Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!  Our Easter festivities began on Saturday morning when we went to church for the annual Easter Egg Hunt.

The kids were a little bit excited as we exited the van.

 We arrived a bit earlier than the 10am start time because although they put out about 4,000 eggs every year, many many people from the surrounding community comes and the hunt is mostly over in literally 5 minutes.

It was a little bit chilly and so the kids decided to conserve warmth by doing a "penguin huddle"--they learned about this from one of the nature shows they watch.

There is a section dedicated just for 0 to 3 year olds.  This is where the boys were.  The girls went to the 4 to 7 year old section.  This is nice as it evens out the playing field for the kids.

 And it's time!  Xiao Yu gets his first egg.  The challenge is that he wants to open the egg, instead of getting more to put into his basket.  (Yes, we are using Halloween baskets, but hey, it works!)

Gabriel got his egg too; orange, of course!  Elvin put him in bright orange pants so that he'd be easier to spot in a crowd.

After a minute, the boys wanted to go find out what the girls were doing.  We found Karina with a basket chock full of eggs!  She had a successful hunt.

She wanted to see how Gabey had fared...

And being who she is, she started putting some of hers into Gabey's basket.

And then she did likewise for Xiao Yu.

We also caught up with Eliana.  Although most of the eggs were accounted for, she was searching for the golden egg.  Every year, they hide several golden eggs.  If you find one of these, you can turn it in for a special prize.

After the hunt was over, it was time to dig in!  Elvin let the kids eat as much candy as they wanted.  The theory was that instead of having a battle with the kids over when they could eat candy, if they ate it all at once, then there would be no candy left.  They ended up eating most of their candy instead of eating lunch!

Later on in the day, it was time to dye eggs!

 The kids enjoyed dipping the eggs into the dye.

This was Xiao Yu's first time dyeing eggs.  His was yellow, as he thinks this is his color.  (His sippy cup that he always uses is yellow, as is his towel.)

The next morning, it was Easter basket time!  The kids looked through all the goodies they got in their baskets, such as Peeps, electric toothbrushes, and some other small toys.

Eliana made individualized Easter cards for everyone and passed them out.    She even sacrificed some of her own candy in doing so by giving them away to others.

 Xiao Yu was very excited about this basket.

 Then, for breakfast, we ate the eggs that the kids dyed the day before.

 And as dessert after breakfast, Gabey had a Peep.  His was an orange Peep, of course.

After going to church, and then coming back home, in the afternoon, Emily's parents and brother's family came over.  We did another small Easter egg hunt at home...  Xiao Yu knew exactly what to do.

 Gabriel found a bunch too!

 We got to watch Karina in action--she is QUICK!

 Gabey needed help in reaching some of the high up eggs.

And here is the crowd, happy after their hunt.  We let them eat all the candy out of all the eggs.  We put one mini-marshmallow in each--so it's not that much candy and the kids think it's the best!

 We then had some dinner with salmon (actually steelhead) and ham.

And finally, it was time to go.  Grandpa always insists in taking pictures of each family unit as they leave.  Xiao Yu, ever the ham, decided that he needed to take a picture with his cousins' family!

Hope you had a good Easter!

Transitions...

Spring is here and all our daffodils are blooming.  The past several months have brought lots of transitions in our house...

One transition which our legs and hips have appreciated is that we are now completely baby gate free!  There used to be a baby gate between our family room and the stairs.  We put it there because we did not like Xiao Yu climbing up and down the stairs by himself, since he was still a little unsteady on his feet.  

But then, in the fall, Xiao Yu started to want to be potty trained.  And the downstairs bathroom was in our foyer just beyond the baby gate and it became very laborious to keep lifting him over the gate every time he needed to go to the bathroom.  

So finally we took down the baby gate and all of us experienced freedom!

Another big transition was moving Xiao Yu into Gabriel's bedroom.  For almost a year, Xiao Yu had been sleeping on a mattress at the foot of our bed.  While this was necessary at first, but it got old quickly, as we could never have the lights on in our bedroom after Xiao Yu fell asleep, etc.  

However, we wanted to wait until Gabriel had settled down with the new member of our family before we moved his little brother in with him.  Although he was not totally pleased about this new development, he was not overly upset either. 

The arrangement actually worked out fine...sometimes they wake each other up early in the morning, but we have trained both boys, that if they wake up before the other--to leave the room quietly and they stick to this usually.  And we now have our bedroom back!

If you had visited our house in the past months, you would notice a cardboard box underneath Xiao Yu's high chair.  Most people who came over did notice and asked about it...  We filled this box with books, taped it shut, and put it underneath Xiao Yu as support for his feet.  This is because when Xiao Yu's physical therapist came over, she remarked that it might help Xiao Yu concentrate on eating and learning how to chew and swallow better, if he was able to have more stability for his body by having somewhere to put his feet on.  But we didn't really follow up on that piece of advice along with the dozens of other exercises and things were were supposed to do with him but didn't because we had a hard time fitting it into our schedule.  And then his speech therapist mentioned the same thing, and then another did as well.  We realized that if three professionals are all saying the same thing, then maybe we should follow it....

And the biggest transition we've had for Xiao Yu is that he has started pre-school!  He qualifies for a special ed pre-school because of certain delays, such as his speech and so he now goes to pre-school 4 days a week from 8:30am to about 11am.  At first we were a little reticent in sending our new little guy off to pre-school because there was very little parental involvement and because it seemed weird to ship him off to school.  However, we knew that he is a very social kid and likes that type of a setting.  Also, the thought that there would be a teacher and aides teaching him skills sounded great and would take a certain amount of burden from us.  So after meeting the teacher (she was VERY nice) and the aides (they were very nice too), we signed him up.  Here we are walking to his first day of school.  He has his Paw Patrol backpack on, which is bigger than his entire torso.  So it looks like a turtle shell.

Because it's a program run through the school district, they also offer busing.  This for us also seemed quite drastic as we weren't sure how he would react to boarding a vehicle without us on it.  However, he has had and continues to have a crazy fascination with buses and would throw tantrums when he saw other kids on the bus but we didn't let him go in.  So we did sign up for the service where the bus takes him home every day.  This helps Emily with the driving and Xiao Yu is a very happy camper for getting to ride the bus!

So now, in the evenings if Elvin asks Xiao Yu, "How was preschool?" Xiao Yu's answer is always "Two buh!"  (Meaning, "school bus!")  That seems to be the highlight of his day.