Been too busy to post lately, but here it goes!

Over a month since the last post!! (Oh dear...) and yes, a lot has happened since we went up to the mountain to play in the snow. I will try to summarize it in this post.

So where do we start? ...

AYSO Select season about to start and practices continued with Syd's team. We decided to add some indoor soccer practices to add some footwork skills, and because we could play it while it was pouring outside, the girls really seemed to like it...

Then there was some crazy bike riding stunts by..who else? HANA!!! (Leslie: would you like Hana to teach ER some of her tricks?)I went on a trip to AZ and had to make a quick detour to Guadalajara to visit my dad . Got a chance to see my dad's side of the family who I hadn't seen in quite a while an also got to go and play some "night paintball" with my cousin Cocoliso and some of his friends (that was very cool).The big story of the end of the month was NONNA'S VISIT!Her first comment was that she regretted not spending Christmas Dinner with the girls, so she suggested we made a Christmas Dinner....didn't take much effort to convince us, so we planned one with our friends Jim & Jeri, and Macario Leslie & Emma Rose. We went all the way, from a fire in the backyard...

to a full Xmas menu which included: Smoked Turkey (which Charlotte made this time and it was hmmm, hmmm, hmmmm, hmmm, hmmm!) mashed potatoes & gravy, cranberry sauce made from scratch; Leslie brought Ho'i'o salad & her Xmas signature Oyster dish (yummmm!) and of course we had pumpkin pie with whipped cream and a giant chocolate chip cookie that Jeri brought!

Feeling "Christmasy" in February

Hanging out in the backyard by the fire....(oh the weather outside's delightful)

(I think we should celebrate Xmas more often)

After dinner Sydney asked Macario (who played drums for a living for many years) if he wanted to play Wii Rock Band.....well, that was a near disaster! No matter how many times Syd tried to explain Macario that he should only play the notes that the screen told him to, he kept on going into this crazy drum solos with every song that came up and kept getting booed out of the stage. Then there were some band adjustments, Syd took the drums away from Macario and gave him the guitar (that worked a little bit better), then Leslie joined the band....

Nonna even got gifts for all three girls to make it even more Xmas like!

We took Nonna to the hot pond by Kapoho which she had not been to before, and it seems that she found a new favorite place, we soaked in the geothermally heated pond for what seemed to be hours. Had a picnic there (turkey leftover sandwiches) ....

Don't know what happened, but it seems that Nonna was here just for a minute, she spent here 12 days and it went by way too fast....

Hilo Minibig Indoor Soccer Tournament

The indoor soccer practices were such a big hit that the girls decided they wanted to enter a 3 day indoor soccer tournament held here in Hilo over the weekend. We played teams of Waimea and Kona. We tied one game and lost 3......well, the girls actually did very well considering we had about one month of indoor experience and that we played teams that have been playing for several years....

Hilo Wildfire...

Against Kona Heat

Taking some shots during warm up

In between games

After the match against Waimea..

Charlotte made a Castle cake for Syd's Social Studies Class (extra credit she found out after she spent several hours working on the project). She modeled it after the Tower of London. It looked REALLY COOL!

Syd made a blueberry crumble for her class too!

And that is about it, I think....