First, I wanted to give him a birthday present that would be very meaningful. I wanted to be able to include all of the friends that he cares about, but never is able to see. At first I thought I would try to put together a signature quilt, but then reality set in and I knew I would never be able to get that put together before the end of the century. So, I decided to make a birthday scrapbook for him.
I dug out his address book and sent blank scrapbook pages to nearly 100 different people from all over the world. Over half sent something back. I was able to keep it all a secret by having the pages sent back to me via my parents' house. It was awesome to see the stacks of pages coming back week after week.
When I finally gave Koichi his present, he was completely floored. He said it was his best present ever, and he's spent hours looking through it and reading all the messages from his friends all over the world. I'm so glad I thought of it, and was able to actually get it accomplished by his birthday.
The weekend of his birthday I wanted to surprise him with a party with my family. Koichi gets really shy about some things, including his birthday, but since it was his 40th it seemed like he needed to be celebrated. So on Sunday after he took a nap, I got him up and told him we were going to take Lily to the zoo. We'd been planning on going to the zoo for a few weeks, and that was the perfect day. We started driving to Independence, and luckily for me Koichi has no idea where the zoo is, because he didn't become suspicous until we drove to my brother, Dustin's, house. When we pulled in the driveway I told him I had to drop something off for my brother and his wife, since it was so close to the zoo
(wink, wink) and he came inside with me to find most of my family there shouting "surprise!"
Surprise #2 worked equally as well, and Koichi had a great time turning 40.
The last weekend of September we went to the Lake of the Ozarks with my brother, Dwain, his wife, Jennifer, and their son, TJ. Jen's mom has a condo on the lake, and they were kind enough to invite us for a 3-day weekend with them. We had a blast!! It was by far one of the best vacations we have ever had. We didn't "do" a whole lot, but it was sooooooo nice to sit on the screened-in deck overlooking the lake, read a book, play Guitar Hero, and just generally relax. 
Lily and TJ had a lot of fun playing together. They loved to get into the kitchen cabinets and crawl around, opening and shutting doors and spinning around on the lazy susan. They were hilarious.
We did do one touristy thing. We went to HaHaTonka State Park and saw the castle up there. We enjoyed a nice picnic lunch outside, and drove around the lake and did a little sight-seeing. It's so pretty there.
On our last day, Koichi and I went to Bridal Cave and took a cave tour. It was really neat. I'm glad I don't suffer from clausterphobia because there were some pretty tight squeezes through the tour. We even got to see a bat hanging from the ceiling. The ceiling where he was hanging from is only about 5 1/2 feet tall, so we had to duck under the bat. Pretty cool.
