Merry Christmas!

We want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas! It is Christmas Eve here already and the girls are out on a walk to the park with Gram, Brad will arrive home from work soon and we will have dinner with some of our good friends here. We will be around most of tomorrow, so if you have the chance, give us a call, or SKYPE us! My computer is down, but Brad has Skype also. I think his name is devildog_bja or you can look up Brad Aiello.

We love and miss you more than words can say.
Love you,
Kelly, Brad, Olivia and Alessandra (and Gram Heather too!)

Footage for the Grandparents!

Alessandra has officially made her stage debut! Her new school East-West Montessori put on a terrific Christmas Program this morning. She was a little unsure about the whole thing, but made it through and in the end was very proud of herself.

Here is some footage of when Miss Reiko asked her what her name was and what she wanted for Christmas. She told me she was going to say "Chocolate", but ....

(And, there is more footage to come... I wanted to get this on here and the other videos i think were too long... I have 2 more of Alessandra's class and 2 of Olivia's Class, I will try and add them soon. Just wanted to make sure you got to see the little cutie pie! )

Santa Knows Everything.

So, this is going to be one of those great years that the SANTA stories will live loud and clear in our world. Where Santa IS real and you just have to believe. How can you not with a 5 year old in the house?

Olivia had her first Christmas party of the year last weekend. Our Dojo (Karate) held a fantastic party complete with performances, caroling, dancing and SANTA. The week before the party Olivia told me (in a whisper) she was going to ask Santa for a new Polly Pocket. She told me to keep it a secret (which I am very good at). Amazingly when Santa came to the party, he gave her a gift and it WAS a new Polly Pocket. She was amazed and SO happy! Afterwards I asked her how she thought he knew she wanted it (since they didn't have time to actually talk to Santa) and she told me "Mom, Santa knows everything. You don't even have to tell him"

Behold the happiness of Santa Knowing IT ALL!

Sisters...

With all of their love and adoration for one another (as well as all of their frustration and arguing with one another) I can SOMETIMES get a cute photo of the girls together. Tis was taken the other evening when we took a walk down to the park. Right before (you guessed it) another gorgous and amazing sunset.

Okinawa is beautiful.

Hard Drive Crashed

Hello nice people.

SO, that is the newest news on my life. My nice new (from March) laptop crashed last night due to ... who knows what...

I am still trying to figure out if I can pull all of my personal info off of there. I had most everything backed up (just trying to figure out how to get itunes on another computer from the back up), but is is still REALLY frustrating. I am currently on the phone (to India) with Dell customer service and having a hack of a time getting them to understand that I live in Japan, but have a US postal service address (I never should have mentioned Japan) and am now trying to just get a refund, so I can go and get a MAC. I don't think I will likely buy a Dell ever again.

SO, if you see this, please email me at aiellobk@gmail.com. I had a GREAT address list on my Microsoft Office stuff, but obviously I can't get to that at the moment, so I am going to work on my web based list. ARGH!! Sometimes technology just kills me.

Happy Holidays!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Susu want a cracker?

The other day we were on Skype with my parents and the girls were having a snack. Alessandra kept feeding her crackers to her grandmother (Susu) on the computer. It cracked me up so much, I had to catch a photo of it.

Sorry about the glare... it was a sunny day! :)

The Ball

Yes, it is December and I am only now posting a Marine Corps Ball photo. Our ball was actually on the 25th of November ad in true Kelly form, I forgot my camera. THANKFULLY our friend Heather took a photo of us and sent them on to me!

Here we are. Happy Birthday Marines! (not sure what I got on my dress, but everytime I picked up my water glass little droplets ended up on the dress... argh.) AND to note: this is shortly after Brad broke his ribs, he held up pretty good!

Olivia's World

Olivia's friend Nyomi had her last day of school today (they are off to somewhere new!) and here is a shot of Olivia with her friends Alexa and Nyomi (doesn't Alexa look like a living Dora?)

I love Kindergarteners.

Happy life and happy times. Who doesn't love a nice vacation?

