Cooking and Ballet

We usually have something special for breakfast on weekends. This morning, I decided to let Sonya try making pancakes. She has done kitchen preparatory work like washing, cutting, measuring and mixing but today, she tried actual cooking for the first time. She did a great job pouring the pancake batter into the pan, waiting for it to bubble and then flipped it over.

Here are the pancakes she made :) She loved the pancakes...

And so did Clara and of course Justin and myself :)

Clara also tried something new today. It was Bring-A-Friend Week at Boston Ballet. Sonya invited her classmate, Anna, but I got it wrong and Anna went last week. Mrs Loring was kind enough to let Anna join in the class. Anna has since signed up and now does ballet with Sonya every Sunday :) Mrs Loring told Sonya that she can bring Clara to join in the class today if she wanted. Clara was overjoyed to be able to join her sister finally after only being able to watch and wait patiently outside the classroom for almost 2 years!

Sonya's old ballet costume and shoes came in handy. Many people didn't even realize that she is more than a year younger than everyone else in the class!

I was a little worried initially and told Mrs Loring to send Clara out of the classroom should she cause too much trouble but Clara blended in perfectly with some help from her sweet sister :) She did the "this way that way chassé", that she had watched Sonya do so many times, all by herself! I was really impressed and proud that she did exactly what Mrs Loring instructed throughout the 45 minute lesson.

How often do you find Clara sitting nicely and waiting and listening to instructions?

She was so happy!

The icing on the cake was when Mrs Loring gave each one of them a rose and a tutu and did the statue in the museum thing. Too cute!

It was time for the "goodbye line".

The tricky thing now is to explain to her that today was a special lesson and she cannot go into the class in the future. I wish she is 3 years old already then I can sign her up for a class too. Sigh :(

On Ice

It was an icy weekend. The weather was actually not so icy, as in no longer below freezing. It was an icy weekend because first we went ice skating at Kendall Square and then sledding at Arnold Arboretum.

We got quite a good deal for the ice skating at Kendall. Sonya really enjoyed the skating at Frog Pond and had been bugging us to go again. Since it was not too crowded, we thought we let Clara try as well. Justin and I only paid $5 for the admission fees and skates rental for both of us. We paid about $12 for Sonya and Clara.

Sonya had a lot of fun on the ice. Clara, on the other hand, simply didn't want to learn how to skate. She didn't even want to stand up on her own and was just fooling around and lying down on the ice. She said she didn't want to do it anymore quite soon after we started. Justin brought her to the bench and took off her skates. She stayed on the bench most of the time after that having snacks.

After about an hour and half, Sonya started complaining that her heel was painful. We later found out that she got a big blister on her heel :(

While getting out of the skates and back into our comfy shoes, I caught some skates sharpening in progress :)

After lunch, we drove to Arnold Arboretum while Sonya and Clara took a short nap in the car. This is where I caught a whole family of squirrels playing in the snow.

After Sonya and Clara woke up from their nap, we took the $5 penguin sled that I bought from AJ Wright and tried sledding for the first time!

Another boy was sledding there as well and we exchanged sleds for a while :)

We were all very tired at the end of the day but we had a lot of fun :)