Fingernail Polish!

We painted Aashini's fingernails this week. I actually think it was the first time we had painted her nails!! Crazy! Anyway, she thought it was AWESOME!!!

After I painted her nails she kept doing funny poses and showing off her nails :)

Here's the finished product. I love her little pose :)

She thought it was awesome!!

Swimming!!

Swimming is one of my favorite things to do. I joined a local pool and swim laps most days after we drop Aashini off at school. Right now School is out, so we've been taking the girls swimming when we have a free morning :) Aashini is pretty terrified of water. When we first took her to the pool this time, she was excited until I put her in the water. She kept screaming and saying: "Help!" "Help!"...

I look so weird in this picture... yeah, I'm wearing a swim cap. If you have long hair, you have to wear one :) Aashini has started warming up some to the water. She's soooo excited to go to the "big pool" but then gets really scared in the water. The last time we went in she did really good and had a lot of fun :)

Diya is almost the complete opposite. She barely makes a peep when we put her in and she just chills the whole time.

The last time we went to the pool, she actually fell asleep in the pool :)

Summer is fun!

Summer!

"School's out for summer!"

Friday was Aashini's last day of school until July, so we have been thinking about all of the things we're going to do now that school is out...

We'll do some building...

Aashini made this one all by herself (really!) - she was so proud of it!

We'll do some crafting....

Aashini said she was "SUPER GROVER" when she put these things on :) haha!

We'll play some music....

This is Aashini's new keyboard - she LOVES it!

We'll do some singing....

This is the microphone that's attached to the keyboard - it's her favorite part! She's loud! :) haha!

... and we'll have some fun just hanging around :) haha!

Friends :)

Aashini has gotten the opportunity to see a lot of her fun friends lately :) She gets to see her friend Meri a lot (on the far right below). Meri has a little brother that's just a little younger than Diya. Here are the kiddos together :)

Some other kids got jealous and wanted to be in the picture too :) haha!

Later that week, some of our fun friends came to visit for a couple of hours. Here is Diya with Joya & Stephen :)

We all took a picture holding all of our kids! haha! I love this picture :) It's funny, when we all first met and moved to South Asia, we didn't have any kids - now look!! :)

We tried to get everyone to make funny faces - haha!

Friends are fun!

Quilts!

My mom made Diya a quilt when she was born :) She made one for Aashini when she was born too :) It's fun :) Here's Diya on her quilt :)

In the middle of taking pictures Aashini kept coming and giving Diya hugs :)

Here are Diya & Aashini on their quilts ;)

I like this picture :)

Aashini wanted to lay on her tummy like Diya ;)

5 Months!!

So I'm about 2 weeks late in posting these pictures (but the pictures were taken on time :)) - here is Diya's 5 months picture with her dog :)

For comparision... here are Aashini and Diya both at 5 months with Aashini's bear. (you can see more of Aashini at 5 months if you click here.) I think they are starting to look a lot alike! I didn't think they looked much alike until just recently :P

Here's a few pictures of Diya for fun on her new quilt that my mom made for her ;)

I like the face she's making in this picture ;)

I love her little grin :)

This one is funny - it's like the closed-eye smiling picture :)

And another picture because I just couldn't pick a favorite :)

First School Performance!

Aashini had her first school performance this past weekend!! It was AWESOME!!! (there's a video at the bottom, so if you want to go ahead and scroll down and press play-pause and let it load, go ahead :)). Anyway, we knew this performance was coming up. We were supposed to practice with Aashini what she was supposed to do. Each kid came up by themselves and said their "introduction" - which in this case was her name, school & teacher's names. Then she said 2 poems - one in Hindi and one in English.

When we first got there, the principal of the school gave us a parenting lecture for about an hour - it was sooo long! It was funny! Then, they told us what was going to happen when our children came up to perform (they were all in their classroom at this time with their teachers). They told us that they were going to turn off all of the lights so that the kids wouldn't be scared :) That made me laugh, but what REALLY made me laugh was that they gave everyone masks! They told us that when our child came up on stage, we needed to wear the mask so that they couldn't see us and get nervous or something like that :) haha!

Here are our friends Joe & Amberley in their masks :) I think they're pretty scary!

Here are some parents (below) with their masks on as their kids are performing - hilarious!

When Aashini came in, she spotted me right away (even with my silly mask on) :) The lights were off, so all the pictures are terrible - haha! Oh yeah... so for this performance they were supposed to wear their Takwondo uniforms, so I put on her comfy "play clothes" underneath it. Well, apparently they were going to wear those clothes for the first half of the performance... so my kid is wearing "junky play clothes"(that are a little too small) while all the other kids are dressed up... yeah, I am THAT mom... again... haha! Anyway, Aashini did great! We were so proud!

After that, the whole class got up together and performed a bunch of poems and other things like that as a class. It was really cute!

Aashini got really into it :) This poem (below) always cracks me up. At this point in the poem, they are saying: "Touch, Touch, Touch your eyes..." - Aashini always mashes them - ouch - haha!

:) This makes me smile :)

And last, but definitely not least, is the Takwondo performance! This is Aashini's favorite! She LOVES Takwondo!!!

This is one of their warm-ups - She was concentrating really hard!

She does Takwondo every Monday, Wednesday & Friday at school. Every one of those days, she constantly asks her teacher where Aman Sir is (her Takwondo teacher).

He says: "Make the Punch" and then they say: "hiah" - too cute!

I love her face in this picture!

Then they took us to the computer lab and let Aashini show us what she's been learning on the computers :)

Then we went into the puzzle room and Aashini showed off her puzzling skills :)

It was so fun :)

Here is the video from her performance! The video isn't great because it was so dark, but it's still fun! :)