Fall 2015

As this year winds down, it's time to reflect. Here are some fall highlights in our family:

***Kai started kindergarten. He is in Mrs. Benson's class. I think doing a year of T-K was so good for him. He came in very capable and confident. Kai is still on the quiet side in class and shy with others, but he IS talking when the teacher asks him a question. Last year he refused to talk and would just point at things. He also has started to open up in speech class. Kai has begun to turn his bedroom into a classroom again with calendar time, the pledge, etc. I'm amazed at how much Kai has grown.  He can read and write and draw and do math.  Sometimes I think he is almost as smart as some of my 2nd graders (although he is just a year younger than my students.)  Ryuta started working more on hiragana with him and he's really improved a lot in piano.  Kai started going about 1-2 times a week to the after school program when Ryuta works.  He says it's boring, but it's our best bet right now for affordable daycare.

***Lukas is still potty training. It's been a back & forth with him. He was motivated when we gave him candy every time he peed. Then we upped the antie and said only big candy for poop. He then went on strike and was having accidents left and right. We put him on a timer for the potty, but he's still been holding back on the poop.  Cleaning poop literally stinks, but I know in time he WILL get it. Lukas is still a junk food monster and we've needed to cut back on milk and snacks. He started going to daycare with a Japanese woman in Fremont. Chikako "mama" also watches a little hapa girl. Lukas hates going.

***Kai turned 6 in September and had a Star Wars birthday party in our backyard. He requested hamburgers and chocolate chip cookies. A couple of weeks before his party he sprung it on us that he wanted Darth Vader at his party. Auntie Miho came from Japan and pulled a few strings. Kai was ecstatic.

***I began my 3rd year at Weibel teaching 2nd grade. A few things changed this school year. Leah and Emily were gone. Rhonda from 3rd grade moved down to 2nd grade and Gail came back to Weibel.  The class size went down from 30 to 28. But so far...going into about 4 months of the school year I'd say this has been one of my hardest, most challenging years of teaching. It's a "growing, learning" year full of so many opportunities to be stretched like never, ever before. I've cried and felt depressed, angry, bitter at least once a week. I've started to see why so many teachers joke a lot about being alcoholics. It can get beyond tough. Kids stealing, spitting, fighting... Parents included. Anyways....

Back to happier days.. Right before the school year started, Ryuta did our annual child-free trip. This year we went to Santa Barbara.

***10 years!!! In October, we celebrated 10 years of marriage. We did it our way with sushi and yummy shaved ice for dessert.

***Ryuta started work at Viange Salon in Saratoga. It's a really nice salon with mostly Japanese workers. Ryuta loves it. It's right up his alley.  He's been working Fridays and Saturdays. And going in at night for more training on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday nights. He's going to start working on Wednesdays, too. It has been tough on getting time together. We have to do date nights on Monday nights and Sundays are important as our family days. We are still at least a couple of years from where'd I'd like to be...Ryuta can start making money. I can work part time. Time will tell.

That's Ryuta's mentor, Yumi-San at their anniversary event.

***During thanksgiving break, we went on a little road trip to the central coast. We went to Monterey to play.

We went to Pismo beach.

***Ryuta's gallbladder: Ryuta had a gallbladder attack during the summer and we changed insurance so that surgery would be more affordable.

That's his gall stone!

My poor baby was so weak and lost a lot of weight.

***Kai's piano recital: Kai had his first piano recital!! We were so proud of him!!! He played 3 songs on the stage in front of an audience.

***Halloween: okay, so I'm writing a little out of order. This year's theme of course was star wars. Kai was the emperor. Lukas was Darth Vader.

This Death Star turned into fuzzy mold within a day!!!

I had fun getting creative with food this year. We did "ghost pancakes" for breakfast.

***Charity projects: our bible talk discussed in November doing more service projects together. We put on a blanket drive. I spread the word at my school and collected about 80 blankets! Our minivan was packed to the max!! The boys helped me deliver them to Abode in Fremont.

Our next outing will be tomorrow to visit the elderly at a nursing home and do some caroling. :)

***Thanksgiving was nice. I spent HOURS in the kitchen with my mom. We did turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, veggies, and a homemade lemon berry pie.

