End of (school) year craziness // Kids growing up // Science Olympiad // Garden Bros Circus

 You know, I think we always forget how busy the end of the school year gets.  There are just so many activities that pile up.. soccer tournaments, Science Olympiad, Kai's birthday, end of year parties, school concerts, planning for summer.  Those are my excuses for not having written a blog post sooner :p  No big trips or anything, just regular life stuff..

The biggest thing is probably Kai's birthday.  He turned 12 (!!!) and had several celebrations.  First with cupcakes with his soccer team where he also was MVP for the previous game.  Then we went to Lasermaxx with the church friends and after that celebrated at home with neighbors.  I think he had a good time and is growing up a bit.  He's still very disorganized and not always thoughtful but he's very smart and generally a very good person.  He does still tend to goof off and poke at others a lot, especially his siblings, but still usually listens to us (so not fully teen yet).  He has come to really enjoy his friends in church youth group so I'm glad there is that constant in his life.  He's also challenged himself to a lot new things like track and field, cross country and violin while also keeping up with jujitsu and soccer.  It's hard to believe that he'll be 18 in just six more years.  Hopefully, we've done an ok job raising him.  I still tell him I love him every chance I get :)

Low light pic from inside the laser tag area

The church friends and giant donut .. love Kai and Evelyn's no smile here :!

Jad has also finished up the competitive soccer season.  It was shorter than the rec season and probably cost 3x as much with all the uniforms.  It's still not terribly expensive but I'm not sure if it's worth it either.  Jad is definitely picking up some good technique and footwork.  He's getting stronger for sure and has some athletic potential.  The Arsenal White team did not do super well overall this season but it's a bunch of 7 year olds so not a big deal.  We probably will continue, though mostly that's because he enjoys playing with his friends who are on the team.   

Jad usually plays mid field or defender

Sora is still continuing with gymnastics, as well as piano, ice skating (all medium priced activities) and Girl Scouts.  She enjoys gymnastics and likes the friends that she sees there but is also probably not competitive.  Sometimes, we question whether it's worth it because it's a bit far, takes a lot of time and especially when Sora doesn't practice regularly at home.  We'll see, I think she'll have to pare down her activities a bit once she reaches middle school anyway.

Sora showing Jad some stretches during
home practice

I've been doing some little quality of life improvements around the house.  Put up some solar lights around the backyard fence, some hooks for helmets, cleaning up the garage and getting some storage boxes for the shelves.  I put up a bike hook so we could stand Amy's bike up.  It's much lighter than my bike so can be stored this way to save room.  Nothing big but still, I like doing little things to make everyday better.  Some of the larger project always get put off so it's nice to see these things and just get 'em done.  It'll also help with closet space as the kids prepare to move into their own rooms this summer which will be a big project. 

Looks so cool :)

Amy has continued to run and says she's getting back in shape, though the metrics are completely skewed here because she's already in great shape 💝 Still, she has signed up for a couple of half marathons this summer and is training hard.  She's also finishing up her lactation nurse certification which has been on delay for much of the last year due to her mom's cancer diagnosis.  

Running the spring rains

I'd be remiss if I didn't add our last family member.  Sesame is (as Jad says) "living the life, dude".  Food, shelter, love.. what else does one need?  He's come to make friends with Callie, our outdoor feral, and will sometimes sit around in the front yard with her. Luckily, we got them both neutered or else who knows what black/calico mixed kittens we could find some day.

This cat is very comfortable here

Callie still hisses at us, maybe
a bit less than before though

Some other random bits..

A great picture of Jad as he finishes
the 1st grade

Kai reunited with some of his best buds from Noble at the Spring Carnival.  They all went to different middle schools so it was nice to see them getting back into their silliness so quickly

Amy went to visit Jen Nagaran and (as usual for them) they went
all out for their party with caricature artists and great food

Sora lost another tooth while Jad lost two
so they are keeping the tooth fairy busy

One day, I walked out in our front yard and found a random young bird out there. Surprising because it was very friendly and walked right up to me and also because of the number of cats that roam our neighborhood.  I told Jad to keep an eye on it, grabbed our cat carrier, threw some sunflower seeds in there and it walked right in.  After some internet sleuthing and Amy posting on a chicken forum, we realized it was a quail, probably domestic because it was used to people.  Despite Amy's cousin's suggestion that we eat it, Amy managed to find a bird lover who took it off our hands.  About 2 weeks after, we got an update that it was fattening up and had become friends with another found quail.  Happy ending!

I thought it was a young chicken at first

Jad is fascinated by the quail

Kai finished up Track and Field, where he mostly ran the longer distances (800m+).  I think he made some friends there and also reconnected with Micah a bit, who was doing some jumping and shot put.  Kai is definitely more of a steady runner rather than sprinter and did ok though I don't think he liked this as much as cross country so we may not do it next year.  The track meets are also a bit of a zoo since there are multiple events going at once and took up so much time.  Interesting experince.

Kai lining up for the 800m

We took Amy's mom out to celebrate the end of her chemo treatments.  

