Some Halloween pics and Bellas KARATE TEST

Sorry- gonna keep this shorter than I'd like to- but at least it's something :0

Halloween was Fun... Awesome... Spoooooteeeee!

I wish I had taken night time pics of the house- hope to next year. Girls look cute though.

Vivi and Bella Strikin' a pose

Declan, Aubrey, Gemma, Bella

Josie and Vivi

Spooooteeee, Spooooteee

Josie, Vivi, Erin, Declan, Gemma, Bella, Cooper, and Ryan

Karate- Bella tested for her Purple belt tonight and passed with flying colors(no pun intended)
'CONGRATS BELLA'

Lolo was there to offer his never ending support for Bella.

"Strike!-Strike!-Strike!"

Bowing and getting their Belts with PRIDE.

Proud Bella with Sensei Marcello.

YAY! Vivi and Bella with their proud Lolo.

Rent

After a long wait we finally took Bella to see her first REAL musical... RENT.

Although we knew it would be too adult in it's subject matter for her, I think she really enjoyed hearing some of her favorite tunes LIVE!

Here's a pic

Oh yeah- and here's a quick pic of the backyard set up for halloween- Hopefully Lynn will blog about that a little more in the next few days.

Alphabet Adventure

This past weekend, while Lynn was swamped with work, I tried a fun adventure with the girls that required a check list of the alphabet, our cameras and some imagination. Our goal was to go for a long walk through our neighborhood and see if we could spot the letters of the alphabet in ordinary things we pass everyday. Although we began to find some pretty easy cheats here and there, we really tried to challenge ourselves (ok... after about 1/2 an hour... MYSELF) to look for clever ways to find these letters. Our goal was to make them pretty obvious to the viewer, and we even hope to make a fun little book for Bella and Vivi's cousin Koa when we're all done. Well, we still have a few letters left to find, but I had so much fun I felt I had to share the first results.

Enjoy 'em:)

bella's 1st day of first grade:)

Sisters

Hi All -- It's Charlene,

Today, Bella decided to do something really wonderful for her sister. She decided to write her a card. I won't even begin to try and describe it, I'll just post what she made for her:

Just to officially translate, it says:

Dear Vivi

You are such a great sister

I love my great sister

I love, Vivi

Bella did this all on her own, with absolutely no help from me whatsoever. To say that I'm a very proud mama right now would be a huge understatement. Bella was so excited to give Vieves her card. Here's a photo of that moment too:

Sometimes, the girls really can just totally blow me away by how loving and thoughtful they both can be. Now the trick is making sure they behave this way more often, and fight less!

Movie night is back :)

It's been too long... WAYYYY too long since we've done a movie night. So- last Friday night I decided to get us all geared up for movie night. Lynn picked the movie, we ordered the Pizza, I made our movie tickets at work, and collected them using my normal- cheesey french accent- and we all sat down to watch....

Happy Feet

I guess no one in the world has seen this movie or else I'm POSITIVE I would have been warned about the nightmare I was about to experience.

The movie started out with some crazy-assed singing from a deep in outer space shot that eventually made it's way into to a bunch of penguins signing. After seeing one big star name after another in the opening credits, I had hoped that this confusing opening sequence would eventually pay off and we'd settle into some comfy warm penguin cuteness.

Well after explaining wtf was going on to my girls every 2 minutes, there FINALLY was a little bit of cuteness 15 minutes into the movie when the little Happy Feet guy was born. But within minutes, that was destroyed by BS story telling with characters and plot that I had NO attachment to what so ever. Within minutes, my girls and I were like all WTF again as the movie continued to piss us off and hurt our brains for the next 2 hours.

You can tell by the photos that this movie night went from wonderful anticipation



to complete hatred and disgust.

(Vivi's so out of it, she didn't even sit up for the picture... poor thing)

Sorry girls- we owe you big time:)

SO watch out everyone- this movie does nothing but tell you what you SHOULDN'T do while making a film.

Luckily I've figured out how to make it up to them.

In MY household, I save all Christmas movie watching for Christmas time only.

That way- I can continue to keep the special magic of those films alive for me and our family and hopefully we'll never really get too tired of watching them.

Well- that rule is being broken on Saturday night!

I'm pulling out the big guns to make up for that horrible film and we're doing Christmas in July. Christmas themed PJ's, Food, and snacks are required for this special viewing of one of our favorites...

That's right

ELF!

Who else can make us forget that horrible penguin movie than Santa's funniest helper EVER. Laughter and songs will fill this house next Saturday and I truly can't wait.

Hopefully the pics from that night will blow the ones posted here out of the water.

Sorry again girls, but look at it this way- If we didn't have these crappy films to watch, how would we know how great the great ones really are:)

Till then...

Crazy Day!

It's Charlene again...

Just thought I would write about our crazy day. A few weeks ago, Bella and Vivi got invited to a birthday party for their friend, Erin, who takes karate with Bella. We RSVP'd that we'd be there happily at 2:00 to help her celebrate. Then we found out that Papa had the day off today. Bonus! A relaxing morning with Daddy, then off to the party, then relaxing at home for the rest of the day. But then we found out that Vivi's favorite show, "Brother Bear," at Disney's California Adventure Park was closing. We found this out from one of Bella's karate teachers, Mr. Thurmon, who happens to be the lead in the show, and today was going to be his last day performing it! We knew Vivi would totally get a kick out of seeing Bella's teachers in the show so we decided to head out really early, drive down to Anaheim, catch the show, and high tail it back to Burbank to get to the party in time. Bella loved the show and was called on stage to 'assist' Mr. Thurmon, Vivi on the other hand suddenly got totally freaked out by the Kenai bear character that joined them on stage and begged to be taken out of the show area by Daddy. (And yes, that's right, Vivi was the one we drove all the way down there for.)

After sitting in traffic for 1 1/2 hours, we made it to the party which was fun. The girls tired themselves out on Erin's water slide and bounce house. But then we remembered that we promised to also take the girls to the grand opening of this new candy store that opened up a block away from us. They sell sodas from all around the world and tons of different kinds of candy. (I know, Zac's version heaven, right?) So after a sugar filled morning, and afternoon, it was time for more sugar from the candy store.

Oh, and then Bella got the bubble gum that we bought from the candy store stuck in her hair. Note to self: peanut butter actually does work in getting that stuff out.

So, it was a crazy, fun filled day of sugar, traffic, bears, more sugar, bounce houses, and peanut butter. And it's only Friday!

Here are a few pics from our nutty day :)

Getting ready to start our day!

Bella with Mr. Thurmon AKA Shaman Assistant

Vivi had to leave in the middle of the show because she was so scared of Kenai. Mr. Thurmon was nice enough to see Vivi after the show, take some pictures...

And give her a consolation hug :)

At least Bella wasn't scared of Kenai!