Weekend with Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai

Last weekend, Elvin's parents flew up from California to visit.  It'd been 4 months since they'd seen the kids, because we cancelled our Christmas get-together with the three kids being sick.

 

So they hadn't see Gabriel since he was 4 months old.  Now he is several pounds heavier and two clothes sizes bigger.  Yeh-yeh (grandpa) really enjoyed holding Gabriel.  Gabriel, however, at first was no so sure about the whole thing.  You can almost see what he's thinking, "Who is this person holding me?"

 

On Saturday, Elvin, the girls, and Elvin's parents went to OMSI--the local children's science museum in Portland.  (Gabriel stayed home with Emily to take his morning nap.)

 

It was everyone's first time to the museum and we all enjoyed it.  Here is Eliana looking at a funny mirror.



There is a water activities section that had lots of water tables.  Eliana came out of this session with her clothes still all dry.  The same could not be said for Karina, however.  

After watching a IMAX movie in the museum, it was time to eat lunch.  We stopped at a little noodle shop in Portland that serves hand-pulled noodles.  The girls (and Elvin) really like these noodles.

Although Eliana used a fork to eat, Karina insisted on using chopsticks like the grown-ups.  She can actually get food to her mouth with chopsticks.

 

 Gabriel seemed to get better with his stranger anxiety that weekend.  By Sunday morning, he was letting Nai-nai (grandma) hold him. 

 On Sunday afternoon, we started making dumplings.  It's a tradition to eat dumplings during Chinese New Year and so that's what we did.

 Karina helped laying out the dumpling skins. 

We didn't let them touch the filling which has raw pork, so they had fun taking the skins, adding water, and squishing them into play-doh.

 In the end, we ate the feast.

After dinner, Elvin's parents whipped out a ice cream birthday cake, since Elvin's birthday is coming up soon.  The girls couldn't resist sticking their fingers in the icing.  

 We sang "Happy Birthday" in a couple of languages and everyone helped blow the candles out.

 

On Sunday, we also went to a studio to get pictures taken.  The photographer was GREAT with kids...

And we got great photos from that session!