Halloween Tumbling Class

It's a Halloween party at Mylee's tumbling class today. The girls both dressed up in their Ariel costumes to jump around and play in. Of course Makayla loved it since she's wearing her favorite Princess right now over and over again.

The two Ariel's at circle time with their Daddy. I snuck in for photos since Makayla and I come from her karate lessons so we're always a little late.

Mylee saw my camera and loves it! She tries to grab it right away but instead I got a cute close up of her instead.

It's jingle, jingle time now.

If you're happy and you know it.

Now that all the tumblin' time is over it's party time! Food! One of Mylee's favorite things to do and boy did she love it all! Yummy cookie though! More fun time during Halloween! So good to let them wear their costumes more than once.

My Gym Halloween Party

One of Makayla's favorite spots, My Gym had a Trick or Treat event today. For some reason she wanted to wear her mouse costume from her ballet recital in June. Did she get tired of Ariel already and it's not even Halloween yet?

Here she is with Katie one of her favorite teachers there. I guess this is the check in counter. Grandma had to take her today since I had to work. Boo!

Looks like a good crowd. There she is hands up in the air with one of her best buds Jordan during their circle time.

It's bubble time!

The girls and their instructors all dressed up for Halloween! So much fun!

R&B's Halloween Contest

We even have a little Halloween fun at my work too! We have a fun contest with some pretty good prizes and dessert! Good times to lighten things up at work! haha! Even the big bosses all dress up too! I love the participation!

Carving Pumpkins

It's carving time with my little pumpkins!

They are both ready in their cute matching Halloween PJ's. PJ's are really one of my addictions for my girls! Love them to match especially during any of the holidays! Well, this little pumpkin really isn't going to be carved, but poked!

Poked just enough to add the little Princess Potato Head from Auntie Som & Uncle Alan. How did they know Makayla was eyeing this at Target.....good thing we didn't buy it.

Makayla just loves her Princess creation! So much variety for the kids these days it's amazing!

Onto the next one! We're really going to carve this one! But it's really Mommy's pumpkin.

Doesn't Ry look thrilled to be carving his? He really did have fun, I think he was just over me and that camera. haha!

Here are the carved masterpieces before they are lit up. Not bad!

Boo! Scary in the dark! Not so much. Pretty cute if you ask me! Can you tell which one is his and hers? We're so predictable!

My favorite part after carving the pumpkins. Homemade baked seeds! I kicked it up a notch and added some garlic powder, salt & Cajun seasoning. And of course spray butter is a must! They were awesome! A keeper recipe for sure!

Halloween Magic Show

Daddy took his little girl to a Halloween Magic Show at the library tonight. So sweet that they were able to have a little date night. Makayla was excited to go with him since she mostly does almost everything with me. Of course she's in her Ariel costume again! We are really getting our money's worth here! She loves to dress up! Especially in her Princess costumes!

Cute Daddy & Makerdoodle pic!

The Magician and all the kids on stage. I tried uploading the video but it didn't work. He was pulling a rabbit out of his hat! They were thrilled! Same magician she saw last year. And same guy they she saw at Disneyland too. Small world! The library always puts on such great little shows for the kids.

School Halloween Parade & Party

Makayla is so excited about her Halloween parade at school and party! She is already with her costume this year! She is thrilled to be Ariel. Can you believe she even let me color her hair red? She was so cute and such a pretty little Ariel!

Posing in the front room of our house before she heads out to school. Look at that pose with her hands out like little fins and all. I don't ask her to do any of this. She does it all on her own. She must get it from her movies.

Some her her little friends at school. Looks like we have a rocker, Silvermist fairy, Snow White, Ariel and another pretty, pretty fairy!

A little video clip of their parade. They are all so adorable! Amazing how the school can get all these little one's to do this parade is amazing. It's always so much chaos fun!

Even better that after the parade they were even able to get a class photo! Everyone pretty much cooperated nicely! Not bad for 3 & 4 year olds.

She's back in the class and now it's time for the party! Crafts & snacks! But first we must take the costume off. Good thing I had extra cloths for her. The craft they did was so cute! The room moms are pretty amazing. They got the kids a Halloween frame that they decorated and then they even got the group picture developed and into the frames for the kids to take home. Now that's efficient! All the kids had so much fun!

School Portraits

Makayla's school portraits this year in the Yellow Room. Her 2nd year of preschool is much better! I love the back drop that they used! Very cool school picture for sure! Last year she wasn't happy and was crying in her pictures so this is 100 times better! She's such a big girl, even picked out her own pretty dress for this today. We're so proud of her each and everyday and enjoy every minute of watching our girls grow up! Oh, it's just way too fast though.

