posting here are just the raw, scaled down photo without any cropping or photoshopping. There are some real possibilities here that show Ella's little personality. Look at the gallery and let us know if there's one that you particularly like. While the photo shoot focused on Ella, Anthon wanted in on the action. You can see his enthusiastic, boyish personality in almost every shot.

If anyone is interested in the photographer, Ryan Young, or his work, please visit his website Ryfoto.com. They'll be relocating to the Arizona area in case you want to hire him to do some work for you or your family.

Ella is starting to walk

Right before the family left for the U.S., Ella began to take some steps on her own. So while we'll be away from each for the next month, I'm full anticipating seeing Ella make the transition to walking full time.

Up until the day they left, she never would walked for me. Whenever we tried to get her to walk, she would end up walking on her knees with her arms outstretched and grunting - looking a lot like baby Frankenstein.

But here she is walking around and enjoying the laving praise we pour on her.

It's going to be a boy

We went to the doctor last week and found out that we're having a boy. You obviously can't tell from this shot, but rest assured, we are. Anthon, of course, is excited. He told us, "I've always wanted a boy!" Ella doesn't know what's coming.

So this confirms what Shelley has thought all along - that there is something about being pregnant with a boy that really makes her quite happy. Unfortunately, her pregnancy with Ella was the exact opposite. Anyone else have a similar experience?

Our girl sleeps in the closet

These are the instructions Shelley left for the babysitter last night. Brush teeth, say prayers...and don't forget to put Ella in the closet! There's part of me that feels guilty about putting our daughter to sleep in the closet. I mean, what loving parent puts their children in the closet for 10-12 hours at a time? Ella isn't the deepest sleeper and the slightest noise seems to wake her. To exacerbate matters, we don't have blinds in Ella's room and with Tokyo getting light at 4:00 AM, we've had a spat of days where Ella is up at 5:00 or 5:30 AM. Not good. So we've resorted to putting her in the closet. It's at least a walk-in, and we have a crib there for her. But we do feel bad, because we are putting her in a closet. In the movies, only unloved kids with mean parents put their kids in closets. I mean, is she going to develop some complex that will take years of therapy to unwind because her heartless parents put her in a closet at night, turned out the lights and closed the door? We're willing to risk it to give us a few extra minutes of sleep. Well, there goes parents-of-the-year honors for 2009. Better luck next year I guess.

Terra Cotta Warriors

The other highlight to our trip throughout China was our stop in Xian to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. To get there, we took a 12 hour over-night train from Beijing. This is a pretty good option, especially with a family. There are some downsides, however.

1. Non smoking cars aren't truly nonsmoking as people can smoke at the end of the train cars and that seems to circulate quite nicely back into the other cars via the air conditioning system.

2. You're easy pickings by fellow train passengers who want to interact with you and your kids. This time I was the target. Some random lady who saw me on the platform buying drinks and snacks tracked me down and found my room and, uninvited, sat down to tell me all about why she was going to Xian. She probably would have stayed there forever had we not told her to leave our cabin...in a more nice way than I'm putting it.

The Terra Cotta Warriors were stunning. They were first discovered by a local farmer who was drilling for water and came across shards of terra cotta. That turned into the massive dig that we have today. If this had been the United States, then the guy who found this would undoubtedly be a very rich man...kind of like finding oil underneath your house. But in this case, the man who found this has a new job, that of sitting in a visitor center outside of the entrance, shaking hands with people and signing autographs for tourists who buy coffee table books. Look, is it a step up from farming? In my book, yes. But come on...this guy got shafted in grand scheme of things.

I don't know if it's comforting or not to know that wasteful government spending isn't a modern invention. A few hundred years BC, Emperor Qin, who's buried here, recreated an underground palace complete with an army to help him fight in the afterlife. So much planning went into this, that it was started over 30 years before the future Emperor died...even before he was made Emperor.

The whole compound is fascinating. It's one of these places where you can stand in one place and stare it would still be as stimulating after 30 minutes as it was when you first saw it. It's just hard to fathom how much time, money, people and effort that went into making these statues. The attention to detail and the sheer number of soldiers is incredible. Most have been broken apart underground and it must be so tedious to put them back together - like a giant 3D puzzle.

This place is still very much a slow work in progress. There are three pits, two still darkened significantly, denoting ongoing archeological digs.

As always, click on the pictures to take you to a small gallery of shots from the day. The youtube video below offers a brief look at the statues and the pits.

The Great Wall of China at Mutianyu

It's hard to know where to start in describing our experience with the Great Wall. One can get caught up in the data points - like the fact that it stretches the same distance as a flight spanning the Pacific Ocean from Los Angeles to Tokyo (5,500 miles). It took centuries, plus the lives of millions of laborers, to build this wall. At its height, more than 1 million soldiers were used to guard the Wall. The construction is even more impressive when you realize that the wall basically lines the contours of these rugged mountains, no matter how steep. And at times there was some very steep hiking.

