Happy thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!  As Thanksgiving approached, Elvin's mom ordered some treats for the kids.  

We picked them up and they were a dozen mini bundt cakes.  

There were about ten different flavors and we cut them into quarters so people could try lots of different flavors.  Karina's favorite flavor was confetti.  Gabe liked red velvet cake flavor.  Eliana liked the marble which had streamed of chocolate cake mixed into the vanilla cake.  

For Thanksgiving, we didn't have family coming over.  Instead, we had a friend who is mentoring a family from Iraq that emigrated to the U.S. a couple of years ago.  They were wondering what Thanksgiving was like and so we invited them over.  The family is a grandmother with two grand kids.  Also she brought her friend who brought one kid over.  Their English was really good.

We usually don't serve turkey or any of the typical Thanksgiving accoutrements.  Instead we had steak and roast chicken.  They brought over lots of food as well...this is a rice dish with huge chunks of lamb.  It was really good.

So we had a fun Thanksgiving and had interesting conversations about the holidays that are celebrated in the U.S. and in Iraq!

The steak we had was on the bone and we gave Lucky the bone.  We've never done this before and he just stared at it for a while before he started licking it.  He's a funny dog.

Later that weekend, we went to the local middle school to run around on their track.  Gabe brought the soccer ball to play around.  Xiao brought his bicycle.

Xiao was great on his bike.  He is pretty much at the point where he won't need training wheels for much longer!

We hope you had a good Thanksgiving as well!

Fall Happenings

Fall is here in Vancouver, as can be seen by the apple crop that has come in.  This year we have had a bumper crop of fuji apples, which are very sweet and juicy.

School started and in addition to home schooling, more of our kids go to school as well.  Eliana started taking classes at our local middle school.  She leaves to catch the bus every morning which comes around at 7:30am.  At school, she takes English, Social Studies, and Science and then comes home by 11:15am.

Gabe goes to school one day a week, so Monday is the day he has to get up early!

And Karina goes to school one day a week as well.  

Her bus comes even earlier at 7:15am!

And Xiao Yu goes to school every day.  He really enjoys it and has a good teacher.  For some reason, his bus picks him up across the street and many times, Lucky is out there with him.

Gabe is back in soccer, which is good because it gets some of his excess energy out.

He scored goals several times but his specialty is playing in the midfield.  He is great at gaining possession of the ball by stealing it from others and then making a super accurate pass to a teammate close to the goal.

At the end of the season, he got a certificate.  It's addresses to "Gabriel...aka Mr. Business".

Here is a team picture.

And here is a goofy version, and of course he is the monkey hanging off of the goal.

He recently got his second haircut during our two year long pandemic.  This time Elvin convinced him to go to a barber shop instead of doing it at home--which can take more than an hour instead of 15 minutes.

Much better!

When she has free time, Eliana can be found talking to her friends on the phone.  She's a teenager now and  I guess that's what teenagers do!

Gabe and Xiao Yu every once in a while play games together.  Here, Gabe taught Xiao what the various chess pieces do.

Xiao has started getting into puzzles.  These are puzzles that Emily got and Xiao Yu likes putting them together.

Here's a tougher one with multiple parrots to piece together!

Karina continues in her baking streak.  This time she is making molasses crinkles, which have dark molasses in them.

After they get rolled into balls, they get dipped into sugar.

The cookie dough is yummy of course.

And here they are...just out of the oven!

Gabe has started to bake as well...he decided one day to make monkey bread, which tastes similarly to cinnamon rolls.  First you make the dough and then let it rise.

After rising, Gabe rolled out the dough and then cut it into segments.

At this point, Karina started helping out by rolling the segments into little balls.

Then they formed an assembly line where they dipped the balls into butter then rolled them into a cinnamon and sugar mixture.

After a second rise in the pan, into the oven they went!

Here is the monkey bread after coming out of the oven and out of the pan!

And everything tastes yummier with icing.  This was super yummy!

And because of the rainy weather here, we decided to go with some friends to the local rock climbing gym.  All the kids enjoy climbing and, unlike Elvin, have no fear of heights.

They made up a game where they were speed climbing on a certain section of the wall up to about 12 feet high.  And they had us time them with a stopwatch.  At first, it took them about 15 seconds to go up and eventually they got it to about 6 seconds!

And so that's been our fall!

Happy Halloween!

In the week before Thanksgiving, we took advantage of a rare sunny day to go to the pumpkin patch.  

Aunt Gretchen and cousin Lena drove down from Seattle.  Which was good for Xiao Yu because he needed a little help at the pumpkin launch.  The rubber straps are quite strong and he needed some assistance staying on the ground.

Gabe requested help as well.

Karina and Gabe looooover the corn pit.  It is full of corn kernels, and, by the way, so super duper dusty.  

So after swimming in it, they came out covered with corn dust and also needed to empty their pockets too.

The petting zoo area is always popular.  Also, there's a little candy dispenser machine where you can buy a handful of feed for a quarter.

And then it was time to pick out a pumpkin.  As always, it's a big decision worthy of lots of deliberation.

Here are their picks!  

Lucky tagged along and rested while the rest of the kids roamed around.

Gabe slowed down enough to let us take a picture.

And Eliana too.

We met up with our nephew and his family at the farm.  We haven't seen them since their wedding and also met their kids for the first time.  They have moved back to the area so look forward to seeing them more.  Here's our attempt at a semi-socially distant group picture!

After the pumpkins came home, it was time to carve!

People were hard at work taking out the guts!

The seeds went into the paper bags, which then went to the chickens.

And as far as trick-or-treating...we decided that again instead of trick or treating, the kids would go to the store to buy two dollar's worth of candy from the bulk bin.  Much easier than going around house to house!

The kids still traded candy a little bit even though everything they got they picked themselves.

Here are their pumpkins!  Eliana carved "Hamilton" into hers.  Xiao impressively carved Thomas the Train.  Karina carved nighttime creatures in hers, an owl, a raccoon and a bat.  And Gabe a Start Wars B-wing into his.

Happy Halloween!