OMSI!

A few weeks ago, a friend from Xiao Yu's preschool invited him to a birthday party at OMSI, which is the science and tech museum in Portland.  All the kids were allowed to come along and so off we went!

There was a section where you could use big blocks made out of foam to build one of those arches the Romans used to build bridges.

So the kids started stacking them up.

And then we did it!

Then it was time for the fun part--knocking it down!

There was a smaller version, which was also fun to build.  First you build the base.

And then you stack blocks on top.

And then when you remove the base, if you've done it right, it stays up.

In another section, we saw some space-related things.

Xiao Yu went inside the space capsule.

And there was a 'brain fair' going on, with all these booths set up talking about different aspects of the brain.  They even had preserved human brains that the kids were allowed to touch.  The kids touched the brain of a left hemisphere, from a woman who donated her brain to science.

And then we had pizza for lunch, cake, and opened presents!  It was a fun day!

Snow Day (or rather Snow Week)!

This past winter, much to the kids' disappointment, we have not had very much snow.  However, in mid-February, we finally got a couple of little snow storms in a row.

At first, even though it was barely below freezing, it did snow--about an inch or so.  It was after dinner and the kids quickly put their snow gear on and rushed outside.

 Gabe loves his scooter and so brought it out, and looped the rope of the sled to the scooter.

 And then he got the little tricycle out, which was equally hard to make go forward.

 Eliana decided to make her mark on the hood of the car.

 Then the girls decided to build a snow man.  The snow was really slushy so packed together really well.

 Eventually the snowman got pretty big.

 The snow on the tree branches made beautiful patterns.

Eliana's hair had wet and frozen snow mashed in.

The next day, the schools were on a two-hour late start, so Eliana ended up going to school but the other kids went out to play.  They needed to be quick, because it was melting quickly!

 With Daddy's help, they built a super tall snowman!

 The wet snow was perfect for rolling into huge snowballs.

Now it was time to stick the balls together.  Gabe was using a gardening hoe to make a flat spot on top of the ball.  The ball was so big that Daddy had to help lifting it up.

And then another snowstorm moved into the area.  The kids left out tupperware in order to catch the snow.   They love eating snow with flavored syrup on top.

 Snow!  Eliana puts condensed milk in addition to the syrup.

Because there was a couple inches of snow that night, the school district announced via their website that school was cancelled the next day.

 Can you see how disappointed Eliana was?

 The next day we had a snow ball fight!

It got pretty heated.  There were lots of snowballs being lobbed.  Lucky for Elvin, most of the kids have not yet developed perfect aim.

 And here is our backyard that got temporarily transformed into a winter wonderland.

 It was fairly warm the rest of the week, so the snow was totally gone after several days.  But it was fun while it lasted!