Mommy surprised me with tickets to the Kidz Bop concert! Kidz Bop is a group of kids who sing clean versions of popular songs on the radio, and I am a HUGE fan. I always insist on listening to them in the car, and Colin and I love to dance along to their videos at home. I even want to audition to be a Kidz Bop kid when I'm old enough. I am obsessed! On the day of the concert I could not stop talking about them. Adding to the excitement was getting to go with Wylie, Lidia, and Alyssa.
The concert was a ton of fun. They performed all my favorite songs and I sang and danced along during the entire concert. Here's a video of me doing the Whip Nae Nae.
I really really wanted to meet them after the show. Too bad Mommy couldn't secure those VIP tickets...maybe next time!
We took a break from the usual water activities one morning and visited the nearby Maui Animal Farm. Mommy was expecting it to be just another petting zoo but we were pleasantly surprised. It turned out to be a fantastic hands-on tour of the farm and one of the highlights of our vacation.
Maui Animal Farm is located in the hills of Lahaina and surrounded by sprawling homes with views of the ocean. They only host one tour a day, and we were lucky enough to be the only family that showed up that day. It was nice to have a private tour and get all the animals to ourselves!
The tour guide was very informative and told us all about the farm and the animals on it. We walked around and visited the horses, miniature horses and donkey, goats, sheep, and pigs. We got to feed them carrots. Lots and lots of carrots, since it was just me and Colin.
Miniature horses. Apparently one of these is worth $25k and was once owned by Oprah!
Happy the pig, who acted just like a dog.
We also fed the chickens, visited the coop to look for eggs, and attempted to hold the chickens.
Here's a short clip of some of our feedings. Mommy is pretty good at catching a chicken!
After some refreshments, we did a little egg hunt around the pond. The guide's three-year old son was there and was so excited to point out where all the eggs were. They were stuffed with surprises for us to take home (stickers and small animal figurines). It was fun and super cute!
Afterward, we were given small nets and buckets to catch tadpoles in the pond. After I caught one we got to see what a grown-up tadpole looks like.
There was still more! We met two tortoises, Lucy and Honk, and watched them race. Did you know tortoises love to eat canned cat food?
We thought Lucy and Honk were fun, but the smell of the cat food drew another tortoise out. We met Tonka, a 100lb desert tortoise. He was as big as Colin!
Finally, we got to hold some guinea pigs. After all the animal feedings and interactions, I left saying that holding the guinea pigs was my favorite part of the whole visit!
It was an awesome farm tour and a fun way to spend the morning. Definitely worth the visit!
I had a special day alone with Mommy so she took me to the Children's Creativity Museum in the city. It's a smaller museum but had lots on hands-on activities that kept us busy for hours.
We started out doing some arts and crafts and then moved on to the good stuff. One of the exhibits was a stop-animation station. We cut out and colored paper figures, placed them on a screen and took photos of them over and over to create this video:
Then we discovered the stop-motion animation studio - similar to what we did above, but much more involved. They gave us a quick tutorial and then we got to work creating clay figures for our movie. I made a figure of Brady and Mommy made one of Tacoma, our neighbor's cat. Somehow Tacoma ended up being bigger than Brady. I picked a backdrop and we started shooting. Mommy was in charge of moving the figures while I was in charge of taking the photos.
Our movie was titled "Brady and Tacoma." When we were done they emailed us the video, and here it is!
Another exhibit was the music studio where kids could make their own music video. I'm usually shy when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I was intrigued and ended up performing all on my own (it helped that there was no one else there)!
I picked Shake It Off. Here's my music video (kinda long)!
We finished the visit with a ride on the carousel. What a fun place! It was definitely worth the visit, perfect for kids my age and we're glad we checked it out.
This seems like it was forever ago, but here it is - our winter break recap! For two whole weeks, I had no school, Colin had no day care, and Daddy had no work. We split our time between home and Poh-poh's house and tried to stay busy with lots of outings. We were happy to spend lots of quality time together, especially during the first week. By the end of the second week I would say that we were all eager to get back to our normal routine.
Vasona Park, Los Gatos:
We wanted to go on the train ride and carousel there, but it turns out they only operate on weekends.
Safari Run, Sunnyvale:
Rainy day plus school vacation means it was packed! It was a bit chaotic, and Colin kept making Mommy or Daddy crawl after him through the play structure. It was definitely not relaxing (for them), but fun for us!
Christmas in the Park, San Jose:
We went downtown to see the Christmas decorations and exhibits, and discovered there were carnival rides too! I went on almost every single one of them.
Colin wouldn't get on the horse so I ended up riding by myself.
San Mateo Central Park:
Loved the koi pond inside the Japanese garden!
On our way to the playground, we walked all the way down the path like this. Colin kept waving hi to everyone we passed.
Ice Skating in Central Park, San Mateo:
My second and third time ice skating this year! I liked this rink because they had these big blue walkers you could lean against. It made ice skating actually enjoyable. I even built up enough confidence to lose the walker and skate unassisted! I had so much fun that Daddy took me back later in the week.
Here's a video of me skating with the blue thing (basically walking on ice):
And look - no hands!
Rockin' Jump, San Carlos:
An indoor trampoline park! We went with Wylie and Lidia and had a great time playing dodge ball and jumping into the foam pit.
On top of all that we squeezed in a trip to Junior Gym, to the movies to watch Alvin and the Chipmunks (my current favorite), more parks, and hanging out at home. It was a fun two weeks, but I'm glad to be back at school!
Mah-jong tower at Poh-poh's house
Mommy's friend Valerie came to visit with her two kids. It was a perfect time to play with the Orbeez that I received for Christmas. It felt really good to stick our feet in it but also got messy, especially when Colin started hurling them out of the tub.
This year's Christmas was pretty similar to previous years'. We had Christmas Eve dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory, woke up early in the morning and opened tons of presents, ate a big breakfast, then headed to Poh-poh's house to open more gifts. We were too lazy to get dressed so we hung out in our Christmas pajamas all day long, even to Poh-poh's house. It was Colin's second Christmas and although he doesn't understand the concept of Santa Claus yet, he got the hang of opening Christmas gifts pretty quickly.
Christmas Eve
Here's a video of how our Christmas morning played out. Santa even left a note this year.
This year I got a new bike! Santa also brought me the Perler beads and Orbeez that I had asked for (I had also asked for an ice cream maker that I saw on a YouTube video but after doing some research, Santa knew that it probably wouldn't work well and I would end up disappointed with no ice cream). Colin received Megablox and a new push car, and at Poh-poh's house he got a new scooter too! We were definitely spoiled this year.
Santa pancake. Mommy totally forgot the strawberry for his mouh.
