I I might have mentioned this, but a few months ago, Maile really started enjoying cooking shows. We watch things like Chopped Junior, Good Eats and a few others – much better in my opinion than the cartoons!
In any event, given the interest, we’ve been cooking a bit more with Maile (and Lauren) as a result. Maile says she is training for the Chopped kitchen 🙂
Christine does most of the cooking around here, but today, we gave her a rest and Maile, Lauren and I cooked up dinner. Maile was the main chef and we had a lot of fun putting together a great meal.
In the morning, while still in our PJ's, the girls made a strawberry gazpacho - we let it chill all day and it was delicious!
Getting things prepped for some harticort verts and pancetta...
While preparing dinner, Maile was introduced to the sting of onion chopping so she went and grabbed these protective googles and they helped!
Maile is old enough now that we’re letting her do more things in the kitchen, especially with knives and chopping and prepping. She takes good care and its fun to teach her how to do things.
The funniest part is that while the girls like the cooking, they are still a bit picky. The strawberry gazpacho was a bit too “veggie” for them – we told them that next time we’ll make Grandma Jill’s famous Strawberry Soup.
Lauren showed this video to me the other night and we fell in love with it all over again. Thought it’d be a fun one to share for #tbt. Have a great weekend!
(Click here for the video.)
Sorry for the lack of posts this week! Tonight, two to make up for it – both featuring our little girl, Lauren.
In this first one, Lauren discovered how the filters work on the iPad and had quite a good time…
Was looking back at our April 22nd pictures and stumbled on this one…
Maile (3.5) and Lauren (3 months)
And then there is this one…
From January 22, 2013 – but still “I know a song about toes…”
(Click here for the video.)
When people ask me about raising our girls in a big city like San Francisco, I always tell them that its been wonderful, much better and easier than I expected, with one big BUT. And the big BUT has been that I’ve felt that its been a lot harder to teach the girls (and Maile in particular) how to ride her bike. Can’t really just head right out the door as the streets are quite busy. And so I’ve felt like I’ve been failing in one of my “father duties” in making sure Maile could ride her bike.
This all changed a few weeks ago – Maile started asking directly for me to help her learn so we made a concerted effort to take the bike out, take the training wheels off, and go find a place nearby that we could practice on. Turns out there is a big church right diagonal from us that has a pretty big open space that is perfect.
Very tentative early attempts... (look at the concentration though!)
Maile was very nervous, but to her credit despite the fear and the tears, she kept working at it. I’m proud of her often, but I was particularly proud of her through this effort. It was really hard. We went out a couple weekends in a row and all of a sudden on the fourth outing, it all just clicked and she’s now a full-fledged no training wheel rider!
Pretty cool place to learn how to ride your bike...
Here’s a video of our first outing…
And here she is on Saturday…
As for Lauren, she is incredible on her little scoot bike – she whips around on that thing like crazy. Since Maile was learning something new, I taught Lauren how to ride and lift her feet up so she could glide a bit. She too nailed it pretty quick and was gliding all over in no time. I have a feeling she’ll be on the pedal bike soon enough chasing after her big sister.
Maile Girl, No Training Wheel Bike Rider
Lauren, Gliding Maniac
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
A new toy for the house arrived today, an Amazon Echo. If you haven’t heard of it, Echo is a speaker that responds to voice control and can do all sorts of cool things. It’s kind of like Siri, but for your home. The voice control is activated by saying “Alexa” – so Alexa is a new friend for the girls.
They had quite a good time this evening getting to know her – they think she is hilarious…
Of course, we tried to see if we could teach her Chinese, but didn’t have much luck with that one…
One thing that is cool, is that Alexa is programmable – so looking forward to seeing what tricks I can teach “her”…
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
For the past couple of weeks, Lauren has gone kicking and screaming to swim class. But once she arrives, she crushes it.
And today she was rewarded for her hard work (even though she seemed a little clueless as to what was going on) – she received her Level 1 ribbon!
Christine caught a very short video of her swimming all by herself last week:
And I caught the awarding of the ribbon today:
Very proud of our little girl 🙂
Bam! Level 1 Ribbon! You said I get ice cream with this, right?
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
We hope everyone who was celebrating had a nice Easter today. We ended up having a really nice day with the girls.
The morning started with a mini Easter egg hunt in the house that Mommy setup before she went to bed last night. The girls discovered their Easter baskets when they woke up and then went off to find some eggs hidden around our living room. A fun start to the morning.
Nothing like starting the morning with an egg hunt in your PJ's...
The hunt is on!
Success!
Also successful, but still refuses to look at the camera for me 🙂
One of Christine’s co-workers invited us to her church’s festivities so we headed down to the nearby park and they had all types of awesome activities for the girls – from decorating eggs to cookies to making bunny ears to making a candy bracelet … and, of course, an easter egg hunt (which we kind of messed up and missed, but one of the organizers gave the girls some eggs so they were happy). It was a beautiful day and the girls had fun with all the activities.
Painting some eggs...
Quite proud of her Easter cookie...
... the goofball wants to eat it all up!
She could have decorated cookies all day - we pulled her away after two...
Recently, Lauren has been really enjoying this wood marble run set we got her for Christmas. She builds these super elaborate contraptions (which she is always fearful that clumsy Daddy will end up breaking). She’s not done yet, at the end of the video, you can catch her asking Mommy for a Lego set – so I have a feeling a lot more building is coming!
And the best part is that Christine captured probably my favorite picture of Lauren in quite some time:
So cute! So proud!
(Click here for the video.)
