Kaori's 6th Birthday

Kaori turned six this last week.  So weird for me.  I feel like she really is no longer a baby.  I probably said that last year.  Maybe I'm just finally accepting that. We are having a pink party because I think that this time next year we won't have such a pinkalicious kid anymore.  Here are some pictures to share because I love pictures!

The day of her birthday we told her that she could go anywhere she wants for dinner. 

 The evidence is behind me in the picture.  

Her favorite place:)

Here's the birthday girl flaunting her new stuff.  

Seriously these made her so happy..

  

On Saturday we had her party. 

Here is me getting all Pinterest on everyone. 

I liked how this looked but the picture doesn't quite capture it.

 Naomi and Kaori made the small pom poms.  

               

Here is all our pinkalicious food.  mmmm

Kaori and her pinkalicious cupcake. 

 and her pinkalicious dress.

Our pink punch, bucket of prizes, and pinkalicious books. 

Thanks mom and dad
for our festive pink party balloons:) 

The Grandma's laughing.

The Papa's lounging.

All her honored guests, 10 and under.
We had to pull everyone from Kaori's
room in order to take this picture.
They were all in there sitting by themselves.
 Reading.  Seriously?
I could have done THAT party for two hours...

And the birthday girl puts on another pink dress.  

First they blew bubbles.
Never told them to line up on the edge of the grass that way.
I think they could have blown bubbles for the whole time.
They were having a great time.

Then they played limbo.  Cheaters...
And even Lucky is playing.

Next we did a pin the crown on something which isn't exciting in pictures. 

 Actually its barely exciting in person.  But I think they still like it at that age.  

But here she is after she opened the one thing she asked for her birthday.  

A "Brave" dress.  So we know what she is going to dress up as for Halloween.  

She also  got a CD and the dolls. She is happy:)

And she still has no breath.  It took her 3 tries to blow out her six candles. 

But I think our little girl had a  fun birthday.

The day was not over.  Our neice Allie had a  going away party right after Kaori's.  So we spent the rest of the evening at her house.  Can't believe that girl is 18 and leaving home.   Kinda crazy to think I met her when she was just 3.  And just in case you didn't notice, Kaori has changed clothes again...

And then the next day we spent time with Cristina and her family and Uncle Russell and Aunty Judy.  Busy weekend for us.  I am tired and happy that this week was more uneventful.  I included this picture because I love what my babies are wearing.  So it's cute:)

Cutie and Race for the Arts

This weekend one of our beloved goldfish Cutie (our kids are awesome at names) died.  Our children were devastated.  As you can see here...

Kinda funny that they still looked at the camera for me. 

This was right before she followed her predecessors.

Seriously they cried forever.  We have had this fish for like 3 or 4 months.  Everyone will be happy to hear that today was a better day.  With no tears.  We have moved on :)

In other news, our girls ran their first fun run with us this morning. Kaori ran 1/4 mi and Naomi a 1/2mi.  They both said it was so fun and that they would do it again.

 I wish so much I had it on video how Kaori ran her race.  I have never seen her run so fast in all my life! It was adorable.  She took off so fast in the beginning and at the end she was still running, just slower, and with a smile on her face.  But I have never seen her try so hard in all her life and we were so proud.

Naomi started out nervous for some reason, but gave it her all also and finished running.

At the start.

 At the finish.

 

And the gold goes to...

Erik beat his last time at 27 something and I got 32 something. I also ran two miles with an untied shoe because I did not want to stop running.  I didn't, and that was my first 5k running without stopping. 

I  AM  AWESOME

 We were awesome.

and we will be doing this again next year:)

Summer fun

     Just thought that we would share our last week with you guys. Or two weeks I guess.  We decided to finish out our summer with bang!

     Last weekend we took the kids to Discovery Bay with some friends and they went knee boarding for the first time.  With no fear inside of them, they went for it and had a lot of fun.  Erik did it for the first time also and got up the first try. 

Kaori practicing in slow water not going very fast.  It took her four times to get up and when she did, there were people watching from a balcony on their house and all of us were cheering. 

The girls probably spent and hour or more just swimming in the water and trying to stand up on the boards.  It wasn't too difficult for Kaori with her light weight, but Naomi struggled.  She came home with lumps and bruises and friction burn on both knees. but happy to say that she made it up.  Unfortunately all of us were in the water so we didn't document her success.  Only her initial failed attempts that were making her so frustrated.  She did not like that Kaori could do something that she couldn't.  

They loved sitting in the front of the boat while we were going so fast .   A huge boat went by us and made some pretty big waves that the boat was hopping on and they squealed the whole time.

I wish I could add a video of Naomi going over the wake.  She was so proud of herself.

The weekend before we decided to go to Monterey Bay and take the girls to the aquarium. They loved it and so did we. I could have spent a lot of time there just watching the tanks.  It was crowded though and didn't feel fair to hog glass space for too long.  My favorite was the giant octopus and watching the fish get out of the way of the sharks.

Checking out the starfish in the tidepools area

We thoroughly enjoyed the sea horse area.  They are so adorable and some are very wierd. Here we are pictured with the largest sea horse ever. ;)

We also spent time goofing off.

And went to a cool park with cool stuff there.

The red thing in the back is a giant roller slide. That was cool.

Awesome long rope bridge

Here is Erik hanging on for dear life for 5 secs.

This is Erik capturing me for the 10th of a second that I lasted.  I am so weak now....

We then went to SF where we cruised around pier39, went downtown to Erik's favorite place on Earth, except Disneyland, Niketown.  We also visited the Disney store for the girls.

Then we went to a Giants game.

 

The game was so awesome I had time to do Kaori's hair.  (That was sarcasm.. We lost 14-2). 

But we did get there early enough that they finally got a chance to go down the coke slides. 

We had fun anyway. 

 A few days ago I bribed my kids.  I am ashamed to admit it.  I said if they didn't make me go to the fair, I would take them to do something fun that they haven't done for a while.  So Naomi (who has been bugging me for a few months now) suggested horseback riding.  We have an awesome lady who lets us come and ride her horses occasionally.  They have gone twice before. So that is what we did.

This was Naomi's favorite pic cause the HORSE looked perfect. 

Kaori was so excited that she got to ride by herself.  Mostly..

And then it was all over and it was time for school to start. Here they are on their first day of school.  One sweet, one sassy.

SWEET

SASSY