Halloween Craziness

 Halloween is one of the girls' favorite holidays.  Not only do they get to wear their costumes to school, but they get to have parties and candy, lots and lots of candy.

Lydia and her teacher, Mrs. Israel

Sophie as princess Anna

The younger grades get to parade around while the older kids sit around and give out high-fives.  Here Sophie reaches out to her sister who she secretly adores.

Free doughnuts at Krispy Kreme if you wear a costume

Free kid's smoothie at Jamba Juice, plus the kids got stuffed fruits and vegetables

Sophie and I trick-or-treated a little on Montana Ave while Lydia was at swim team.  She got a semi-private lesson because only her and a boy showed up to class today; then he left early and it was jut her.  Yes, I'm such a tiger mom.

Trick-or-treating in my friend Danielle's neighborhood after having pizza at her house.

Taking a break to have a candy or two

No school!

Just because the kids didn't have school didn't mean I was not going to work-out.  Apparently, my other mommy friends agreed and we had 9 kids running around our zumba class today.  They behaved for the most part, but I'm just glad that they are normally at school.  :P

Smiling mischievously

Orange for the day

We spent the entire day in Orange County, hanging out with friends and family, and enjoying some good food!

My brother and niece at my cousin Ben's three kids' birthday party...they were born within a week of each other

All kids love a bouncy house

Cute set-up

Mom of three, Patti, and the delicious cakes

How many people does it take to make cotton candy?

It's Christmas in October!

We dropped by to see Lydia's best friend Mia who just moved to Irvine last week

Naam Yoga turns 3

The last two months, I have been going to Naam Yoga every weekday for pilates or zumba.  Gradually I have invited my friends to join and many times, more than half of the class has been my friends, which is lots of fun.  Today, the most number of my friends attended the zumba class, so I just had to get a picture.  Even the little kids are enjoying the class!

 Magda, Simona, Lorri, Julie, me, and Christine

 We want to pump YOU up!

In the afternoon, I watched Sophie during her final music class

Ready to make some music

 All little out of sync, but still super cute

I even offered up the Chinese word for "hello" to add to a song.  Too bad I could only remember one of the characters at first, though the second one finally kicked in.

We "meet" again

Lydia had her second swim meet today, again in Manhattan Beach.  She did well and I'm anxious to get her times to see how she fared from the last meet.  At the end, Lydia's coach passed out ribbons from the last meet, where she placed 2nd three times and a 3rd, not bad for her first swim competition ever.  :)

I though freestyle was Lydia's best stroke, but her butterfly is pretty darn good too.  She got first in her heat, so she may have gotten first overall as well.

Please excuse the commentary; apparently I couldn't get over how fast the other girls was.  :P

Lydia swimming side by side with her friend Julia.

Head to head

 The relay got changed up a little.

Head shots

I finally got Sophie's edited head shots to send to the agent today.  I hope she get more auditions (even though driving to Hollywood can be a pain) because of them!

My top pick...the picture was taken at Tongva Park in Santa Monica

She looks so serious...the picture was taken at Santa Monica Beach

 Picture taken at Laguna Beach

Auditions

Sophie has been getting a lot of auditions lately, one a week for the last three weeks, but fortunately, she hasn't had to miss anything important to attend them.  Today's audition worked out great because we were headed out to Pasadena anyways to go to Kidspace Museum.  And she even got a callback (second audition) two days later.  She is currently on the final step, "on avail", (we have to hold the wardrobe and shooting dates), so hopefully she booked the job.  Sophie hasn't booked anything since the fashion show in March, so a booking would be nice.  Driving to Hollywood after school in full blown traffic isn't the funnest of things.

The girls always hit the bikes at Kidspace

Fire and water

We woke up early, well, not as early as planned, since I went back to sleep for another 30 minutes after my alarm went off, to attend an event hosted by the local fire department.  We all had pancakes, sausage, and eggs, and headed out to San Dimas to California's largest water park on full stomachs.  We spend the next 6 hours frolicking in the water and enjoying fun water slides and successfully beat the heat.  Afterwards, we waited a mere 15 minutes (when quoted an hour over the phone and 30-45 minutes in person) for delicious Asian cuisine.  It was a great day with excitement and good eats.

Our table of little eaters

Deborah, me and Magda

Thank you Santa Monica Firefighters for our breakfast!

First stop at the Raging Waters water park...the wave pool

Sophie yelps every time she hits the water

Just look at the pure joy on the face

Staying cool on a triple digits day

Teamwork

Dinner of champions

Movie night

I'm not quite sure what I was thinking when I thought it would be cool to invite a bunch of the girls' classmates for movie night, but it turned out okay.  I started with the same number of kids as I began with and everyone seemed happy.

11 little kids, 1 movie "Legend of Oz", and lots of laughter