We need new baking soda

We had fun baking cookies together, too bad they didn't turn out so great (hence the reminder about new baking soda).

Note to my son

Dear Son, I hope you'll always like hugging me! I hope you'll never be embarassed by me! I hope you'll always be a mama's boy. (is that too much to ask? :)

UNO!

Faux-cousins

Jade and Josiah (they are kinda like faux cousins) spent the night. The girls were enjoying listening to music on their MP3 players.














And surprise, surprise, the boys enjoyed playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii...

The Adventures of Noodle Girl

Asia could definitely live on noodles alone... In keeping with one of Andy's new years "revolutions" (that's what our family calls them ever since Asia said "revolutions" instead of "resolutions" a few years ago), our family is checking out local joints on a semi-regular basis.

The plan is that Andy will document our food adventures on his flog. You'll have to check it out for yourself to find out what a flog is! And by the way, I'll just let you in on the fact that I'm the one who came up with the clever name "flog".

Anyway, this particular Adventure of Noodle Girl (her counterpart is Rice Boy, we'll have to get a picture of him the next time) was at Grandma Thai Restaurant. There's no place like Grandmas! It was really good.

Ezra's Good Boy Outing

Ezra is the King of Phases. He goes through these extra surly phases so then we invent some sort of System which he totally gets into. A week or so ago he was in one of those phases and I was ready to sell him to another family so I knew it was time for another System.

Here he is proudly displaying how wonderfully he ended up doing with the latest System (the goal was to keep all three things--stars, smiley faces, whatever the magnet might be--on each day). The first few days were a little sketchy but in the end he proudly ended up earning a fun outing with me.

(Note to self: outings with mommy will not always be seen as an awesome prize. Enjoy it while it lasts.)



















Okay, so maybe getting a trim wasn't exactly his idea of an exciting outing, but it was just the first stop and he got a lollipop for sitting nice and still (look at how worried he looks!).



















There's a happy boy! He'd saved up some money and we ended up at ToysRUs where he got his first set of Indiana Jones Lego to add to all his Star Wars Lego sets. Han Solo is Indiana Jones, afterall... ;)

One Night Count

Here's our team for the One Night Count. This was taken at 4:30 A.M. after we'd spent over two hours walking the streets (and the railroad tracks!) of our assigned area in the 20-something degree weather. Brr! But we all kept thinking about how lucky we were to be able to go home to warm beds. The homeless people we were out there to count don't have that luxury...

It felt good to be part of this project, I encourage all of you to sign up as a volunteer next year if they do this in your area!

Snow! (well, kinda)

Look! It sorta kinda snowed!

The pretty colours of a Moms' Night Out

Rollerskating

The fam rollerskating for our friend Olivia's birthday party. What fun!!














Asia had gone rollerskating twice last year and it all came back to her pretty quickly.














This was Ezra's first time rollerskating and he mostly hung onto the sides or onto someone's hand, but he had a blast regardless. For this one split second he looked like a natural! :)

Movie Night at School

Lots of kids came for movie night--in their pjs, with pillows and blankets, oh so cozy! We watched Shrek The Third














Intermission was cool--popcorn, juice and candy!

Duet

Asia's piano lesson book has a line for a more experienced pianist to play along so the two of them played a duet.



















Look at those long made-for-piano-playing fingers!!

Here's a video clip of their duet :) (there's a bit of a mistake on Andy's part, but eh, it still sounds pretty great especially considering this was after Asia had only had one lesson!)

Happy Birthday, Titus!

The birthday boy with Chuck E. Cheese

Thomas

We got to go to a Thomas Mapfumo concert for free! We LOVE his music so when I found out that I needed to have a ParentMap staff person at this family concert (most of his concerts aren't family ones, but this was one he specifically did for the family concert series of which ParentMap is a sponsor) I immediately signed myself up and took the family along!

My brothers have both been to his concerts in South Africa (Thomas is from Zimbabwe) and we have his CDs. What a treat to go to a concert!














As my older brother has often pointed out, Thomas is very possibly one of the ugliest people in the world. Oh well, he makes beautiful music!

"We're all in this together..."

Who said High School Musical is only for girls?! Taylor and Bailey joined Asia and Ezra in some HSM karaoke on the Wii. Bailey (far left) was way into it!














Ez and his backup singers :)

Swimming Lessons!!