Singing Away

Just making up some words and singing her silly songs from school. She's been doing this and pretending to read a lot on her own. Just making things up. The creativity is really flowing right now. it's so cute! I hope she continues since we love watching it!

Playdate with Rachee

Makayla had a little play date with Rachee today. The girls were so excited to spend some time together. I heard about a little Halloween trick or treat event at the OC fairgrounds swamp meet so I took the girls to walk around. It wasn't too exciting but we got to shop around and have ice cream!

Mmmmm, yummy ice cream! It was super hot day so this really cooled them off! They both shared so nicely with each other! Good girls!

They were both super interested in the man carving the giant pumpkins! They watched for quite awhile here. After collecting some candy and buying a few fun items we called it a day and headed home.

Now it's park time! We got out the monster wagon and went for a ride! I took the girls to our little park that we always hang out at. They brought a ball to kick around and a tea set? Interesting combo but whatever they want! They all rode over in the wagon so nicely! It was a fun little ride! I got my workout pulling the 3 of them! Look at Rachee's silly little face!

It's tea time! I forgot a blanket for them but they were fine right on the grass sipping their pretend tea. They all played for about an hour and my cousins came to join the girls in the fun. So there was more tea time, kicking the ball around or chasing it and then some jungle gym time! What a relaxing day in the outdoors!

We got another passenger on the monster wagon for the ride home! Double the workout now! Mylee loved being in the wagon with all the girls! So much they had together. I'm sure they're headed home for some dress up time now! I think I know them all way too well! What a fun day the girls had with each other. We need more of these days!

OC Great Park Harvest Festival

We heard about the Great Park from a friend that lives in Irvine so we went to check it out for the Halloween festivities. It was kind of in a weird location over by the base in the middle of concrete? Not so much a park setting to me but maybe one day......since that's what they're trying to promote. They did a good job though with lots of activities and vendors. We had fun and enjoyed ourselves for a few hours if that.

This was the entrance to the park. The girls seemed excited since they saw a little train right when we got in. So we rode that first.

Then they had all kinds of craft stations set up for the kids. Here, Makayla got to make a spider with a tootsie pop. Turned out super scary!

It's pumpkin time for my little pumpkin!

My two little pumpkins picking out their pumpkins. Can you believe they gave these away for free to the kids? Pretty nice! It was a super hot day too! Can you tell? We're in shorts and t-shirts and it's October! Only in Sunny Cal! Gotta love it!

After the girls picked out their pumpkins they had an area for them to decorate their pumpkins. Real fun with paint pens, feathers, pipe cleaners and foam stickers. So much fun. We've never decorated pumpkins this way before. Only good old fashioned carving in the past. Very creative!

Makayla excited about her pumpkin. She even decorated one for Mylee too! What a good big sis!

Ngoai's Birthday Dinner

It's Grandma's (Ngoai's) birthday celebration today! We took her out to dinner at Spaghettini's! Same place we celebrated Grandpa's 70th! Mom loved it so much that she wanted to go back there! I'm so glad we did because it's so yummy! Great ambiance and music too!

Here's Grandma with her two favorite grand babies! Mylee is eyeing that creme brulee. That girl loves her food! Especially sweets!

Grandpa & Grandma with the girls.

The Arakaki Grandparents also came out to help us celebrate with my mom! Again, I have to say how blessed we are to be able to have both sides of the family get along so well and pretty much celebrate almost everything together! Makes life for us kids so much simpler!

Uncle Binh & Auntie Janai came up from San Diego too! What a treat!

Uncle Alan & Auntie Som with one of their favorite nieces! Happy Birthday Mom!

Mylee Walks!

Our Mylee finally starts walking! Yippee or not? I know we've been anxious since she started so late (18 months) but I know she's going to be moving faster then I can keep up! We're super excited about this milestone for here! More chasing around here I come!

Where the heck are her pants in both of these videos? I guess you grab what you can and sometimes the moments are just not perfect. It's so cute and she is thrilled by this new thing that she's doing called "walking".

Super wobbly but it'll get there before we know it! Our baby is getting big way too fast! You want them to progress forward but why does it make us so sad that they grow up way too quickly! I remember her being in my arms not too long ago. How time flies, even more so with the 2nd for some reason. So proud of you Myleeboo! Big steps!

