Our kids had fun during Easter several weeks ago. Their cousins from Colorado were in town and so on the Saturday before Easter, we all arrived at our church to get ready for the annual Easter egg hunt. We've been doing this for several years and it's a major highlight for our kids.
Here is Gabe with his little friend from church. They are both a little quirky and are two peas in a pod. Gabe is purposely trying to look silly for this picture, as usual.
And they're off!
We've counseled the kids to bypass the first several eggs to get to an area with no kids around them.
And then it's all over in an amazingly brief amount of time. Even though several thousand eggs were laid out on the field, these kids pick them up in no time. Xiao Yu was able to get a ton!
And every year, they put out a small handful of golden eggs. These are very coveted because you can exchange them for a large prize. For days, Karina has been talking about getting the golden egg. Ironically, none of our kids got it but instead their little cousin did! Leave it to the two year old to find it!
And here they are going through all their loot.
In the afternoon, we started to dye eggs.
The egg dyeing kits seem to get more sophisticated every year. This year's kit has a little paint roller that you could use to paint your eggs with.
And some of them ended up with a shiny coat after they dried.
And then that evening, we put together their Easter baskets.
Gabe and Xiao Yu got a little aluminum camp cookware set.
Karina got a pen set with lots of colors, as well as a stuffed animal bird.
And then we also did a egg hunt in our house that morning before church, as we always do. The eggs are color coded--each kid has "their" color. This is so that we can "tailor"the degree of difficulty with finding the eggs according to each kid.
Even after all the normal eggs were found, there was still a golden egg out there. And then finally, it was spotted!!! Both Gabe and Karina lunged for it at the same time.
And Karina came up victorious!
The prize? A two-dollar bill and a silver dollar!
After the egg hunt, we were off to church for Easter service.
And that was our Easter! That evening, when having their customary dessert after dinner, the kids got creative. Eliana plopped her blue bunny Peep in a nest of vanilla ice cream and surrounded it with Annie's cracker bunnies.
Karina created a nest using sour patch gummies, put a couple M&M's in the middle as eggs and dropped a Peep on top! Yummy! We hope you had a good Easter as well!
It seems like Eliana has been bitten by the acting bug and several months ago she tried out and got a role in a musical with the local youth theater group. The musical itself was Pirates of Penzance and even though we had not seen it before, it grew on us over time.
After the kids were selected, they only have 5 weekends' worth of time to rehearse and get ready for the performances. It is amazing what these kids are able to accomplish in such a short amount of time.
And then came the big day--opening night. Eliana got a part as a "Daughter"--one of about a dozen actresses playing the daughters of one of the main characters. Here she is in one of her costumes. We like this program because it not only gives them a chance to perform, but also teaches them character traits and things like responsibility. All the kids are expected to put on their own make-up and costumes and, when backstage, to keep track of time and know when they are going on.
Here are all the "daughters" plus their father, the Major General.
Here is the entire cast.
This theater group is all parent run. They need volunteers to pass out programs on the night of the shows and Gabe and Karina decided that they wanted to help out!
When you volunteer, you get to wear a special button!
And as a reward, you get free tickets to the show. Karina volunteered a couple times and got to see the show several times. Here are their seats in a reserved section of the theater.
And then the show begins!
When Elvin took the kids, he let them pick out an item from the concession stand. Karina chose a soda, which may be her favorite food.
Gabe made sure he got to imbibe as well.
Several friends from church came to see Eliana perform.
Also, Elvin's parents flew up from California to see Eliana on stage! Good job Eliana!
With Eliana in public school this year, we had to take Spring Break during the actual spring break week for the school district. And in planning for it, we tried looking for a cabin to rent, but couldn't find something within our price range and that wasn't too far.
And then we asked the kids what they would like to do if we were to stay in the area, and they were happy to do activities around here; and thus our staycation was born.
