Basketball and Parties!.. (Week 281/143)

With Thanksgiving behind us, it's now time to start preparing for Christmas!  What better time to prep the house than the long Thanksgiving week we had off.  Time to put up the Christmas tree!  The kids were very excited when we got the tree out from the garage.  It took a lot of good behavior from the kids to get the tree up.  They were very helpful in putting on the ornaments.  Here's a few photos of the kids helping out.  No finished photos yet though - there were a lot of ornaments to put up...and we had a lot of activities we needed to get through (Kumon, TKD, piano, etc).

Love Katelyn's ornaments from the last two years that were made at ICDC.  Here 2010 one had her handprint, and her 2011 had her photo on it.  So cute!  I have wanted to make ornaments each year with our family photo.  I may have to make some to cover the last few years, ever since Tyler was born!

Busy week back, nice to get back into the hang of things.  It was quite an exhausting week off so I was looking forward to 'normalcy' again.  Except normalcy is pretty exhausting in itself.  Waiting for Tyler at Kindergarten, Katelyn likes to play in the playground.  She likes their swings, even though they're big kid swings.  Poor KK fell right off when she got on!  She wanted to get back on but was still sad.  Look how sad she looks!

With Hawaii just around the corner, we tried to squeeze in some extra swim lessons in.  He's progressed to Level 4 now - yay good job Tyler! 

On Wednesday, Katelyn and I had an errand day instead of our usual rushing-home-to-nap-her routine.  We headed to the Spectrum and ran many many many errands.  We even had a nice little dimsum lunch at Capital Seafood.  It was a really nice morning together with my little KK.  If her naps weren't so critical, we would enjoy more days like this!  It makes me a little sad to know that these days of ours are numbered (somewhat...) so I'll need to remind myself to enjoy every moment I can.

Thursday I finally got a haircut - not much of a change so I don't have a picture to post.  I am a wimp when it comes to cutting hair, and the stylist assured me that she'd only cut off the damaged ends.  Will worked from home that day so that I could take my time and was able to come to Tyler's make up swim lesson with us that afternoon.  He's learning to dive and do the backstroke! 

Brrrr it was cold that day.  I LOVE it!  We took the kids for an early dinner at the Mitsua food court - the kids love their ramen.

Friday- another piano lesson for Tyler (we alternate Thur and Fri each week).  He's getting better and I'm always impressed that he can actually read notes!  For now,  it isn't too too difficult to get Tyler to practice.  Fingers crossed it'll continue.

Rainy day Friday.  It really started coming down when we picked up Tyler from school.  Soaked!  Tyler took the opportunity to bug me about playing the Wii and succeeded!  Bowling and Tennis on the Wii - he enjoyed it very much.

Friday evening, our friends Jen & Vince came over to hang out.  The kids love playing with them, like really.  They worked up a sweat running around in excitement!

We enjoyed wine and played Cards against Humanity (second time for us!).  It's nice to know we can have grown up time downstairs while the kids are sleeping upstairs.

Saturday was Tyler's first basketball practice.  The organization (So-Cal Elite) seemed really disorganized as they were preparing for the season, but the practice that day seemed quite orderly.  The practice was at nearby Irvine High School's gym with most of the Kindergarten teams practicing at 9am or 10am.  It was so cute watching all the kids dribbling around!

Tyler's team is the Spurs, and the kids on the team are mostly from the Canyon Hicks Elementary school area.  We're on the team since our friend Jason is coaching.  His son Luke went to ICDC with Tyler and they were on the same soccer team and we all got along great!  Plus I didn't want to be on a specific team to try to avoid dramatic interactions. It was a little awkward that morning since all the teams were there but we made it through, thank goodness.

After a good practice, In-N-Out for lunch!  New favorite lunch place for the kids.

Saturday night we headed to West Covina for our friends' the Tsao's party.  They are returning to Asia for a while and were throwing a big send off party.  Always a blast with them and it was great seeing friends.  It's a very specific type of party - lots of adults fun with little kids running around. :)

Sunday we were total bums.  After two late nights in a row I didn't want to do anything!  Tyler still had Chinese school (thank you Will for taking him!) and I slept most of the day.  For dinner our friend Joan visited us with her littlest.  It's always great to see her when they are in town!