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...

Bonsai Adventures

Who knew that picking out a bonsai could be such an experience?!

Andy decided that he wanted a bonsai for his Christmas gift from his parents so he looked online and found a place not too far from our house. We had no idea this place existed or that it would be so huge! There are over 17,000 bonsai in the greenhouse and this place ships all over the country (world?).

We walked in and the owner, Robert (surely he's got a Chinese name and just told us his American name), immediately began teaching us about the importance of taking care of a bonsai tree, he compared it to taking care of children: For example, you can't decide to ignore them because they'll let you know when they need to be fed. Trust me, it was all really deep.














Robert walked us through the proper process for picking out The One from the 17,000 choices. He said to pick seven and then to look at them carefully and take away one at a time that you didn't love. Here's Andy with the selection down to three...














They had a holiday special going on: buy one, get one 50% off so we decided to get one for his office and one for home. Here are Andy and Robert with the two keepers. They are really beautiful.



















Robert told us the most important thing to remember is: Find what you love, love what you find. Wonderful advice! Here's the one that Andy took to his office.

Merry Christmas!!

Poor Asia, a few days ago she discovered that there isn't really a Santa. She took it very personally and said she couldn't believe her parents would lie to her like that and that she felt stupid she'd fallen for it all these years. Drama.

I tried to help her feel like it was cool to be a big kid by letting her help me fill Ezra's stocking on Christmas Eve after Ez was in bed. She reluctantly agreed and had this really sad face the whole time she was doing it. She said she doesn't really want to be part of the lie for Ezra...


















...But look! The sparkle was back in her eyes on Christmas morning! I guess the Christmas magic is still around afterall. Phew.

























































Who knew that so much Star Wars stuff existed?! Here are the guys showing just a few of the SW related things. Books, playing cards, daily calendars, etc. etc.

Isn't it funny that Ezra looks more like he should be Kevin's son than Andy's? Someone called Kevin a Giant Ezra the other day :) It's the blonde hair.














Good times were had by all! It was a special treat having Kevin and Theresa here with us.

Christmas Eve service

Asia was Joseph and Ezra was one of the "Wise Dudes" in our impromptu little Christmas pageant at the Christmas Eve service.













Mark and Eric (my pastor and also Brett's--our brother-in-law--brother) playing some beautiful music at the candle light service.

Uncle Kevin & Auntie Theresa

We had such a great time with Uncle Kevin and Auntie Theresa here!

















The girls were way serious about their sudoku














There was also some serious Scrabble playing going on.

















Uncle Kevin loves playing the Wii! Nothing brings out the competitive side of a person more than when they keep getting beat at tennis by a 6 year old...