i was invited to test for a belt promotion today.  since it was my first belt test, i didn’t know what to expect.

today was a special belt test day.  it wasn’t just a regular class.  apparently, all the junior cubs (age 6 and under), white belt kids (age 7-12), and beginner kids (age 7-12) all test on the same day.  each group tested separately.  junior cubs went first.  we had to demonstrate a bunch of skills including a variety of stances, upward blocks, punches, and flying side kicks.  after we finished, the white belt kids were tested, and then the beginner kids.

after we all finished testing, we took our places on the mat and we were presented with our new belts.  then we each invited one parent to the mat to participate in the belt promotion ceremony.  we took off our old belts, then master shir stood at the front and said a few words (i have zero recollection of what she said).  there was a loud kiai, and then our parents tied our next belts on us.

and now i’m a “yellow belt”!  (actually, i’m still a white belt, but now i have a yellow stripe.  i don’t think i’m even eligible to get a real yellow belt until i’m 7 years old.)  luckily, my dojo is just a few doors down from blush, so we celebrated with froyo.  what a great afternoon. 🙂

sienna loves chocolate pudding. mommy made us some special chocolate pudding out of coconut milk, chia seeds, and unsweetened cocoa powder. it’s sienna crack.

at the end of the original video, sienna whispers “chooocolaaate” in a creepy silence-of-the-lambs voice, but daddy edited that part out. too bad.

when mommy asked me if i wanted to go to the art and wind festival this year, i said yes. but then, i looked at the photos and videos from last year, and it all came back to me.  “you just walk around and look at stuff.  that’s boring.”  the problem was that i went with a bunch of grown ups last year.  seven grown ups and me.  sienna didn’t come with us because she was at home, napping.  so this year, it was just me and sienna and mommy and daddy.  and we checked the schedule in advance to make sure we could catch the fun kid stuff that we wanted to do and see.

we headed out after lunch, and we got special passes to park in uncle ritchie’s neighborhood again.  (thanks uncle ritchie!)  when we arrived at the festival, we headed straight for the children’s puppet theatre to wait for a production of “three billy goats gruff”.  (uncle ritchie and auntie margaret found us there and watched with us.)  it was our first time watching a puppet show!  it was a fun and interactive show, and sienna and i both really enjoyed it.  from the photo it looks like we were far away, but we had the best seats in the house because we were in the shade. =)  we liked the puppet show so much that we wanted to stay for the next performance, “little red riding hood”.  but since it wasn’t going to start for a little while, we went to check out the rest of the festival.

i didn’t want to just walk around and look at boring stuff with uncle ritchie and auntie margaret, so we split up from them and went to find the kid’s zone.  by the time we got there, sienna was asleep in the stroller.  i found a ball toss game that i wanted to play, so i got in line.  when it was finally my turn, the lady asked for 3 tickets.  tickets?  what tickets?  we didn’t have any tickets.  we looked over at the ticket booth, and the line was 10+ people long.  mommy didn’t want to wait because it was too hot.  so instead, we decided to go get some jamba juice.  yesss!

we made it over to the food court area, and guess what.  they were out of jamba juice.  i was so upset and i couldn’t understand how they could possibly be out of jamba juice.  why couldn’t they just make more???

we had about 30 minutes before the keiki hula performance — sienna wanted to see it because she wants to join a halau when she turns 3.  so in the mean time, i dragged mommy back to the children’s puppet theatre where we caught the second half of “little red riding hood”.  after the puppet show, we made our way over to the ampitheatre for the hula performance.  on the way there, i spotted a “game” at one of the booths.  the lady said i could spin the wheel to win a prize, but i told her i didn’t have any tickets.  she let me spin anyway, and i won a plastic bracelet with something printed on it.  i have no idea what.  but i got a bracelet.  cool!

sienna was still sleeping when we got to the hula performance, but we stayed and watched for a few minutes anyway.  i didn’t really like it because it wasn’t “real hula”. sienna’s style of hula doesn’t really look like real hula either.  daddy says she looks like one of the plastic hula dolls that sit on your dashboard and bobbles around as you drive.

