All Done

Another school year in the books. Grade 1 for Kai and the last year of preschool for Teia. Next year they'll both be in "real" school. I was beyond ready for the school year to be over and will treasure every moment of this summer. 

Here are a few of the highlights of the year's end. 

Kai's entry in his class memory book:

I love, love, love this. 'Fly' is a butterfly that Kai raised from a larvae in his class. Fly made a profound impression on our little man. His entry was unique and poetic. As always, Kai brings a fresh perspective, his own perspective, to life.  

And here he is at the last project night of the year where they showcased their "passion" projects. Kai's was about Ferries. 

Teia's preschool held a very low key graduation ceremony. Hard to believe the little Peach is really heading to kindergarten in the fall. 

Unfortunately, the best pic we got of T was not with either of her parents :-( . She was all about making funny faces that day when standing with Mom or Dad. A few more photos:

Last day of Grade 1.

Last Day of Preschool.

Now these kids are ready to take on Summer!

T waiting to perform with her dance class at the SD Fair. She is so much braver than her mom!

Our Performer

It's that time of year again. The school year is winding down and activities and celebrations seem to be ramping up. The kids are getting ready for their end of year festivities and commemorations, including those outside of school. Teia had a particularly busy weekend with rehearsals for her upcoming "spring" dance recital and a Gymnastics performance. We dashed out on Saturday afternoon to hit the dance studio first, followed by a quick swing back home to pick up Daddy and Kai and we were off to the Y for her gymnastics show.

Teia took it all in stride. Here she is waiting to go on waving to her Dad. Pure excitement.

She is only 4 years old and I'm already in awe of her. She does everything with gusto and complete enthusiasm and determination. 

The video of her gymnastics performance would probably take all night to upload but we did get a few photos that weren't blurry. 

I did get a short video of one of her dance rehearsals. She is playing a bird, eating up the bread crumbs left for Hansel and Gretel. 

And here she is at Saturday's rehearsal, literally leaping through the air. It's blurry, but I love it anyway. Fly my girl, fly! 

Not to leave out big brother, he's been a busy little man too. Just last week we attended the second to last project night of the year. Kai's projects this year have included: Mapping Airports and the Water Cycle. This one was entitled Flying Birds of the Rainforest. Up next their "Passion Projects" where they can pick any project at all, not constricted by any classroom-based themes. Bet you can't guess what Kai picked...

Stay tuned...

100 Days

Greg and I have a new challenge. Well, its not so new; we started in mid-April but its taken me awhile to document any of it. Its a 100 day challenge - 100 work outs in 100 days. This was inspired by a friend of mine who posted to Facebook the day she finished her 100 day challenge. Feeling a little un-inspired in my athletic life this year and discouraged by injuries and illness, I thought it might be just what we needed to spice things up a bit. Told Greg about it and he was immediately on board, although a little concerned about how we'd pull it off. We made up our own rules - work out minimum: 20 minutes in order to count. Other rules have evolved as we've gone along. Like the rule that a two-fer day can take the place of a missed day. So we've built in a little flexibility, and we've needed it!

We're on Day 45. Hard to believe we're almost half way there. I made it to Day 41 without taking a break but then waking up in the morning with a 101 fever and not being able to stay awake longer than 30 minutes made it so I had to miss a day. Stubbornly I ran the following day with the same fever but realized 20 minutes in what a silly thing that was to do.... but I got in my 20 minutes so it counted, stupid as it may have been.

Greg has missed a few more b/c he got really sick on his trip to Hawaii and has had a few uber long days at work where working out would have cut into the 5 hours available for sleep. He's had plenty of two-fers though with his bike commuting so he's really not far off the pace.

I can't say we're all that much fitter yet. At least I'm not, but I can do chin ups again and that really impresses the kids. Maybe by the time we hit 100 days (sometime in July) we'll be nice and fit. Or nice and ready for a week off!

Lucky Number 7!

I'm not sure if 7 is really a lucky number or not, but people seem to think so. I figure its a good title for this blog post as Kai was pretty stoked on turning 7. He bid goodbye to 6 two nights before with his first real stomach flu so I guess 7 was lucky b/c he was all finished throwing up by the time he was 7!

He mustered Teia-levels of excitement when he arrived in our room early in the morning to proclaim that he had turned 7. Then he went through a list of all of his body parts that had grown in the night, tangible proof of his seven-ness. 

