Leon's 5th Birthday Party

Leon had his first ever friends birthday party and it was a blast!  He was so excited, for months ahead of time he kept asking me how many more weeks/days until his party.  It was cute and also annoying at the same time.

After we spent the morning setting up Leon came around the house with me to take pictures. 

We ended up with a lot of chain!  I love how they looked though.  If you ask me those nights we spent stapling them together while watching TV were worth it.  I'm not sure if Bob agrees.

We even had time for a picture together before friends arrived.

Just before the party started Tucker, Penelope, and Scarlett went to the neighborhood park and Calista took a nap.  It was great to have the house a little more empty to focus on the party.

As the kids came in we had them make their own flags.  Once they all finished we played the Olympic theme song and watched the kids march around the house.

After our opening exercises the first olympic event was curling.  This one was so easy and it turned out really well.  We just had taped a square on the floor and had the kids try to slide their bracletts into it.

The biathlon was a bit trickier.  They had to suck up a marshmallow with a straw and shoot it across the table.

We had a cheeto torches snack break.

Then on to speed skating.  For this the kids just slid in a circle around our house on rags and we timed them.

For the ski jump bob made a ramp that the kids had to slide a ping pong ball over and try to get it to land in the step.

For the olympic cake I thought about actually lighting the torch but we decided to stick with the traditional candles.

It was quite a bit of cake.

The awards ceremony was probably my favorite part.  I was worried that the dollar store trophies and medals were kind of cheap looking.  But the kids were thrilled to get them.  They were so excited it was really cute.

Later after the party we opened our family presents.  Leon couldn't wait for this!

I think he was most excited for his remote control car.  He was asking for one for a while and so we didn't want to disappoint.

I love how Calista is just sitting and watching like everyone else.

Happy Birthday Leon!

Penelope's 8 Pictures

Penelope is getting Baptized tomorrow!  We are so excited and happy for her!

Penelope is such a sweet and thoughtful child and this is a huge milestone for her.  In so many ways she seems extra mature for an 8-year-old.  

She definitely is a planner, everything is thought out and preplanned in her head way in advance.  She rarely forget things.

Penelope can get really nervous for thing but this past year I feel like she has started to come out of her shell.  She started going to activity days (a group of girls 8-11) without any problems and she went to her new church class without hesitating.  She even talks to the other kids in her class, which is huge if you knew her in our previous ward.  She tends to stay quiet in group settings but she will talk to her friends and answer questions in a group if asked.

I've noticed she really takes on the big sister role with Scarlett.  They do a lot of things together and she has really stepped up and been the one to lead the way, where sometimes Scarlett will be too scared.  She is also a great big sister to baby Calista.  She loves to hold and play with her.  She cracks me up because she is was so analytical about it at first.  The first time Calista cried while Penelope was holding her she didn't know what to do.  So we talked about softly bouncing her.  So the next time I saw that Calista started crying she mechanically started bouncing her.  Penelope was confused as to why Calista didn't instantly stop crying.  That seems like ages ago because now Penelope is a pro and holding and calming down her baby sister.  It has been such a lifesaver because Calista hates to be put down.

Penelope has specific tastes when it comes to her hairstyles.  It was hard for me to convince her to leave her hair wavy like this for pictures.  She likes it straight down, because that is easiest and quickest.  When I convince her to let me do her hair she likes it neat and nice.  No bumps or poofs on top, and absolutely no messy buns.  Which is a shame because messy buns are my fav.  Even when she takes her hair down at night she doesn't like to go to bed with it looking crazy.  Once she was up crying about it.  It seemed silly to me because no one could even see her.  But I took her into the bathroom and sprayed her hair down and let her comb it out to get rid of the "craziness."

We are homeschooling her this year and it is going really well for her.  She is an awesome reader and has even taken to staying up later than Scarlett and Leon because she is reading on her own.  Math isn't a problem for her although she does sometime write a few numbers backwards.  Writing seems to be the biggest struggle for her.  But we are working on stretching out the sounds and just putting down her best guess.  She gets frustrated because when I tell her to just guess she will but then she won't be able to read it back to herself later.  So so wants to spell everything right but she doesn't know how.  I made her a little chart with common words that she can look at.  That helped but it also slowed her down a ton because she was trying to find how to spell the whole time.  When I'd rather she just let go and let her creativity flow by forgetting spelling and write whatever pops into her head.

Penelope is such a great child, we love her so much!

Penelope's Birthday/Ninja Park

Penelope always seems to have her birthday's when we are not at home. Ok, just two years in a row, but that seems like a lot to here.  We tried to make it special even though we are living in a hotel.  I hung up some decorations and even attempted a special birthday seat.  For breakfast she got waffles and ice cream.

She is sooo easy to please with presents.  I think the majority of them were from the 100 yen store, and she loved them!

The exception was this fancy dress I bought on a whim just before we left for Japan.  It was only $5 from Good Will and I knew the girls would love it!  Really it is from David's Bridal and was probably pretty pricey.  It worked out perfectly because it is white and her baptism dress is packed.  So this will be her new baptism dress.

The one thing she wanted to do was go to the ninja park in Taura.  We went twice before 6 years ago, check it out here.

We actually used to live in this apartment.  Just for about a month, but it still feels special to me.  The sign right by Scarlett's head is pointing the way to the park.  They were all over town and made it very easy for us to find the way.

To register your car in Japan the police actually come to your house and measure to see if you can fit a car.  You have to prove you have a parking space big enough.  This car barely fit in it's space, like two inches on each size.  It was a tight fit and seemed like it would be hard to park everyday.

Another sign for the park.  I think we found three maps, each a little different.  I learned long ago not to trust the Japanese maps.  They are never to any sort of scale and everywhere you want to go always seems to be uphill and farther away than you think.

The trail was soo pretty though.  Like some sort of magical forest.

The kids were so happy when we got there.  Tucker has been hyping this place up to everyone for 6 years.

The ninja course.  Pretty much America Ninja Warrior for kids...Bob and I did it also.  There may have been some racing going on.  On our fist attempts went, Bob 1st place, Tucker 2nd place, and me 3rd (but only by 5 seconds of about 4 minutes).  Tucker made a second attempt and beat all of our times.  In my defense, it was my first time doing the course and everyone else had played on it for a while before that.  I did fall at the park one time, but not on the playground just on the grass trying to take pictures.  The ground was slick in areas.

Complete with a zip line and all.

This park has more than just a ninja course.  It is a pretty popular destination to see the plum tree blossoms.  There is a great lookout spot, and this time we found a back trail to some sort of cub scout building.  The signs were in Japanese, but there were definitly boys there with uniforms on.

On our way back we saw a pop machine blocking someones stairs.  I thought the placement would be pretty annoying.

We stopped and ate dinner at CoCo Curry.  When Bob opened his bag to pay he found a friend.  

It would have freaked me out.  The grasshoppers here are big and one jumped on Scarlett at the park.  She froze in place and let out a deathly scream.

When we got back Penelope finally got to have her long awaited cake and ice cream.