NYC 1. happy reunion!

on friday evening, linda and i hopped on megabus [totally amazing, by the way: i highly recommend the company!!] and joined sarah in New York City. she met us at Penn station and we headed uptown to her incredibly warm apartment, then got late-night snacks at the seinfeld diner with her bf floss.

i love how easy it is to reunite with these 2 ladies. we REALLY missed ann and mandy, though. our little toyama group wasn't quite complete without them. <3

ooooooooookinawa de gozaimas

mandy sent me the link to this video. totally warms my heart.

1. bc it makes me feel sooooo nostalgic, remembering my awesome spring break in okinawa
2. bc the obas and ojis doing exercises cracks me up
3. bc the music in the background of their exercising is like the intro to every single sports day i witnessed.
4. bc okinawa is incredibly gorgeous!!
5. bc they say "hai" in okinawa-ben, too ;)

<3 me some okinawa!

kelly fam photos

ginger did an amazing job on the kelly family reunion photo shoot. you can check out her website here: http://www.onlinepictureproof.com/GingerSnaps/albums/portraits/

you cant look at all the photos without a password, but if for some reason you really want to look at the entire album, email me and i'll tell ya :)

my absolute FAV photo is of all the grandkids jumping in the sand. hilarious and heart-warming. just the way i like it <3

whoa!

watch the wall-e DVD this weekend. check.
read ann's blog this morning. check.

WHATTTTTTT?!?! holy wall-e bento batman!! totally amazing and adorable.

check.
it.
out.

we wish you a...

...merry christmas tree decorating.

tonight is the 1st decorating in our household. the real [aka: live] christmas tree wont arrive till next weekend, but the new [fake] tree got set up tonight. as a result, we're learning a lot about relationships. and how they... um, develop... during the holidays.

please allow me to elaborate.
[conversation overheard 20 minutes ago as mary lou was trying to arrange the new silver lighted star on top of the fake tree]

mary lou: oh, sam, we need an adapter!
sam: okay... i'll find an orange one
mary lou: ORANGE?! NO!!!!
sam, kelly, melissa, etc.: hahahahahahaha!

bad habits & boys

yesterday we were talking about bad habits. someone mentioned thumb sucking and olivia told us she sucked hers for a really long time. i asked "when did you stop?"

she thought for a second and goes "when i liked boys!!"

the whole class diiiiiiiiiiiiied laughing. [and i felt tons better since i'm sure i stopped sucking my thumb before i started liking boys! haha]

turkey in duck. 3

we had an outing to the wright brothers memorial on the friday after thanksgiving! it was cool to see the place where they did their flight tests and see a model of their first plane.

naturally, i was more focused on including my cousins in a photo shoot than i was on actually learning about the wright brothers, haha.

after the museum, we went to jockey's ridge where they have incredible sand dunes. you can run down the hill and try to run back up. OR you can do as the kelly kids did--- ROLL down the hill with your arms crossed over your face to avoid getting sand in your mouth/eyes.yesterday i wore the same jean skirt i wore to roll down the hill. and there was STILL tons of sand in the pockets, even after being washed :)

after our sand dunes experience we dashed [freezing!] to the pool. <3 fun times were had by all [especially the younger boys who were attacked by their uncle and cousins!]