For our loyal blog following (that's you mom....and Shannon), you might remember that Kai has a sneaky little habit of changing favorite things right before his birthday. Last year we were scrambling to turn a trolley party into a train party at the last minute and ended up with a bit of a mixture. This year followed suite. Kai's favorite thing in the whole world changed from school buses to ferry boats as April 27th drew near. I was anticipating this a little bit so held off on too much party planning until the last minute (much as it stressed my planning-self all out). It was easier to do this year, seeing as Kai only invited 3 friends to his party. Its much easier to last minute plan a party for a few kids, rather than the full class-load we had last year. So this year we had a school bus/ferry boat party. No one seemed to mind. Kai loved his giant school bus photo stand. It is amazing how much school bus stuff one can purchase on the internet. I had no idea they were such a popular interest for kids. Ferry boats, not so much, apparently. 

Okay, one more school bus picture:

But we did find a BC Ferries toy if you can believe it. We are taking a trip to the Pac NW this summer which will involve a ride on one of these "super boats" as Kai likes to call them and he is really smitten with the idea. 

There are no waits for this ferry. Captain Kai fits ALL the cars on!

Kai's friends arrived and the trampolining commenced. I love this picture. Just so much unbridled energy!

Kai's birthday party usually marks the first swim of the year. But I think it was actually the second this year; its been a warm "winter." 

Kai's cake was decorated to reflect our duo-theme. We couldn't find any ferry boats to put on his cake so we made do with pictures of BC Ferries on toothpicks (7 of them, as requested). He was pretty pleased. I always love watching his face as he sees his cake for the first time. I think it is the birthday moment he gets most excited about. 

Ferry pinatas were equally hard to come by so we improvised. 

You didn't want to be this pinata. One of Kai's little friends hit it so hard that some of the toys inside broke. Really hoping the pinata thing gets old soon. I can remember maybe only one birthday party growing up with a pinata. Here in San Diego, EVERY birthday party has one and all the kids just expect them. I find them annoying on several levels and look forward to our first pinata-free birthday. 

But complaints aside, Kai had a great birthday. He was thrilled to be another year older, and we loved having a chance to celebrate him. 

Seems like just yesterday he looked like this:

Easter

April is such a crazy month for our family, for many reasons. So I am determined to document our Easter adventure before the next big thing is upon us. (And its a big one; someone is turning 7).

I'm kind of ambivalent about how to celebrate Easter seeing as we're not particularly religious and I don't even know the story behind the egg-layin' Easter bunny that a secular Easter seems to embrace. (Every year I say I'll look it up; has yet to happen so if anyone knows, I'd be obliged....) This year I decided to at least attempt to tell the kids the original Easter story (the child's version w/o the terrifying parts, of course), so they'd have some sense of it. Teia was having trouble saying "Jesus" so she changed his name to George and then asked me if "George" and the Easter bunny knew each other. I don't think I did such a good job. Maybe I'll let Greg give it a shot next year.

Regardless of the meaning of the holiday, the kids were excited, Teia in particular. She was peering out the door for days before thinking she spotted an Easter egg. Usually it was just a leaf or an orange peel. When Easter morning finally arrived she was up early and spying eggs in the backyard. We were pretty groggy, having laid all those plastic eggs at 5 am. It was torture for her to wait for her brother to wake up and as soon as he was up she was out there and had about 7 eggs in her bucket before we even noticed she was outside. She's ninja like that when it comes to Easter eggs. We pretty much had to hold her down so Kai could catch up. If there was an Olympics for Easter egg hunts, Teia would be national team, if not gold medal-quality I'm sure. Kai went about his hunt in his usual thoughtful way, more of a tortoise than a hare. He really enjoyed it but wanted to open each egg to see what was inside before moving on for more. We had to prod him along lest he only end up with three to his sister's 30.

Post-hunt they examined their spoils with eggs and wrappers all over the floor. Then we moved on to the in-house hunt. Growing up, I don't remember an egg hunt outside but I do remember our indoor hunts where my parents always left crafty notes that we had to decipher to find out where our Easter chocolate was hiding. We loved these hunts, long after we learned to recognize our parents' writing and knew there was no Easter bunny. We do something similar for the kidlets. 

Bunnies across the wall and ceiling led them to the secret hiding places for their Easter baskets. 

I admit, even the hiding place was inspired by one of my childhood hunts.

The rest of the morning was pretty exciting for Teia while Daddy built her "jungle bed." We became the unexpected owners of a full size bed from some friends over the weekend. This was perfect b/c Teia had been sleeping on the floor on a mattress for the past few months. She's pretty happy with her new bed, complete with its jungle canopy (pics to come). 

After lunch we took a ride on the ferry over to Coronado island. Kai is a ferry man these days and the smile tells the story. He enjoyed himself :-)

Once over on Coronado we rented a 4 person bike where Greg and I got competitive and made sure we overtook every other family out there riding. We didn't have much choice; Teia was steadily mushing us from her perch at the front. 

