Birthday #2

The second birthday to celebrate in October was FDVD's 4th Birthday! How old are you now Felix? "First I'm 4, then I'm going to be 5!" (shows fingers). Now that Felix is 4, he is in Pre-K (pre-kindergarten). He even gets homework: practicing tracing letters and numbers, and writing his name.

 He has also just started drawing people. This is his teacher, Ms. Jona "under the ocean":

 

On the morning of Felix's birthday, he couldn't wait to open his presents. His favorite things were his Spider-Man umbrella (from Ella) and the "huge car-truck" (from his Oma). 

 

We went to ride the trains at Travel Town in Griffith Park and to have a picnic together with his best friend Liam and his mum & dad. Lucky for Felix, it was a bit drizzly, so he was able to use his brand new Spider-Man umbrella right away. There was a band playing; Felix and Liam danced along with gusto. The fire department was there too, and the kids were all allowed to climb in.

 All aboard!

 Dinner at our favorite restaurant, Crazy Tokyo Sushi, rounded out the weekend. 

(happy face)

Fall and Birthday #1

Fall is always a busy time of year. Here is the first installment of some long-awaited updates... September always means a First Day of School. Not only did Ella start 2nd grade with Mrs. Shusett, and Felix start learning to write letters & numbers with Ms. Jona, Ella is now in Groep 3 with Juf Janneke at Dutch School, and Felix has started Groep 1 with Juf Iris. Here they are on their first day:

Fall is also Harvest Time. When we bought our house, the tree right in the middle of our front yard was an ugly Q-tip shaped thing, which we allowed to grow out and become more tree-like. After a number of years, it started producing fruit and now, 8 years later, we decided to harvest those olives, soak and brine them, to hopefully have our very own supply. It's a tedious process and results are not instant. First the picking and the sorting...

It was a family affair, everyone pitched in and helped out! Now we've sliced them all on one side, are soaking them in water to cure them and changing the water daily.
 
On October 3, our little Ella turned 7 years old! Here she is the night before her birthday:

Ella at 6 yrs + 363 days

While Jim took Ella to see a beautifully restored screening of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, complete with in-person appearance of Belle herself, Felix and I made a cake.

 Then Emma (left) and Wil (not pictured) came over to help us celebrate and enjoy the pink-pink cake.

Last but not least, Felix and I drove out to Palm Desert to Tante Lynnie's house to visit with her and OmaLala! Felix was eager to show off his new drawing skills...

Felix draws OmaLala

Tada! Looks just like her right?

This is Tante Lynnie! Also a perfect resemblance.

A visit from Mom - Part 1: Birthday Party

In honor of the kids' birthdays, my mom ("Oma" to Ella & Felix) came to visit us for a couple of weeks. It went by so fast but we did manage to get "just a few" pictures to document the occasion. The very first day was Ella's birthday; after Dutch school in the morning, they went to the mall together to pick out a new birthday outfit. Ella also got a couple of pretty necklaces. For Ella's birthday dinner, she chose to go to Crazy Tokyo Sushi.

The following day was THE PARTY!

(click on pictures to see them bigger)

Felix's friends Liam, Daniel, Charlie and Will came, as did Ella's friends Emma, Molly, Mia, Kate, Syrena and Zachary. The special guests, Reptacular Animals, were a huge hit with the kids and adults alike. Ella's favorite was this, a little kingsnake:

Felix liked the chinchilla and the iguana:

The rest of the special guests were an Emperor scorpion, a big fat African Bullfrog, a yellow finch, a white dove, a gray bunny, a boa, a monitor lizard and a desert tortoise (who enjoyed munching on the grass in our yard).

The other WOW moment was the rainbow cake, made by my friend Nathalie. Molly's brother who doesn't even eat cake exclaimed, "This is the best cake I've had in my life!" (as a 6-yr-old, you can imagine he'd had his share of cake in his lifetime). High praise indeed.

One last picture of the special day; Ella's Back-To-School picnic was the same day as the party, so after everyone left, and we cleaned up, we headed over there for a little while. Here's Ella with her name on the school marquee which was up for the whole month of October: