Zoe's 4th birthday party

Zoe celebrated her fourth birthday with her friends at Pump It Up Jr. She invited about 16 kids to bouce, jump, and slide! She chose to have a Backyardigans theme so we had decorations, masks and goodie bags too!

Jason and Sam's visit

We had a ton of visitors in the month of Sept. It started with Dad and Tita Aida coming in early September. Then in the middle of the month, Elaine and Tim came for a visit. And just in time for Zoe's 4th birthday, Jason and Samantha came to visit us. We did a lot of celebrating with Zoe's classroom and her buddies and even had a little party at home with family. But we also went to Carmel where we visited Pebble Beach and relaxed at Carmel Beach which is a beautiful white sand beach. Here are a few pictures from Jason and Samantha's visit. Once Elaine and Dad send me pictures, I'll upload those as well.

Zoe is 4 years old!

A little snack at the Pebble Beach. We couldn't afford to eat the Lodge...

This is one of the other beaches we found while on the infamous 17 mile drive. This wasn't the white sand beach that I fell in love with.

Here are a few pictures from Carmel Beach:

Seafood dinner in a little area called Carmel by the Sea.

Jedi Training Academy aka Ethan's 6th birthday

On Sat, August 14, we hosted a Jedi Training Academy where we invited 16 young padawans to come and train with Anakin, a real Jedi. We decorated the garage, made Jedi Robes for the kids, and ordered lightsabers. After Anakin trained the young jedis how to use their lightsabers, we had a Jedi Academy graduation ceremony and handed out the graduation certificates. It was a lot of work but the kids, especially Ethan, enjoyed it! It was totally worth it.

Jedi robes for the whole family...

A friend of mine taught me how to sew these jedi robes - all 18 of them...

Jedi themed cookies...made by yours truly...

I even made "lightsaber" pretzel rods...

Cupcakes topped with little lightsabers...

Anakin tested each kid for their Mitaclorian count. Ethan's count was 11,000 which we were told was higher than Mace Windu's and Obi Wan's!!! Ethan got a kick out of that!

Learning some new moves...

Getting ready to battle...and try out those new moves

Zoe got into the training too...

Even though she is tough, she is really sweet too :)

Ethan, though, he does not mess around! He is here to learn!

Ethan is receiving his training certificate for his stellar performance during the training academy.

The kids received Jedi Academy Training Certificates after they completed the jedi training.


Ethan and his best buds from school...

Summer 2010

We have had a great summer! Ethan will already be starting school next week so its good we did as much as we did:

In early June, we went to Disneyland. This time we stayed at the Paradise Pier Hotel which is a Disney hotel on the Disneyland property. The hotel was a short walk to Disneyland and was decorated with the Disney theme throughout. Kids loved it!

We also had a neighborhood block party which I helped organize for the six homes on our little block. We had a great time and plan to do it each year! Each family brought some food and we all invited a few friends. John even bbq'd some oysters which were a treat!

We also landscaped our backyard and I will post before and after pictures later...

Ethan lost his first two teeth, I will post the before and after pictures later... He lost one of his teeth but had one which he was able to put under his pillow for the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy came that night, took the tooth and left Ethan $4 bucks!! Ethan was so excited!!!

We went to Legoland with Jaekob and Erisijah (John's neice and newphew visiting from Virginia) in July. We drove to Carlbad on Friday and hung out at the beach and pool on Friday evening. Saturday, we hung out at Legoland all day long! And on Sunday, we drove back to home..it was a long drive but worth it.

Another really fun thing we did this summer was take the kids to see the Wiggles. They are an Australian band who dance and sing to toddlers and preschoolers. The kids have been watching them on tv since they were babies so they were insisted that when they came to our area for a concert, we would have to go! So we did...and got middle section of the 5th row which made it so much more fun. The kids danced and sang and were so excited to be there. John and I even enjoyed the good 'ole fashion dancin and singin, which was a nice surprise!

A few more videos of the kids

Ethan had his kindergarten performance on May 28th, where he sang with all the kindergarten classes. It was very cute! This year flew by - I cannot believe he is going into first grade already! Wow....



Zoe got pizza while we were waiting for her brother to start his performance. Guess she liked the pizza because I caught her doing her happy dance:



Right now, Zoe loves Mulan (a Disney Princess). She would watch the movie every day if she could. One of her favorite songs is Reflections. She sings it all the time and I was able to capture a few lines here:


Another song Zoe likes to sing. Proud to be an American:

Ethan's morning message

In Ethan's kindergarten class, Miss Lim, his wonderful teacher, usually reads a morning message to the class, sometimes giving them a sneak preview of the day or week or reminding them to do more listening than talking etc. Since the school year is almost over, Miss Lim has just started to let the kids create their own morning message which the students will prepare the night before and read to the class the next morning. Ethan was the first kid to be selected and here is his morning message. On Monday mornings I volunteer in his class so luckily, I was able to videotape him in action.