Urashima Taro - the fisherman

The 2nd grade play this year was Urashima Taro - which is the name of a fisherman who saves a turtle and then visits an undersea kingdom and then goes home to find out that 300 years has passed and everyone he knew is dead.

Elisabeth was a narrator and the sea princess.


The kids had to learn their parts in both English and Japanese, because they did the play twice - once in English and once in Japanese.



Elisabeth sang a solo in Japanese. She did a great job!




The kids also played the taiko drums.

A funny thing happened after the play. Alan had been on a business trip to Louisiana and just got home in time for the play that night. I cut my hair off while he was gone (above my shoulders). So, I was taking pictures of Elisabeth with her teachers after the play, and Alan came up behind me and said, "I'm embarrassed because I couldn't find you. I was looking for you and looking for you and then I remembered that you had short hair now." I asked him, "Don't you pay any attention to what I am wearing?" He answered, " That's how I found you. I tried to remember what you were wearing and then I saw you and thought - oh yeah, that is her with the short hair." It made me laugh.

Wicked

Alan took me to the musical Wicked for our anniversary (which was in March, but since the musical was in April, we postponed our celebration).

We got dressed up and made a night of it. It was fun to spend some time alone out on the town, and we really enjoyed the musical.

In fact, we enjoyed it so much that Alan decided to go down and try and win tickets for the two oldest so that they could see it. He didn't win any the first night, but the second time he tried he was able to get them. The girls were very excited! They didn't even care that they had to go by themselves and didn't get to sit together (they were 7 rows apart). I was nervous letting them go alone, but of course it turned out fine. Sadly (or happily if you were them), they had better seats than we did! (One was on 5th row orchestra and the other was on row 12 - we couldn't afford seats that close for ourselves! We were much further back in the orchestra section.)

It was a fun show to watch, and we were glad that it came to town. It makes you look at the Wizard of Oz in a whole different light, though. You will never look at those witches quite the same again!

Easter Finery - 2011

This is the first year that my kids have not been matching. It made me sad and nostaligic, so we probably won't do that again. Leilani is the hold out of course; not only does she not like to match anymore (especially on Sunday...that is VERY uncool for a young woman apparently), but it is hard to match her to the other kids because she doesn't wear kid sizes anymore. But, it can be done...even though they didn't exactly match at Christmas, they at least blended. I just was busy doing other things, and never got around to shopping for or sewing anything. I warned them that I didn't think it was too much to ask for 3 times a year - Christmas, Easter and Mother's Day. So hopefully we will do better in a couple weeks for Mother's Day. Nobody argued with me, so I think they have accepted that this is part of life with mom. :) It is obviously not a life or death matter, and it has nothing to do with the true meaning of Easter, but I like it, and it makes me happy, so why not?

They looked nice today anyway.

Here is my handsome little man. He was supposed to wear a pink tie to match his sisters (I did get them all to agree to wear pink), but he told me he would "absolutely die!" if he had to wear a pink tie. Not wanting to lose my only son, I relented and let him wear red, LOL.

Elisabeth has plenty of hand-me-downs from her two sisters, so it was easy for her to pick something out.

I have always liked this dress, so I was happy to see it worn again.
Leilani FINALLY wore the coat we gave her for her birthday today. I was beginning to think that we were going to just end up saving it for Emily. It looked really cute on her!

This is the outfit she chose to wear today. It matched her new necklace and earrings very nicely.
Emily has been waiting to wear this dress for a few months, so she was glad it was finally spring!
I didn't take any family group shots, since we didn't match, but I probably should have. It started to rain right as I was taking the pictures, so that is why they are all trying to stand under the porch as I take their pictures. Luckily we have a nice covered area out front. I hope that everyone had a nice day. Despite all the fuss about clothes, we do remember why we celebrate Easter! We are thankful for our Savior Jesus Christ and the sacrifice that he made for us. We are also thankful that He has risen, and that He broke the bands of death for us. We are very blessed!

Ballet Northwest Coppelia

My three girls are doing ballet this year. Emily did ballet at a different studio last year, but they did more modern dance than classical ballet in her class. So I decided to try a different studio. We ended up at Ballet Northwest Academy, and we really like it. Some how all my girls ended up taking ballet instead of just Emily. They started out all in the same class - which was very convenient! Too bad it didn't last.


We decided to let Leilani take ballet to try and improve her grace and form in gymnastics. It seems to have worked. Her scores have improved in gymnastics, and she has rapidly moved up in ballet. She has moved through three ballet classes since September, and is talking about moving on to pointe. Her ballet teacher is excited about how strong she is, and her gymnastics coach is excited about the improvement in form, so I guess it is a win win for everybody except my pocketbook! :)


Emily is taking ballet because she quit gymnastics a couple of years ago and decided to focus on dance and music instead. She quickly moved out of the beginning ballet class, and now I have all three girls in different classes...which is not as fun for me...but they like it better!

Elisabeth is taking ballet because she has begged to do it since she was three, and she looks pretty cute twirling around! She is still in gymnastics too, but she isn't on team or anywhere near it at this point. So, she has a lot more time to experiment with different activities than Leilani does.

Emily and Elisabeth participated in the ballet Coppelia this year. It was put on by the Pacific Classical Ballet, but they used younger students from Ballet Northwest Academy too. Leilani couldn't do it because it was in the middle of her gymnastic competition season, but I don't think she really wanted to do it anyway.
The girls were villagers during Act 1 and Act 3. These pictures were taken during dress rehearsal, so they don't have their hair and make up done, but I couldn't get any at the actual performance...I wasn't allowed back stage.

During Act 2, the girls are Chinese dolls. They really liked their costumes for that dance!
They were a little harder to dance in than the villager dresses, though.

