Lauren and Mommy arrived on Kauai on Friday (Maile and I followed today – more on the delay a bit later – we stayed behind for a performance Maile did with her choir.)
I think this video perfectly captures how we feel about being back on Kauai…
(And yes, she did that many, many times!)
(Click here for the video.)
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At school, Maile has started learning about poetry. It’s been fun hearing about her explorations of this new literary style. She seems to really love it.
Tonight she came home from school with a little piece of paper with her “Christmas” poem written on it. It kind of blew us away.
Maile's Christmas poem
I smell the christmas tree
it is lovely and some times
even pineconey
I feel the warm hugs and the
nice cool air
I see the tree and oh my gosh
could that really be so much presents
I hear the Jingeling of Santa’s bells
I taste the ginger bread house and
the lovely cookies
I love christmas it is so much fun
And, of course, Maile being Maile, she wanted to perform it as well…
’tis the season 🙂
(Click here for the video.)
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The program for Lauren's performance
This morning it was Lauren’s turn to show all the dancing she’s been learning at school this fall! I was lucky enough to be able to attend and had a blast. Lauren definitely enjoys being up on stage and did a great job with all the steps she’s learned.
There were lots of laughs and smiles, some tears – but all in all good times. In the newsletter they send each day they captured what the kids said when they asked them about the day:
“Lauren: I like my daddy coming to watch me. I dance with my daddy.”
Yep, that made my day 🙂
(Click here for the video.)
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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.)
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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.)
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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!
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The holidays seem to start earlier and earlier every year, don’t they? This weekend Lauren got a jump start and put together a letter for Santa. We don’t know what she asked for because she insisted that the letter was for Santa’s eyes only!
(Click here for the video.)
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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
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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!”
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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.)
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