Dance Recital

Kaiya and Nadia have been waiting for me to update the blog, especially about their recital, for a while now.  I'm finally going to update the blog and so I thought I would start with their recital.  The girls did such a good job and loved being on stage.
Kaiya of course, loves to dance.  She made the competitive dance team this year but loves her dance teacher and the studio so much, she decided to do both this next year.  She played soccer both in the fall and spring, and is currently playing softball, but dance is her love and passion.

Nadia, who hasn't been the biggest fan of dance classes, told me after the dress rehearsal that she wanted to go back on stage again and that she would take dance classes again just so she could be on stage.  This is coming from a girl who told me she didn't like her tutu "because I can't climb in it!".  She is quite the singer as well.  You can hear her voice she sang so loud.  At church when the primary children sang for mother/fathers day, you could hear Nadia sing over all the other kids.  She can sing very loud and is quite proud of it. 

Nadia with her friends

Kaiya with her friends in their Jazz costume.  She was also in a ballet dance.

Unfortunately, the photos I took of Kaiya on stage turned out way too dark.  At least we have video.....

All the brothers supporting their sisters.

Holiday Party

Ian works part time at a hospital near by.  They had their "holiday party" 2 weeks ago.  We went with our good friends, Jeremy and Kelly.  They have been a life saver and dear friends to us since we have moved here.  Ian was deployed a few months before Jeremy and he was such a good help.  After Jeremy left, Kelly and I held the fort together and we made it through.  We are so grateful for their friendship and are so blessed to have them in our lives!

Ian still wakes up at 4:30am to go to cross-fit!  Doesn't he look good?!

Ellia LOVES Gymnastics!!

As mentioned in my previous entry, Ellia loves gymnastics.  She seems to think that the only outfit she can wear to gymnastics is her pink leotard and brown pants with pink polka dots.  She refuses to wear anything else.  It is so nice that Ellia's coach lets Nadia not only participate, but lets her be the "leader" even though it is not her class.

 Jump on the snowman!

 Not her favorite thing to do.....

 Can I go and jump on the tramp now?

 She will swing for a while and then drop.  She can stick the landing!

 Drop the bean bag on a frizbee.

 Walk across and stack the "snowman"

 She loves to climb the rope!

Nadia showing the kids what to do.

January Birthday Girls

Happy Birthday to Nadia and Ellia!!  Nadia turned 4 and Ellia turned 2 in January. I thought I'd press the easy button this year and have a big combined party for the girls. What better place to have it than the gym they go to for gymnastics? The girls LOVE gymnastics so it was the perfect place to have a party.  They were so excited to show all their friends the gym. 

A coach was there to oversee the party and she had games and obstacle courses set up for the kiddos.  She did a really good job and everyone had so much fun.

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We are missing a few kids here.....We had 19 kiddos running around!

Even the all the daddy's had so much fun jumping in the pit, climbing the rope etc.

Nadia wanted cupcakes so the night before, everyone helped make and decorate the cupcakes.

We also had a few healthier treats since it was before dinner.

Gifts got a little crazy with 2 girls opening at the same time!

Nadia has turned into such a sweetheart and a wonderful sister. 

She is very caring, kind, and thoughtful.  Nadia can often be found helping the big kids with their chores.  She has been busy with preschool, dance (which she says she wants to quit after she "dances on the stage" because gymnastics is more fun, she loves writing notes for people and can write almost all the letters in the alphabet without any help.  She can't wait to go to the same school as Kaiya and Ezra.

Ellia thinks she's older than everyone and tries to boss the family around.  She has to have everything the same as the big kids and will settle for nothing less.  She is full of energy and loves to run around in just a diaper.  She can be often be heard saying, "mine", "me too!", "I wan money", "No, my turn!", "dress?", "outside", "I wan some", "where did (Yaya, Ezzie, Nanats) go?", "no, this one!"  She can't wait to go to preschool with Nadia and loves it when we go and help out at her school because they let her participate in all the fun.

Happy Birhtday girls.  We love you!!

Christmas 2011

Christmas was a lot of fun. My 2 sisters and their families, my mom, and my aunt and cousin (who I have not seen since she was 4!) came to visit. It was so nice to spend the week together.

Our yearly tradition of making gingerbread houses.

We usually have Japanese food for our Christmas dinner but since my aunt and cousin were coming, we had a turkey and ham dinner. 

The only grandsons!

Yes, I am the shortest of all of us!

Me and my sisters.  The last time we all got together was about 2 years ago.

Baby Emi was a huge hit with all the cousins! 

This was the first time we met her and just fell in love with her!

