Ezra is Leaving For a Month!

Ezra will be leaving today (Feb 16th) for France. He's going to visit my grandparents in Marseille, then visit some cousins of ours in Holland and some other places. (I forgot which exact places he's going to, other than France and Holland.)

He will be going alone and will be away for about a month. 

We have cousins in Holland that he's never met, so it will be pretty exciting for him. I think one of the cousins is his age too, so they will probably have a lot of fun together. And when I say cousins, I mean cousins once or twice removed on my mom's side. We have three cousins in total from our parents' siblings. 

His flight today is at 6:30 PM at the Redding Airport. Which is nice, so we don't have to drive all the way down to the Sacramento airport like we did when I went to France. 

So he'll have to fly through the night, with a 6:30 PM flight from Redding, arriving at his destination about eighteen hours or so later. It sounds pretty tiring to me. I remember going from Denver, Colorado, to Munich, Germany, and it was a ten-hour flight. I hated that so much. Having to sit for ten hours straight. Other than that, the rest of the flights were fine, only being two hours or four hours max. 

I think he will be coming back sometime in mid-March. He's very excited to go and can't wait to see his cousins and grandparents. 


My Sewing Project From France.

While I was in France, my grandma took Sophie and me to a marketplace. There were all kinds of stuff—clothes, food, jewelry, etc. It was a really cool and fun experience to be there. I was really hoping to find a dress, since that was one of the things I wanted to get while in France. 

As we walked past various items, I saw a long dress that looked very beautiful on a mannequin. So we all stopped and went to see if there was a dress in my size. My grandma asked the guy who was selling them if they did ( since he only spoke French), and he brought one to us. The smallest size he had was a medium/small. So we got it. 

 Once we got back to my grandma's house, I tried it on. It was a little big around the waist. But I thought I could probably do some sewing on it once I get back to my own house. 

When we were back in California, I took out my sewing machine and started sewing, trying to see how I could make it tighter around the waist. But I couldn't get it right. So eventually I thought maybe I could make it into a skirt. I cut the top off. I wanted the skirt part to be very long, so I made it a high-waist skirt. Then I folded the part where I had cut it and sewed that so it wouldn't fray. It was a little loose around the waist, so I folded it a bit from the inside out and then sewed it to just where I liked it. 

It worked! I even wore it to church on Sunday with a black shirt on top. I also had a black belt, so I put that on too. Here is a picture that my mom got while I was about to walk out the door to church: 

Nicholas Getting Married in October.

Nicholas proposed to his girlfriend, Noemi, about a month or two ago, and of course, she said yes! The wedding date is October 4th. They will be having the wedding in Lake California at the Lake Club, out on the grass. 

Noemi will move to California sometime at the end of September (since she lives in New Jersey). 

I'm excited to have another sister-in-law!😁 It's going to be awesome! She's super sweet and awesome to be around. She also has a beautiful singing voice and hopefully will sing for our church. And she cooks amazing Mexican food. She's perfect for Nicholas because he has more of a quiet personality, and so does she. But she can also be extroverted when she needs to be and can socialize really well with people. And she's a Christian, of course. She's perfect for him. I'm so glad my brother picked such a wonderful person to marry. 😊 I'm already imagining the little, cute children they're going to have. 😂 Imagine a Nick Jr. So cute! 

Okay, so for Noelle and Cameron's wedding, I wrote a poem for them and recited it out loud on the mic. And for Nick and Noemi's wedding, I wanted to write a poem for them too. I haven't started writing it, so I'd better do that. But it would be cool if I made it a tradition for the rest of the boys when they get married. Just write a poem for each wedding. 

Here are the engagement photos:

Our Family Health Challenge.

So, starting today, our family will be doing a health challenge every day until Easter. Noelle made a group chat for all the people who will be doing it:

Risa, Noelle, Cameron, Gideon, Mom, Dad, Johanna, Simeon, Jonathan. 

We each get to pick and personalize our challenge. But it can't be so easy or hard that we won't stick to it. It has to be a bit challenging for us. 

This is my goal:

Go on 20 min jogs daily, and take my dog on walks.
10-minute split video every day. 
50 pull-ups a week on the pull-up bar. 
No more than one slice of bread a day.
No more than two servings of dessert a week. 

We've been talking about what the penalty should be if we miss a day. So far, we've decided they have to put $1 in the pot, but it doubles every time they miss another day. I think we should start out with $2 just to make it more interesting. But we'll see. 😊

At the end of every day, we have to text this ✅. That means that we finished our goal that day, and if we didn't text that in the chat, then we would get a penalty.

I'm really excited about this challenge! If I follow through, I will be able to get a lot more flexible from doing all the splits exercises and eat a bit more healthier than I did before. 

Yesterday was Easter!

Yesterday was Easter! 

My Opa and Oma stayed the night and my cousin and my aunt stayed the night too. They came on Thursday to Sunday because Sunday is Easter and we were going to have a big feast with everybody and Cameron would also come. On the day when my cousins and my Opa and Oma came, we had an early Easter egg hunt because everybody wanted to do it. And we did another Easter egg hunt on the same day and had it on every day that my cousins and my aunt and my Opa and Oma stayed. It was so much fun!

On Easter, Cameron brought smoked tri-tip. It was so good. My brother Jonathan brought lamb stew. Everybody liked that best! We also had fruit salad and couscous and asparagus and some crackers.  

For dessert, we had chocolate-covered strawberries and cookies and pudding and more fruit salad with whipping cream on top and some candy. There were lots of sweets!

After that, we went down to the tennis courts and played. The tennis courts are right next to the Lake Club, but the Lake Club is closed right now. My mom my Dad and my brother Nicholas and I all played. We had four rackets and some balls for it. We had two people on each side. I haven't really played in a while but I tried anyway. I got better and better. I love playing tennis so do my mom and dad. 

Two days before that we played tennis and it was at night. We turned the lights on. There was a switch for setting how many minutes you want it to go for. We set it to 45 min and when it was almost done I did another 35 minutes. And when there was one more minute left, I was about to hit the ball and then all of the sudden the lights turned off! It was pitched dark we could barely see. We just called it a night and headed back home.