Silly Girl

Grandma and her silly girl! I had to post this picture of them since she rarely sits still for a decent picture with anyone anymore and I had to post these silly pictures that she took all on her own! Amazing how she would press the button put the camera on the table real quick and make a silly face and get it all to take and come out. Amazing kid!

Makayla and her Ba Ngoai!

Silly Face #1

Silly Face #2

Silly Face #3. Note again, she took these all by herself! My crazy girl!

Ballet & Sippy Cup

Makayla is starting another session of ballet lessons through the city again. She just loves it so much! It does fit her perfectly! She has chosen this and karate as her two things to do since that's all I can handle and at times I don't even know if I can. Good thing for Grandma since she takes her to her ballet lessons each week. Thank you so much Grandma! We couldn't do it without you!

Pretty girl in pink!

That evening we decided that Mylee should really be drinking more and more out of a sippy cup. Here she is with it! She's so excited but oh so messy. She really lets it drool right on out. We'll see what happens with this. I notice that we are much lazier with switching to the next milestone with the 2nd baby for sure. What the heck's the rush right? haha!

Big Bear Scrap Retreat

I still can't believe I was able to go on my very 1st scrapbooking retreat! We've all talked about it and heard about it but our group never thought we could really pull it off and put one together on our own and we did! It filled up pretty fast! We headed up to Apple's Bed & Breakfast in Big Bear! Awesome time of year to be up there. Not too cold yet but pretty cool where it was super refreshing! Fall was definitely in the air! It was so beautiful and relaxing to get away for some R&R with all my best girlfriends to do what we love to do! Scrapbook our friends and family!

We arrived in Big Bear! The drive was pretty smooth! It's been a long time since I've had to drive up this mountain but I just loved all it! Reminds me of our snow days in the past when we went up all the time. We all carpooled and caravan up there with Stace, Tara & Patty. The Bed & Breakfast was super cozy! Loved it from the moment we arrived! The staff was absolutely amazing too!

This is just a glimpse of one side of the crop room. We had two sides that looked like this with a total of 18 crazy women scrappers! It was a crazy paper mess!

As if we didn't have a enough stuff from the picture before we had to take a little field trip to their local scrapbooking store. Got just a few items....we had to support the small local town store and be good tourists right? You know me, always trying to validate my scrap spending. Even better that they gave us a group discount on our entire purchase! Perks to going in groups and if they know you're coming! Thanks to Scapper's Escape, Jessica, the gal that coordinated everything for us so that I could enjoy this R&R trip and not have to be the usual coordinator. She was well worth every penny and it wasn't even that much from everyone. We didn't have to worry about anything and everything was great!

It's time for Happy Hour! The Bed & Breakfast provided this daily for us. All yummy homemade everything! Those cute apples are cheese balls. So good!

Lounging in the family room during happy hour. This was our day 1 with our Halloween PJ outfits. We kind of look like jailbirds with the orange pants but they had little ghosts on them with black "Happy Halloween" shirts. Everyone was a trooper and participated in our little fun.

Day 1 group photo in front of the Apple carriage. Fun group of gals for sure!

A glimpse of one of our meals. Can you believe all this? I can't even tell you how good it all was! So good that I had to come home with their recipe book too! And all the recipes look pretty simple too. Can't wait to make a few of these on my own at home.

A shot of part of our dining room. So cozy to be able to all eat together. Can you believe this table? The biggest I've ever seen for a large group to all eat together. They served us breakfast, lunch, dinner, mid day snacks, happy hour & even midnight desserts! We were so spoiled! And to top it off there was a masseuse there each day for us too! Absolutely paradise without the palm trees & beaches!

Day 2 was basically all the same except for different outfits. We had cute pink shirts that said "What Happens at a Crop, Stays at the Crop!" and black PJ bottoms that had princess crowns and hearts. So perfect, comfy & cozy. Our group shot in front of the Bed & Breakfast of Day 2 which will be our last evening here. So sad how fast it has gone by.......

Here we celebrated the 3 October birthday's. Dawn, Patty & Stacy! Happy Birthday ladies! What a special treat to be able to celebrate it at a retreat!

Disney's Halloween Treat

Our little 3rd year tradition to Disney's Halloween Treat event at California Adventure Park. Our girls are so thrilled! It's an event that is just in the evening filled with trick or treating and fun dance stations all around the park. Everyone is dressed up for all the fun!

We are parked and ready to go with our two little Ariel Princesses!

Walking along Downtown Disney and stopped for a picture since we're a little early. We didn't want to fight traffic and the crowds so we gave ourselves plenty of time. Here are my two sweet girls together for a pretty good photo. They are both kind of looking and sitting still. You don't even know how hard that is to accomplish! Can you tell Makayla picked out her costume and her little sister to match her? So adorable if you ask me!

