March Break: A trip to the Natural History Museum

Hi Everybody,
It's Amaya.  Today I went to the Natural History Museum to see the March Break Exhibits.

Wow look how big that shell is, it's big enough to be my bed.

Here are some really large frogs.

But this guy is even BIGGER.

Aren't these cute.  I don't think they are chinchillas but I don't remember what they are, sorry.

And now on to the snakes.  There are 2 snakes in this tank, the big coil underneath is the second snake.  The top snake was very active while we were watching.

And some lizards.  These are water dragons, I'm pretty sure.

It took a while to get this photo because lots of people were looking at it but here I am in front of the snakes.

I am looking down at a giant tortoise.

I forgot to mention I went with the human and her other uncle.  He thought this would make a great photo:)

The uncle and me in front of the little furry beasts.

Ahhh a shark is trying to eat me!!!!!

Help, I don't want to lose my hands, I need them to do my art (and other things too!!!).  It's OK, this shark is actually really cute and plushy:)  The uncle was having fun.

Here is a link to the museum's website if you want to have a look.  We saw the desert animals but we explored the rest of the museum as well.  My human has been coming here for her whole life.
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mnhnew/en/home/default.aspx
That's it for now.

Amaya :)

Hinamatsuri (doll festival or peach festival)

Hi Everybody,
It's Amaya.  Today, March 3rd is Girls' Day in Japan.  This post is about that holiday and celebrating it here in Canada where I am right now.

These are the hina dolls that belong to the human.  She has a set of them that she found at the flea market for a very low price, even though she isn't Japanese.  These dolls represent the emperor and the empress or a prince and princess.  Traditionally the male doll is placed on the right.  Here is a wiki article about them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinamatsuri

Here I am with the travel version of hina dolls that my parents sent me.

Here is a close up so that you can get a better look.

Here is the sushi that we of course had for supper tonight (no I didn't eat all of this but the human sure did!!!) If you were wondering, the green pod looking things are edamame (green boiled soybeans).  I didn't get a picture of it because I haven't eaten it yet but there is mochi for dessert.

Since I haven't shown you this yet, here is a picture of my ribbon board.  Except for the one of us as toddlers, all the pictures are of my sister.  I need to add some of me soon:)

And finally here are 2 cool youtube links about girls' day that I found following a link from the Just Bento website
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kIsND0BuEk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=93BRVRCbuy4

That's it for now.  I hope you enjoyed learning about Hinamatsuri or Girls' day.  By the way. yes there is a boys' day, it's  May 5th  :)

Amaya :)

Purim

Hi EVerybody,
Today was the Jewish holiday of Purim.  A lot of Jewish holidays can be summed up as: they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat:)  While there is a lot more to this holiday than just eating, this post is going to be about one of the traditional foods for purim: hamentashen (triangular shaped filled cookies).

Here we are with a hamentashen filled with poppy seed filling, one of the traditional fillings.  Prune filling is the other traditional one at least it was in Eastern Europe where our ancestors come from.

Here's a close up.  If you are interested, check out the links at the end of the post to learn more about purim and why hamentashen are always triangles.

We cut it in half because one is more than enough for the 2 of use to share.  Although it is more in 2 pieces than even halves.  I guess that Sophia was trying to get a bigger piece than me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim
http://judaism.about.com/od/holidays/a/hamantaschen.htm
That's it for now.  Expect a new post next sunday if not before then.

Sophia and Emma :) :)

Earrings and Rings

Hi Everybody,
Sorry we haven't blogged in a while.  There was a lot going on in our human's family's life.  Things have settled down a lot.  Also, our human has been working very hard in preparation for a ballet exam.
Our human found a tutorial through a blog linked from a facebook page.  It was about making doll rings using brads.  We can't give exact credit because our human wasn't able to find this a second time.  Anyhow, last weekend our human bought these brads at ink stamp and scrapbook store called Carousel Ink stamps.  However, there is also an amazing website called:
eyeletoutlet.com which sells a huge amount of eyelets and brads at really low prices.

Here are the rings that we made.  You wrap the metal tabs around a paintbrush.  Start by taking them off the package and fully extend the metal tabs first.  Keep checking the size against your doll.  These rings do not fall off.

We realized that the brads could make awesome earrings too.  Particularly the silver ones.

This picture is from a few days ago, we just decided to have some fun?  Can you tell who is who? we aren't wearing our necklaces. 

So that's it for now.

Sophia and Emma :) :)

Making valentine's day cards

Hi Everybody,
It's Amaya.  When I came in from enjoying the snow, I found Sophia and Emma doing this:

I asked them what they were doing.

I joined them and we were using all these things to make valentine's day cards.  This is a new holiday for me because it isn't really celebrated the same way in Japan where girls give gifts (usually chocolate) to all their male friends and co-workers.  Children sometimes give gifts to each other.

Here are the ones we each made (we used oragami paper because I can't actually do origami even though I am half japanese)

Here are the cards we gave each other, I have the ones to mail to my sister in Japan.  I thought she might enjoy a card from me and the twins decided to make some for her too. 

When the twins were gathering supplies earlier, they stacked up almost all the duct tape we have.  We have plain silver and also candy corn pattern that isn't in this photo.  we didn't end up using any duct tape but I thought this was a great photo anyways so I included it.  The top of the stack isn't even in the photo, I think we might have enough duct tape now don't you?
That's all for now.
Amaya :)

LOTS of snow!!!!!

Hi Everybody,
This post is just a quick one to show you what kind of weather we've been having today.  Lots of things have been cancelled or postponed.  The libraries are all closed and dance class for our human was cancelled.  There aren't any photos of any of us because it is still snowing and we weren't allowed out until the snow stops.  Once it has stopped we'll get out there and enjoy the wintery weather.

snow on the back deck earlier in the day.

snow drift next to the compost bin in the driveway.  See how much it grew during the day in the next photos.

The snow is up over the human's boots, she's standing in a bit of a drift though.  That's it for now.  Check back tomorrow or monday to see if we added more snow photos.

It's not as snowy as lots of places in the US eastern seaboard (Boston for example) but it's still the most snow in one storm here in several years.
Sophia and Emma and friends :) :)

Here's a photo from sunday.  It snowed more over night and we piled the snow higher too.  This is Amaya standing next to a snow mountain.

Snow pile right by the front stairs.  Does Amaya have a death wish?  This is quite steep.

Amaya standing on the snow mound from yesterday's photos.

Making a snow angel.

Going down the wood pile in the backyard onto the deck.  That's it for the snow update for now.

Snow fun

Hi Everybody,
This is actually take 2 because we managed to delete the almost fully completed blog post instead of publish it much to everybody's annoyance and dismay.
As you can see, the computer is back from the shop.  It turns out that nothing was broken just that when the new power supply was installed recently it didn't get plugged in all the way. 
We're trying something new with this post:  Different colours for different speakers.  When there are 2 or more people talking at the same time the text is black.  The blue text is for Sophia only and the other colour that isn't black is for Emma.

Sophia is thinking about throwing a snowball at me.

Emma was not too pleased to get covered in snow.

My turn to throw a snowball.

We almost had a snowball fight.

We had fun making snow angels.

Then we got out our toboggan (it was a birthday present).

Here we are about to go down the back stairs.  I thought it was a good idea and would be fun.  Emma who is behind me was not so sure.

We made it down the stairs in one piece and didn't fall off or into the nearby frozen dog poop.

Sophia and Emma :) :)