I was able to take pictures of the dress rehearsal, because they didn't allow any photography of the performance itself. I videoed it too, but it is way too big a file to upload here.

It was a cute ballet. They all did a good job, and they were very excited to perform on stage at the Hult Center. I guess we will see if they try out again next year.

Asian Celebration 2011

Both Emily and Elisabeth performed at the Asian Celebration this year. It was held at the fairgrounds.

Leilani wasn't able to come with us, because of YW basketball, but Benjamin was very excited to watch his sisters.


They both played on the big Taiko drums. (I had video, but it is too big)
They both really enjoy the drums, but they also both received bruises and owies while learning the songs. Apparently it REALLY hurts to get hit with one of the Taiko sticks. They learned not to stand too close to the person playing the drum!

The older girls did a couple of dances with fans.
I have video of all this, but it is much too big a file to post on blogger, so the pictures will have to do.
The younger girls just danced without any props.
Our school chose three grade levels to perform at the Asian Celebration: K, 2nd and 5th. Each of the grades performed separately and then they sang all together. These pictures are of them singing together. I was blessed to be able to get Elisabeth, Emily and their cousin Kyle all in the same frame as I filmed them. In the picture above, Elisabeth is standing in the front row of the kids in back, Kyle is sitting behind the microphone and in front of the girl in yellow, and Emily's head is at the bottom between the two boys.

Here is a close up of Emily.
And here is another shot of Elisabeth and Kyle.

The kids did a good job, and they had lots of fun. Benjamin was even singing along with some of the songs, so I guess he has a head start for next year. It is too bad that they don't have any more performing opportunities after they leave grade school. Leilani would love to still perform!

Some Valentine Fun

Happy Valentines Day!

We had some fun this year for Valentine's Day. I found a great hair blog, with tons of videos and tutorials on different hairstyles. So, I tried out some of the Valentine ideas on my girls. (Well, not Leilani, because she is too cool for that now - but she did say I could do her hair for crazy hair day tomorrow!)
Emily is sporting the heart braid...

and we did a three heart twist on Elisabeth's hair. I am excited to try more cute ideas in the future. If you want to check the site out, here is the link:

http://www.princesshairstyles.com/2009/01/valentines-day-hairdos.html

We also did our nails - except for Leilani again. She's a party pooper :( But she did have me just braid her hair down her back and put a heart ponytail on it. Who knows why she wouldn't do her nails? Elisabeth is sporting her own individual style of red and pink alternating nails.

I made the kids pink "love cakes." We dyed the pancake batter pink, and then Emily decided that we should add frozen blueberries because I told them how my dad used to add all kinds of fruit to our pancakes on Saturday morning. (She originally wanted to add orange slices, but that just sounded gross to me. My dad used lots of fruit - apples, pears, bananas, etc. - but never oranges.) I just used cookie cutters to make the shapes on the griddle. I learned that it is much easier to remove the mold if you spray it with PAM first, but they will come off if you use a knife to loosen the edges.

The finished product was yummy! Benjamin asked why I made Mickey Mouse shapes for Valentines day. I said, "Do we love Mickey Mouse?" They all answered "yes," and the matter was settled.
I also decided to try making a conversation heart candle this year. It turned out cute, and it was fairly easy.

I bought a white pillar candle and some sweetheart candy. I traced around each heart with my mom's ceramic tool, and then carved the wax out of the hole and pressed the candy heart into the hole.

I melted the leftover wax and put a layer of wax over the candy hearts to seal them. I needed a different brush for this part, and I needed to keep the wax hot instead of letting it cool down and then have to heat it up again, but live and learn! I enjoyed making it, and it is a cute decoration. Next year I am going to try a picture frame. Did any of you do any cute crafts for Valentines?

Pinewood Derby - a few years early

Our ward made the pine wood derby into a ward activity this year. The cub scouts raced their cars first, and then they had an open class for anyone else in the ward to compete in. Everyone in the ward also made banana cars to race and then they ate banana splits afterwards. My kids thought this was great!

All the kids were very excited about the racing (and so were many of the adults). You can see my kids and their cousins sitting down at the end of the track.


We didn't start our cars very early - we started Monday and the race was Friday - so they were pretty simple. My dad cut out wedges of wood for the car bodies, and we bought "official" wheels. The kids sanded and painted them (I helped Benjamin paint his), and the girls decorated theirs with glitter. Alan drilled the axle holes and glued the wheels in. They were very light weight, even though Alan glued some lead into the bottom, so the kids had to tape more weight onto the top of their cars. You can see our cars above: Benjamins is the green one with orange wheels (#26), Emily's is the silver car with blue wheels and two stripes down the middle (#25), Leilani's is blue, purple and pink with blue wheels and glitter all over it (#23) and Elisabeth's is dark pink with light pink polka dots and lines and black wheels (#24). They are pretty simple. The nice Oregon duck car on the right belongs to my brother Chris and his son Kyle. It was very nice looking - they did a good job in that department...but Ben and Elisabeth smoked them in the speed department :)

Here is Benjamin winning on of the races. He beat the "duck" car in this race.
Benjamin took 3rd in the open class competition. He was pretty excited! He beat both his cousins and their dad's (Jeff/Danny and Chris/Kyle). Elisabeth took 4th. Emily lost a wheel in one of the first rounds, and her car never competed well after that. Leilani...well, I think all the glitter may have impeded her racing :) But they all had fun!

This shows Elisabeth's car jumping the track on the final race off. It put her in 4th place.
Emily and her race car.
Elisabeth and her car (it was hard for Grandpa to accept a pink car - too many years of it being a boy event I guess!)

Leilani and her car. Notice that she even glittered the inside of the wheels...I do not think that helped her in the speed department. But she sure had fun making it!