I thought I had more photos.....I remember flashes going off more often but I guess they were on other peoples camera!  I guess we don't have any photos of the guys either.....hmm....I wonder what they were doing the whole time?!  The older kids put together a New Years Eve party including fun games and a talent show. 

Turkey Trot

We signed up to run in a Turkey Trot this year.  Ian was nice to run the 1 mile race with the kids so I could run the 5 mile race.  Kaiya and Ezra had ran a mile a few times to make sure they could run the whole time.  They were so excited to be in a race.  I think the high that day was 32 degrees!

 Here we are before the race.  We had different starting places so we had to separate after this.

 Ian was asked if he could run with 2 other kiddos but he showed up and ran with all of these kids!  He was such a trooper!  He said it was like herding sheep and none of the kids ran the whole time.  I didn't even know he had all these kids until I met up with him after the race.  Kaiya and Ezra had fun but decided that next year, they want to just run with dad and run the whole time.

We didn't have a meeting place so we weren't able to meet up with all the runners before the race and we couldn't find them after the race either.  Next year, we are finding a meeting spot so we can all start together!

There were 7 of us running but we were the only ones that met up before and after the race.  We found Rachael right after we took the group shot.  She was the first to finish with a time of 41:26!  She was so speedy I couldn't keep up with her after a mile or so.  I finished in 44:55 and Melissa finished in 48:14. 

It was such a fun race we are doing it every year!  I just hope my toe gets better so I can start running again!!

NUTCRACKER

I like taking Kaiya to the Nutcracker every year.  This year, Nadia was so excited to come with us!  We invited friends to come along and made it a fun girls day.  We met at Panera and had lunch and then headed over to see the show.  I think we had 21 people total in our group!

The girls ranged from 3 to 16.  We are missing a few of them....

Me and my beautiful girls!

Family Vacation- Disney World

In the beginning of November, we took a trip to Florida to go to Disney.  I have to admit, I did use the Disney trip as bribery while Ian was gone.  Especially with Nadia.  Overall, the kids did really well while Ian was gone and this was our reward for making it through.  We stayed at the Shades of Green, which is a military resort in Disneyworld right by the Polynessian Resort.  It was a nice but older hotel.  Everyone was very friendly.  Our first room did not drain very well so we asked to switch and they were happy to do so to a room right across from the other one so we didn't have to lug our stuff very far.  It is a BIG resort.  It was very nice to be able to not worry about parking etc and just use Disney's transportation.  We didn't have any problems with it.

Nadia is at the perfect age for Disney.  She was mesmerized and the look on her face when she saw the Princesses was worth all the craziness!  She was obsessed with getting autographs and taking pictures. Ellia was not shy either and got right in to take a picture.   Nadia didn't want to wait too long in lines except for Rapunzel.  We waited an hour to see her.  All the other lines were not so bad.  We were about 4 people away from Jasmine when Nadia realized she was showing her belly.  She whispered "Jasmine is not modest".  A few minutes later, she told me she didn't want to get a picture with her anymore.  This was the next longest line because Jasmine and Aladdin just kept talking and talking.....Anyways, we had waited about 15 minutes and she was done.  I asked her why and she said she didn't want to touch her belly when she gave her a hug.  I had to laugh.  She insisted that we didn't need to stay in line any longer. 

With our big span of ages and interests, Ian and I split for the first 2 hours or so of our day.  He took the big kids on all the big rides, (they were so happy to be tall enough for all the rides) while I took the little girls on their rides and autographs.  We got there right before it opened and made a mad dash to the most popular rides.  Doing that, the big kids got to ride on all their rides at least twice and the girls and I got to ride a ton without a long wait as well.  We would then meet up and use our fast passes for family rides and shows.  It really worked out well and we saw everything we wanted to see without having to wait too long in lines.  It was a great vacation and we really had a lot of fun.  We were worried about Ellia but she did well for the most part.  She LOVED all the rides.  She kept saying "rides, rides"  it was so fun!  The kids had so much fun, they kept asking us when we were going back again.  We kept telling them we hadn't even left yet.

We also went to Sea World for a day.  I didn't realize how different Sea World would be from the one in San Antonio.  They had some fun things there but being there made me miss the SA Sea World.....maybe because we went there so often.

I took about 200 pictures and I wish I knew how to put my pictures into a collage like so many people do but here are some photos of our trip.

 The kids did cartwheels all the way down the hall in the hotel.  This is Ellia's version.

SEA WORLD

On our way home we were able to stop by my sisters and stay two nights as well.  Even though we were gone for 10 days, due to teacher conference, the kids only missed 4 days of school.  We had a fabulous time and it has been wonderful having Ian back with us!