Shining Star Summer Camp

Aashini has had a super fun summer!  There are only 2 weeks left of summer now.  For the first 4 weeks of summer Aashini went to Shining Star Camp (which she seemed to think was called "Treasure Camp").  It was super awesome!  It was put on by her school.

Here she is waiting for the school transport to pick her up one morning :)

 This was the last week of Summer Camp... On Friday we got to go to the school and watch them perform and show us all the things they learned this summer.  The Shining Star Camp had 4 Tracks...

The first Track was Dancing.  Dance is a big part of the culture here and we love it!  They taught them multiple styles of dance.  In her dance performance she showed 3 different styles of dance (Hip Hop, Jazz and Bollywood I think)...   Here she is about to begin her performance :)

 Here she is during her dance :)  I like the bottom picture... she's being a DJ :)

 She always has her tongue sticking out when she's concentrating :)  haha!

 Here's a VIDEO of the dance!  It was awesome! Aashini learned the choreography pretty easily :)  Go Aashini!!!

Here are some of the bigger kids doing one of their dances :)  They were super fun :)

One of the other tracks of the Summer Camp was "Skills for Life".   This is where they learn how to model and showcase themselves :), personality developement, self discovery, mass communication, etc...

For this part of the performance, each kid walked across the stage smiling and waving and then came to the middle, did their "introduction" and said a few lines.  It was cute :)

Here is the Video of her speaking:

Another track of the camp was Theatre.  They did all sorts of fun things in this track.  They did puppets, voice modulation, using props, miming, and all kinds of creative things... One day they gave all the kids magic wands and when they came to the front they would turn the rest of their group into something and the group would have to act that way... pretty fun :)

For the Performance, they did a play where everyone was a vegetable :)  Aashini was the Gobi (Cauliflower)... Her hat (which had the cauliflower on it) didn't stay on, so they took it off before she got on stage :)  Here she is speaking her lines as the "Chorus".

Here she is speaking her lines.  

This is what her costume was supposed to look like :)

Here is a video of the play (Not the whole play... mostly just the part she is in... her part is about halfway through the video):

So... the 4th track was "Sports and Adventure"!  This one was totally fun!!!  They had an amazing team of sports professionals that did everything.  The kids did Team Building Games, Skill Building in Sports and Adventure Sports.   In the Skill Building in Sports she did Skating, Table Tennis, learned how to dribble a basketball and play Cricket!!!  

Adventure Sports was super fun!!  They did Artificial River Crossing (it was a small zip-line from tree to tree on platforms), Rock Climbing, Rappelling and Flying Fox.  What is "Flying Fox you ask?".... 

Here is Aashini suited up and ready to show us how she did the "Flying Fox" all summer...

Here is the climbing wall (it's 5 stories tall!!!!!)...  Flying Fox is an AWESOME Zipline sliding from the top of this tower!!!!!!!

Here's one kid going down :)

For the younger kids, they didn't have them climb up the stairs to the top of the climbing wall to slide down... they connected them at the bottom of the zipline and pulled them up and then sent them down (they kind-of got two rides :)) 

Here's Aashini on her way up!!

She's super high up!! :)

Here she is on her way back down!!

Aashini is a bit of a scaredy-cat... just the other day she screamed and cried when we put her on top of a camel because it was too high up!  She wasn't scared at all on the Flying Fox!  She LOVED it!  She said she did it a lot!  How fun!!!  

Here's a video of Aashini going up and down the zip line :)

Afterwards we celebrated with some McDonald's :)

We're definitely going to do this again!!!

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!

It's getting Hot...

It's starting to get hot here. We don't really have a Spring here. We have Winter, then about a month of 70's to 90's temps and then it's Summer :) So, since it's about to be really hot, we decided to get a few summer supplies to get us (Aashini) through the summer :) The first thing we got was this huge beach umbrella. Last year when Aashini would go swimming, we would jerry-rig a sheet so that it sorta blocked the sun... so this year we decided to get this big umbrella (it was only $8!). Adam picked out the color :)We also bought a new small kiddie pool. We have a Big Pool that we used last summer, but we thought this pool would be better to use more often. The big pool is great for when other kids come to swim (or when Adam and I want to swim and cool off) but to use more often the smaller one is better. It's also great to use with Aashini's balls!
So, recently, Aashini has become afraid of baths. She screams through bath time. She loves the pool though!! She LOVES to play in the water (she's still a little leary of getting IN it though... I think she thinks it's too much like a bath!). Once it gets hot, this is going to be one of her favorite places!

So here she is playing in the shade!

Another picture of her playing :)

This picture made me laugh :)

This picture made me laugh too :) I like how you can see the pool in the reflection of her glasses :)

More pool fun to come! I think she's going to really enjoy it this summer!

Pool Party with Hazel :)

Hazel came over for a pool party the other day :) It's already hot here - in the upper 90s most days - so the pool is a great way to cool off :) Adam and I usually get it with her too :) haha!

Hazel wasn't so sure what she thought about the pool... I think it was her first time in cold water... she wasn't sure if she liked it or not :) Aashini couldn't understand why Hazel didn't like her pool :)Aashini was so cute... it looked like she kept trying to comfort Hazel :)
Aashini even grabbed Hazel's hand at one point (Emily's Blog has a cute picture of that).

Although she didn't show it, I think Hazel started to have fun at the end :)

Yesterday at the market we randomly found a little swimsuit... so we had to get it for Aashini.

Pool Party!

We got a kiddie pool a few weeks ago for Aashini to play in on those hot days :) So, for the last week or so, we've "gone for a swim" about every afternoon. We got this pool that's pretty big so that we can all get in it (which is great!). We put it out on our porch and it's a lot of fun :)

When we first put Aashini in the pool she didn't like it...Then she started to think it wasn't so bad....
I like this picture - it's like she's thinking..."OK, I'm not so sure about this...it's a little colder than my bath water..."
THEN she started to have fun :)
My little chubby baby :) This picture (below) cracks me up!

OK, so I'm posting tons of pics, but I thought that she made some really funny faces :)

Another funny face :)....

We also have a raft for her - haha! - it's actually really great because she can sit in it all by herself (which she seems to really like since she can't sit up by herself yet). She got really relaxed in it :)

This picture (below) is funny it looks like she's saying: "yes, I'll have a fruit punch please" :)

She got so relaxed in it that she almost fell asleep :) It was cute :)

So that's our fun kiddie pool :) It's going to be super awesome on those days when it's 125+ outside :) (not that I'm looking forward to that - haha!). Hazel is going to come and play soon too :) That will be fun!