First Pow Wow

Here we are at our first native american indian pow wow. We saw Atka, the grey wolf, a falcon fly over our heads, listened to native stories, and did a tribal indian dance "The Candy Dance". All the children were asked to come to the circle where they had just scattered candy all over the ground. It was like musical chairs, but with candy. When the music stopped, you had to drop the candy out of your hands. Of course, K + A just wandered and danced around anyway.

Here's a short clip of a tribal dance with complete regalia.

Random Pics from Beth (2006)

At a year and a half old, I went away for a week, the first time away from the twinkies since they were born! When I returned, Wawa Beth + Chris elected to graduate the twinkies out of cribs and into their new 'big girl' beds... availing the rest of the house to their double-duty disposal (and consequently leaving the mama to cower in the kitchen, dispensing food as needed) That same week, earth-moving equipment arrived to our estate to dig a 300' long trench behind our house. Here's are the twinkies on the back hoe, digging up our property, and staying hydrated. Nothing was quite the same since!
This one (left) was taken in the Spring of 2006. My older sis, Didi and the twinkies.

The photo below was taken at Ashley's graduation from nursery school and to kindergarten, Spring 2006. This question was posited to our young nursery school grad "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Ashley firmly exclaimed loud and proud, "I wanna be a princess!"

Cousins In The Philippines!

Here are Chloe (about 6 months older than the twinkies) and Nina (about 5 years old?), daughters of Dennis Diente. Dennis is the son of my dad's brother Billy / his nephew, I think. Making him my cousin, or something like that...

(The pic of Chloe laying on the floor looks so much like Anakai!! :o)

1st Birthday Party (2006)

Here are pics from their 1st birthday party, July 1 2006 (o: better late than never :o) Here's some crazy family tidbit: This is the day we found out that the twins on Chris' side of the family our ring bearers Ted + Nate, were celebrating their birthday as well. But it doesn't stop there! The twins on Sheila's side of the family, Benjamin (BJ) + Nikki were also celebrating their birthday!!! Okay, how odd is that!? Three sets of twins, all whom were in our wedding party (except Kacia + Anakai, I guess) and ALL share the same July 1st birthday!! (: :) :)(: :)(:

Key: Kacia - yellow, Anakai - pink

Thanks to: Uncle James + Claire for rocking tiger and rocking lion; and Tita Xenia's roommie, the happy baker, who made their gorgeous gourmet double decker strawberry shortcake - all from scratch!! She hand ground african vanilla beans, and meticulously hand brush-painted the amazing birthday cake!! An edible masterpiece!! And Linda (again) for all the pics!

Summer Fun 2007

Here we all are at Speziale's Estate (next door, again! :o) Another summer day, another...splash in the keiki pool (hawaiian for bambino), ride the tractor, climb the ladder, scale the wood pile, hay-ride, popcorn + tv, and toast!

Thanks again Linda for all the great pics! And thanks for everything else!

2nd Birthday Party (2007)

What a perfect summer day for an outdoor birthday party!! Reminiscent of our wedding day! Wa-wa Beth and Tita Didi prepared the food (mmm, goood!!) Tita Linda took most of these pics, some are from mom's camera (wawa) and I inserted the captions (some are a complete guess - sorry!)

Thanks for coming over and helping us celebrate our 2nd birthday!! (o: :o)

A Stroll In the Park (2006)

Actually, these two are no stroll in any park. They are much more like a iron-mom event. Everything starts off so well...

Anakai at the Pool '06

Anakai took to the water so quickly! She immediately loved swimming in the pool, then jumping in too. In 30 minutes time, she was jumping off the side wall into the 3' deep end plunging to the depths and pushing up from the bottom! Then, in 45 minutes time, she was turning around and jumping in backwards!! Oh, my tiny diver! Would make any cliff diving mama proud!! (clap...hey!)

Later on we took them to the beach (click 'First Flight' of the twinkies archive). There was NO turning Anakai away from the mighty ocean without her crazy crying!! (After all, Ocean is her middle name)

Here are 3 separate clips.

She learns how to go backwards down the steps + hang on the handrail, Kacia is rubbing her eyes from the sunscreen.

Anakai learns quickly how to jump in and push off the bottom.

We all can't wait to visit again!

First Flight

Like a most northeastern snow birds, we all decided to fly south for the winter for our first "new family style" foray to Boca Raton (where my mom Beth lives) Spring Break 2006. Traveling with the twinkies in an airplane for the first time ever, we thought we'd be saving a bit of cash because kids fly free before they're 2 years old. Truth be told, we did save cash, but paid double in sanity. Without seat belts to harness them, (the ones that are tightly fastened to the seats that we elected not to pay for) I began to ponder Christopher's less humane double headed leash idea while i smacked my forehead in a 'what were we thinking??' manner. The flight turned out to be a 3 hour-long apology to our aisle neighbors seated behind (peek-a-boo is only cute the first few minutes, and that's from only 1 child) and in front of us (as tugging on the passengers hair is not cute at all, especially from 2 children).

On the return flight home, jetblue lost our double stroller. Yes...gone. They said they'd mail it to us as soon as they located the item. Great. Now we're stranded - and sooo close to home - since our 'new family' mobility was entirely dependent on this wheeled monster of a contraption for several reasons. None of which we, previously brilliant people, knew of. One was for our carry-on crap. Two, the twinkies survival stuff. And three, THEM. The 5-point harness system is a twin parent's dream - mobilized. Instead we were immobile, uncomfortable, and it was now past midnight. We hadn't the energy left to catch them anymore, so we just watched as they ran ran ran all over the piles of people, then on the luggage carousels... Forty-five minutes later, Jetblue appeared with a remedy: it was a single stroller, that was gross and broken. "Problem is sir, that has 1 seat while we have 2 children..."

That said, we did manage to reach the beach!!