Grandma and Auntie Laura came over. We played Wits & Wagers, junior monopoly, and escape. We went for a walk with the boys and collected pine cones and colorful leaves. We also took some Christmas card pics (which won't be used. No cards this year!!)

***Christmas memories, Santa wish list: Kai wrote a letter asking for his own Christmas tree with ornaments. Lukas asked for a gray storm trooper. After a trip to toys r us, they scoped out some basketball hoops and an emperor Lego set.

The boys have the best tutu. They built a homemade gingerbread house together. Then we baked cookies.

The boys are enjoying baking and watching Christmas movies.

Merry Christmas!!!

Disneyland adventures

We just got home from Disneyland and from a week and a half of Kearns family time.  My parents are very generous and my mom especially treasures getting her kids and grandkids together.  I'm amazed at her love and energy to make it happen.  She flew to Texas to pick up Andrew and Bailey.  Ryan and Sarah just had baby Megan and so they stayed home.  Mom flew the Kearns kids back to Fremont for the week and then we all flew together to the OC for 3 days at the Disneyland resort.

Lukas was so excited for his cousins to come and stay at his house.  He talked about it for weeks before they came.  Once we got home from church on Sunday, he burst through the door, ran full steam towards his cousins, and started hollering.  The boys all started to play together right away.  Little Bailey would get tired of all the "boy play" and wander around the house by herself.  At night the kids had a big sleepover and usually Lukas and Bailey crashed out first.  Kai and Andrew stayed up late talking.  The first night I peeked my head in and they looked so cute lying with their faces toward each other, elbows propped up, and talking in low voices about the universe and Adam and Eve.  During their Fremont visit, we went to Happy Hallow, saw the Minions movie, and went to the water park.  Fun times, but man, I'm exhausted!  And the fun didn't stop there...

Who's ready for Disneyland?!

We all hopped in the plane and headed to the Disneyland Hotel.  It was really nice!  There were lots of Disney touches such as our bed headboard lit up into fireworks and played a little music box lullaby.  The bathroom sink faucets were shaped with Mickey ears and the lights from held up by Mickey hands.

From our hotel window, we had a perfect view of the real fireworks at night.  The kids didn't get to watch them until the last night because they crashed out too early to see them.

Of course my sweet tooth sweetie wanted some of the 60th anniversary cupcakes

Getting ready for the pool

One of the other really cool things about our hotel other than that it was within walking distance of the parks was the pool area.  The pool area had 2 swimming pools and one splash zone with 3 slides next to old school monorail decorations. We went swimming 2 of the days because most of the days were very hot.  The weather though was very unusual.  It was hot during the day and rained Saturday night.  After our hot morning at California Adventure on Sunday, we went back to go swimming and the weather started to get cold and breezy.  It rained that afternoon and night.  Mom and dad went to California Adventure after dinner and enjoyed the rides in the rain.  On Monday, it got hot again and everything was going okay.  Mom and Ryuta took Andrew and Kai to Thunder Mountain.  Dad and I took Lukas and Bailey to Winnie the Pooh.  After the ride, we found a shady spot to stop, check our phones, and figure out where to go next.  The next thing you know... Lukas is toppled over the railing with his head crashed down on some river rocks screaming and thick blood dripping from his head.  I picked him up and ran him to the nearest snack shack to get ice or help.  The Disneyland employees were excellent at attending to us and trying to be helpful.  I need to write a thank you card to the nurse Vivver and the security guard Lisa.   They were very, very good to us.  Lukas had a gash in the back of his head that wasn't big, but it was deep and cut all the way through his skin.  Ryuta and I grabbed a taxi to the nearest Kaiser to urgent care.  We waited awhile and the doctor ended up putting a staple in Lukas' head.  Now, if you've never experienced your kid's head getting stapled and you are faint at heart, I don't recommend it.  It was just a little traumatic for everyone.  Luckily, I had a lollipop on hand.  Unluckily, the doctor got it wrong and had to pull out the staple which was just as traumatic and do the stapling one more time! Ah!  We spoiled Lukas after with candy and found Star Wars cereal at the store across the street.  After which he was back in good spirits and didn't seem to mind the big ole bandage on his head.  Mom and dad said they could watch the kids that night so that Ryuta and I could go back to Disneyland.  All was well with Fastpass tickets, etc., but then... I reached into my back pocket and my phone was gone!  This was icing on top of the cake.  The Disney Lost and Found called us the next morning as we were headed to the aiport that they found it and would be mailing it back.
Anyways, here are some happy pictures of our trip:

Check out those monorail slides!

