One last post about our trip to Hawaii before we return to San Francisco.
Lots of fun with Grandma and Papa Hawaii, Uncle Steve and, especially, Katie and Emily. It continues to amaze that despite the language gap, it really doesn’t seem to matter – the girls communicate with shrieks and giggles. They run all over, inside and out, splashing, swimming, laughing, creating fun projects with Grandma, coloring, playing games, dancing, singing – it’s a really nice way to end the year and start the new one.
Grandma Gail and Papa Cal with their girls, Emily (6.5), Maile (5.5), Lauren (2), Katie (8.5) - all in their homemade shirts 🙂
Thank you Grandma and Papa for a wonderful visit!
by Papa K on December 14, 2014
Last week Maile’s after school art class held an exhibit. And Maile had a very special guest in attendance – Papa Cal needed one more trip to achieve status for the year, so he booked a one night trip to come see us in San Francisco (and somehow managed to dodge all the bad weather we’ve been having too!)
The artist at age 5
Explaining all her influences to Papa Cal
The artist and her Papa
A Girl Walking in the City by Maile Girl
The starting point for each piece was a chinese character - here you see tree on the left and home on the right.
The front side of Maile's portfolio
And the reverse
by Papa K on September 1, 2014
For the family reunion we picked up this awesome bubble wand that makes huge bubbles. The girls love it, so on Saturday we headed out with Grandma and Papa to have some bubble fun.
Woah. That's a big bubble!
I think I can reach it...
... no, no, I can reach it!
Papa is IN the bubble!
All smiles playing with the bubbles 🙂
We also used it to play around with Instagram’s new Hyperlapse video app – makes some pretty cool videos (although I really should take the extra step and set it to some music – next time!)
(Click here for the video.)
Wow. Time flies.
Today was Maile’s first day of Kindergarten. She’ll be staying at Presidio Knolls School so the stomping grounds are familiar, but this is still a big milestone for our little, but rapidly growing up, girl.
And she is very, very excited to get started.
But before heading off to school, we took some family pictures…
Here she is, Maile Girl at 5 ready to start Kindergarten!
Maile and Lauren - Lauren will need to wait one more year before joining her big sister at PKS
Family Picture - Maile (5) and Lauren (20 months)
Daddy and his girls (and their backpacks)
These three.
Grandma and Papa Hawaii are in town and got to see Maile off to her first day too...
One last shot just inside the gate at Presidio Knolls - after this she was off and running with her friends...
Just like her big sister, Lauren was introduced to ice cream for the first time on her birthday by Papa Cal (it’s in his contract that he gets to introduce the girls to ice cream). We threw in a cupcake (which she loved) for good measure too!
In comparison to Maile, Lauren was certainly a bigger fan of ice cream. She ate up everything Papa threw at her!
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...
Maile Girl showing Lauren how the whole candles thing works...
This pink thing? Delicious!
This food is pretty different from my normal food. Can we work this in to the routine more?
(Click here for the video.)
Maile Girl here – aloha from Hawaii! We’re still visiting with Grandma and Papa, but I’m very sad to report that Katie and Emily already went home to Japan. I miss them so much already! I had so much fun playing with them – check out all the fun things we did…
First things first, I showed them my new baby Lauren - they hadn't met her before - they hit it right off with her. I knew they would!
We attempted many times to take pictures all in the same purple dresses that Grandma got us - they didn't all work out, but we still had fun trying...
Grandma and Papa taught us Pokeeno - which is kind of like Bingo. None of liked losing, so that made things interesting.
We did LOTS and LOTS of art projects with Grandma and Mommy...
Grandma Gail read us stories and let us play the puzzle game on her iPad...
Katie, Emily and I decorated the whole back patio with chalk!
And we pretended we were Hawaiian warriors with the toys Uncle Steve got for Katie and Emily...
I love you Katie and Emily! Lauren and I can’t wait to see you again next year!
Mommy and Daddy went away this weekend and left Lauren and I home. Don’t worry Grandma Gail and Papa Cal came to stay with us! On Friday, I told Papa that we needed to send Mommy and Daddy pictures throughout the weekend so that they knew we were doing okay. And that’s exactly what he did!
On Friday night we went to Off the Grid and it was Onigri time for me!
Lauren hasn't discovered the joys of onigri yet, she is content with just her strap.
At the park, I showed Papa how to feed Lauren. (Dad note: Mommy and I really liked how Maile opened her mouth to show Lauren how it's done.)
This is Lauren showing off a bit by holding her own bottle - see Mommy and Daddy we don't need you around! Just kidding...
(Dad note: Thank you to Grandma Gail and Papa Cal for taking such good care of our girls while we were away!)
So on my second day here, Papa Hawaii asks me, “Maile, do you want to learn how to make smores?” I had no idea what a smore was, but when Papa explained it involved marshmallows AND graham crackers I told him I was in. (To be perfectly honest, he had me at marshmallow!)
First you have your Papa make a fire and then you find a nice long stick and you place the marshmallow on the end of it...
... then you stand at a safe distance and heat the marshmallow over the fire. You have to make sure not to touch the coals at the bottom otherwise your marshmallow will get dirty.
NOTE: If you have a nice Papa, he'll let you eat one of the marshmallows he made while you are waiting for your to heat up!
Then you smush the marshmallow between two graham crackers and you are good to go! NOTE: Some people add chocolate too, but I don't like chocolate so I didn't.
I taught Lauren how to do it and she made sure that Daddy did it right too...
This is one of my favorite type of posts to do. Every once in awhile, I’ll post a picture and it will job the memory of the grandparents and Christine or I will end up with an email with a picture from way back when that basically is exactly like the one we posted of Maile. The apple indeed does not fall far from the tree!
Here’s a couple that we received last week…
Maile eating lamb (2012)
Mommy eating lamb (1978 - ~3 years old)
Maile on the carousel with Grandma Jill (2012)
Mommy on the carousel with Papa Cal (1977, ~ 2 years old)