even though it seemed like i had fun at the art and wind festival this year, i told mommy that i didn’t. it would have been fun if i got to play games. i hope mommy and daddy remember that for next year.

we went to erik’s birthday party today.  it started out like a regular park party — we sat around, ate some food, and drank undiluted juice (a treat that we sometimes get at parties).  sienna and i didn’t know any of the other kids there because they were erik’s friends from school.  but one of the cool things about having a sibling is that you always have someone around to play with.  so sienna and i played together in the playground and we found a beach ball that we played soccer with.  well, i was trying to play soccer but sienna kept picking up the ball with her hands.  that’s one of the not so cool things about having a sibling — they don’t always want to play what you want to play.

while we were playing soccer in the grassy area, we noticed one of the dads setting up a bunch of stuff.  it turns out that he is a magician!  he did some magic and even let all of us kids help with the tricks.  (that’s erik in the photo, assisting with a card trick.)  i really love magic and i enjoyed the entire show.  sienna was sort of into the magic, but she kept getting up and wandering to the back to sit with mommy.

after the magic show, it was time for the pinata!  since sienna and i were the smallest kids there, we got to swing first.  auntie jill said that everyone had to be blindfolded, but not sienna, because she’s so little.   as it was, she just barely tapped the pinata.  i got blindfolded, and so did everyone else.  i guess that’s what happens when you go to big kid parties.  because everyone hits so hard, everyone has to get blindfolded so that the pinata doesn’t bust open before everyone gets a turn!

after everyone got in a swing or two (even erik’s grandpa!), one of the kids finally busted the pinata and all the candy fell to the ground. i spotted what looked like a receipt, so i pounced on it. i was disappointed to find out that it was just a rectangular piece of paper that was part of the pinata. we all scrambled to fill our goody bags, and when we were done, i proudly showed mommy my stash.  “i got emmy em’s for daddy!”  that’s what i call m&m’s.  they’re daddy’s favorite.

and then it was time for cake.  erik had a really cool cake that looked just like a regular cake, but underneath the many inches of frosting, there were cupcakes hiding under there!  i want one of those for my birthday party.  i ate an entire cupcake — minus the frosting, which mommy scraped off — all by myself.  and then my tummy hurt.  it was worth it.

happy birthday erik!  thanks for inviting us to your super cool birthday party. it was magical!

remember how i got a cool new bike last august?  it was too big and my feet couldn’t touch the ground when i was sitting on (or standing over) the seat.  so it pretty much just sat in the garage.  in december, auntie cindy gave me cousin jerrod’s old bike to try out.  i didn’t ride it much because the days were short and the weather was cold during the winter.  but now that it’s springtime, i’m back in the saddle.

jerrod’s bike is probably 10 years old and 10 pounds heaver than mine.  but my feet can touch the ground when i sit on that bike, so that makes it better.  all it took was a couple of spins around our cul de sac, and i was off and riding.

this video is from one week ago.  i had a hard time starting by myself, but once i got rolling, i could balance and ride pretty well.  but still, i didn’t have the confidence to ride my big 16″ bike.

well guess what.  over the weekend, i decided to ride my big bike, and i did just fine!  and because my bike is so much lighter, i can even start by myself now. 🙂

now i’m off and riding all by myself, just in time for the triathlon coming up in 2.5 weeks!  i like to ride really close to the curb and then make a really sharp turn at the very last second.  mommy and daddy think that i might be a little too confident on my bike now.  good thing i ride with a helmet, gloves, and knee pads.  safety first!

sienna just finished her second session of soccer classes.  she never really seemed all that into the first session, so we were all really surprised that she wanted to register for another.  mommy discouraged her, but sienna insisted.

all season long, sienna never really got into soccer.  when she participated in the activities that the coaches led, it was usually half-heartedly.  some days, she would just flat out refuse to play the games.  mommy always gave her the option to go home instead, but she never wanted to leave.