Tutu & Papa with most of their grandkids

Meeting Mickey

One of the highlights: We got to meet Darth Vader!!!

Join the dark side!

When it was time to say goodbye and take separate planes, it was sweet and sad when Lukas realized that he was saying goodbye and started crying.  Even when we got back to the bay and were driving home, Lukas asked about Andrew and Bailey and started to cry again.  I'm glad that our boys got to spend some time with their only cousins and had some fond memories.

Last days of school and the start of summer

Kai is now done with TK. He had a great year with Mrs. Bass. He loved school and would come home everyday and set up "school" in his room. Although I wonder if it's just Kai or if Mrs. Bass barked at her students the way Kai barks at Lukas. Kai learned a lot this year and really grew up so much!! I feel so confident about him entering kindergarten after a year in TK. He knows all of his numbers and generally understands place values into the hundreds.  He can read and write (from what I know as a 2nd grade teacher) at the 1st grade level. He knows a buttload of facts about maps, geography, outer space.  He also started taking a group piano lesson near our house and despite my initial reservations, he really likes his teacher, Miss Shelly.  I really wanted Kai to participate in SOMETHING! Every time we'd get a flier in Kai's Monday folder from school, I'd ask,"Want to try soccer? Basketball? Karate?" Kai would say no to everything. But he wanted to do piano! He loves it and practices on his own without my asking.

I had an excellent school year and as happy and excited as I always am for summer vacation, I was also sad to see the year end. (1) I was so fortunate to be part of a wonderful grade-level team. Leah was the cutesy, creative one. Emily was the laid back one. Melissa led the group. Everyone contributed. Understandably, Leah needed to find a job closer to home and Emily will move to kinder next year.

(2) I also had honestly one of my favorite classes to date. My students were generally VERY well behaved, sweet, like able kids. I woke up every day excited to see them and happy to go to work.  I'm sad that this golden year has ended. Such precious memories!

As I left my classroom on the last day, we jumped in the car and drove down to San Diego.  Taylor graduated high school and although I wasn't able to be a part of her life, Jenn will always be someone special to me.  I was glad that we got to go down to support the fam.  On the trip down, we ran into RiDiCULOUS traffic due to construction.  It helped that the boys were content and entertained by a Star Wars marathon in the car.  We also stopped for dinner at Denny's and got to watch more of the Warriors finals.

Jenn was the hostess with the mostest for Tay's grad party, beautiful decorations, a taco guy, cake pops, a slideshow. We stayed in a vacation rental with GG, Auntie Laura, Auntie Nani, Monica, Auntie Brenda, and Jacie.  The boys really enjoyed the bunk and baskets of Legos and the hot tub. We went to the beach although the weather was not completely ideal beach weather. I had a nice walk on the beach with my cousins, Monica and Jacie, with a heart-to-heart talk.

On the way home, we stopped in Valencia to visit Ryuta's college friends, Sunghi and Wongyu.  We had such a nice time. They had a beautiful home complete with a massage chair and community pool! Sunghi was super hospitable. The boys enjoyed playing with their girls, Katie and Chloe. Wongyu opened his own restaurant and they treated us. It was SO nice! We were very impressed. Wongyu is the owner and head chef and pours his heart and soul into his restaurant and you can tell! We definitely plan to stop there again in the future.

When we got back, I cleaned the house for a week and tried selling our baby stuff online.  A huge milestone was that we sold our crib. I cried when I saw the empty space where it sat the last 6 years. I know it's just a material object, but it carried so many memories and took with it all the baby dreams. The new dad who came to get it seemed so fresh and I felt how quickly time had passed. 

I also got down to business and finished an online class to get more units for my teaching salary. All the while, Ryuta's been studying day and night to pass his state board exam (THIS Friday!!! Omg!!) He finished school and saw the Fremont Beauty School close its doors. 

We are so proud of you, Hardeep!!! :) :)

This week, the boys started swim lessons and I foresee lots of time at the watermark this summer. I just can't wait until Ryuta passes his test and can join us.

To be continued...