Emily's 2nd Grade Play - Urashima Taro

On Friday the 16th, we attended Emily's school play, Urashima Taro. It is a Japanese fisherman story. Basically a fisherman catches a fish and lets it go and then the fish comes back and takes the fisherman to an undersea kingdom where he gets gifts and entertainment. When he goes back home he finds that many years have passed and all his family and friends are gone. Then he opens his gifts, but they lost me at that point and I'm not sure what the significant point of the gift was. I need to ask Emily, I guess.
She was the undersea princess.
After the play they played the drums. The taiko drums are so big that you can hardly see Emily over the top of them.

She does pretty well playing them, though.

This is Emily's Japanese teacher, Michiko. She recommended Emily for an audition for the Oregon's Children's Choir after this performance. Her audition is tomorrow, so we will see how it goes.

This clip shows Emily saying one of her Japanese speaking parts.

This clip shows her singing the duet she was picked to sing - in Japanese of course. You have to pardon the video quality. I use the video button on my mom's 35 m camera, and it is not great quality...but it is better than nothing!

Estela is a U.S. Citizen!!!!

On Friday, May 16 we were able to attend the naturalization ceremony for Estela where she was sworn in as a U.S. citizen. We took the kids out of school to go to it, because we figured it is something not many people get to actually see. We also wanted to support Aunt Estela. She has gone through a lot of paperwork, classes and tests to get to this point. We are proud of her!
The kids stood on the bench in the back row, so they could see everything.

Estela and her family got a picture with the judge who did the swearing in.
Yeah, Aunt Estela!

Skate World

Our school sponsored a night of free skating at Skate World. It used to be THE place back in the '80's. Somehow it has still managed to survive.
Leilani had a blast. She knows how to skate, so she and her friends had a good time. She played all the games (red light/green light, musical numbers and Hokey Pokey) and burned up lots of energy.
Emily was kind of wimpy at first. She wouldn't skate by herself - she had to hold on to either Mom or Dad.

In fact she fell a lot, and of course I had to take her picture!
She finally braved up after Elisabeth decided that she would only skate by herself. Emily couldn't be outdone by her little sister!
Elisabeth had a lot of fun. She skated with Mom and Dad for a while (neither Alan or I fell all night...hurray!), and then practiced in the practice rink for a bit. Then she decided she could do it, and she skated by herself the rest of the night. Either Alan or I skated next to her most of the time. It was cute, though, Emily came up to me at one point and said, "I'll skate with Elisabeth now, you can go skate with Dad for a while." What a sweet daughter!
We left Benjamin home with Grandma and Grandpa Bevans. I didn't think he was old enough to skate yet (although he puts on an old pair of roller blades at my mom's house and rolls himself around, so who knows what he can do). So he dressed like a race car driver and played with cars.
Our cousins go to the same school, so we saw them at the activity. Kyle wasn't quite sure if he liked it or not, but I think he had fun.
Charlotte had fun too. She hung out with Elisabeth in the practice rink a lot.
Emily's friend Cybela came with us. She goes to our school too. She is Jamie Teran's daughter, for those of you who know the Terans.

I borrowed my Mom's camera for the event. I didn't skate with it on, for fear I would drop it or fall and break it, but I didn't need to worry about any of that. Every time I use her camera, the battery dies, and it happened again at Skate World. So, I got one short video and some candid pictures and then locked the camera away for the night. We had a lot of fun, though. I'm glad our school sponsors these fun events!

Mother's Day 2008

I am slowly getting caught up with the events that have been going on recently. I had a very nice Mother's Day.
First the kids gave me the pots that they had planted with Dad and Grandpa the week before.
Emilyanne made me a lovely pressed flower bookmark.
Ben is showing off the wooden flowers they made at Home Depot.
Leilani made me a purse shaped card with a poem in it and a bunch of origami flowers.


Elisabeth made some tissue flowers at preschool and put them in a cup/vase that she decorated.

The flowers in our yard are finally starting to bloom, so I made the kids take pictures around the yard with the beautiful flowers.



My family was awfully good sports. The first set of pictures we took were blurry, because my mom's camera we borrowed was on manual focus instead of auto focus, so I made my family get all dressed up again and retake all the pictures. They did it for me, with only a tiny bit of complaining!
My husband gave me some dark chocolate, and I was sure to have one of the kids take a picture of us so I will have more pictures of us to use in the future. :)
Emilyanne changed into her "I Love Mom" shirt and her"Kiss, Kiss" sweats to show her love for Mom.

After a nice dinner at my Mom's house, provided by the men, the men took the kids outside and watched them while they played a game.
The kids bounced on the trampoline...

and played beauty parlor with fingernail polish.

Meanwhile, the women had some alone time to watch a movie without kids (27 Dresses).
After the movie, the kids came inside because it was getting dark and cold outside. (The men stayed out to finish thier game) Benjamin and Hailey played dolls and cars.
The other girls played dress up.
Grandma had a happy Mother's Day too, with her grandkids, kids, flowers, macadamia nuts and candy. It was a very nice day!

Emily's Fun Meet

Emily had a fun meet on Saturday night. We were very lucky (?) that none of the things on Saturday were at conflicting times. A fun meet is just a meet put on at the gym for the students in the lower levels and classes, so they can get experience performing for audiences and getting judged on their performance. Emily vaulting
Emily did a very good job! She was the only person who earned all blue ribbons. She actually is supposed to be moving up to the pre-team class, but it is full, so she has to wait for someone to move out of it before she can move into it.

Here are some short video clips are her perfomances.

Floor

Bars

Leilani did an exhibition performance at this meet too. This time she did a beam routine. I enjoyed seeing both of the girls perform. It reminded me again of how far Leilani has come since she started.

Catch a Shooting Star

Elisabeth had her end of the year preschool gymnastics program on Saturday. Luckily it was after our big Stake Activity Day program.

It is amazing to me, as I watch these programs, to see how far Emily and Leilani have come in gymnastics. They used to be little beginning gymnasts too!


We had an hour to kill between Elisabeth's program and Emily's gymnastics meet. Grandma and Grandpa went home for a break and were nice enough to take Ben with them for a nap. The rest of us stayed and saved seats. We goofed around and took pictures on the equipment for entertainment.




Of course Leilani had to show us all her advanced tricks. I never could do the splits, let alone do them on a balance beam.
And I doubt my cartwheels were straight enough to do on a balance beam.

Leilani did an exhibition of her Level 4 floor routine. (Emily did her Hotshot routine, but the camera battery died, so I don't have any video of hers. Poor Emily, she always seems to be the one that happens to.) If you compare Lani's routine to Elisabeth's floor routine, you can see just how far she has come :-)