And here's our girl in a lovely Easter dress that was perfect for the occasion. We're alot more into dresses these days. 

At the end of the day Greg showed me a note that Teia had dictated to him and placed in the mailbox, thanking the Easter bunny for a dress (different one) that was in her Easter basket. 

I'm sure the Easter bunny, wherever s/he is, appreciated the note. Kai told us the bunny goes back to his cage post-egg layin'. That's probably a good place for a giant, egg-layin' bunny to hide out. Oh, and the kids said they weren't scared of the wascally wabbit. But they did sleep with their doors closed the night before Easter and have kept them open every night before and every night since. I don't think they fancied the idea of a large rodent peeking on them while they were sleeping.

The Great Catch Up of 2014.

This has definitely been the slowest start to a blogging year since we started keeping this blog in 2008. What is that about more free time once the babies grow up a bit?????

I'm not really sure what to blame for my blogging absence. I guess we've just been super busy. Seems we've had our share of colds and fevers and there always seems to be something pressing to get done. Oh, and trying to maintain an active blog with photographs on a circa 2008 computer also has something to do with it. When the blog goes silent again, it'll be b/c I've run out of memory for photos on the old machine yet again.

So now we're a full third of the way into 2014 and I have only blogged about NYE. I had so many stories and photos about our visit with Shannon, Kip, Piper and Harry in December and January....but sadly, that seems such a long time ago now. Here are a few of my favorites nonetheless....

We spent alot of time at the beach. So much so that Teia, my sand crab, turned into a water and wave lover! She also discovered that she loved sand tobogganing. That Kip sure was lots of fun! 

Winter Solstice celebration at OB.

And another opportunity to sled in the sand, even if just on a piece of cardboard. 

So good to be together! (maybe we should have stood somewhere other than the kids' arts and crafts display wall!)

Christmas Day.

Move night. 

We spent a wonderful few hours hiking at Mt. Laguna. The kids were amazing, knocking out a 3+ mile hike with no complaints. This was taken near the end and they still had big smiles on their faces!

The girls. 5 weeks apart in age, just like their moms. 

This picture is just so classic: Teia pulling a face, Harry laughing, Piper turned the wrong way and Kai not looking. Doesn't get better than that!

Cuddly, snuggly girls. 

Just to prove Teia really does go in the ocean now. 

So much more to catch up on. We have a beautiful new nephew. Mike & Mom just spent spring break with us. I had another birthday (they seem to be coming fast and furious these days). We took a short trip to Pasadena. And we got a ...... trampoline! The blog is back in action :-)

Happy New Year!

Just like last year, we had so many adventures over the Christmas break and so little time to document them. I will try to get a few posts done, before memory fails me.

This year, for the first time in a loooong while, we went out to celebrate New Year's Eve. Neither Greg nor I are big New Year's people (meaning that going to bed before midnight really doesn't bother us much at all), but despite that, we found ourselves strangely excited as we drove down to our friends' rental near the beach. Funny that we were excited to be heading out for NYs knowing full well that we'd be home by about 8 pm!

We had a little party-get together at Shannon and Kip's place where we were joined by a couple of other families with small children who are good friends of theirs. We started off with a short trip to the beach to catch the sunset that wasn't. The clouds actually rolled in and it was quite misty for probably the only evening the entire time that Shannon and Kip were in town. So we didn't get a spectacular sunset finale to the year 2013. The kids didn't mind. They thought the mist was kinda cool.

Then we went back to the house for our evening of dinner and dancing. Really, we did have a little dance party in the living room. The kids absolutely loved dancing around with the grown ups and really throwing it down. Sometimes their dance moves looked more like running around the perimeter of the furniture as fast as they could, but whatevah, it was dancing.

We cracked open the bubbly (and the children's version) at about 8 pm to celebrate a Halifax NYE. We didn't even watch the ball drop b/c that would have meant staying up for New York and that was just way too much past the kids' bedtimes. The kids really got into the countdown. And seeing as our countdown didn't correspond with any particular time on the clock, no one really knew when to get started until Kai decided he had waited enough and started us off with an assertive "TEN, NINE, EIGHT...." Then it was cheersing and kisses all round and some pretty lousy attempts at auld lang sine. (I vow to learn the words for next year).

The kids made a fantastic sign to welcome 2014 which Harry kindly held up for a photo while I snuggle-posed with my best girls.

Wish I had something really profound to say to start off the New Year but for now, I'll just wish everyone a happy, peaceful 2014 with lots of time with the people you love!