Jolo's
Remember the balloon room in Yokosuka? I'm sure that we dragged the grandparents there when they visited. For those of you who don't recall, the balloon room (not it's actual name, but a term coined by Josiah) was located at the local Daiei Mall in Yokosuka. It was a big area filled with pens full of slides, mechanical animals, balloons being blown about by fans, and ball pits. In other words, a child's and bacteria's favorite hangout. If I recall, it was around 200 Yen (or 2 dollars) to sit there for a couple of hours and watch Josiah tear around. Totally worth every yen.
Yesterday we loaded up, fired up Dora and headed for the magical children's paradise known as Jolo's. This is a mystical, mythical place alluded to by all of our neighbors with children, who kept asking "Have you gone to Jolo's yet?". I thought about going on Thursday, alone with the children. Thank heavens Annika decided to sleep through the entire afternoon, thus effectively cancelling our trip. We ended up going yesterday. Hans was able to come along, and boy, am I glad he was there! Even if part of the time we spent in the car was filled with muffled curses as Dora led us in an extremely circuitous route to Jolo's. What should have been a 15 minute trip turned into an expedition of epic proportions. But--we know where Jolo's is now and next time...we'll just listen to Dora instead of ignoring her advice.
I will try to let the pictures do the talking here...suffice it to say that Annika and Josiah were so excited when we came into this place that their pupils dilated, their eyes rolled back into their heads and they started twitching violently and foaming at the mouth. We could hardly hold them back long enough to remove their shoes and coats before they shot off, in opposite directions (thus my thanks for having Hans along). They proceeded to spend the next two hours in a blur of motion. I don't really blame them--some of the stuff they had there was so cool...like the roller slide. I secretly kept pretending that Josiah needed "help" to get down it, just because it was so freakin' fun for me.
We stopped at McDonald's on the way home for supper, so all in all, an excellent day. I feel like I can totally let my parenting skills slide today because we showed them such a good time yesterday! Enjoy the pictures in the next post.
Yesterday we loaded up, fired up Dora and headed for the magical children's paradise known as Jolo's. This is a mystical, mythical place alluded to by all of our neighbors with children, who kept asking "Have you gone to Jolo's yet?". I thought about going on Thursday, alone with the children. Thank heavens Annika decided to sleep through the entire afternoon, thus effectively cancelling our trip. We ended up going yesterday. Hans was able to come along, and boy, am I glad he was there! Even if part of the time we spent in the car was filled with muffled curses as Dora led us in an extremely circuitous route to Jolo's. What should have been a 15 minute trip turned into an expedition of epic proportions. But--we know where Jolo's is now and next time...we'll just listen to Dora instead of ignoring her advice.
I will try to let the pictures do the talking here...suffice it to say that Annika and Josiah were so excited when we came into this place that their pupils dilated, their eyes rolled back into their heads and they started twitching violently and foaming at the mouth. We could hardly hold them back long enough to remove their shoes and coats before they shot off, in opposite directions (thus my thanks for having Hans along). They proceeded to spend the next two hours in a blur of motion. I don't really blame them--some of the stuff they had there was so cool...like the roller slide. I secretly kept pretending that Josiah needed "help" to get down it, just because it was so freakin' fun for me.
We stopped at McDonald's on the way home for supper, so all in all, an excellent day. I feel like I can totally let my parenting skills slide today because we showed them such a good time yesterday! Enjoy the pictures in the next post.
Comments
I'm glad Josiah and Annika had such a good time. Mostly likely they'll be asking to go there many times.
Take it from one who knows!
(N.B.; I don't actually condone this...)