From Super Shaggy to Shorn

One side effect of COVID is that Gabe's hair has gotten REALLY long.  It was not by design, but it just sort of happened.  Before we knew it, it had grown so much that he started looking like a surfer dude.  And then after that...  well, it was so long in the back that you could tie a pony tail. And in the front it was down to below his mouth.  To the point where he started constantly chewing on his hair, which bothered Emily.  And then he would complain that hair would get stuck between his teeth, and he'd have to pick it out with his fingers.

At that point we decided he was going to get a haircut.

But he doesn't like going to the hair salon and would have to get his hair cut at home.  Which we decided not to fight him on especially during COVID.  So Elvin looked up some YouTube videos and started chopping away...

In in the end, because of Elvin's inexperience, it took over an hour.  The only thing that kept Gabriel willing to sit there was because he was doing one of his favorite activities, which was watching YouTube videos of people playing Minecraft.  It's quite a senseless activity, but he likes it.

In the end, he turned out looking like a totally different kid!  Emily says he looks two years younger.  What do you think?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!  Our Thanksgiving was much lower key that usual.

In the morning, after Gabe got up, he took it upon himself to make a "Happy Thanksgiving" sign out of piece of paper, Scotch tape them together, and then hang them up on the wall in our living room.

The "Happy" fit between our windows, but not the "Thanksgiving"!  So some adjustments need to be made.

Emily's sister from Seattle drove down with her kids.  They arrived in the afternoon and we hung out.  Unfortunately, we completely forgot to take a picture of the food prepared, so a picture of some raw ingredients will have to suffice.  We had roast chicken and potatoes along with baked salmon (which was the salmon that Elvin caught during his trip to Alaska earlier this year.)  We also had cheesy biscuits and broccoli as the vegetable.  

The kids had fun playing the Nintendo Wii.  Emily's brother has a Wii system that they hadn't used in years and dropped it off earlier in the week.  Xiao Yu's favorite cousin (and quite possibly his favorite person) is his big cousin Anders, who helped him play some games.

And for dessert we had two types of pumpkin pie.  Eliana prepared some fresh whipped cream in her special whipped cream dispenser powered by compressed NO2 canisters.

Here is everyone enjoying dessert.  

You may have noticed that we did not actually have any turkey.  No one except Eliana reports actually liking turkey so we never have that on Thanksgiving if Elvin is cooking.  

But on a trip to Costco later that weekend, the turkeys were on sale and Elvin could not pass it up!  He ended up buying a 17 lb. bird for only $7 because it was $10 off!  Wow!

We ended up having turkey on the Sunday after Thanksgiving...well sort of.  We did not actually have roasted turkey.  Instead Elvin roasted some pieces and made a broth out of the bones.  Then he added some meat to make a turkey soup.  He also chopped up turkey meat and we had turkey fried rice as well.  

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving!

Major Haircut!

It had been a while since Eliana had cut her hair and she'd been thinking about cutting it.  Before, she had always kept it long because of her involvement with Journey, the local theater group for kids.  The parts often needed the girls to have longer hair.

But with the pandemic, Journey has not had in-person shows and so Eliana seized at the chance at having shorter hair for a while.

She wasn't sure how much she was going to take off.  At the hair dressers, she asked how it would look like if they took 8, or 10 or 12 inches off.  In the end she decided to go for 14 inches off even though it's a little more than she was planning.  This was because there's a non-profit organization called Wigs for Kids that takes donations of hair and makes wigs for kids who need them.  She didn't want her cut hair to go to waste and so she went for it!

At home she packaged up the hair and sent it off.  We're proud of you, Eliana!  And her haircut looks great!

More of the COVID life...

Because of COVID, the kids have pretty much no outside activities.  So how did the kids fill up their time during the summer?

It was a great day when our local library re-started services.  We could put books on hold and do curbside pick up.  And when a new load of books came in, it was almost like Christmas.

A illustrated Harry Potter book came which, which both Gabe and Eliana wanted to read.  But they were in different sections of the book.  The solution?

There are also games of "chopsticks" that the kids play, which is a simple game of addition using your fingers.

And if you don't want to do any math, there's always good ol' arm wrestling.  Eliana's gotten quite strong!

And if you're not into arm wrestling, then there is plain old wrestling.

Eliana is bigger but Gabe is more....aggressive shall we say.

One day, the kids said they wanted to make dumplings, which we normally only do during Chinese New Year. 

Unfettered by tradition, they started wrapping the dumpling in lots of different ways.

Check out the various shapes.

They were yummy.  Everyone likes them fried except for Karina who likes them boiled.