Me and my little mini Ariel!

Oh, Makayla is on cloud 9 with her bestest girlfriends! Mia as Tinkerbell and Rachee as Alice from Alice & Wonderland. The 3 Musketeers!

All the kiddos together as best as we could get them. All dressed up! So cute!

All the Momma's! Too many cameras, not sure which one to look at so we're kind of all over the place. Notice our matching shirts. We are such dorks but love it!

All the Daddy's now! Such troopers in their matching shirts too! Except for our one outcast, Mr. Arnold the party pooper!

It's now late and we're winding down. The big kids are riding on California's Screamin' while a few girls are watching the fireworks. Alexis as Cinderella wasn't in the group photo since they arrived a little late so here she is with Mia & Makayla. What a fun filled night with lots of candy and apples collected along with dancing away and a few rides too. Great start for the Halloween season!

Mylee Loves her Fishy's

I just think it's so cute how often she just goes over to her fish tank to watch her fishy's swim around. It's just adorable and then when we catch her she just laughs and gives us big smiles! We just can't get enough of it!

Group Karate Class

Makayla finally advanced to the group lessons in her Karate class. She's been doing the private lessons and was not able to go to the groups until she was more comfortable and actually said some words to her Sensei which she just did recently. She was so excited to be in a group setting again. She's not use to doing anything in a private lesson and this disciplined at all. I know it's all great for her in the long run but she just loves to be with others. Just like her Momma!

Before class started the kids all sit together and play. Makayla is sitting with her new friend Alexis. She's a little bit older and has a yellow belt already so she really is a super helper with Makayla. She takes good care of her. Small world is that her parents own a Chinese style noodle shop that we go to all the time for years now. Super sweet family.

Stretching with the others. She really is the smallest out of all the kids for sure.

They don't mess around. Here are some push ups. She in in the middle back row with the black piggy tails if you don't notice her.

All stretched and ready!

You have to watch this video! Amazing that this is really her first group lesson and how she knows how to do all the moves. I guess the privates paid off after all. They don't like us to stay and watch since it's distracting so this was really neat to see how she's progressed in such a short amount of time. Kids are simply amazing at how much they absorb!

Vistage Retreat

It's our annual retreat with my Vistage Executive Group but this year we decided to stay local and not a weekend or overnight er trip due to the economic strain on everyone and their businesses. We went to Decor Center in Diamond Bar where Simple Gourmet took care of us with a super fun "Iron Chef" event. We started the morning off with a professional speaker on "Change". He was only mediocre compared to some of the other fantastic speakers we've had in the past. We were looking forward to the evening portion of our retreat. This is a fun event since our spouses and significant others join us to see what this group is all about too since it's a pretty big part of most of our lives.

A few appetizers and cocktails before the competition and teams are divided up. I'm pretty sure Ryan and I are being split up so we all get to know others in the group and no spousal disagreements in the kitchen! haha.

Some pictures of our finished dishes. We had a wonderful salad with a yummy dressing, rice dish with bbq'd corn and other veggies mixed in. The main dish was a prawn dish pineapples and a Jamaican jerk salsa sauce. So good! I'm sure there's fancier culinary words used to describe all this but I think I had too much wine to remember it all.

The other half of our dishes. We made home made tortilla chips and a bean dip that was a mistake but excellent! Oh and we were called "Team Caliente!" Ahh, ya, yay!

The enemies presentation. Same type of dishes, just done up a little differently. Oh, I forgot there was a free range chicken dish also. Our judges were chicken and we ended up in a tie. Boo! All in all it was sooooo much fun! I would highly recommend this for any team event for sure!

Tracy & I had to get this picture in with Jacob since he's our youngest member of Vistage and could possible be on the bachelor one day so we thought we'd get in a picture with him before he becomes too famous to stand next to us! j/k! He's a total sweetheart! Thanks Tracy for organizing our entire event too! You did an awesome job!

She Kei & Speaks Sensei

It's been around 6 weeks since Makayla had started her Kenpo Karate lessons. She likes it a lot but for some reason she's super shy and doesn't talk to her Sensei at all. Not a peep. He's been trying to get something out of her an nada, zip. She says a few words but not the commands that he wants out of her. He's been very patient and it finally paid off today when she started to "Kei" when doing her blocks & kicks. She's been great at doing all the moves but no words until now. Quite the break through so I had to post a little something to remember it.