Happy Easter!

We hope that everyone had a good Easter.  Ours was eventful and started on the Saturday before with the annual Easter Egg Hunt that our church organizes every year.  It's open to the community and they stuff and hide about 4,000 eggs.  This year, reportedly about 450 people attended, 2/3 of them were kids.

We arrive early because the egg hunt starts a couple minutes after 10am and if you are even 5 min. late, you will miss out!

The areas are divided into three sections according to age.  For the first time, our boys graduated from the little kid area into the medium kid area with Karina.  Eliana went to the third section which are for kids 8 and above.

 And they're off!!!

 Xiao Yu was off to a little bit of a slower start.

Gabe was also a little hesitant and had to hold Daddy's hand.  It also did not help that it had been raining for weeks straight and so the field was quite wet and spongy.

 Karina did quite well hunting for eggs with her friends.

 She was able to get quite a few.

Elvin, who had Gabe, led him past the large horde of kids who immediately bent down to pick the first eggs they could see.  Instead, Elvin led him to the area about 50 yards beyond where there was no one and Gabe had a good time getting eggs as his leisure.

 After most of the eggs were picked, Eliana wandered over and did quite well too.

 Here are the kids with their loot.

And here are the kids opening their eggs and returning the egg shells.  This gives you a sense of how many eggs there were in the field!

It turned out that Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai (Elvin's parents) were also visiting during Easter weekend.  So they got to spend time with us.  Here is Gabe showing Nai-nai the logic exercises that he does during homeschool.  Emily actually wasn't planning to start home school with him, but he's been begging and begging to start.

Later in the day, it was sunny and Karina had been wanting to go bike riding, so we went.  She has been wanting to practice riding her bike with no training wheels.  Although she could do this already, she needed to practice starting and stopping.

The kids also decided they wanted to race.  The littler ones made Eliana ride in the outside lane as a handicap.  Despite this, the results of the race were still fairly predictable.

Xiao Yu also rode.  We have many bicycles in our house of every size imaginable, but sometimes not in the gender-appropriate color!  He didn't seem to mind at all--either the pink bike or the purple helmet!

Then we played some soccer in the field.  The kids enjoyed playing and are starting to kick and dribble the ball while resisting the temptation to pick it up with their hands.

We then dyed some Easter eggs.  They each got to decorate five, which you can see Xiao You protectively holding his, like a mother hen.

 They had fun dipping the eggs into the dye.

The kids also like playing Uno and played with Nai-nai.  Except that they forgot to tell her the rule about saying "uno" if you only have one card left--until it happened to her and she had to draw cards.  That's the risk of playing a game against a 4- and 6-year old who don't tell you the rules until you stumble into the situation!

 The next day was Easter Sunday and the kid's baskets were all prepared!  They each got a new toy (the boxes under the basket) in addition to candy.  They also got new gardening gloves in their baskets--a request from Karina.

 The girls got Legos which were themed with American Girl dolls.

The girls have really enjoyed these Lego sets, even Eliana who usually doesn't play that much with Legos.  They have spent hours and hours every day since Easter playing with these.

Then after breakfast and getting dressed, it was time for another mini-egg hunt that we do at home before heading off to church.

To make it more equitable, especially for the younger ones, each kid is assigned a color and they can only grab eggs of 'their' color.  If they spot eggs of a different color, they have to let it be.  Gabe's color was green.  He found his shiny green egg, which was a "golden" egg that each kid had in their respective color, and it had a dollar bill inside instead of candy.

 Xiao You found his golden egg, which was truly golden, since his color was yellow.

 And Gabe found another one!

 Here is a forced posed picture of the kids in their Sunday best.  Gabe is even wearing a real shirt, which buttons!  Quite a change from his usual t-shirt.

In the evening, we had dinner at a local ramen place.  It's relatively new and a novelty for Vancouver which is not known for a diverse or thriving restaurant scene.

And it's one of a few restaurants where both the parents and kids enjoy the food.  Here Xiao You is eating noodles, with chopsticks no less, while trying to also watch TV at the same time.

 And for dessert, the kids got creative.  Peeps on a "nest" of ice cream!

 The kids had a good time with Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai who left a couple of days after Easter Sunday.

This past weekend, we visited Emily's parent's house for dinner.  Emily's brother's family also came and they were kind enough to put on yet ANOTHER easter egg hunt for the kids.  This year, Easter was the holiday that kept on giving.

 Each kid, again, had their designated eggs.

And they were hidden around the living room.

 Karina checks out her loot, which consisted of Hershey's kisses, Swedish fish, and Peeps (some of which where fruit punch flavored!!!)

Hope you guys had a fun and blessed Easter as well!