Never one to miss out on the opportunity to perform a bit, Maile spent time after school this fall taking dance classes with Miss Angela and the PKS “Dance Team”. (I have to admit, I don’t really understand how she keeps all the steps straight between the different dance classes she takes!)
Maile & the PKS Dance Team
Last week, they had their end of fall performance and Christine and I were able to attend. These videos are always a bit longer, but figure I’d post, as I know the Grandmas eat them up!
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
by Papa K on November 30, 2016
Every year as a fundraising event, some families from the girls’ school rent out an outdoor ice rink downtown and invite everyone to come have some skating fun. We headed down this year and it was Daddy’s turn to get out on the ice with the girls. Maile is pretty much out on her own these days, but I got some quality skating time with Lauren.
We started out hugging the wall:
But soon enough we were out on the ice properly:
My skating date 🙂
I took a few spins with Maile Girl too - she isn't completely embarrassed by me ... yet.
We fell.
Still upset about the fall.
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
by Papa K on November 29, 2016
For only the second time in my life, I didn’t head to Boston for Thanksgiving. After our big trip to Minneapolis a few weeks ago, we decided to stay local and Grandma and Papa Boston along with Auntie Elyssa and Uncle Stephen came to us. We rented a house up in Healdsburg and had a California-style Thanksgiving.
Grandma and Papa with Maile and Lauren on the deck outside our rental house
Mommy had the great idea to kick things off with a full family turkey trot. 1.5 miles and the girls did awesome. Christine and Maile ran ahead. Lauren and I followed behind – and Lauren ran the whole way – didn’t stop once! I was very proud of her.
We're bundled up and ready to trot!
The whole family got involved in the trotting!
Maile Girl at the finish line
Maile came back and ran the last yards with Lauren
Very proud of my little runner!
After that we cooked up a storm at the house – it had a huge kitchen that was perfect! The girls loved having so many people to play with, read books, play games and goof around with.
Cooking with Grandma
All in all, it was a fantastic extended weekend and a nice start to the holiday season. We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well!
by Papa K on November 15, 2016
This past weekend we headed to Minneapolis to help our cousin Aidan celebrate his Bar Mitzvah. The whole extended family came in and we had an absolute blast playing with our cousins. We spent some solid time in temple and the girls did great, but certainly the best part was the party on Saturday night. I don’t think the girls left the dance floor for more than 2 minutes – I was quite proud of my little dancing machines!
Maile and Lauren with Aidan and Caleb
More cousin goofiness!
Family Picture (Maile - 7 and Lauren - almost 4!)
The grandparents and their grand children...
The full crew: Lauren, Aidan, Maile, Caleb, Harlow and Lexie
Just the sisters looking good for temple
A lot of excitement as the day started... I hope we are able to hold on to that regardless of this outcome.
Christine and I got Maile and Lauren all excited tonight about the election. We went down to a Wellesley party in our Hillary gear ready to celebrate. When it became clear that things were going to take a while to sort out and it was getting late, I took the girls home and put them to bed … with Maile asking the whole way who won?
I’ll caveat this by saying that Maile is only 7 – she knows a bit about Trump, but really his only policy she knew much about was “the Wall” – she wasn’t really exposed to the racism or misogyny. There are a bunch of complicated aspects of this related to race and gender that I’m sidestepping here.
In any event, this is how I imagine our conversation going tomorrow morning…
“Last night Donald Trump won the presidency and Hillary Clinton lost.
It’s not the result we talked about or that we wanted and that is frustrating. Your mommy and I really thought that Hillary Clinton would become the first female president. That’s not going to happen … today. But it will happen someday.
When you turn 18 you get a chance to vote. All across our country in every state millions of people voted. Some of those people agreed with Mommy and Daddy that Hillary Clinton should be president. And some thought that Donald Trump should be president.
It’s okay to disagree. And it’s okay to lose. We don’t agree with many of the things that Donald Trump wants to do for our country. But regardless of that, we will continue to be good people – we will continue to support our friends and help people, whoever they might be, when they need help. Donald Trump said a lot of mean things during this campaign – but even though he won, it doesn’t mean that he will be able to make all of those things happen and it certainly doesn’t mean he is right.
