Staycation!

This year, we had a weird spring break.  In the beginning of it, it actually snowed again!

The kids had fun playing outside.

As you can see, it snowed quite a bit.  Lucky likes playing in the snow too.

How else did the kids spend their time?  This year we had a staycation for spring break and so they played board games.  They played Stratego.  Gabe has funky strategy for it but usually wins, even against Daddy.

One day, we went to the local community pool at the Firstenberg Center.  Because of COVID, they capped the number of people and also limited the amount of time to 1.5 hours.  It was actually nice to not have to be in the pool for a huge number of hours!

We went with another family and our kids are good friends with them.

The girls enjoy visiting Ikea.

Karina got a candle holder.

On the way back from Ikea, the girls requested and picked up Chinese food from a restaurant in Portland.  It's a restaurant that specializes in hand pulled noodles.

The kids compared the length of noodles and wanted to see who got the longest.  Karina won!

While the womenfolk were at Ikea, Elvin took the boys to the park.  Since having played basketball for a season, Gabe is content to shoot baskets and play 1 on 1 basketball against Daddy.  Elvin is not that good but being one foot taller helps.

And Xiao is content to ride around on his bike.

On a different day, we went for a hike on Mount Hamilton, which is about a 45 minute drive away.  It was beautiful.

Karina brought her new Lifestraw bottle, which has a built in water filter.  So when she needed to refill her water bottle, she just used the water from the creek!

Gabe also did a bit of scrambling on the rocks.

It was a hike with a fairly steep elevation...

...but the view of the gorge and the Columbia River was worth it!

Here is Gabe and his friend lounging and soaking in the view.

The Bonneville Power Administration and dam were close by so we stopped there.  The kids picked up a junior ranger packet that you can fill out with information.  Karina was the only one that finished it and took the junior ranger's oath with the park ranger.

She got these badges!

And afterwards we went to this soft serve place where the cones were huge.  Everyone decided afterwards that it was too much ice cream.  That's something you don't hear every day!

And one request from the younger three was a trip to our local bowling alley.  Not to bowl but rather to play the arcade games.   

Racing was fun.

Also the kids were really into collecting tickets that you could then redeem for things at the gift store.  You could earn it by playing various games and scoring high.

And here is the store, where you could turn in the tickets for candy, toys, and other things.  It took about 30 minutes for the kids to decide what they wanted.

And no staycation is complete without a baking project.  Gabe used his imagination and creativity and set to work.  We had leftover pizza dough and he unleashed his energy on it!

What to make?

He ended up making these balls which has cinnamon and sugar mixed in.  They were sort of like monkey bread.  He used no recipe and he is not afraid of not getting things right!  And then he covered them with icing.  They were actually pretty yummy.

It was a good staycation, fun, memorable, and very easy to plan!