School Days...

Well, it has finally happened...Jacob has asked to go to school. Today is the first day.

We went to the Welcome Back Night and Jacob met his teacher, saw his classroom and explored the school. Jacob will be taking swimming this year at school and he already knows some kids from church and baseball.

The teacher only made me a little nervous when she proclaimed, no less than three times, that she is not mean only strict and that the kids will learn the difference. She then spent about 15 minutes explaining all the different ways that cursive writing can be done wrong. On the way home I asked Allen how often his cursive writing is critiqued in his occupation....hmmmmm. I'm not sold but we will see how it goes. I hope he is having fun!

Trophies and Tap

Baseball season and dance class are now over and both Jacob and Julia had a blast. Julia finished her last dance class and Jacob recieved his trophies for his team winning the championship. Jacob's team the Pirates went undefeated (19-0), something that has not happened for 30 years. Julia had so much fun in dance with ballet and tapping away with her friends.

Here she is in her little pink tutu. There is nothing like a chokehold from a friend to get your dancing juices flowing. The last image is a recent picture of Julia.


Jacob's team, the Pirates, with all their trophies. Then a couple of pictures of Jacob with the team championship trophy and at home.

Recent pictures of Jacob and Jora. Julia and Jora got to enjoy looking at the trophies and be in pictures with the trophies but their older brother was much too protective of the trophies to let them touch them.

Land of Godzilla

I recently returned from the land of Godzilla (a business trip to Japan). A Japanese dinosaur museum was setting up a special exhibit and borrowed numerous fossils from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I was sent along for technical support and fossil specimen handling. So I worked during the day in the museum and in the evenings our Japanese hosts took us out to different restaurants to try out the food. I really enjoyed the variety of Japanese cuisine along with their great culture. It was an awesome vacation… I mean business trip (Good thing Laura did not catch that slip).



One of the hotels I stayed in had a public bath available to men. I stayed at the hotel for a few nights and towards the end I decided to give it a whirl. It was a very educational experience. I took pictures at a different time when no one was there. I did not want to get beat up and it would have been a bit weird to ask one of the guys there to take a picture for me. You place your clothes in one of the baskets along the wall and then you enter the bath room and you sit on a little stool, wash (left) and then enter the water and soak (right). The third picture is of a typical bicycle parking lot. So many people ride bikes that there are large parking lots dedicated to only bicycles and very few people lock their bikes.


One morning while I was sightseeing in Fukui I came across this accident. Two small cars collided with each other at an intersection and a fire engine and crew were there. No one was hurt. The last picture is of Amy and I at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. We sat on barstools while all kinds of sushi and other eatables moved along the conveyor belt at eye level. We would choose what we wanted and place it in front of us. At the end you counted up the number of plates you ate and paid. Our host had been here before but had never seen a waffle on the line before so I tried it out.

This was an awesome temple complex that we visited. The setting was up at the base of the mountains where the largest cedar trees I have ever seen make up a grove around the various structures. It is here where monks are trained so no pictures of them were allowed and we were required to remove our shoes and talk in whispers. The gardens and architecture made for an incredible experience. I even got to ring the bell.

Here is one quarry where dinosaurs are collected in Japan. This is literally a quarry where rock is removed with jackhammers and heavy equipment. The Japanese love dinosaurs and nothing stops them from collecting. Also, on one of our sightseeing trips we came across a rickshaw and I had to get a picture with the guide and cart. Pizza delivery anyone. This cracked me up.

Who said one child bike seat was ever enough. The last two images are of another temple sight way up in the mountains above Kyoto. You can see a fountain where people are pouring the holy water over there hands and into the pool. Also, a great view of the city can be seen along with part of the Temple.

Japanese women in traditional dress pose along one of many souvenir streets. Finally, I managed to take this shot of the city of Osaka during takeoff on my way back to the United States.

Land of Godzilla 2

The rooms were much smaller than other hotels but the bathroom was awesome. The bidet is standard in all bathrooms with the water temperature at your control and convenience (you can see the controls on the right hand side of the toilet). I wish we had a bidet toilet at our home in Pittsburgh. There were also some cool squatter toilets in certain locations like some of the temples we visited. The third picture is of a typical street in Osaka.


Here outside the city of Fukui, I stayed in a hotel with a spectular view of the mountainous areas and architectural buildings of Japan. Rice patties dominate the low areas with tree covered mountains surrounding on all sides.

The Fukui Prefectural Museum is located close to the hotel and for obvious reasons is quite impressive. At a distance I thought it looked like a turtle shell but upon closer examination a football seems to better describe it. I met a fellow paleontologist while I was there and had some fun in the park area around the museum when not slaving away inside.


The food was amazing and quite different. Lunches consisted of eating in the museum from these wonderful lacquer boxes with a variety of food choices. I did get the hang of using chopsticks and tried everything at least once. We were invited to a dinner with other curators from the museum in which they tested us to see if we could eat whatever was placed in front of us. We sat around a low table with the paper wall partions separating us from other diners and had a typical male business dinner (Amy was the only woman). My favorite was teriyaki eel. I did try various types of sushi, sushimi, octopi, squid and various other sea creatures.

Just another day at the beach......

We have so many pictures this year, I hardly know where to start. Some of the pictures are from Angie, she took over 200. We took something less than that but got some great ones. This is the back seat of the car on the way down to the beach. This year we tried something different. We decided to leave at 3am and drive all the way in a day. We arrived around 130pm. I liked that, what I didn't like was that I was too excited to sleep and didn't get to sleep until after 1am so we didn't leave until 4am and the kids were just starting to go to sleep again at about 530am and we stopped to pay a toll and it all started all over again. Kids were VERY tired and after all the leaving early we still sat in traffic for 2 hours in the same place south of DC. That was infuriating. Next year we will take 81 down, even though it adds an hour, it still saves my nerves. We took 81 back this year and really enjoyed the drive. We drove past Shenandoah National Park and I want to go back and do some exploring one of these days.

So, we got there and Allen hauled all our stuff up to our room and then it was craziness. Sunday was our first official family walk on the beach that Jake managed to turn into full on body surfing and Julia and Jo became sand crabs. Here we see the whole Shaw family, first walk on the beach (THANKS ANGIE). We see Julia, Mayci and Chandra in the background, note, this is the ONLY time Julia actually wore her beach hat in the entire week, good thing we got a picture or that would really have been a waste of money~ And we see Jo in her absolute favorite beach pastime, sitting in a sand whole, later you'll see a picture of her eating sand and walking in waves with Allen those are the entire sum of her vacation, that and sleep.

Here we have Allen, Travis (packing Malan) and Rafal, acting cool. Laura and Jo taking a walk in the waves and Max and Jacob just shortly before the "don't get too wet" thing went completely awry and full on body surfing began.

The girls were happy in the sand, Jo, Mayci and Julie. Jo in her hole.

We spent time at Sandbridge Beach, where the house was, Chesapeake Bay, which the kids love and Virginia Beach, a great place for Boogie Boarding. And watching military maybe SEAL? training. We've seen it every single year we've gone to Virginia Beach.

Here are the girls at Chesapeake Bay. Jo in the water with Allen, in her hole by mom and Julia on the beach towel, well away from any kind of water! Jo was crazy about the water here, she would run down to the edge of the waves and grab Allen's legs and try to pull him into the water, she wanted him to hold her hands. Julia absolutely wanted nothing to do with the water this year. Jacob, on the other hand, couldn't be kept out of the water. Here is he and Max playing some football in Chesapeake Bay.

Next post, Virginia Beach and the Pool. Jacob learned how to play Marco Polo this year, it was funny.