Benji turns 10! (part 2)

More photos from his birthday party.  --Victoria



Time for cake!

Gathering around to sing happy birthday.

Two of Benji's friends found a very creative place to eat their slices of cake!

Benji turns 10 today! (part 1)

It's so hard to believe.  We had his party yesterday in a nearby park and the weather was beautiful.  The kids did a scavenger hunt then ran around playing make-believe games.  So much fun!

--Victoria

We set up a table with snacks and drinks.

While Aaron was setting things up, I hid the scavenger hunt items.  The theme was Minecraft (the building game) so each kid had to find one "stick" (pictured below) and two "gems" before they could make a sword.

Once they found the stick and two gems, the kids brought these items to the "crafting table" and "furnace" that we brought from Benji's room, and the items were converted into a (foam) sword.  Then they ran around brandishing swords at each other for the rest of the party and coming up with different Minecraft-themed adventures.

Dancing twins! (Takoma Park Folk Festival)

Earlier this month, I took the twins to the Takoma Park Folk Festival with me.  They took part in a simple workshop for Morris dancing (the folk dancing that I do), watched some performances, and really enjoyed the jug band music and dancing.  They even did a little dancing of their own!

--Victoria

 

Happiness is ... a house for little toy animals

This was Tamar's xmas gift from Grandma and Grandpa (from Canada), that is, Victoria's parents.  She loves playing with it and, this time, Daniel joined her as well.
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--Victoria
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(and here's a video of them playing with it)
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Happiness is putting together floor puzzles!

Tamar and Daniel had some fun with their floor puzzles and then showed off their work and did some silly poses for the camera!
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(our next-door-neighbor friend is in the background of the first photo)
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--Victoria
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Benji earns his blue belt in karate!

He has been working really hard and we are really proud of him!
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At the blue belt level, the students do a fair amount of sparring and that was part of the test (Benji is the kid in the white gi with the green belt).  Sensei stops them every 10 seconds or so and tells them what to work on, so they don't just spent the whole time clobbering each other.  😁
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--Victoria
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Tamar's ballet class (videos and her drawing of the class)

Tamar has been taking ballet lessons this fall and she absolutely LOVES both the class and her teacher.  She says she wants to be a ballet teacher when she grows up.

Families were allowed to sit in on the second half of the final class.  It wasn't really a recital -- just a demonstration of what they usually do in class (click on the link below to see a youtube video).

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--Victoria


Click here and here and here and here to see Tamar doing some ballet.  She is the one with the black top, black tights, and silver skirt.
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Here's the picture she drew of her ballet class.  I realized after a while that the pink lollipop shapes are the other girls in her class.  The label she put at the top "BALEAY" is her four-year-old attempt at spelling "ballet" (pretty well done, actually!)

She's the dancer in the bottom left of the picture, with the black top and silver skirt.