Our Family is Growing!

Mara is about to turn 6. Just a few more weeks until the happy date, but she's already there mentally and physically. This summer she went:

• Kayaking at camp - first in her age group to kayak on her own without an adult during this whole summer, according to her camp instructors
• Biking on mountain trails - yes, she started biking with no training wheels after several months of sparse strider bike rides, and is so smooth at it now!
• Stand-up paddleboarding (SUPing at Shoreline Lake) which I've personally never even attempted. Greg got his opportunity to try it for the first time just this week, same location, with his coworkers.
• Horseback riding on Wizard who is a 30yo mare at Garrod Ranch.
• She can read piano music and play several songs with two hands on it - whenever she's patient and rested enough :-). She figured out the notes of "Doe, a Deer" and wrote them on sheet music one afternoon.
• Can swim end-to-end in the pool at swim class in a bunch of different strokes, head under water and reaching up for breaths in between. She's still not as sure about swimming outside of class though, but she's getting braver every day and can do half the distance in our home pool.

She's starting 1st grade in two weeks and "already feels like a first grader", and loves reading Elephant and Piggy books over and over and over to us.


Gaius is already 4! And of course he immediately started asking when his next birthday will be. Tomorrow is his first day as a Figgie, his school's PreK class and the last year for him there. A big responsibility to be the oldest kids in the yard and watching out for the little ones!

This summer he learned so much more Romanian (Alex, Naty and the cousins visited us for 3 weeks and we had a wonderful time together), he sings Azi Grivei e Mânios all the time and even asks for Romanian books sometimes. Still far from fluency, but the patience he's showing is encouraging!
Here's some of his latest adventures this summer:

• Went to a week of summer camp for the first time in his life, at the Youth Science Institute in Vasona Park. He was in the Investigators group, learned even more about tadpoles, went on hikes and made tambourines out of hard seeds. We were so proud of him for taking on this challenge, and even more so because Grandma was visiting so it was terribly hard to not spend all the time with her instead!
• Got over his extreme passion for Lego sets - now going more for the open ended projects, though he will still sit with us and work on his Millenium Falcon every now and then.
• Built a wooden claw, light-up solar system with the planet where DinDin and PowerMan live, a 10-marble timer and a pinball machine - he loves the Kiwi crates subscription! 
• Is actually a pretty impressive chess player! He begged us for a nice chess set after having visited Grandpa's house in Florida, but this one had to be magnetic. We found the perfect set at the Chess House which we thoroughly recommend:  9" Milled Leather Travel Chess Set.
• Is our main boardgame instigator - Photosynthesis, Labyrinth, National Parks Monopoly, Santorini, Dinosaur Island, Zingo are his favorites.
• Loves taking photos with the Instax mini camera (thank you Miko for introducing us to it!)
• Pony riding on Pumpkin - who loves children! with Daddy leading him around on the trail up on the Saratoga hills among gorgeous vineyards.
• Swimming classes are going great, Gaius has been successfully treading water for 8 months now, and can go under for "a very long time"!
• Gaius's art was showcased in a very fancy Marvegos Studio art exhibit in July (along with Mara's) after 8 months of art classes together. He made so much progress, especially being about 1 year younger than the age of his class - huge thank you to his teacher Corinna for supporting him through this!

And both kids were super-excited about riding their first roller-coaster this summer! here's the one at Great America:

Greg and Elena are feeling roughly the same, except that I bet we look slightly older! but we definitely don't feel so.

Elena absolutely loves cooking and doing crafts with the kids and fully disconnecting from work in the evenings and weekends.

• We got a child friendly woodworking Wood Shop Tool and did a bunch of projects - even repairing Gaius's wooden claw when it broke by cutting out a part for it!
• Sewing madness! Both Gaius and Mara are very crafty, they sewed little felt food figurines - a lollypop and a rainbow-sprinkled donut.
• Elena also started on a commuter-bike program at work early last year and biked 3 days/ week for 6 months, until she got her very own commuter bike! She discovered a new freedom and passion for biking, which she felt again this June when we biked with Alex & family in Yosemite Valley (see the photo!). 
• Still goes absolutely crazy for good watermelon (see a photo of a very special one at the bottom of this post)!
• Discovered another passion for Pilates Reformer and now she's not happy unless she gets her two sessions of workouts every week!

Greg is ever unchanged - still with a giant beard and looking like a woodsman two days after shaving. He:

• Is still playing Ultimate twice a week and loving every disk catch - he even did a greatest this month. 
• Loves getting the kids to run every time he can, especially when picking Elena up at the end of her biking trail when she leaves work in the evenings.
• Is automating everything he possibly can in our home! Our home hub can start either one of the two Roombas, or turn off all the lights in the house, or set the temperature to 72F. He even gave Elena a master control button by the bed to turn off all the lights in the house right from her pillow! And he got Willow a phone-connected kitty door that detects her tracking chip, but doesn't allow burglar raccoons to get into the garage.
• Enjoys doing fun experiments with the kids, like capturing tadpoles in puddles in Florida or experiments with dry ice and aluminum foil (see photo).
  

Furthermore, we've been feeling as part of a wonderful loving family for the past year and a half, and had many many many discussions over whether we would change anything in it. And the one thing we decided to change was to have more of it!

So our family is, indeed, growing!

We are expecting a baby sister this November, and everyone is so excited and peacefully happy to welcome her in our family. As soon as we told the children, they both immediately guessed the gender and started making a large list of names (we'll update you later on that, it's still a growing discussion!).

Here are some pregnancy photos we gathered up this summer (thank you for the tremendous patience on this, Tammy! you can finally tell friends and family now!):

This last photo and the one earlier in the post with us on bikes in Yosemite Valley were taken the same day! Did you guess then about our family news? So funny how different body postures either show it or hide it so well. 

Anyway, <3 to all!