Eliana got inspired and made some pickles for Xiao Yu, who loves pickles.  She included some basil which she grew herself in the garden.

And thank goodness for videos.  We have had movie nights...

Also Karina and Gabe have found some YouTube channels they really like.  They like watching videos of other people playing Minecraft (which Emily finds exasperating--why watch a video of someone else playing a game instead of playing the game yourself?!)

We've also had outdoor video watching sessions...

And the kids love to look at the Humane Society website looking at the kittens and puppies up for adoption.    They would check daily and inform Mommy and Daddy on what's available.  (This was before we got our own puppy.)

And we have had some sleepovers downstairs.  It's fun to sleep in the living room every once in a while!

We had some unseasonably sunny days in September so went to the park to burn off energy.

We overall had a good summer and hope you did too!

New Puppy!

Because having rabbits and chickens was not enough, a few weeks ago we decided to get a puppy!  The prospect of being stuck at home for a few more months made it seem like an ideal time to plunge into this new adventure.  Also, Elvin is working from home some, so that made the timing even more appealing.  

We wanted a dog that would be good with kids.  We settled on a doodle so that there wouldn't be as much shedding.  We began to research and found out that in addition to golden doodles and labradoodles, there were lots of other types of doodles now.... Irish doodles (Irish setter mixed with poodle) and bernedoodles (Bernese mountain dogs with poodle).  

And then after emailing a breeder, she mentioned she had a "double doodle", which is a labradoodle crossed with a golden doodle.  She also said that this little fellow had a really pleasant disposition and she sent us a picture...  

We had a few days to make a decision and decided to go for it!  And then began the debate of what to name him.  The kids nominated various names, such as Donut, Pumpkin, Charlie, Jinx, Dusty, and even Nom Nom (that was Gabe's idea.)  But nothing was clicking, or five people would agree to a name, but then the sixth member of the family would veto it.  This dragged on and on and by the time we left to pick him up in eastern Oregon, we still had no name.

So the last weekend in October, Elvin drove out with the two girls the day before and they stayed in a hotel.  They watched TV while eating take-out dinner and this was an interesting life experience for them because at home we don't have 'normal' TV.  When Elvin turned it on, he explained that there are just channels, with things already showing and we have to flip through the channels to find something interesting to watch.  Eliana then suggested, well, then go to the YouTube channel.  Karina asked if there was a Netflix channel.  Elvin tried to explain that TV doesn't have those things.

They watched American Ninja Warrior, but were perturbed by how long and how frequent all the commercials were.  When the show as over, Eliana remarked, "That wasn't really worth it!"  Wow, we are raising kids in an on-demand world.

The next morning the girls were up bright and early.  We grabbed breakfast downstairs which was handed to us by workers wearing gloves and masks.  Everything was wrapped in saran wrap, even Elvin's hard boiled egg.

We met the breeder in the lobby of the hotel and finally got to meet him for the first time!  We still didn't have a name for him, so he was being called "puppy" or "baby" or "sweetheart" depending on who was addressing him.

And thus began our 6 hour journey back home!  

We stopped a couple of times and he went potty for us where he was supposed to.  No accidents in the van, yay!

His harness we got him was too big for him--it kept slipping down to his waist like a belt.  So we put a collar on him.

Here is our second stop.  He was happy to be free to walk around a little.

Time for one picture before getting back in the car for the last leg.

And we finally made it home!  The rest of the family got a chance to meet him.

He gets lots and lots of attention.  Karina is brushing his fur here.  He has really soft and fluffy fur, which needs to be brushed every day.

He also got to meet the girls' rabbits for the first time.  He likes them, as in he likes to chase them.  They, on the other hand, don't like being chased.

His first week with us, he took lots and lots of naps!  Sometimes in funny positions.

We gave him a bath a few days after he arrived.  He did NOT like it very much.  

Getting another brushing on his fur!

We have started training him on getting used to his crate.  He will go in there but does not like spending too much time in there.

When we had pizza one night, Xiao Yu make his pizza in the shape of the new puppy.

After trying lots of different toys, we finally found one that he likes chewing on.  He hasn't like lots of other ones that supposedly are popular with puppies.

He also happens to like licking the plates as they are being put into the dishwasher.  Hmmmm....

He is a fairly snuggly puppy.

And pretty sleepy too, especially after his visit to the vet where he got more vaccinations.

And we'd like to announce that as of a couple days ago, puppy finally has a name!  We all decided to name him Lucky.  Or rather, no one vetoed this name.  So here is Lucky F. Yuen!  (With Fauci being his middle name.  =)