Catching Up on May: Sarah's First Communion and 8th Birthday

May began for us with Mother's Day week: Matthew's Kindergarten had their annual "Mom's and Muffins" time with their mommies on Friday morning (Daddy was a helper). Matt and Mommy had a great time enjoying muffins and juice, and reading stories together. Then the weekend began.....

Sarah's big First Communion Mass was Saturday evening, May 10th (hey, wasn't that our 11th Anniversary too!??.... we hardly noticed). She looked gorgeous in her white dress, and posing with Fr. Jim (our Pastor Emeritus). We're very proud to have her as a more active participant in the Mass and as a more active member of God's community :-). Matt was pretty anxious to get out of the Church and run around outside.

Finally, Sarah had a very fun skating party on her birthday on the 31st. She had lots of friends (and their parents!) in attendance, and all had fun skating (or at least trying to skate) around the rink. Her cake was once again by Misha and Nate of NorCal (a Littlest Pet Shop-styled Peacock)....... :-)


Both kids continue to do well in gymnastics too, and we've all been excited to watch the Lakers in the playoffs.

We'll be back soon with June updates so far.....

Matthew's 6th Birthday

Last night was Matt's 6th birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. He and 10 of his kindergarten friends had great fun playing games, and goofing around in front of the stage-area video camera (which put them all on-screen!). He enjoyed the birthday theme of his favorite new cartoon (and Playstation video game), "Ben 10". His cake, showing Ben's alien-DNA-powered Omnitrix and a few of his alien hero alter-egos, was once again created by chef Michelle (AKA, Mommy) and confection designer, Nate (AKA, Daddy).

Today, we spent a fun afternoon as a family at California's Great America, just a few miles from our house (Daddy's first time, since we moved here almost 4 years ago). Sarah even went on a her first big, inverted roller coaster, The Demon! We also met Aang, from Matt and Daddy's favorite cartoon series, "Avatar: The Last Airbender" -- along with many other Nickelodeon characters.

** In other news: Matt is doing great, having fun, and reading well above his class level in kindergarten. He likes math too! Sarah continues to excel at the top of her class.

Sarah and Matt both will advance to the next level in Gymnastics this month. Sarah will begin level 3, and Matt will begin level 1 (advancing from "Tumbler" level 2). As we expected, Matt is a total natural, and could do everything his teachers asked him to do the first time he tried! He needs to improve a bit on steadying his hand stands, and has even begun work on the rings and pommel horse! Sarah is working hard on uneven bars, especially on her "back hip circles".