Growing up with a little of both and the lessons learned along the way
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A trip to Kauai means lots of time in the water for our girls – they basically become fish.
Beach time with Papa Cal!
Sometimes the water is fought over with water guns...
... even Papa Cal got involved!
On Tuesday we spent the day at the Marriott pool and spent hours goofing around...
Maile is no longer afraid of the big throw from Daddy!
Lauren most have gone down this water slide 50 times...
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Daddy wasn't so fun when he got home from Las Vegas...
This one cracked me up when I stumbled upon it this evening. Also made me realize its been awhile since my last Vegas trip!
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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!
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… but Daddy still does!
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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.)
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After exploring Hollywood for a bit, it was finally time to head over to the show for the taping. We arrived around 3 PM and were whisked through with our tickets. The live taping wasn’t until 5 PM, but we needed to arrive early and they also did a pre-taped performance with Keith Urban. They actually had him play his song twice – which Maile got a total kick out of – growing up in a DVR world the whole concept of live TV and the fact that they were taping this and it was then going out over the TV was pretty wild for her.
Of course, Maile made friends with all of our nearby seat mates – lots of moms and grandmas that all got a kick out of Maile Girl and her La’Porsha sign. The area in front of the stage was filled with teenagers and Maile was very intrigued by everything going on down there and the “hype man” who came out to get the crowd “rowdy” – “what’s rowdy, daddy?”
The hype man instructed us to clap over our heads during the fast songs and just sway a bit during the slow ones – Maile took down his instructions to a tee.
It was a long afternoon – the show is two hours so we didn’t leave until 7 PM – but Maile did great – she screamed her little heart out for La’Porsha – and probably just because of that her favorite made it to the finale 🙂
Putting the finishing touches on her sign for La'Porsha with glitter glue...
Oh yeah, let's get ready to rock!
One more selfie on the way in - we are very excited!
We made it!
Maile and her sign were very popular with the people we met...
An awesome experience with Maile Girl 🙂
Maile was in a pretty goofy mood after the show, but here’s her quick recap…
(Click here for the video.)
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As I mentioned last week, last year, we started watching American Idol with Maile – we were looking for a show Christine and I could watch with her that wasn’t some mind-numbing cartoon. American Idol fit the bill pretty well – she loved the singing, its a “family” show – it led us to some interesting conversations with her when different things would come up – and its kind of inspiring to see these kids work hard to achieve their goals.
With this season being the last, a few months back I had the idea that it would be really cool if I could figure out a way to get us to a taping of the show before it ended. I realized I actually had a college friend that worked at Fox and a few emails later he agreed to help me out – which was totally awesome of him!
So Thursday, Maile and I boarded a plane and headed down to LA!
Before we could go to the show though, we needed to set the stage – so we took in some of the sites around the hotel. We were staying at the W Hollywood – which was right in a pretty seedy part of Hollywood – but I wanted Maile to have the full experience so we headed out…
(NOTE: Some of these pictures are from Thursday before we went to the show and some are from Friday AM when we had some more time to kill before heading back to SF.)
Selfie in the Lyft - we have arrived and are ready to rock!
Maile doing her best fancy hotel pose in our fancy hotel...
To say Maile was excited is an understatement...
Incredibly, the very first star we saw right outside the hotel was J. Lo's!
Maile was very impressed that my feet and hands matched up with Matt Damon's - and we shared a first name to boot 🙂
Roof top pool. So. Cool.
Julia Roberts was kind enough to take a picture with Maile Girl!
Taylor Swift and Lady Gage too 🙂
Yep, Maile has her Beyonce nailed!
More to come…
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When Christine and I lived in NYC, we often started our Sunday mornings with a walk to the local bagel shop for breakfast and a newspaper. Our favorite Jewish deli here in the city, Wise Sons, opened a new bagel shop last week right up the street from us. We thought we’d start a new tradition with the girls and went to check it out on Sunday. Not quite as relaxing as I recall our days in NYC with bagels, coffee and leisurely reading the newspaper, but still good times (and the bagels are great!)
And we're off - family selfie on the way out!
There was a bit of a line, but we didn't mind...
Lauren enjoying her cream cheese with bagel (in that order)...
Two thumbs up from Maile Girl...
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Okay, technical difficulties have been resolved and we’re ready to share all the details of Saturday’s Chinese New Year Parade!
This was Maile’s second year participating in the parade and once again we had an absolute blast. We headed downtown as a family at 3 PM and helped the kids get ready for the big parade. It was a long afternoon – the parade itself didn’t kick in until ~6:15 PM, but the kids barely noticed – they were having too much fun taking in all the sites and goofing around with each other. Once the parade started they were all business – the practice really paid off and they nailed their dance number to Uptown Funk each of the oh 30+ times they performed it along the route.
Here’s a close-up of Maile performing the complete number during a pre-parade practice…
And here are some fun shots from along the way…
Lots of helping hands getting Maile and friends ready for the parade...
Here she is - ready to rock!
Maile and Gemma
All the Presidio Knolls kids - notice Maile looking at the only camera that matters 🙂
Family selfie right before the start...
Maile and Isobel
Maile Girl - smack in the middle of the action as always!
The picture of jealousy.
Don’t worry, Lauren, next year you’re in!
(Click here for the video.)
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