Annual Day 2013 - Aashini

A few weeks ago, Aashini had her School Annual Day :)  

Aashini's group was first this year.  While they were doing the opening welcome and things, this little girl peeked under the curtain.  I thought she was cute :)

 Here's Aashini coming on stage for her dance!! :)

 OK... now before I go on....  I want you to notice this picture below... the picture on the left is how she looked when she left the house....  The picture in the middle is how she looked when she got on stage! haha!  She said she thought I did her outfit wrong, so she "fixed" it.... hahaha!  (Granted, I did put her top on backwards... this one was supposed to hook in the back, unlike a Sari that is supposed to hook in the front... I always seem to get it wrong! hahaha! BUT you couldn't tell when it was tied properly haha!)  The last picture is after the performance when we had it all right :) haha!

Anyway, back to the performance....

 Here she is with her classmates doing her performance :)

 She had sooo much fun performing :)

 Here's Aashini posing afterwards :) hahaha!

 That's more like it :) haha!!!

Somehow, Aashini lost her shoes... so she got a free piggy-back ride home :) haha!

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!!!

Vijay's Wedding - The Kiddos

 The kids had a great time at Vijay's reception.   They got to run around, dance and eat Ice Cream - what kid doesn't like that? haha!  (Oh, and if you're wondering what is on Diya's face, it's a heart.  It was Valentine's Day and one of her teachers drew hearts on her cheeks with markers and we couldn't get it off :) haha!)

 Diya with "Uncle Vijay".  She was so cute with him :)  Diya doesn't go to just anyone, but she always goes to Uncle Vijay :)

 Here's Aashini on the dance floor :)  She was doing some funny moves :)

 Diya was cracking me up too :)

 Daddy-Daughter Bollywood dance :)

 Sister dance :)

 The kiddos had a lot of fun!

An Aashini Post :)

This post is all about Aashini :)

She likes to make pretend food a lot now. The other day she lined up a few stuffed animals and fed them - I thought it was cute :)

She likes tea parties (with juice :) - the girl loves juice!).

Aashini loves getting dressed up and dancing. Here she is dancing to "Go Tell it on the Mountain" haha! (if you can't see it, click here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-TcsAa10g8)

She loves to dress up!! She goes back and forth from wanting to be a princess and wanting to be a superhero/pirate :) This day she had a combo (check out the shoes) :) In this picture she's showing us the picture she just took on her camera :) haha!

Aashini still loves doing puzzles. Here she is at school one day when we went to pick her up... she wanted to show Diya her puzzles at school: )

Aashini LOVES being a pirate!! Here she is "playing pirate" with Adam and Joe. The newspaper is the pirate map :)

Here's another video. If you can't view it, then you can go here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R-zSNt91uQ) to view it. This was the other night. Aashini was cracking me up! We were getting her dressed warm for sleeping (marble floors and cement walls make for a really cold house!) and she started dancing on the bathroom counter. She calls herself a "Dancer-lina" (She confused a ballerina and dancer) :) It's pretty repetitive but funny (to me anyway :))

Random Post & Videos :)

Here are a few random pictures... some good, some not-so-good :) Here's Aashini dancing in her birthday tap shoes :)

Here's a video of Aashini. She has a funny thing she likes to do... she likes to look sad and when you ask her what's wrong she'll give a big smile... so that's what's going on at the beginning of the video... then she does a Hindi poem, then she talks a little bit. At school if they are studying something, they usually write it on the kid's hands (I know... nice :))... so on this day it's special shapes... Cone & Rhombus - made me laugh :) Anyway, enjoy... if you can't see it, then you can go here to see it.

Here's Diya with one of her new birthday toys :)

This is what Diya looks like when she's super excited and trying to talk :)

Here's a video of Diya playing Peekaboo :) I love her giggles :) If you can't see it then click here to see it.

I got some boots for Aashini from another mother who's kid outgrew them. Aashini wore them for the first time the other day and she thought she was awesome :)

Here's Aashini at church with two of her little buddies :)

Here's Aashini at school (after school) with her super hyper friend Alina. I've never seen a kid with as much energy as she has! I'm trying to get it on video - one day I'll get it :)

At the end of a long day - the girls were exhausted!

Dancing!

Diya loves music. She can't help but to move when music plays. You can look at this video and see how she moves :) She does this in church too - it's funny :) Here she is dancing to Thai Elvis :)

Dancing Princess :)

My sister got Aashini this cute ballet costume for Aashini. She LOVES it! She was wearing it the other day and spinning all around - it was so cute!

Here she is spinning....

... and spinning...

... and spinning...

... and spinning!

She had so much fun! :)

Growing up I took about 8 years of ballet/pointe - I wonder if she'll like ballet like I did? :)

I love her big smile :)