Elise and Mary's Subarashii Adventure!

My cousin Emily, her husband Mark and their daughter Mary made the trans-Pacific journey to come and spend 10 days with us in our little corner of the world! Emily and I have been friends since we were babies so it was really really special to have them here and to share our baby girls with each other.



I think we managed to take them to just about every cool spot within a two hour radius of our home, but we also made time for plenty of coffee breaks, dinners on the grill, and playtime with babies! Some of the highlights of the week included: an overnight stay in Tokyo (with the last few days of cherry blossom beauty), a ferry ride and hike in Chiba (where we ended up climbing several hundred stairs!), and a Yokohama Baystars baseball game. (more on Japanese baseball games later!) We also had our fill of shrines, train rides, pressed squid crackers, and French pastries. (yes, a popular treat in Japan!)

During the week the "girls" (Mary and Elise)seemed to really enjoy interacting and managed to have quite a few adventures of their own! Mary (6 months old) got very chatty, tried solid food for the first time, and got much more advanced with her hand and arm movements. Elise (now 8 months old) started to wave, loved eating steak and chicken for the first time, and made our lives a whole lot more complicated by starting to crawl! (It's still more of a marine crawl at this point, but she knows how to get from where she is to the closest and most dangerous thing, that's for sure!)

Next stop, Italy 2012! (That's if we can get stationed there after Portsmouth!)