Ralph Hoflich

This weekend was the Yokohama International Tennis Tournament, the one that Fumio and I played in last year. This year I was too busy to practice and I’m not nearly as good as Fumio anyways, so I declined the match.

We went to watch Fumio anyways and we saw his last game. They didn’t do so well and perhaps I would have played as well as his partner anyways, so that was a bit of a shame.

The kids were quite interested in it though, since they both got tennis rackets from Fumio and Yoshie for Christmas. They had always been interested in tennis and now was their chance to try it out.

We had a court to play on for a bit, which the kids played on first and then the adults played. It was fun, since we did some practicing with the kids. Lauren didn’t quite get it, but Evan was able to hit some pretty good balls.

The day was beautiful and sunny, so it was a great time out. Yoshie made lunch for us all and we got to play a bit of practice tennis on the lawn. The kids also climbed up a tree, which was good fun. I’ve never seen the kids climb a tree before!

We had a nice Mother’s day and Nicole’s birthday today. I didn’t do anything special for Nicole, but because the kids slept in this morning, that allowed us to sleep in. I was making pancakes for breakfast and then Yoshie and Fumio came over with a huge present for Nicole’s and my birthday. They had assembled 36 presents in tiny packages, inside a big present. It was quite amazing. I was busy making the pancakes, so I couldn’t see, but the kids enjoyed opening all the presents. Most of the presents had some sort of Japanese history to them, so that was nice. For instance, they gave us a book cover, which Yoshie made when she was young.

In the afternoon we went over to Ani and Hideo’s place for a barbeque, which was great fun. We always have a lot of fun with them. The kids play really well together. The boys were all vying for Julia’s (1.5 years) attention, which was funny. Lauren wanted to hold her on the chair, which I let her do. Then at some point, she let go of her and she fell flat on her face. Anyways Julia never gets too fussed over anything and although it looked like she hurt her lip or something, she didn’t cry at all.

Ani had a cake for us with champagne at the end, and I had baked a cake and decorated it (with flowers – or more like a flower garden) which we all enjoyed. The kids went to bed again late tonight (10pm), just like last night, when we went over to friends’ place for a different barbeque. Fun! Only I haven’t done any Japanese homework or my work that I was planning on doing.