Happy 7th Birthday, Ennio!

Our boy was soooo excited to turn 7 this year! He was lucky: his birthday fell on a Sunday, so we got to celebrate this morning at home with balloons, birthday cards and presents, and no rush (yay!), AND he had his big party this afternoon at Travel Town where we had invited his entire class for birthday cake and other treats. We had rented one of the train wagons and this worked out really well to serve the food and drinks. The kids spent the rest of the afternoon outside, exploring the train museum, playing in the trees and on the picnic blankets, building train tracks and riding the little train that goes around the museum. Ennio loved being the train conductor :-) I think (hope) he had a fun birthday!

Party at Travel Town!

Let's get this party started!

Goethe Club

Besides going to Dutch School on Saturdays, Lily now joined the Goethe Club in school on Wednesdays. She loves going because it's not just about learning German, but also about music, singing, eating with fork and knife, and... Ms. Langsdorff is also handing out German candy (think Haribo, Maoam, etc).

All about Ennio!

Ennio is going to be Star of the Week next week in school and had to prepare a poster telling all kinds of facts about him! He was very excited to work on the poster and especially liked the coloring bit. Since he couldn't read all the words, I read the questions and the sentences to him and he answered them. I had to spell the answers out or write them down on a separate piece of paper and he copied them.

These are a few of his favorite things:
Color: turquoise (also Marcus's favorite color)
Animal: hippo (no clue where that comes from)
Food: brown cow yoghurt (that's the brand we always buy and he only eats the vanilla flavor)
Book: titanic (Lily has been reading "I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912", a children's book we got from the library, to him the last couple of nights)
Sport: swimming (he goes to swim class every Saturday morning)
Thing to do in school: playing in class (unfortunately, that is exactly what he is doing, instead of paying attention and doing his work!)
Thing to do at home: watch a movie! (we often have movie nights on Friday night and the kids love it)

I liked the super-cool facts he came up with:
1) I love building boats in Minecraft.
2) I am very fast at finding places in Google Earth.
3) I have been to many cool countries in the world.

He's such a cool kid. Now if only we could help him focus and concentrate in school (he's currently below grade level in all subject areas), that would be great!

Sakura Matsuri: celebrating cherry blossoms!

Last Sunday, we went to the Cherry Blossom Festival ("Sakura Matsuri") held in Brand Library Park in Glendale, in the Japanese Friendship Garden and the Shoseian "Whispering Pine" Teahouse. We met up with our friends Amie and Alejandro, and their girls Adalyn, Alexa (who used to go to preschool with Ennio) and baby Alice. Addie and Alexa go to a Japanese-language school so they had let us know about this event. Lily was excited to put her kimono on for the occasion! She was not the only one. For a moment, I thought I was in Japan again 😉. There were many fun activities: a Kendo demonstration (martial arts), Taiko performance, Cherry Tree planting ceremony, a traditional Tea Ceremony, Singing Meditation Bowls, etc. I especially enjoyed the taiko music performance. Ennio was mainly interested in the koi fish in the pond near the teahouse and kept on fishing out dead bugs and bees from the water 😱. Lily liked strolling around the grounds in her kimono. She was also drawn to the Akita rescue dogs booth, and wished she could pet the dogs (but wasn't allowed to). Unfortunately, the Okamoto Food Truck had some technical problems, so Marcus and Alejandro had to look for food elsewhere and missed some of the activities. Around 3pm, the festival wrapped up and we headed home. It was a fun afternoon!