Each kid picked out two special things they wanted to do or go to, and so on Thursday of that week, we headed off to...Ikea! Eliana chose Ikea. She wanted to eat breakfast at Ikea and wander around leisurely.
Here is the breakfast!
And there is Eliana. She slowly walked through the various showrooms, opening and closing cabinets. Looking around...
She checked out the pre-designed bedrooms...
The other kids entertained themselves by playing the various stuffed animals and looking around as well.
To Eliana's delight, we stayed long enough to eat lunch there as well. Almost everyone had hot dogs and Xiao Yu had pizza. Elvin bought a bag of potato chips and the special Ikea apple cider.
Later on, we decided to fulfill Gabe's request, which was to visit the local bowling alley. There was a 90 minute wait for a lane, so we played some arcade games first. The games are very different from when Elvin was a kid...they had fancy games like this...
Gabe quite enjoyed driving... An adult needed to stand there next to him to press the gas pedal because his little legs are too short to reach.
And at the end, it would display a picture of your face. Gabe made sure he had a silly picture taken of him by the arcade game.
And then it was time to bowl. We set up the bumpers for the kids. They develop their own interesting techniques...
Here is Karina bowling.
Here is Eliana bowling.
They have a ramp for the kids. You put the ball on top after positioning it, and then push the ball down.
It's a pretty ingenious contraption.
One time, Eliana (somehow) managed to get her bowling ball skip over the lane divider and land into our neighboring lane. We had to ask the worker to go down the lane to fetch the ball for her.
Here are the scores. Daddy got the lowest score out of everyone!
And then we had dinner at the fine dining establishment of Red Robin. Mac & cheese, pasta, and chicken strips were the kids' choice of food.
The next day, we went to our community pool to swim. The kids love this place since it has a shallow area, and then a lazy river where the water has a current, and then a deeper part with a water slide--which Xiao Yu loves.
Here is Gabe. He is in a phase where we will not pose normally for pictures. We basically have no picture of him looking normal for a picture for the past several months.
Xiao Yu likes wearing these goggles. The problem is that he likes them on really tight, but they're on so tight it looks like his eyeballs are about to pop out. To each his own.
Karina is getting better and better at swimming. Her and Gabe are taking lessons right now, and she is just on the cusp of officially being able to swim without a life vest.
They had some friends from church join us, which was fun for everyone.
After swimming, Karina wanted to go to Menchies, so off we went. We spent several minutes trying out various samples.
After making some selections, it was time to put on toppings, which actually is the real reason the kids like this place.
Here is Gabe's concoction. Fruit, sprinkles, Nerds, strawberries, along with marshmallow cream and mango boba. Yum!
Xiao Yu was almost done with his before some of the kids sat down.
By this time, on the way home after 1 and half days of playing, Karina declared that she was tired and asked whether she could take a nap? "Sure!" was the answer and so she made her way upstairs and promptly fell asleep.
After she woke up, we headed off to the rock climbing gym. There have been several birthday parties held in this Vancouver locale and the kids enjoy going there.
Technically, you're supposed to stick to handholds of a certain color to stick to that "route", but the kids help themselves to any color.
Since we burned calories climbing, we decided we needed to replace them by going to Cold Stone.
Everyone got their own ice cream. Eliana got a mint ice cream with brownies and fudge mixed in.
Can't let even on drop go to waste!
After we came home from that, the next special treat was watching a movie. The kids ended up watching the live action version of Beauty and the Beast.
And for dinner, we headed off to MOD Pizza. We customize the order by getting mushrooms and olives for Gabe and Xiao Yu.
We used to only order 3 pizzas for our family of six. But now that the kids are bigger, we have to order 4!
No slice is complete without a healthy dose of parmesan cheese. When we started dinner, the jar of parmesan cheese was almost all full. By the time we ended, it was almost completely empty!
And that was our staycation! Everyone was pretty tired but also content that they go to do their favorite things. Hope you had a good spring break as well!
