Pumpkin Patch 2015

A couple of weeks ago, we made our annual trek to the local pumpkin patch called Bi-Zi Farms.  It not only has a large pumpkin patch, but also has lots of other activities such as a farm animal petting area, corn maze, and other things.

Karina enjoyed sitting on a saddle to lasso pretend cattle.

This was Xiao Yu's first time, of course, and he enjoyed riding on the little tractors they have.  He absolutely loves riding anything that resembles a bicycle.

Cousin Anders got Xiao Yu a little cup of freshly pressed cider.  He took sips of it and of course liked it since it's so sweet.

The other kids visited the cider pressing station as well.

There is also a station where you husk a corn cob and then run it through a machine that scrapes the kernels off.  Then, you can grab handfuls of the kernels to put through yet another machine that grinds it into meal.  And then you can take the meal and throw it into the chicken pen.

There is a pumpkin launch area where you launch softball sized pumpkins towards large garbage can-sized bins about 30 yards away.  Xiao Yu, as he usually does, jumped right into the thick of things.  This boy does not like to sit on the side lines!

The bungee cords can be quite tight, so Xiao Yu needed a little bit of help in pulling the pumpkin backwards.

Eliana tried her hand at it as well.  She is strong enough to do it herself.

And away it goes!

Close, but not close enough.

And Karina tried it as well.

Then we got on a hay ride to get to the pumpkin patch.

You get one pumpkin per admission....so our wheelbarrow became very full.

The kids enjoyed the hay ride back.

There was a washing station to brush the mud off.

Before leaving, we entered the corn maze.

It's actually quite large and covers an area about the size of a football field, it seemed like.  After a while, one could get quite disoriented in it.  They provided a map and Anders served as the guide.   Without the map, one could spend hours lost in the maze.

Anders finally led out towards the way out!

And that was our pumpkin patch experience this year.

And to go along with the Fall-type motif, here is "homework" that Gabriel did for his preschool.  He traced out the letters in his name, which we were impressed with.  This is because he has not demonstrated any special aptitude in writing and drawing.  (In contrast, Gabey is astoundingly good at kitchen skills, such as cutting slices of a tomato using a chef's knife or flipping a pancake using a spatula.)  He also drew a smiley face and we do believe it's the first time ever that he has done that!

Fun with PJs

It's getting cold in the evenings now, so Karina decided to put on a nightgown when getting ready for bed.  Xiao Yu hadn't seen nightgowns before but was very impressed.  He kept wanting to touch Karina's nightgown.

So Elvin decided to go one step further and put another one of Karina's nightgowns on Xiao Yu.  He likes playing dress up and liked putting it on.

 The girls found this to be hilarious and posed with him.  That is, after they put a princess crown headband on him, and you can't see it in the picture, but we is also wearing Karina's tap dancing shoes.

 Then Eliana wanted something else on him, so off comes the night gown.

 And on goes a Disney princess nightgown.

 Here he is in all his (her?) glory!

He was quite content wearing all this, but one day when he is older and sees these pictures, he'll regret it!

Happy July 4th!

We would like to share about our July 4th festivities this past summer...

Emily's sister and brother-in-law came to visit from Colorado, which was exciting because then they could meet Xiao Yu for the first time and also, we met our newest niece for the first time too.

They stayed at our house and the kids got to play together.  Cousin Jace is very close in age to Gabey.  Here is a rare shot of all three boys playing together (well).  It was summer so the two boys were in their outfit of choice--being naked.

The weather was pretty hot although not too bad in the mornings.  Here is Karina showing off some of her skills on the hanging bar to Uncle Darin.

Karina was also very interested in her new cousin Julia.  Karina is in a very chatty phase of life and was making all sorts of observations to Aunt Jenny.

We went to Emily's mom's house for a dinner and get-together.  We had baked salmon as well as other tasty things.

The kids got to sit at their own kid table and enjoyed drinking fizzy fruit juice drinks.

The kids play around more...

As you might know, they allow people to buy fireworks here.  We bought a small amount to set up, although many people here, including our neighbors, spend thousands of dollars on huge fireworks that make humungous explosions.

We set a few off in front of the house.  This was Xiao Yu's first time, of course and he liked the loud noises.

Karina didn't appreciate them as much.

