Happy 8th Birthday Krish!!!

Krish's 1st Grade Thanksgiving Pageant at Greenhill 2016

In 2016, Krish and Arjun both performed in Thanksgiving Pageants with their grades.  These special grade performances just happened to line up in the same year for both of them!  Such a treat!

Arjun's Thanksgiving Pageant at Wesley Prep 2016

Happy Halloween 2016!

I usually never miss the opportunity to post about our family's Halloween and trick-or-treating adventures, but since I had fallen behind on blogging, I realized I was missing Halloween of 2016.

A little over a month after moving into a new neighborhood, we relished the opportunity to visit our old 'hood and go trick-or-treating with all of our friends!

Krish's love for the Harry Potter series inspired all of us to dress up as characters from the books for Halloween!  We would later go on to throw a Harry Potter-themed 7th birthday party for Krish to celebrate with all his friends!  So of course, Krish was Harry Potter, Mommy was Professor McGonagall, Daddy was Hagrid, and Arjun was...a skunk!  And he was the cutest skunk I've ever seen!  Tanya Masi and Alfredo Masa were also able to come trick-or-treating with us and Alfredo Masa dressed up as a construction man.

Greenhill LS & PS Halloween Sing Along

We started out the night at the Tran's awesome annual Halloween party, and if you know Mrs. Tran, you know she knows how to throw a party!  From there the kids all got to trick-or-treat together down Camino Lago, and the boys were thrilled to reunite with their old neighbors and best buddies, Ellie, Finley, Reian and Niam!  We also caught up with more best buddies, Caden, Logan, Caleb, Andy and Jack.  And finally, we did some trick-or-treating with Aayush, Shyam Mama and Ami Mami!  They were all dressed as the Monsters, Inc. gang, Aayush as Sully, Ami Mami as Mike Wasowski, and Shyam Mama as Boo!!  They looked so cute!

The Greenhill crew including Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker,
Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, a Vampire, and a Candy Fairy!

Arjun the skunk exploring the park where he
had his 1st birthday party!  Reminiscing in
our old 'hood!

Krish in front of our old house!

Right in front of our old house :)

Boo, Sully, and Mike Wasowski!

Cutest little Sully!

Krish wearing Aiden's (EF's cousin) awesome
homemade Annie's Mac & Cheese costume!

We've had some very memorable trick-or-treating experiences over the past 4 years in La Villita (including our Arbol block parties and trick-or-treating at Damarco Murray's house), and 2016 was no different! Overall, we had an incredible Halloween 2016 and were so thankful we got to reunite with old neighbors again!

Arjun and Aayush even helped Ami Mami carve a Rubble (Paw Patrol character) jack-o-lantern!

Cozumel Trip - Spring Break 2017

For the boys' spring break last year, we visited Cozumel for the first time!  It is an island off the southern coast of Cancun and is highly known to scuba divers and snorkelers for it's extensive coral reefs!  We stayed at the Cozumel Palace (one of the Palace resorts) and while we were there, Daddy's business partner, Dr. Tinley was visiting with his family too!

They had rented a beautiful beach villa with a pool and lots of amenities! Since Dr. Tinley's daughter, Sophia, and Krish are good friends, we hung out with Tinleys at their beach villa a few times during our break.  The kids had fun combing the beach for hermit crabs and splashing in the waves, playing ping pong and Monopoly in the game room, lounging in the hammocks, and simply playing together.  One of our days there, we took Sophia with us on a submarine tour.  The kids had a blast!

Pool view at their villa!

Arjun was just loving the hot tub and his coconut water since
the pool was too cold!

Sunset playing on the beach!

Sophia and Krish loving that fresh, island coconut water!

That view!

Beautiful sunset!

Our first full day in Cozumel, we took the ferry across to Playa del Carmen to explore it's beach and a sister resort, PlayaCar Palace.  It was a very windy day on the beach.  Our favorite part of the adventure was actually listening to a local band, the UFO Vans, perform on our ferry ride there!  The boys loved the band and we even bought their CD to listen to back home in Texas.  It is still the preferred choice of music in our car!  This is definitely one of my favorite things to do on vacation - enjoy the local music and bring it home with us!  I brought back some Caribbean calypso music back when we visited the Caribbean when I was younger.  We enjoyed that CD for quite some time as well!

When the Tinleys went back to Texas, we booked another favorite island adventure - a dune buggy ride around the island!  After we did this in Punta Cana, we were hooked!  It was so thrilling and different from our typical snorkeling excursions.  The dune buggies in Cozumel weren't the typical dune buggies though; they were more like convertibles.  Nonetheless, we had a great time driving around the entire coast of Cozumel and stopping at various tourist locations to explore!

Another fun excursion we booked was a snorkel tour!  The boys have been snorkeling so many times now I think they're becoming experts!

Back at our resort...

 We enjoyed the restaurants and all the yummy Mexican food!

The boys had a blast in the kids' club with the play kitchen, train table, Disney movies and the Wii!

On our last day in Cozumel, we tried a brand new activity.  We went on a family tour of a chocolate making factory and got to make chocolate using a mill from the cacao beans themselves!  It was an awesome experience I know the boys valued just as much as we did!  Krish loves chocolate and we know Chef Arjun loves cooking and working with various appliances in the kitchen!  The cacao mill was no less exciting to him!