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!”
Last week we had our fall school conferences for the girls. It’s always fun hearing about how the girls are getting along in school. The girls are at different stages of their educational journey so its interesting to see how the conferences change as the girls get older. For Lauren, her primary teacher is wonderful and talking to her its clear how well she knows our little girl. Lauren really seems to be adjusting well socially and the Mandarin learning is really starting to pick up steam – I have a feeling Lauren will go even faster than Maile did on account of having the support of her big sister.
For Maile, this year in second grade there was something new – mainly that Maile actually joined us for the conference and led part of the walk through providing us an overview of what she’s been learning to start the year. It was actually pretty funny because she started explaining everything in Mandarin until her teacher’s stopped her and asked, “Do your Mommy and Daddy know Mandarin?” “Oh yeah!”, Maile said and then switched to explaining in English for us. Thanks for tossing us a bone!
Maile and Mommy at Maile's parent teacher conference...
... and with Daddy too. Maile did an awesome job walking us through everything she is up to - it's going to be a great year!
Once again we headed to Michigan for a family reunion with Grandma Jill’s side of the family. We had an awesome weekend running around and playing with our cousins. We fished (using marshmallows!), went paddle boating, swimming, slip n’ sliding, water ballooning, glitter tattooing (thanks Maile!), we sang and danced, we shared stories, ate s’mores over the fire and, of course, made amazing memories!
Paddle boarding cousins!
Maile doesn't actually like eating the s'mores, but she sure enjoyed roasting the marshmallows 🙂
A rare family picture (Maile 7, Lauren 3.5)
Maile and Aiden _loved_ spending time together!
Auntie Elyssa and the cousins (at least some of them)
(Almost) full family shot!
Today was the end of year picnic for Maile and Lauren’s school. Hard to believe we have another school year in the books! We had a lot of phone running around the park with our friends and playing all the different field games they had from three-legged race to the tug o’ war.
Lauren didn’t need official games there – she and her friends just enjoyed launching themselves off this cement stoop. They must have done this for about an hour…
Lauren, how high did you jump? Wow!
And then it was Maile’s turn to crush the tug o’ war with her friends…
Maile's game face for the tug o' war!
Maile and Mommy
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
One of the parents in Maile’s first grade class ran track in college and offered to train some of the kids for a mile run. Over the past couple of weeks we met a couple times at a nearby track and he taught them about running as a group, how to pace yourself, etc. The goal was for them to complete the mile run without stopping.
As it turns out, Lauren tagged along for the training sessions and ended up chasing after Maile and her friends. In the training she finished the mile without problem and became kind of a mascot for the team. So when we signed Maile up for the run, we signed Lauren up too.
Today was the run – called See Jane Run over on a course in Alameda. We headed out in the morning and had a great day – and all the kids did an amazing job. Not only did they all finish, but they also cheered each other on – and in Lauren’s case, Maile and some of her friends ran back and finished the mile with her. Christine and I were quite proud of the girls.
Part of a race is picking up your numbers...
All dressed up in our green PKS t-shirts and ready to rock!
Lauren played the part of mascot well...
Stretching out to get things started...
Maile Girl too.
Lauren had a few pre-race jitters, but good thing Mommy was there...
Here’s a video of Maile Girl finishing her run…
And here’s Lauren (with Maile and friends cheering her on!)…
Chocolate milk at the end of the run! Christine said she kept Lauren going during the run with chats of Chocolate Milk, Chocolate Milk!
The whole crew, post run
Look at the muscles on those girls!
Maile and Tori ran the whole way together - proud finishers!
One last shot - very proud of my girls 🙂
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
Grandma and Papa Boston have always loved taking the girls to museums. In fact, here’s Maile on her first trip to the MOMA with Grandma Jill and Papa Mike.
The new MOMA just re-opened a few weeks ago – so was a perfect chance to check out the new digs. Its a pretty amazing museum – one of the nicest art museums I think I’ve been to. Excited to have it here in SF and I’m sure we’ll be back again.
Here are some shots of the girls and the rest of us exploring…
On Saturday we received the sad news that Great Grandma Kiyoko had passed away. GG Kiyoko was Papa Cal’s mother and a staple of our visits to Kauai. She was a part of every visit and always loved seeing the girls. I can still hear her voice every time just saying over and over: “Oh my, so beautiful!” and then Christine would often say something like “And they are smart too, Grandma!” and she would say, “Yes, yes, but on my, so beautiful!”
GG Kiyoko was always admiring our beautiful little girls...
Both girls met Great Grandma when they were about six months old – Maile on December 30th, 2009 and Lauren on June 27th, 2013…
Great Grandma Murashige, Mommy and Me
Great Grandma Kiyoko, Mommy, Maile (almost 4) and Lauren (almost 6 months)
Great Grandma Kiyoko lived in a assisted living home – but seeing the old people needing help around never phased Maile and Lauren. They always went right up and gave GG a big hug and spent some time with her before racing off to the pool. The pool was definitely their favorite part of the visit. For Daddy it was always a little bit too cold (for some reason it was built in the shadows of the building or something – never seemed to get direct sunlight and was always freezing!), but the girls never cared – they absolutely loved being in that pool.
It's kind of hard to get a 1 year old and a great grandma to both look at the camera at the same time...
When we were talking about GG and the girls on Saturday night, Christine was remembering how on our last visit, GG had moved to a more directly assisted part of the home and Maile noticed that GG’s slipper had fallen off, so she got right down and helped her put it back on. Needless to say Maile took the news particularly hard. Lauren was mainly concerned that Mommy was upset, but Maile felt it and was quite sad. She sat down and wrote a card about GG…
Maile's note to GG 🙁
We then talked about how we could remember GG and we decided that we would think of her whenever we went swimming because we love to swim and swimming was a bit part of our visits to see her. That felt right to all of us.
We'll always remember GG when we are having fun in the pool...
We love you Great Grandma Kiyoko and we will miss you always!
One of our favorite weekends of the year is when Maker Faire comes to down. On Sunday we headed down with the girls and had an amazing time exploring. We spent a few hours, but easily could have spent the day – I feel like we barely dented things…
Maile's first project of the day was to make a flashlight out of a popsicle stick...
Maile used these repurposed fabric samples to make this really cool eye design
This was awesome: a life sized Mouse Trap game (Lauren's all time favorite) - the girls were blown away 🙂
Maile meets R2D2 - home made by the R2D2 Club
Milestone - Maile's first VR experience
Mommy and Lauren doing some building...
Family picture - we had an awesome day!
We had a pretty fun Mother’s Day weekend here in San Francisco. The girls treated mommy to some home made cards, massages(!) and a new outfit picked out by Maile Girl. Daddy delivered on a pretty nice dinner date (if I do say so myself) on Saturday night and a great Sunday brunch at a new Hawaiian spot (aina – check it out if you are in SF).
Mommy by Lauren
Massages by Maile
At brunch I wanted to take some pictures of the girls – at first Lauren wanted nothing to do with it…
But, of course, once she saw Maile having fun, she changed her mind – and we got some fun shots…
I’m a lucky guy 🙂
One of the employees at Pocket has become super interested in pizza making and has been working to refine his techniques over the past couple of months. On Friday, for a happy hour, he said he show us all how to make our own pizza dough from scratch. I had the girls come over and we had a great time making some pizza dough!
First you need to weigh your flour - Maile took the lead on this part...
... well, of course, Lauren helped too!
Getting serious about kneading the dough...
The finished product - it was delicious!
Here’s a video of the girls hard at work ripping the dough…
Good times indeed!
(Click here for the video.)