sienna was pretty engaged for the first 10 minutes of today’s class, but then she was done.  i think she knew it was the last class and had a bad case of senioritis.  after each activity, sienna walked off the field and sat on the sidelines with me and gung-gung.

see the photo of sienna dribbling the ball?  you might think that that’s her game face, but i’ll let you in on a secret — that’s just her usual soccer scowl.

mommy wanted a photo with sienna to commemorate their last soccer class together — probably, ever.  even if sienna shows interest in soccer again some time in the future, she will be old enough to play by herself and mommy won’t need to be on the field with her.

anyway, i took a photo of mommy and sienna, and mommy took one.  which do you think came out better? 🙂

sienna’s 3rd birthday is a little more than 2 months away, but she’s had her party planned since last october.  she wants to have a hello kitty party.  she wants a hello kitty jumpy house, a hello kitty ice cream cake, and she already knows which friends she is going to invite.  that makes the party planning easy for mommy.

we can’t have the party at our house because sienna’s guest list is about 100 people long. but while looking for a picnic area to reserve for the party, mommy discovered that none of the parks in san ramon permit “the use of any trampoline, bungee jumping, or any rebound tumbling device…”. that means no jumpy houses!

mommy thought sienna would be so disappointed about not being able to have a hello kitty jumpy house, but sienna quickly moved on to plan B.  now she wants to have a starbucks party.

mommy quickly got on board with the idea of a starbucks party.  i wonder if they serve americanos in kiddie sizes.

just last week, i was asking mommy when i was going to get to work at leap frog again.  but the thing is, we never know if there’s work for me until just a few days before.  well, earlier this week while mommy was in texas, i got the call.  (it was actually an email.)  i was selected to do some product testing today.

part of the fun of working at leapfrog is waiting in the lobby and playing with all the devices that they have set up there.  we don’t have any of those at home.  but the last three times i went in, i tested games on a leapster explorer, a PC, and a leappad.  so i figured that today would be more of the same.  but instead, i tested games on the TV.  it was sort of like playing wii, but instead of showing my mii, it was actually me on the tv.  that was pretty cool.

the first two games put me in a TV scene and gave me verbal instructions.  so like, i was surrounded by different kinds of fruit and a voice kept saying “smack the fruit”.  the word “long” was displayed on the TV.  i didn’t know what to do.  i stood there waiting for some kind of hint, but i didn’t get one.  the voice just kept saying “smack the fruit”.  (later, mommy explained that i was supposed to choose the long fruit.  the banana.)  the second game was similar, but it was a rhyming game.  again, i just stood there blankly.

the third game was pretty fun.  it was a soccer game where i had to block balls being kicked at me.  there was also a numbers component to it that gave verbal instructions, similar to the first two games.  but this one showed an outline of a person and it helped me realize that i was supposed to align myself with it.  i guess that outline made things click for me and i understood that game pretty easily.

in the fourth game, i was in an underwater scene.  the verbal instructions told me to “swim” toward the top.  i also had to move side to side to collect coins and avoid the coral/rock walls and puffer fish.  (it helped that i am learning arm strokes in swim class right now.)  this game was my favorite, but i didn’t get to play it for very long because i ran out of time.

i had a lot of fun being a tester for these new products.  i hope they’ll let me continue working there even after i blew it with those first two games!

we wanted to do something a little different to celebrate mother’s day this year.  so instead of our usual brunch, we took mommy and grandma (and the rest of the family) on a train ride!

first, we met grandma, grandpa, and uncle randy for lunch.  we ate at chez sovan, one of the places that mommy misses most about the south bay.  then we all headed down to roaring camp, which is in a little town called felton, near santa cruz.  grandpa said that he had taken the family there when daddy was little, but daddy didn’t remember it.  for mommy, me, and sienna, it was our first time.

