The Marusiak Family: Happy Chinese New Year!

Hello! It has been a while since I posted anything on this blog, but I hope to catch everyone up on what we have been up to for the past few months.

Life is pretty faced paced right now, with Hayden, Aubrey, and Sophia keeping

Jonathan and I very busy!

Sophia has blossomed into such a happy toddler! She is a delight to watch as she tries to tell us stories in her "baby language" as the kids call it. She's always got a big smile on her face and loves to cuddle with her puppy stuffies while we read her books.

During Christmas, Sophia enjoyed putting the stockings on her feet and trying to walk around the house in them! She was so cute to watch :)

Aubrey is growing up to be quite the young lady! She loves following in her brother's footsteps of playing the piano, building lego spaceships, and playing card games

(her favourites - Go Fish & War).

But the one thing she loves that is all her own is ballet!

Aubrey just turned four years old at Christmas and we celebrated with a Little Mermaid ice cream cake (her favourite character for that particular week - it changes frequently. Right now she loves the princess off the new Disney movie "Frozen")

She was also very excited to receive her present from Hayden which was her very own "duckie" so she can now play "duckies" with Hayden (I think they have about 7 total now).

And Hayden has been busy this year now that he's in kindergarten! He's doing very well learning new words in mandarin - he can count and write the mandarin characters to 20

and knows many simple words.

He's also loving his music classes he takes each week. He's learning how to play the piano and is already doing so much more than I had anticipated for his first year!

He had his first recital last weekend and performed a piece by memory! His year end recital is in May and I will post a video for sure.

I have two videos to share with you from the Chinese New Year Celebration at Hayden's school. The mandarin classes each performed a song . . . . (Hayden is at the back in this one)

(Sorry this video didn't upload - I am sending out a separate email with a link)

And this is the finale songs all the classes performed together (again, Hayden is on the back row in one and on the floor in the other)