Kaelia's First Haircut

Kaelia got her first hair cut this weekend, and she survived it like a champ.  She was really excited for the endeavor because every time her sister gets her hair cut, she comes home with a sucker and a balloon.  Kaelia soon realized, however, that there is much more to getting a hair cut than goodies.

I took Kaelia to our favorite kids place called Kiddo Kuts where there are TV's at every cutting station, a large TV in the ceiling above the hair washing bins, coloring books and crayons at the waiting table, and a mural of cartoon animals during winter all over the walls.  Kaelia had to first lay back in the washing station to get her hair washed; this was the toughest part of the day because she didn't want to  do it.  So Taelyn came over to show her how, and with tight-clenched fists around my shoulders, she finally laid back and watched The Lorax on the TV above.

After washing, Kaelia sat perfectly still in the hair cutting chair while she continued to watch her movie.  She made the occassional face when she was being prodded and pulled in different directions, but as a whole, she did fantastic.  When the cut was done, Kaelia leaped down from her chair with some cute curls and butterfly clips in her hair.

To top off the experience, Kaelia did get her sucker and balloon as well as a 1st Haircut certificate with clips of her hair attached.

Trick or Treat!

Last night was the official night for trick or treating in a well-known community of our town.  The girls had been waiting for this night for quite some time and were so excited to get their costumes out and wear them.  We purposely did not let them see the costumes until yesterday so that the excitement could climax on our Halloween night.

We started our Halloween preparations at our good friends' house where we had dinner and the girls played with their best friend, Arianna.  The plan was to get into our costumes there and then head over to trick or treating at 5:30pm.  Unfortunately, as the time got nearer, the weather grew dreadful.  By 5:15, it was pouring down with rain with crazy thunder, lighting, and hail.  There was no way we go trick or treating out in that!

So we improvised.  Justin ran out to the store to pick up some candy while I got the girls dressed up.  Taelyn was a bumble bee and bounced around all evening, stinging people with her stinger.  Kaelia was Cinderella and could not get over how beautiful her dress was.  She kept lifting up the sides of her dress, saying "look at my dress!"  She was gorgeous, and Taelyn was hysterical.

When Justin got back from the store, he and our friend, Kris, stood behind various bedroom doors while I took the girls trick or treating from door to door.  All three of them did an excellent job saying "trick or treat" and "thank you" afterward.  They had a wonderful time and were perfectly content with their trick or treating experience indoors.

Taelyn introduces herself to all of the new characters in the room.

Victoria Falls

For our October holiday this year,we traveled up to Victoria Falls, one of the largest waterfalls in the world.  The vacation was filled with good family outings combined with some extreme adventure.  We started the trip with a flight to Zambia and a short drive up to the border of Zimbabwe where we spent most of our time.  After purchasing visas, we made our way to the Victoria Falls Restcamp and began to book all of our excursions.

The first full day was spent on a safari in Botswana at the Chobe National Park.  We started in a boat on the Chobe River - an experience that we have never had during a safari yet.  It was amazing to see the animals from this perspective.  We saw lots of hippos (in and out of the water) and crocodiles.  The girls especially liked the crocodiles.  We also saw many water buffaloes and more elephants in one place that we have ever witnessed  before.  Hundreds and hundreds of elephants were packed together at the river.  We even saw a large group of them cross the river to the other side.  As they stepped in to the river, the elephants held on to one another, trunk to tail.  When the baby elephants did this, they completely emerged under water and could not be seen again until they made it to the other side.  After about three hours on the river, we went back to land for lunch followed by a game drive alongside the river.  Here we saw many of the same animals but from the land perspective.

During the next day, the girls stayed back with a baby-sitter at the Restcamp while Justin and I went white water rafting.  This was an experience that we will never forget.  We first had to hike down a very rocky path to the bottom of the falls where we awaited our fate on the Zambezi River.  There were a total of 19 rapids to overcome, and as long as our boat worked together as a team to paddle and listen to the guide, all 19 should go smoothly.  Unfortunately, we ended up in boat with no one else that had rafted before.  We're not even sure they knew what they were signing up for because very few people in our boat even wanted to paddle at all.  This was bad news for any of us that planned on working hard to stay in the boat.  Needless to say, when we entered our first class 5 rapid, there was no hope at all.  We immediately were tossed out of the boat, and this was the scariest experience I have ever had.  I was pushed under rapid after rapid without a chance to come up for air.  Any time I reached the surface, I was pushed straight back down without the chance to take a deep breath.  I thought for sure I was going to drown, when I finally reached the surface and stayed there.  A kayaker picked me up and brought me back to another boat while we all waited for someone to fetch our capsized boat and bring it back to us.  Justin was picked up by another boat during this time and came out without any physical or emotional damages.  When everyone from our boat finally sat back in to our original boat, someone mentioned how she saw a crocodile in the river during our fall!