there are a couple of different routes you can take from roaring camp.  there’s a 3 hour beach train to santa cruz, but nobody believed that sienna and i would be able to sit still for that long.  we chose the stream train through the redwood forest.  while we waited for our train, sienna and i entertained ourselves by played in the little “town”.

the train ride was about 90 minutes long (round trip), including a stop at the top of bear mountain.  throughout most of the ride, sienna alternated between providing sound effects and signing “let it go” at the top of her lungs.  luckily, the train was pretty loud, so she didn’t embarrass us too much.

when we got to the top of the mountain, we went for a short walk. i was so excited because i’ve never actually been in the woods before.

after the train ride, we got off, and i spotted some big troughs where people were panning for gold.  i wanted to find gold!  so we all gathered around and a man demonstrated for us, proper panning technique.  mommy asked to see a sample of the gold so we would know what we were looking for.  the man showed us a gold flake in a small vial.  i asked in disbelief, “that little dot?!”

we found the first gold flake pretty quickly.  but we couldn’t go home with just one, because sienna and i would surely fight over it.  it took us a long time to find the second one, but we eventually did, and quickly found a few more after that.  we ended up with 6 little dots of gold in total.  maybe 5.  one of them is so small, it’s hard to tell. 😛

when we got home, sienna and i gave mommy the special cards that we made for her.  daddy helped us trace our hand prints and connect them with a folded strip of paper that says “i love you this much!”  when i was making the card, i told daddy that i love mommy more than that, and i wanted a strip of paper that was much much longer.  he said he didn’t have one.  but that’s okay, i made sure mommy knew.

me: i love you more than the moon.

mommy: i love you more than the moon and all the stars.

me: i love you more than googol.

(i recently learned that googol is the biggest number in the whole world.)

happy mother’s day to mommy and grandma.  we hope you had a roaring good time on your special day!

we spent the day down in the san jose today.  first, we went to kaylen and kadence’s joint birthday party.  it was a “frozen” themed birthday party at a frozen yogurt shop.  clever.  and those are two of our favorite things, so we had high expectations.  it ended up being even better than we imagined!

in addition to all of the “frozen” decorations and of course, the froyo, there was a face painter there who did some really incredible artwork on our faces.  sienna got a butterfly and i got the whole solar system.  and they were finished off with sparkly rhinestones and glitter, too.  check us out!

but wait, there’s more.  there was also a balloon guy who could make anything out of balloons.  seriously.  anything.  i saw him make turtles, butterflies, princesses, and a lightning mcqueen.  i asked him to make me something from “frozen”, so he made me olaf, the snowman!  after all of us kids had balloon creations, the balloon guy thought it would be fun to arm all us with balloon weapons.  within a few minutes, we all had a sword and/or a bow and arrow.  he was right.  it was fun.

the little kids didn’t really know what to do with the swords at first.  see how kadence and sienna and holding theirs by the “blade”?  they caught on quickly, though.

sienna was singing “happy birthday to kaylen and kadence” during the whole drive down, so she was more than ready when the time came to sing for real.  i was too full from all the froyo i ate to have any cake.  i know, mommy and daddy were shocked, too.  but daddy didn’t mind — he ate my piece.  daddy raved about the cake.  he said it was the best birthday he’s ever had.  and that’s saying a lot because daddy has been to a lot of birthday parties and has eaten a lot of cake.

happy birthday kaylen and kadence!

the froyo shop is close to grandma’s house, so we went there afterward.  sienna took a nap while i played with grandma.  grandma has a bunch of toys that she keeps at her house for us to play with when we visit her.  today, we played with the 3-D wooden farm puzzle.  the fences doubled as hockey sticks and the animals made good pucks! after an hour of playing grandma said she was tired and needed a break. so i told her she could rest for one minute. i set a timer. 😛

as an added bonus, grandpa came home in time to have dinner with us, and uncle randy surprised us by dropping by with manju for dessert!

we may have moved away, but we still love our friends and family in san jose. 🙂