Passover

Hi Everybody,
It's Emma and it's my turn to do a separate post. Passover started at sundown today.
 We're going to post each day with a different way to eat matzoh or other passover related foods.  This is the first of those posts.  Way #1 to eat Matzoh:  with butter and honey.  The matzoh balls in one of the photos is another way to eat matzoh (ground up) too.

First of all, here I am carrying matzoh and apologizing for pushing sophia the other day.

Sisterly love :)

Yummm Matzoh balls in soup. 


If you don't know much about passover, have a look at this wiki page just for starters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover

That's it for now.  We'll be back tomorrow!!!
Emma :)

A little this and a little that :)

Hi Everybody,
It's Sophia.  First of all, an explanation, we will now be referring to "the human" as our guardian or mum depending on whether or not she has adopted us.  For Emma and me, she is our mom:)

Emma started the day by tossing her belongings all over the place as she looked for her glasses and their case.

Here is she is getting in MY bed?????  I rudely informed her that she needed permission to go in my bed.

She ignored me and started digging through my stuff.

All my stuffies ended up on the floor:(

oops how did those get up there?  tee hee hee.

Emma did not think it was funny.  In fact she was VERY mad at me and said she wished she didn't have a twin.

She shoved me and I lost my balance and fell and hurt my left arm.

We were being pretty loud so mum came in and caught Emma pushing me. She took Emma out of the room to talk to her and I gathered up my stuffies.

Here I am with my laptop in my cozy upper bunk.  I have an ice pack on my sore arm.

On a happier note, here are links to 2 interesting school projects about the Holocaust that you can contribute to, we already did this.  Our mum's mum's side of the family is Jewish.
http://thegazette.com/2013/02/01/dear-danville/

http://www.foxboroughrcs.org/students-families/student-life/frcs-holocaust-stamp-project/



By the way, Emma and I almost never fight and it even more rarely comes to blows.
That's it for now.
Sophia :)

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 :)