Reunion in Sunriver!

This past summer, Emily's family decided to visit Sunriver, which is a resort town in central Oregon.  We rented two houses there and several of Emily's siblings come together to hang out.

The houses were part of a resort community with a wide assortment of activities.

Gabe loves playing games and this resort had many of them.  He enjoyed playing this game, ladder ball, with Uncle Rob.

He also wanted to try his hand at tennis.  This was his first time playing tennis and did not too badly.

And he also wanted to play soccer.  There was a patch of dirt behind the house and while playing soccer with daddy, kicked up a lot of dust.  And because he gets so sweaty the dust stuck to him and so he quickly became very sooty.  He looked like a coalminer by the time he was done.

We went into town to see what there was to do.  The kids found a shave ice place and enjoyed that.  It was very hot there.

We joined the rest of the family in an ice cream shop (where there was air conditioning!)

The resort has an artificial lake stocked with trout.  Gabe wanted to go fishing and so did his cousin Jace, who is absolutely obsessed about fishing.

The resort area also had a really nice pool.

The pool was a short 1/4 mile walk away.

The kids enjoyed spending time there to cool off.

This was Karina's first summer not wearing a life jacket in the pool since she can now reliably hold her breath and paddle in the water.

A group of folks decided to go white water rafting.  They really enjoyed it.

Gabe didn't want to go and stayed behind to ... of course... play more games.

In the evenings we would go fishing.  A gentleman with a fly fishing rod was there and hooked on to a fish.  He let Karina reel it in.

And here is her catch.  A big trout!

At night, we roasted marshmallows.

There was also canoeing available.

And also stand-up paddle boarding which the girls tried and were able to do successfully.  It actually was easier for them because they are so light, they couldn't tip over the boards even if they tried.

Gabe tried his hand at pool.

And also shuffleboard.

And he played checkers.

And Uno.

Xiao Yu was really happy because he got to spend time with his favorite cousin, Anders.

Millie is an expert hair braider and did Karina's hair.

In the end, the kids had lots of fun and were EXHAUSTED.  Gabe even took a nap, which he hasn't done in years.

The family decided that we will probably be back next year!

Lion King!

The two girls love theater and this fall, they tried out for the musical Lion King Jr. with the local community youth theater group.  They both got parts--Eliana was an antelope and Karina was a wildebeest.  You have to be eight to try out and Karina just turned eight.  This was her first show ever.

They rehearsed, memorized their songs, and learned their dances every weekend for 6 weeks.  You can see Karina in the background of this picture.  They also had to learn how to put on their make-up because they need to do it themselves before each show.

The week before the show started, they got to watch their musical-mates perform.

And here they are backstage just before a show.  Karina has the huge white horns and brown costume in the front of the picture.

There were 7 shows over two weekends.  The whole family went to watch, even Yeh-Yeh and Nai-Nai who flew in from California.

It was a wonderful show, with impressive costumes, wonderful singing, and neat choreography.  The actors were encouraged to mimic the moves of the animals they were representing.

 Karina was part of a herd of wildebeests.

 Eliana, on the far right, was part of a grasslands ensemble.

If you are familiar with the story, you'll know that the wildebeests stampede and trample Mufasa.  Karina, in the front, left, was helping to do the stampeding.

In the intermission, Gabe ate a snack and when he saw the sign below, decided to become a rebel and  put a handful of granola bar beyond that point.

And then the show came to an end in the second act.  Both girls were on stage for the final scene where Simba and Nala introduce the new baby lion to the world.

Lots of friends and relatives came to see the show.  Afterwards, the actors come out from backstage so that you can say 'hi'.  Mommy was there because she was a volunteer parent in charge of the green room.  She attended every single show!!!

All the actors got to take staged pictures at one point in time.  Here is the "herd" of antelopes.  Eliana is in the bottom right hand corner.

 Here is the herd of wildebeests.  Karina is second from the right side, on the bottom.

And here is the entire cast and crew--all 90 of them!  It was quite a large production and they pulled it off very well without actually that much time to rehearse!

And there's a tradition with this theater group that the high schoolers will sometimes go out at night and leave a bunch of plates and plastic forks in the front yard of other actors.  It's called getting "forked" and it's considered an honor to get forked.  Our house got forked one night; the only hiccup was that Elvin heard noises in the front yard and when he saw teenagers fooling around, he didn't know about this forking tradition and considered calling the police!  They ran away when they saw him peering out the window.

We are very proud of our girls and all the hard work they put into the show!

Soccer Mania

As you may know, Gabe is crazy about soccer.  At home, anything remotely round is turned into a soccer ball by him.  He is constantly dribbling inside the house anything from a tiny bouncy ball to a basketball.  Needless to say, it makes Emily crazy and she banishes him from the kitchen.

With fall soccer done, he wanted to sign up for another round of soccer, which started a couple of weeks ago.  And he still loves it.  (And thankfully, it's indoors!)

This past Saturday was the first game.  Here he is chasing down a ball...

Here he is getting ready to shoot.  And in this play, he actually scores!

The quarters are ten minutes long and afterwards, he got pretty winded!

He rotated into being a goalie.

Unlike last time when he was a goalie and let in numerous goals, this time he was on top of it and made a couple of saves.

Here he is getting his treat bag.

Happy Halloween!!!

The pre-Halloween festivities this year began with a trip to the local pumpkin patch, Bizi Farms.  The kids have been going there since Eliana was a baby and this year was no different.

The kids rode on the hay ride to get to the field.  Cousin Lena came down from Seattle to join in.

Pumpkins were carefully selected from amongst the hundreds available.

The kids also spent time with the activities.  They really enjoyed the rubber ducky race where they float down the tracks if you pump the water pump fast enough.

They also enjoyed jumping into the gigantic corn bin, which made them filthy by covering them with a weird white corn-based powder.

The weekend before Halloween, it was time to carve the pumpkins.  This year, all the kids helped with taking the ultra slimy "guts" out of the pumpkins, even Xiao Yu!

Karina carved her pumpkin 100% by herself, also a first.  She carved three faces into the pumpkin.  None of which were super scary individually but it was rather creepy having three faces stare out at you from one pumpkin.

Eliana also carved the pumpkin 100% by herself.  The theme for this year for her pumpkin was fruit.

And here they are...Gabe wanted a Star Wars X-wing fighter on his pumpkin and Xiao Yu chose a silly face.

And then Halloween finally arrived and it was time to head off and collect candy.  Gabe dressed up as a soccer player (which was not a big stretch for him), Eliana was a drop of water (she drew the drop on the cardboard using pastels by herself), Xiao Yu was a flower, and Karina was a flower seedling (a little bit harder to fathom than Xiao Yu's costume).

And they were off.  THANKFULLY it wasn't raining.  Yay!  Elvin was very happy about that.

After going around the block, it was time to come back home.  It's amazing that they are able to collect about a gallon of candy in only an hour.  And then the kids inspected their loot.

And they sorted, divided, and categorized their candy.  The two big categories were: candy-I-want/like and candy-I-don't-like.  Things in the second category were bartered and traded away for more favorable candy.  However, some things, like 3 Muskateers and Baby Ruth, were rejected by all.

Overall, it was a good Halloween.  And what do you do with your empty Halloween pails, after Halloween is over?  Well, if you're Gabriel then you stack then up into a Halloween "snowman"!  That boy is pretty creative!