We started out our hike among a throng of other hikers, which at times can be really frustrating. But luckily the more you hike, the more solitude you find, which I think is the best way to experience the Great Wall. It's worth it to see the empty walkways and cool, dark guard towers in relative peace and quiet. Off the beaten path, you can see the wall in its original, unrestored state, being overrun by nature. Trees, shrubs and plants have busted through the Wall, leaving behind only small hiking paths in its slowly crumbling state. It was nature taking over one of man's most amazing creations - which makes for an interesting parable when you stop and think about it.

The biggest worry was the kids...specifically Anthon. He can be very sensitive about walking too much. But we found out on this trip that so long as you tell him stories, he'll do anything. He'll go anywhere...and there will be no complaining. He walked 70% of the way there and back...that's a lot of up and down for a 3 year old. A total champ. Poor Shelley, though, had to tell the same three or four stories probably 20 times each. Ella had it easy. She was in the backpack and took a number of naps along the way. Our guide, Flame, carried her a good chunk of the way. I had it relatively easy too. I was charged with taking pictures and video. I took over 400 pictures over the course of the day. Don't worry, if you click on these pictures it will take you to a gallery of shots from that day that have been winnowed down to something below 40 shots.

As always, I took some video and have it uploaded to Youtube below.

Japanese Honesty...

I got the following email from someone in our office - it shows just how honest the Japanese people can be.

Did you forget to pick up 50yen from vending machine? We found 50 yen in vending machine in the lounge this afternoon. Please contact office services if you forgot to pick up 50yen. Thank you.

50 yen is the equivalent of 50 cents. Someone took the time to find the 50 yen, walk it up a flight of stairs to our office services team, who then had someone craft an email that went to over 100 associates in the entire office. That's a lot of work for 50 yen.

On a related note, vending machine drinks used to be free in our office, but with major cost cutting in effect that subsidy has been lifted. I can see how there could be vending machine mishaps. It just so happened that I lost a 500 yen coin ($5) trying to fish out my 50 yen for a drink. And as luck would have it, the 500 yen coin popped out of my wallet, rolled across the room and stopped underneath the same vending machine. I've tried for the past few days to get it and I can't. Nothing reaches.

I know what you're thinking, and no, I didn't try to claim the 50 yen as mine to recoup my losses!

Anthon has a good memory

One thing we know about Anthon is that he has a really, really good memory. Almost too good. After reading him a story a few times he can pretty much recite the whole story for memory. If you purposefully mess up on a word, 7 times out of 10 he'll be able to correct you.

So harnessing that, Shelley has been helping Anthon memorize scripture verses. And Anthon has really taken to it. Here's the first one he memorized, Doctrine & Covenants 109:8. He has these cute little hand motions too that go along with it to help him remember.





We may try to do a series of these memorized scriptures. As many of you know, I teach seminary (early morning, daily Bible study for LDS high school kids). Our course for the year just ended...but it looks like I'll be teaching it again in the Fall. Every year there is a set of scriptures that the students are asked to memorize. Maybe if we can get Anthon to memorize the set of 25 scriptures this year, that will motivate the kids to memorize theirs. Nothing like a little competition from a 3 year old.

The Summer Palace

If you spend any time in Beijing and read about its history, one thing becomes abundantly clear - the imperial family didn't spend much time out and about with the common folk. I'm sure that's the case with most royal families. But there are large tracks of land that was dedicated solely for the use of the emperor and empress, the summer palace being one of them. To further my point, a lot of the landscaping done around the palace, from its large lake to its Venice-like canals, were made as replications of existing famous Chinese sites. My point? I don't know how much the royal family, or their handlers, got around much. One has to chuckle knowing that after the original palace grounds were ransacked, the money to rebuild the grounds was taken from the money that would have gone into building a navy.

There are three things that make this a must see in Beijing. First is that this is every bit as much as gathering spot for locals as it is a tourist spot for foreigners and tourist groups. Locals can buy a month or year long pass to enter at the price it costs for us to get in for a day. You'll see these people in large groups Chinese line dancing. We're talking a hundred people all lined up dancing away. Others are doing group jump rope, kicking Chinese hacky sacks, which looks like a cross between a western hacky sack with a badminton shuttle cock, or by doing some rhythmic exercises with a ball and paddle.

The second interesting thing about The Summer Palace is seeing how this place was ransacked in the early part of the 20th century. Western powers trying to quelch a nationalistic uprising ransacked much of the palace, even destroying walls adorned with Buddhist statues. You could see heads of these statues lopped off. The higher you got, however, the more the heads were spared. I guess even marauders have certain height limitations.

Finally, I think the best part about being at The Summer Palace was renting a boat and floating around the lake seeing the entirety of the estate. During this time of year the many willow trees were drooping down into the water and their cottony blossoms were wafting in the air creating a really dreamlike state of serenity. It was really quite a nice feeling as we were floating calmly along the canals and lakes of The Summer Palace.

We spent our first full day here and it was a wonderful introduction to the city. Click on the pictures to see more from the gallery. The video captures nicely, I think, the three great things about this place: the people, the lake and the Buddhist statues. At the end you can see a pretty funny video of people gathering around like paparazzi taking pictures of Ella and how Anthon responds to being grabbed.