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!