Tanabata 2013

Today my family visited the Seattle Japanese garden for the Tanabata festival!

My attempt to get Bryan to sit still to take a photo...

The Japanese garden had set up several bamboo trees full of origami and tanzaku wish strips. I made a few origami ornaments at home and brought them to hang on the bamboo.

Kamigoromo, kuzukago, kinchaku, and orizuru

Bryan helped attach origami ornaments.

The Japanese garden is of course very beautiful! It is a very peaceful atmosphere, and thankfully today was not too hot. My favorite part, of course, is hoping across rocks to cross the streams. I don't know why, maybe I feel like a kid again!

Bryan placed a penny inside the stone lantern.

"Here mommy, I'll help you!"

Big boy, wants to hop across. He of course landed in the water once today, on purpose!

We spent some time on the bridge, feeding the koi fish and turtles. 

it looks like I'm yelling at him ^^; I'm not!

Bryan made friends with a lone koi fish. The fish swam up very close. I worried that Bryan would try to get in the water and pet the koi. I stopped him from poking it, the koi fish seemed rather sad to have missed the opportunity to nibble little fingers.

We were with the fish for several minutes, I was surprised it didn't go away when it realized we had no food. Bryan was sad when we had to move on and leave the fish behind.


There was a tea ceremony in the garden, but tickets had sold out. I had attended it last year, but I had a hard time sitting seiza....

We wondered off into the garden and found a tanzaku writing station. I could not come up with a good wish to write this year, so my wish was "I hope to make a lot of wafuku this year". I hope this resolution will help me sew more often!
At the tanzaku writing station, I was surprised to see another bamboo tree displayed, including my kamigoromo ornament that I made last year! It made me happy that they kept it!

Happy Tanabata! May your wishes come true!