Well we made it back from vacation. Yes, it is a tough life we live here... don't you forget it!

Alessandra and Daddy during a stroll on the beach! Chilly, but gorgeous day!

A view from the walking path around the resort ground

I will now try and give you a brief synopsis of our trip, with my long awaited opinion on the whole thing (which I know you are longing to hear).

We left on Thanksgiving morning from Naha airport (our lovely friend Nicole drove us to the airport - THANKS Nicole!) and after our long flight of 48 minutes, we arrived on the beautiful island of Ishigaki. (I should also tell you that the weather on this day, was terrible, so we are assuming at this point it is beautiful, the clouds were quite large and gray). We are met at the airport by 2 nice people carrying a "Club Med" sign (I have always wanted to be picked up at the airport with a sign). We got our luggage, visited the watercloset and got into a spiffy van for our 40 minute ride to our resort. Alessandra by this point is SICK of traveling (yes, already) and a tad bit unruly in the van. Thankfully there was another family in there with a little child (probably 2 1/2) who was singing the English ABC's song (she was Japanese, so it was REALLY cute) and that helped our child who always has ants in her pants.

(more walking path views... beautiful!)

So, you pull up at the resort are the staff is out there waving and greeting you. At this point, I was really not sure what to expect... but I liked it. We got greeted with tea, cool wash cloths and a nice seating area and then our lovely G.O. (General Organizer) Jin told us how things go. We hit the dining room and had the first of MANY fantastically amazing spreads of food and then checked out our room. A nice, clean, room with a king bed and 2 twin beds (I love this place for putting beds in there, instead of the per normal pull out couch). And a really nice view of the Ocean. We love views.

Our room view - yes, that it a circus trapese set up. You can take trapeze lessons if you want to.

The kids went the first afternoon to the "Mini Club". This place is specially for 4-12 year olds. This week (due to low numbers... it is winter season) they put the Petite Club (2-3 year olds) in with the Mini Club, so Alessandra and Olivia got to be together a lot of the time. Most often there would be 2-3 staff members with our kids, entertaining, leading, playing and just being with the kids. We spent most mornings with the kids at the Kids Club. And, in true Olivia form, she really would have prefered to be there ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Alessandra liked it, but not nearly as much as her sister. (and I think they had their faces painted 4 times...life it good)

So, this part sounds like a bad mommy talking - but why in the world would I ever go on any type of vacation again? The kids had fun, and we got to be with them AND without them on vacation. The staff were unbelievably good and pretty much EVERYONE there knew the girls names, so anywhere we went they were greeted with "hallo ms. Olivia, Ms. Alessandra... how are you today?" I don't think they knew our names (until the after the night that he went to the bar and sang with the bar band... then they all knew his name... so sad I missed it!), but they lovingly called us "mama and papa".

Kabira Bay

AND, we actually left the resort one day and went on an excursion around the island. It included a trip to Kabira Bay with a glass bottom boat tour (which the girls LOVED), the black pearl shop (they harvest black pearls in this bay), and Awamori distillery (think Sake, but ickier), an Okinawan Village recreation place (complete with cool monkeys you could feed... in truth, I found it gross, but the kids loved it) and Ishigaki-yaki - an incredible pottery place that makes some very unusual and rare type pottery (fused with glass... color of ocean... very amazing). It was a lovely day (albeit a tad chilly), we were excited to see another part of the Okinawan Islands and their history.

Our little fam on the glass bottom boat (Olivia made her own hair accessories)

Olivia with our tour G.O.


Our little family (the only sad shot I got of us the whole time.. I need to work on that)
Brad, the girls and the monkeys.

Olivia and her new playmates.


Ahh, so cute. After our yoga (Kelly) and stairmaster (Brad) workouts. We hit the trail and walked - it was gorgeous!

All in all, I don't know how anyone could complain about a trip like ours. The most important things to us: rest, time together, good food, good drinks and nice place to be. All points were covered and then some.

Anyone want to go to Club Med Bali next year?