The next class 5 rapid did not get much better.  One of the leaders in the boat actually started paddling backwards going in to the rapid when the guide was screaming "hard forward!"  Once again, we were hopeless as a boat and ended up in the water again.  The fall was not nearly as bad this time, but morale was very low in our boat.  We needed to survive a rapid, so Justin took the lead along with another guy that was not a huge athlete nor had any rafting experience, but he was willing to work hard and lead.  This defintely improved our rafting abilities, and we did make it through most of the rapids that were left, but there was nothing we could do about the people that did not want to paddle.  There were times where Justin, I, and this other guy were the only three of the eight people in the boat that were paddling at all.  It was so frustrating. 

Just when we thought we were going to reach the end, rapid #18 was another class 5.  We went in to the rapid determined not to fall, but again, it was not our fate.  Our boat practically bent in half and the top side flipped backwards.  This was Justin's worse fall.  As one of the leaders, he fell backward and over everyone else in the boat.  His knee ended up hitting something hard (perhaps another person's tooth), and his is still concerned that it might be injured.  It also did not help that once we finished the rafting, we had to hike up to the top of the ravine, but we both made it and survived the 19 rapids and 4 capsizes.

The next day of our trip was a lot more low-key as our family took a little hike and visited the waterfalls.  They were enormous and beautiful, and the girls were really excited to finally see the Vic Falls that we have been talking about for a while now.  Taelyn learned all about how some things are for kids and some things are not as she realized that she can't get too close to the edge or raft the river at the bottom.  Kaelia discovered that she loves some waterfalls but not the ones that get her wet.  She did not like getting in close to the parts that were spraying water every where and would not stop talking about it.  Even when we reached the end where everything was dry, she pointed over to the rainy area and said "other waterfalls get me wet!"  The hike was also a good experience for the girls.  Taelyn held the guides hand through some of the paths until she had to make a stop to swing on the "Tarzan" vines.

We had a pretty down day next in our trip while we walked around town and spent a while at the pool.  But we ended the day with a train ride to a bridge that connects Zimbabwe to Zambia, going across the Zambezi River.  The girls had been talking about the train all week and could not wait to ride it.  They were also equally as excited to get to the bridge because we called it the Tangled bridge from the Disney movie, and Tangled is Kaelia's absolute favorite Disney movie.  (She did understand this time, though, that Maximus the horse would not be on the bridge!)  The train ride was fantastic and came with happy hour drinks and snacks on the train and champagne once we reached the bridge.  During the ride we saw some impala and warthogs as well.

For our final day, we headed back to Zambia to catch a plane back to South Africa.  But before we went to the airport, we made one last stop to Devil's Pool.  Justin and I took turns while one of us stayed back with the kids and the other zoomed off in a small boat to the top of the waterfalls.  Here lies a small pool with a rock wall directly at the edge of the waterfall.  So we jumped on in to the pool and climbed over to the rock wall.  The guide even held our feet while we lay down as if diving in to the falls.  Our photos from the experience look like we Photoshopped ourselves in to a picture of the waterfalls, but it was actually us there!  To end the experience, breakfast was waiting for us behind the pool.

Our trip to Victoria Falls was absolutely amazing!  Check out our photos below.  For the rafting video, I am in the yellow helmet, and Justin is in the front (most of the time to the right except for the second crash).

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Weekend in Drakensburg

We recently had a long weekend off of school, so we decided to head out to the Drakensburg mountains with a new family from the school.  We stayed in a little 4-bedroom cottage up against the mountains that was perfect for our family.  It had a small lake for boating and canoeing, a playground, trails for hiking, a rock pool, and even three donkeys that lived on the resort as the owner's pets.

During our first full day in Drakensburg, we left the resort and took the kids pony-back riding.  The girls absolutely love horses (especially Kaelia) and were pretty excited for this.  The both a had a good time, except that when Taelyn was riding, Kaelia and I looked at all of the other horses in the stable, and she decided that she liked the white horse the best because she thought he has Maximus from the movie Tangled.  So when it was her turn to ride the pony after Taelyn, she got upset that he was not Maximus because he was brown.  Once she got over that, though, she was happy to ride.

