Hard to believe another year of dancing is in the books. On Saturday Maile and Lauren had their dance recital at Nagata Dance. We continue to really enjoy our time at Nagata Dance – they do a really nice job of making dance fun and relaxed – the girls love it!
Maile went first performing to Bear Necessities…
And then it was Lauren’s turn – doing a little Love Bug…
Yes, it was a million times cuter in person 🙂
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
We had a fun filled weekend out here in SF with dance recitals, great progress in swimming, and lots of other fun. But before we get to all of that, there is this…
Maile and Lauren got some slime stuff at a birthday party we went to today and they used it to create a fart instrument. They were quite pleased with themselves.
And I had nothing to do with it.
Seriously, they did this all on their own.
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
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.)
Last week, Maile and her class finished their unit on building and architecture. As the culmination they all designed their own buildings and set them up next to each other as part of a mini city. Maile built the school – it’s pretty elaborate – here she is talking about it…
Christine and I went over on Friday afternoon to see all the projects – it was pretty cool seeing what the kids came up with. Given that we’re still doing a lot of building at the actual school, might need to incorporate some of their designs 🙂
Maile Girl, School Architect
(Click here for the video.)
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.)
On Saturday, Maile was invited to perform at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown with her dance troupe. As a gift to the grandparents, I captured full video of the performance 🙂
First, everyone introduced themselves – Maile made sure everyone knew she was there…
Next, they did a fun warm up routine to get limber and ready…
And finally, Maile and her class danced a number to Bear Necessities…
(Click here for the first video.)
(Click here for the second video.)
(Click here for the third 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.)
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.)