One of things that took up more time the last 4 weeks was Science Olympiad.  It's a competition for 2nd-6th graders (they have a separate level for high school, I think) to encourage interest in STEM.  Kai and Sora did it last year and did very well with their school team winning 1st place so they were excited to join again this year.  Kai decided to do Codebusters again as well as Spaghetti Bridge building and Sora went for broke doing Ecology, Experimental Design and Write It-Do It (where one person writes down a description of a structure made of various objects and a second person has to recreate that thing from the write up.  Lots of meetings, parents ranged from very tiger to medium (us) to drop off kids then go (seriously, two 3rd graders were dropped off at our house who we didn't know at all and the parents were like, "see ya, we'll be back in a couple of hours".  Some parents made notes and powerpoint presentations and Amy showed Sora how to cram as much info as possible into a cheat sheet (1 page, double sided, no margins, tiny font.. allowed in Ecology). 

Sora and Jad had fun with the spaghetti bridge too

We even got real civil engineers from our church group involved!

In the end, Sora and Olivia won 1st place in Ecology and 3rd place in Write it-Do it, a testament to their studying and practice since they beat out a lot of 5th and 6th grade teams.  Kai got 3rd place for Codebusters, which was great already but there was some controversy with Spaghetti Bridge.  After much testing and building, Kai determined that building a solid bridge without any fancy triangles or arches with the best with the limitation of only 25 sticks and clay given.  He built the bridge with Brian and it held 196 pennies(!), which is amazing as most other bridges held only 30-50, before the judges told them to stop.  They were supposed to test the bridge to failure but it was clear they won.  They were so very proud and thought they had 1st place in the bag.  Unfortunately, this was a competition largely run by high school students and there were two testing stations for the bridge load.  The other station has one bridge that they let go up to 200 pennies (very impressive as well) before that team was told to stop.  In the end, the judges realized they messed up because the testing conditions were not consistent but then decided to give 1st place to the other team and 2nd place to Kai and Brian.  The kids felt cheated and talked to the judges but there was no changed so they were pretty sad and angry.  They should have probably just given 1st place to both teams and had no 2nd place winner but again, they were high school students.  Anyway, Amy wrote a letter to the judges and we emphasized to the kids that they should still be very proud of their work.  After a day, I think things were better.  We told them that when they are in high school, they can run this thing and then do it fair!

Sora and Olivia getting their 1st place medal!

Brian and Kai proudly right after their
bridge testing

Kai, Brian and Abhai's Codebusters team

This past weekend, we went to the Garden Bros circus which was in San Jose.  We got a pretty good deal at $15 a seat so it was worth it.  It was definitely a working man's circus, meaning there was a lot of loud music, movie projections, pop culture references and selling of items/food (as opposed to Cirque de Soleil or something of that level where the focus is on the art and performance).  Still it was entertaining and there were definitely very talented people in the acts.  

This spinning rings was probably most impressive/terrifying, especially when the people would run
on the outside of the ring, jumping so they were suspended in the air for a few seconds

There were also a lot of aerial stunts and they were also very neat

The weather is warming up and the kids are getting outside in the street again.  Biking to school, running around and I even put up a make shift zipline in our backyard again.

Flying foam airplanes around on a windy day
makes for some crazy loops and spins

Is it safe?  Probably.  Fun for sure though :)

Kai took a break from violin lessons for 2 months while he had track, jujitsu and soccer.  Now that things are cooling down, he's back to it.  Funny, I'm never sure how much  he likes things because he's so blaise but he's willing to try and does stick to these things so that's a huge plus for him.  I'm glad the kids are getting some music education as I never had a chance for that with our family restaurant's need for labor and the money we didn't have for extra things.  I think it'll enrich them in the future.. they already hear music better than I do, especially Sora :)

Lessons with Jackie

This guy looks pretty good all dressed up!

Our neighborhood continues to be active, even though everyone is pretty busy.. except for Kegan, who's early retired but he's busy surfing and biking :p  We had a nice gathering for memorial day.  Amy and I smoked a duck for the first time.  Pretty easy overall, done in the wok and it came out pretty smoky for having been in there for only about 30 mins.  

Looks pretty good, huh?

All the moms and a great dinner spread!

I'll leave you with a pic of Jad and his 2nd lost tooth.  He's very reluctant about wiggling his teeth which I think has caused one of his lower incisors to come in recessed behind his normal row of teeth.  I have some anxiety about it because I have a canine which has been recessed my whole life, I think, because the baby tooth was in for too long.  We never could afford braces so it's always affected the way I smile and bothered me.  Obviously, I did fine despite but I don't want our kids to go through the same thing.  Luckily, I think they will all be able to get braces to correct any major problems.  Funny, the things that we carry with us from when we were young.  

Jad also asked Amy last night, "when do we know when we're grown up?"  Cute and very insightful.  I thought about it and I think probably about 45-50 :)  I still feel like I don't know so much.  

That's about it for this one.  Til next time!