Birthday Party and others...

We celebrated Sasha's birthday a week earlier than her actual birthday. She had a great time!

Sasha helped us prepare her birthday cake: my Mom's famous "Maria Cake," (made with "Maria" cookies).

Here she is making the lemon juice: (also in the picture are the beautiful flowers James got me for our anniversary-five years!)




Layering cookies:



Spreading the cream mixture: (then it gets refrigerated over night, and then topped with whipped cream and strawberries)



Her party:











Her favorite part, getting ready to blow out the candles:



She helped us serve all the guests:




The next are from Thanksgiving with James' aunt Adrienne, some time spent with Jane and Brad, and some other random pictures:

Time for a quick update. Sasha is no longer going to school. We took her out for several reasons. We weren't fond of some of the teaching methods, plus Sasha wasn't happy there. She had some good friends, but she was losing interest in school. Maybe we'll find a better school, or perhaps we'll keep her out for a few more years. We don't know yet.
We put her in a ballet class instead and she is really happy! I didn't take a lot of pictures of the class but I did get some sweet, short videos if you want to check them out (click on Videos of Sasha on the right).
We visited with our friends Jane, Brad and Federico again and there are a few pictures of that fun outing. There are also some pictures of Sasha's baha'i children's class, as well as of a parent's day at Sasha's school from several days ago. (We got to go in and let our kids show us the work the usually love to work on).

brief update, lots of pictures

First thing's First: I'm pregnant!! We are all extremely happy! Due date is June 9th!

This blog doesn't get updated very much because we've all been busy! James works all day, Sasha goes to school half day, and I take advantage of the morning to do the assignments for my six classes!
James is pretty happy at work, he's starting to find his place in the team and is learning a lot.
Sasha seems to be happy at school. It's hard for her to leave home in the mornings, but she never wants to leave school when I pick her up, and the teachers say she has a lot of friends. James takes the car to work, so I walk to pick her up everyday. It's a nice, 15-minute walk and my only exercise of the day. Then Sasha and I walk back together and that gives us the opportunity to talk about each other's day.
She has been excited about writing, particularly numbers. Below is a picture of her number-writing. (My numbers are at the top). She also loves to pretend to be the teacher.
In this picture she's the teacher, crossing her legs and reading me a story:




Sasha has found a way to sit through the Baha'i Feast. She packs her backpack with some of her favorite things, and during the administrative portion she works quietly with them. As shown here:



The rest are pictures of a few outings here and there, including a visit with our dear friend from Costa Rica, Jane. We went out for lunch at a really nice place with a huge yard for kids to run around in, sand boxes to play in, and horses to feed. We went with Jane, her husband Brad, and their grandson Federico.