The next day, the four of us headed down to the lake to try out the canoes.  After about five seconds of sitting in a canoe altogether, it was obvious that a canoe is just a little to wobbly for four people and two of them little kids.  So we decided to take a row boat out instead, which was still a little wobbly and the girls had to get used to it.  In the beginning, they both held on to the sides like their lived depended on it, but then they relaxed and had a nice time as the ride went on.

Once we finished boating, we tried out the rock pool.  It was a beautiful set of little pools made out of rocks, that trickled down to one another, similar to the small pools that waterfalls make.  Although man-made, it was really neat and the perfect size for the girls.  We thought it was a little chilly to swim, so we didn't come with bathing suits, but the girls didn't care about any of that.  They undressed little by little and were eventually in their diaper and underwear, splashing around.  Taelyn loved to climb that various rocks while Kaelia spent some time "paddling" to Michigan with some leaves to mimic the rowing that she just learned about in the row boats.

Justin and I also had the opportunity to explore the amazing views from the hiking trails.  We ran on various trails each day - one of which ended at a small waterfall.  The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out with our friends and their two children, relaxing, and feeding the donkeys.  The girls really enjoyed this part.  They would grab grass from the ground or carrots from our fridge and take them out to the donkeys several times a day.  One time Taelyn curled her fingers in a little too much instead of laying them flat, and a donkey that was blind accidentally took her finger in with his food.  I had to grab her finger out of his mouth and calm her down.  But afterward, she just laughed the whole thing off and said that she was really silly for sticking her fingers up.  Kaelia also loved the donkeys and visited them quite a bit.  When I was helping Taelyn get ready for  nap time, I turned around and couldn't find Kaelia.  I looked outside and saw her with the donkeys, petting them and saying "good night" and "I love you!"  It was very sweet.

Check out the slideshow below to see some footage of our trip!

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Latest Trends

The girls have really gotten in to some specific trends lately.  The first one is the "Call Me Maybe" song by Carly Rae Jepsen which we heard several times a day on the radio this summer.  At first, I thought the line at the end of the chorus was "So call me baby" (it is actually "call me maybe"), so I started singing the song.  Kaelia stopped me and said, "No, don't call me baby.  Call me Kae-ya!"  From there both girls told me not to call them "baby" and they now love to sing that song.  Here is some footage of the song during bath time.

And here is a classic dance moment that Kaelia has been showing off lately.  We like to call it her Happy Gilmore stride because she prances like this down the hall sometimes.

Taelyn has also discovered how much she loves gymnastics after watching the Olympics.  She likes to pretend that our bed is a balance beam.  Here is her attempt at it.

Fun Friday

Today at school, we celebrated International Day where we were able to bring girls in with us to enjoy the festivities.  We first marched in the Parade of Nations.  Each country that is represented at the school was announced, and while the national anthem was playing, the students and community members that are affiliated with that country marched around the field.  We, of course, stood up when they announced the US and wore our red, white, and blue with pride.  The girls especially liked wavy their USA flags, and Taelyn even commented on how they were just like the flags at Grandma Pepera's house.

After the parade, the girls came up to my classroom where the 8th grade students divided up into different classrooms to enjoy various cultural activities.  In my room, I hosted a proper English tea party, and the girls helped me out with it.  Everyone got dressed up in their proper fancy apparel, made English Breakfast tea and cucumber sandwiches, and then attended the tea party.  It was actually time for the girls to go back home for their naps while the tea party was happening, and Taelyn was devastated that she couldn't finish the party.  They both LOVE having tea parties at home with their tea sets and are experts at how it is done!

To top the day off, we went to Taelyn's school in the evening for her first concert.  Kaelia, Justin, and I sat in the crowd with several of our friends to watch all of the preschool classes come up and sing songs related to an under the sea theme.  When it was time for Taelyn's class, Kaelia saw her sister up on stage and immediately ran up to join her.  This actually happened a couple of times that night, and we had to keep a close watch on her while also trying to video tape.

Taelyn's class sang three songs.  The most memorable was the first one about three blind jellyfish.  They had body movements to go along with the song, and it was very cute.  Taelyn did a great job singing and attempting to keep up with the motions.  At the end of the performance, she was the first one to take a bow before leaving the stage.  She loves to bow, and she practices this quite often at home when she is dressed up as a princess.  She will bow to us and say, "Your Majesty."

We had such a wonderful Friday with our family, and we are so happy that we could take the kids to work with us today and enjoy some memorable moments all day long!