Ez tried swimming lessons when he was like 3 but each week he got more and more freaked out and hated it so we quit. Asia took lessons for a while and he always preferred to just hang out in the bleachers with me, he had zero interest in being in his own lesson.

Last summer Grampa made a promise--if Ez took swimming lessons then Grampa would give him a new Lego Star Wars set. It's taken me this long to get lessons set up, but it's finally going to happen! We found a super cool (new) pool near Andy's office, I took Ez for his little test (I told them he'll need to start in the very first level, I was right) and he's going to start lessons in February. He's actually fairly excited which is great.

Grampa's friend promised he'd give Ezra yet another Lego Star Wars set if he put his face under the water during his lessons. Not sure if he'll be ready for that til he's, oh, maybe 9 or 10... We shall see ;)

Piano Lessons!

Asia has been asking for piano lessons for months, I finally signed her up! She LOVES it. Little bro gets to quietly eat fruit snacks and draw pictures during her half hour weekly lesson.

12th Man

Much to my (watches-every-sport-he-possibly-can-on-TV. {Although he'll tell you I'm exaggerating. I'm not. Well, maybe just a teeny bit.}) husband's disappointment, I'm the furthest you can possibly get from being a sports fan. But I *do* know that the 12th Man flag proudly waves when there is a big Seahawks football game going on...

Asian Art Museum

We went to the Asian Art Museum for free family day. The kids spent way more time with the free kid activity than they did actually enjoying the art. Oh well, they created art of their own!














We were all extremely impressed with the cool ice sculpture being, well, sculpted, while we were at the museum.


















Appreciating the arts is exhausting!!














"T for Tanis!" That's Ezra's chant every single time we drive by this Tully's coffee roasting plant (or whatever it's called) at the south end of Seattle. Although as you can see from the previous picture, this time there was no such chant b/c of the sleeping people.

Thanks

I had fun playing with the kids' Lego to make this "Thanks" so I could use it for Ezra's birthday thank you cards.

Now it's time to start planning the 2008 birthday celebrations :) I'll put it on the record that we are planning to have Asia's birthday (yes, I realize it's not for another 9 months!!) at the cool pool at a new community center near us. Now let's see if the plans change between now and then.

Happy New Year!!

Heading to Bainbridge Island on the ferry to join the rest of the Tanises to ring in the New Year. Plenty of things to keep us entertained!














The first stop was lunch at a little local BBQ joint. Chicken makes Cynthia happy. Always has, always will!



















I'm rather proud of this fancy 'do I did in Asia's hair!



















Ez showing Uncle Buck (that's Brett to you) his Darth Vader laptop.














CHEERS to the end of a good year (for most of us)...














Mom and dad said they are going to wear these 2008 glasses all year in case they forget what year it is. Aww, they aren't old enough to start forgetting things! Speaking of which, I've forgotten how old they actually are. Oh, so maybe forgetfulness starts young and they *should* be worried ;)

Happy 2008!!


























There were some technical difficulties (something about the computer program crashing. Imagine that, in the land of Bill Gates himself we have major computer crashes!!) so the fireworks were rather pitiful. Hopefully that wasn't an indication of the year to come...














Grampa, Gramma and their four grandchildren.

Finally!!!

Our new road is finally open! Okay, so that's not exciting to very many people, but it is thrilling for us. This cut a good 7 minutes off of Andy's commute to work. Lovin' that! That's 70 minutes a week, 280 minutes a month, 3,360 minutes a year! See, it really *is* something worth being excited about.

One Laptop Per Child

The kids' big Christmas gift was a laptop from One Laptop Per Child which is a really cool organization. They had a deal where you could buy two laptops--one for a child in your life and one would be donated to a child in one of the participating Third World countries.

I was especially excited about it because Nigeria (where I grew up) was one of the trial countries and we saw a few news programs about the laptop in schools in Nigeria.

Here's Andy and Asia checking out the kids' new laptop while Ezra entertained himself on his new (much cheaper!) Darth Vader laptop.

Downtown

Grampa and Gramma are here! We went out to our little downtown and enjoyed the lights at the Japanese gardens. It was pretty cold for these Southern Cali folks :)














The fam














We had dinner at a new favorite joint--a local Greek restaurant with belly dancers. Asia was fascinated and the belly dancer gave her a little lesson and even gave her two CDs of the music she dances to!

Ezra? Not so much. He said "Don't let me get anywhere near that woman!!" Give him a few years and he'll be more interested...