Hirosaki Castle - Our 4th Spring!

We woke up today to incredible weather with lots of sunshine, so I decided to load the kids up and head to Hirosaki Castle to check out all the cherry blossoms!  We originally had plans to go with friends on Sunday, but I couldn't pass up a trip with the weather like this after so many days of rain...then, when I checked the forecast and saw rain all weekend, I knew this was a good decision!  I felt a little bad at first because I would have to take Katie out of school today to go, but I decided it was a great "cultural field trip" and totally worth it...come to find out (and I didn't realize this until after our trip today) today is a Japanese holiday and Katie didn't have school anyway!  No wonder the secretary wasn't answering the phone at school!!  :)

Getting ready to walk around the grounds at Hirosaki Castle

Luckily, my friend Mary (who I was supposed to go with on Sunday) saw an email I sent this morning begging for directions to Hirosaki (the only ones I had are quite safe on the laptop that crashed recently...) and decided to hurriedly get her kids in the car and join us!  I ended up following her to our destination and she lead us to the best parking spot EVER!  It's right next to a beautiful park that I didn't even know existed until today.  There's a huge pond with Koi fish, a beautiful red bridge in front of a big waterfall, and flowers just waiting to bloom everywhere (it will be even more beautiful here in the next couple of weeks.)  We may have to go back again very soon and take more pictures like two below...can you imagine what these would look like with all those tulips in bloom?!

After checking out that hidden gem, we walked over to Hirosaki Castle.

 We've seen the "insert your nugget here" photo ops here before, but this is the first time I've seen one for the WHOLE family!  Too bad Daddy wasn't with us for this one, but the kids look cute!

  It's been kind of a rough couple of days here...too much missing Daddy!  It kind of carried over to our trip today.  It was quite difficult to get smiles!

 

 Poor CJ...being stuck in the stroller doesn't allow for very many photo opportunities!  He was able to roam around a bit while we were having our lunch!  And, as you can see below, he finally realized that if he looked up while in his stroller he could see me!  :)

While the weather was beautiful, it was still quite windy.  We didn't really notice the wind though, until we sat down in an open area for lunch. The ladies pictured below nearly blew away while trying to put their tarp down! 

The blossoms were beautiful and I always enjoy going to Hirosaki Castle.  I'm so glad Trevor was extended here and we are able to spend one more Spring and Summer in Japan.  ....and I was able to capture a few smiles, we DID have a good time!  :)

 

While there were quite a few trees that had blossoms, there were still many that hadn't bloomed yet....so there will probably be another installment of "Hirosaki Castle" ...if we can manage to get Trevor back home soon!