Here is cousin Lena setting them off.

In the evening, after we returned home, we let the girls go out to watch the show set off by our neighbors.  They were setting them off about 3 houses down the street.  Ear protectors were in order! Karina actually found it to be too much and after five minutes went inside to watch Strawberry Shortcake -- clever use of her getting to stay up late!

See...they are huge!  Some of the explosions are so large that it makes the windows of our house shake.  We wonder how many accidents are caused by these...

It was a long day and late night for everyone.  The next day, Xiao Yu was so tired that...

My Trip to the Zoo by Eliana

This is where we [Eliana] went on our first field trip in 2nd grade today.  We went to the Oregon Zoo.

That's the home of the sea otters.  You can't really see them, but they were really cute.

That picture is of the leopard.  I couldn't really get a good picture of it because it was behind those leaves.  But you can see its spots.

That's a picture of the monkeys.  I couldn't really take a good picture of it because they were behind those bars.  But you can see the white and black of their fur.

This is another monkey I found.  It was staring straight at us and so it was a good time to take a picture.  You can really see it.

This is a picture of a chameleon I found.  It is really cool because it changes colors.  And I saw its eyes and it has really cool swirls of green and red.

These are the flamingos that I saw.  They were really cute and so I took a picture of them.  My sister wanted me to take a picture of them too.  She is in pre-school and so she didn't come on the field trip.

Those are some ducks I found.  They are really cute and I really wanted to take a picture of them.  So I did.

This is a lungfish.  Seemed kind of weird to me that this fish was out of water and it was fine.

This is a porcupine.  It's really spiky and you can see the spikes.  It looks sort of like a really hairy cow, maybe.

This is a giraffe.  I think you already know this but I want to put it in.  It was reaching really far up over the ledge if it wanted to.

These are mole rats.  I can't tell if they are babies or grown.  But they are really cute.  I found some other ones that were eating broccoli, corn, and carrot.  We had broccoli for dinner tonight.

[Elvin's commentary: Mole rats are some of my favorite animals because they are one of the few animals other than insects that live underground in a colony.  And these are not babies, they are fully grown and are about the size of a hamster.]

This is a gazelle.  It was in the giraffe exhibit but I couldn't take a picture of it then because I needed to get to a different point to see it.  This is the last picture that I took because then I ran out of batteries.  Too bad!

Family Photo Shoot

A couple of months ago, we hired a professional photographer to snap a few photos of our family.  We wanted to do this so that we could have a family photo that included Xiao Yu in the pictures.

We know this person from church and having a two little girls herself, she is good with the kids and patient.

We had two shots that for sure we wanted to get...a shot of the kids and one of our whole family.  Everything else was bonus.

The photographer tried the method where all the kids would hold hands and walk/run towards the camera.  The kids had fun but no 100% normal shots came out of this.  We're not sure why the girls have their tongues out.

Putting them on a bench seemed to help them settle down a little bit.  But they were still easily distracted, as you can see.

But she FINALLY got a good one.  Yes!!!!

She also got other ones which were cute.  Here are the two "middle" kids together.  No matter how much we tried, we could not comb Gabriel's hair and have it stay looking like it was combed.

Here is another one of Gabey.  You'll notice the sticks laying on the table next to him.  He is really into sticks now and he is constantly in trouble for stabbing and hitting his siblings with them.

And here he is being tickled.

 Xiao Yu did not have the "uncombed hair" issue.  We had just given him a hair cut.

We were at a park and one thing that intrigued the kids was the water fountain.  It seems like all kids like water fountains and ours are no exception.

 We got a good shot as a couple.  You'll notice that in Elvin's pants pocket, a wooden stick is sticking out.  This was confiscated from Gabey moments before; you can probably guess why.

Here we are trying for the family shot.  Xiao Yu is crouched down probably because this is the very first time he's ridden on Elvin's shoulders and probably this is the first time ever in his life.  Elvin doesn't really ever put the kids on his shoulders and he is probably feeling very high up right now.

In this shot, all the kids are looking at the camera--what a miracle!  However, the composition, we feel like, is a little funky.

Finally, we got the shot we wanted.  Everyone is smiling (including Gabey--which is currently our most not willing to cooperate child) and at least in the picture, pretending to get along!