Snow!

To catch the last bit of snow for the season, we drove 1 hour southeast to a sno-park near Mt. Hood, Oregon.

We stopped at a play area and walked around for a bit, but didn't find anywhere to go sledding.

When Emily first set Eliana on the snow, she was very apprehensive and didn't want to walk around. She has a pretty cautious nature.

Later on, she gathered enough courage to walk around the uneven surface herself.
We got back into the car and found another play area. It was pretty bright out and so we put sunglasses on. Eliana wore hers for about 20 seconds before tearing them off.We decided to stay at this park. They has a slope where kids could go inner tubing. They even had a mini-slope for toddlers. Eliana went down on Emily's lap. We weren't sure if she'd like it, but she ended up asking to go again and again and again...

Happy New Year!

Happy year of the tiger! Our Chinese New Year/Valentine's Day was pretty low key. We went to the Chinese grocery store to buy ingredients to eat hot pot. Eliana really liked looking at the live fish, crabs, and lobsters in the tank.

We also had Cold Stone's ice cream.

An update on the slide: Eliana has realized that if she's not wearing her socks, she can climb the slide from the bottom up. Eliana's cousins came over to spend the night and she saw them playing checkers. Later on, she tried playing checkers by herself.Elvin sometimes uses his English-Portuguese dictionary to look up words he doesn't know. Apparently, Eliana also does the same.

Eliana loves to be tickled, or "tee-kel" as she says it.

New slide!

Eliana loves to go to the nearby neighborhood park. We don't mind taking her, except when it's raining. She, of course, doesn't care about getting wet but we don't really enjoy the experience.

Craigslist to the rescue! Emily found a small slide that we now keep in our living room. The first night we got the slide, Eliana went up and down the slide at least 20 times in a row.

Eliana's Soliloquy

This past week, Eliana caught the sniffles and Elvin had a little cold too. So we spent the weekend wiping the snot trails coming out of her nose.

But before that, we took a video of her babbling nonsense and otherwise having fun. She calls Elvin "Papai", which means "Daddy" in Portuguese. If you look closely, she's wearing a badge--it's Elvin's work badge that she loves to wear as well. It is her first question for Papai when he walks in the door. And you'll see her trying to escape into the garage. Lucky for us, she doesn't (yet) know how to unlock the door.