100 Day!

Today was the 100th day of school! A good reason to celebrate :) In case you can't tell, Ezra's glasses are in the shape of 100.

Out with friends

We had a double date night out to a neat little place called The Red Barn with our friends Tara and Adrian (who looks super excited to be there ;).

Our waiter was good looking but didn't have much of a personality. We decided he just has a dry sense of humor, but in my opinion even that was stretching it. At one point when I asked him to take a picture of us he actually said "I can't right now b/c I'm busy." Tara giggled assuming he was joking. Nope. Off he walked. So we asked some customers who were leaving to take a picture on their way out instead of bothering Mr. Sunshiny Waiter.

An old friend

Here's a cool Facebook story for you. Through someone else's Facebook page I came across Samit. He was one of my older brother, Kevin's, best friends in school in Nigeria. Samit used to come to our house a lot when I was in elementary school. Once he stayed with us for a few weeks and it was during his visit that I quit using butter on bread.

You see, between Kevin and Samit's growing-boy-appetites my mom was making like 20 sandwiches each day for our school lunches. One day that time when Samit was staying with us it dawned on her that we could make our own lunches. Being that us Boer kids like to be efficient, I decided to skip the step of putting butter on my bread and to this day I barely ever use butter!

Anyway, so through Facebook I connected with Samit, we found out we both live in the greater Seattle area and we made a plan for him and his wife to come over for dinner. We hadn't seen each other since the summer of 1988!!

Throughout the evening he kept commenting on how weird it was to see me as an adult b/c in his mind I looked like Asia.














Because of the Nigeria connection we figured we ought to have Nigerian food for dinner. Samit hadn't had Nigerian food in a long time so he was excited. Here's Andy making the pounded yam (which is actually made from yam flakes, but tastes pretty legit) (and no, Nigerian yam is NOTHING like what Americans call yam).














Good times













A closeup of the Nigerian food. Pounded yam eaten with hands and delicious stew. SO flavorful! Andy makes it really well considering he was only in Nigeria once for two weeks.

Caucus

Not that the caucus itself was super exciting, but it was pretty cool knowing that our vote actually mattered by showing up at the caucus!














In case you were wondering who I'm voting for...














Very proud of the representation from our neighborhood! We pretty much filled a whole row.














The leader of our precinct is someone from our school PTA who lives in another neighborhood in our development (striped shirt near the right). Our gang hung out at the far right (see that tall guy? Andy is always easy to find!) where there was the perfect little cove for...



...the kids










Sure, they don't look too thrilled to be there, but someday they will probably be involved in their communities and in politics and this will be their first memory of taking part in democracy.

Serving dinner to the "Wise Men"

Our friend Chris invited us to join her family in serving dinner to some homeless men at their church one evening. Asia and Ezra both really enjoyed the experience.














We made rice-krispie treats with Valentine colored M&Ms for dessert.

Afterwards Ezra said "Those men were really nice!" then later he asked "Can we go serve dinner to the Wise Men again sometime?" Meaning the homeless men. It was really funny. But maybe you had to be there.

Obama Rally 2/8/08

Look at that line! I went to the Obama rally with my neighbor friend Rob, his little guy Robby, and his mom. Here we were in line until we noticed a back door that was open and people jumped out of the line and ran in that way instead. Whatever works!

We ended up with really good seats and found out later that the arena was full beyond fire code regulations (tsk tsk) and around 3000 people were left outside! What can I say, Washington State hearts Obama...


















It was really exciting being in that atmosphere! Okay, so Robby managed to take a nap, but it was exciting for the rest of us!!














The one thing that I have to say really bugged me? They came and handed out signs to the people surrounding the stage--they even brought out homemade signs! That just felt wrong to me. Ahh, politics, gotta love it.














There's our guy!














Kirk met us there. Just look at those crowds!














Robby eventually woke up. He already knows who we need to see in that White House :)

My evening with Kirk, our philanthropic friend

Our friend Kirk invited me to be his guest at a lovely reception for philanthropists such as himself who donate regularly to the Combined Fund Drive at the U of Washington (where he works). Employees donate to the charity of their choice and the Drive adds in an extra 5%.

The reception was rather swanky--free wine, lovely appetizers and even a speech from the president of the University!

Kirk and I were the youngest there by a decade or so. We're proud of you for being so generous, Young Kirk :)













Afterwards we went out to a local bar in the U District during happy hour. A bit more our speed than philanthropic receptions ;)

Ezra's first swimming lesson

It was a total success! I'm so relieved... He tried lessons when he was 3 or 4 but he HATED it so we quit. No point in having him traumatized like his father was... Finally since Grampa promised some new Lego if he took lessons (and since he's older), he agreed to try again.

He loved it! I love how stiff he is in the picture, he obviously has a long way to go, but for now I'm just thrilled that he is excited about swimming lessons...














See? He's a happy guy!

UNO--kicked up a notch

We've been playing a lot of UNO lately so today I got this new version--it kicks the game up a notch (which is good since, well, UNO isn't really all *that* exciting, you know??). Good times.

Hairspray Party

Sylvie's parents were brave enough to host all these neighborhood girls for a Hairspray (as in the movie) pj party :) The girls had a blast.

Hannah Montana in 3D

Since Hannah Montana's concerts sold out in, what, 2.3 seconds (according to Michelle), they made a 3D movie of her concert. The girls, like, giggle giggle, oh my gosh, like totally loved it! ;)














3D glasses are so hot














My attempt at pirating a photo--I took this picture with the camera focused through the 3D glasses. You get the idea.














We love Hannah Montana!!

Thumbs Up

Ez gave the Thumbs Up at the PTA fundraiser evening at the Bouncy Place...

The Wild Things

The Wild Things, er, I mean kids having a playdate with some of their buddies.

The new office

The company Andy works for moved to a brand new space in January, some of the details aren't actually completed yet but it's a great office. Andy's got his coffee machine, fancy tower, four (!!) monitors, bonsai... all set up and ready to work.

Totally random Ezra picture...

Don't worry, we didn't shave his hair off! This is an old photo that I came across--a reminder of why he should never ever for the rest of his life shave his hair again!

He REALLY wanted to be bald so he asked Andy to shave his hair off. So not a good look for a blonde...

Totally random Asia picture...

I was looking around the computer for a photo of someone and came upon this one of little miss Asia in our apartment in Japan. Love the tatami mat floor and the futon beater that she's playing with! Doesn't she look so Japanese? ;)

PJ day for the kindergarteners

I wish every day was PJ day! Cutting out one step from the morning routine made it a tiny bit easier to get out to the bus stop...

I heart Tom

Tom, my GPS, is one of my best friends ever! Here I was on a snowy day in Bothell--a place I'd never been to before. I can always count on Tom...

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