We will learn from this and work harder so that next time the outcome is different. That’s what we do. We had a lot of fun these last few weeks and months being excited about Hillary – the result of this election doesn’t change that.
And, above all else, we love you!”
At Maile’s school, they organize the year into “units of exploration” – the first unit for this year was about “My City” and they learned all about San Francisco. As a final project they needed to pick something about San Francisco and put together a project about it. It was Maile’s first real “project” where she chose her topic, did some research (at the library and on the computer), decided what questions she wanted to share and put together a display to share her findings. She also prepared a little speech (in Mandarin) about her topic.
Maile decided to do her project on the Palace of Fine Arts. They did a field trip one day to a bunch of San Francisco landmarks and Maile fell in love with how beautiful and cool looking the Palace of Fine Arts is.
Maile showing off her Palace of Fine Arts display
Proud Mama and Maile Girl
And a very proud Daddy too!
Here’s a video of Maile talking about what she did in Chinese – pretty cool that she memorized her speech. And lucky for us, she presented to us in English afterwards too 🙂
(Click here for the video.)
In many ways Halloween for us starts way back in June – that’s around the time that Grandma Gail takes requests for the girls costumes. She then works over the summer to create whatever the girls have requested. And the results are always amazing! The girls absolutely love their costumes – it really is a fantastic gift and makes the girls feel so special. So thank you, Grandma Gail, for once again making our Halloween fantastic!
This year, Maile wanted to be a Magenta Crayon and Lauren wanted to be Hello Kitty. And that is exactly what we got 🙂
Meet Magenta Crayon Maile and Hello Kitty Lauren
Look at that Kitty face 🙂
With Halloween on a Monday this year, we had a few different opportunities to head out for candy – we did some warm up runs on Saturday and Sunday before joining our normal Halloween crew, Jake, Sophie and Willa for some serious candy action on Monday night!
Our Halloween crew together again!
Ready to rock some candy collecting!
Hope everyone had an awesome Halloween!
On Sunday morning, my Uncle Lloyd passed away. He was 99(!) years old. The oldest member of my family on my mother’s side – and quite proud of it. He was an amazing story teller and sharp as a wit right up until the end.
We actually had a chance to see him this summer at our family reunion – he didn’t stay the whole time, but just enough for us to say hello and for him to enjoy seeing all the young ones frolicking around and having fun – I know it brought him great joy.
Uncle Lloyd with the youngest generation - most 90+ years younger(!) (August 2016)
I actually don’t know how much Uncle Lloyd read this blog – but I think he would have very much enjoyed what I’ve been doing here. My relationship with him actually picked up a bit in my late 20’s – in some small part due to writing a different blog. When I was in business school, I traveled to Thailand for a semester and wrote a blog about my travels. Uncle Lloyd got wind of it and started following along. He got a thorough kick out my entries and would often send me emails commenting on my various adventures, asking me all types of funny questions, and more often then not relating whatever I was up to some story from his own adventures.
To say he lived a full life is an understatement. His funeral was today and I’m told it was full of love and joy and many, many stories. I have no doubt that made him smile. He will be missed, but we’ll carry on the adventures on his behalf. I look forward to Maile and Lauren stumbling on this post one day and asking me about Uncle Lloyd!
On Sunday, Maile had her first performance as a member of the Young Women’s Choral Project of San Francisco. She’s been in the choir for about a month and a half and really enjoying herself. She practices twice a week (Wednesdays and Sundays) for a couple hours. She practices her songs and has been also enjoying learning how music works.
The performance was a really quick one – just one song – but Maile was very excited. She loved that she got to wear her “casual” uniform (for the big shows they were a more formal dress). And she and the rest of the choir did a really nice job. They didn’t allow videos, so you’ll need to just enjoy the pictures below of our proud little singer (and her hype girl, of course)…
Maile Girl and her hype girl, Lauren!
In full casual attire...
At the parent teacher conferences last week, Christine and I went and chatted with Maile’s English teacher (since its an immersion school, English has a separate teacher that they meet with for ~a period a day kind of like how you might have had foreign language class growing up). Maile has been working hard on a story about her GG Kiyoko passing away – we’ve heard bits and pieces, but finally got to read the whole thing (see below). It reminded me a little bit of a project I did in preschool when my Grandma Judy passed away – I made a “family tree”-type drawing with my teacher.
