Trip to Sunny California!

Back in September, we made a trip out to California to visit Elvin's parents.  We had planned to leave on Thursday and return the following week.  However, Gabriel came down with a cold, and then Karina and Eliana too.  We almost called the trip off, but they all recovered and so we changed our tickets and flew down on Saturday morning instead.

We grabbed an early flight, so packed our car while it was still dark.

We grabbed our kids while they were still in bed and packed them into the car, still in their jammies.  We parked our van and are taking a shuttle to the airport.  This is fun for the kids.

The last time that Gabriel flew on an airplane, he was about one year old.  So he did not remember how that went and he all this was new to him.

We kept him calm with the trusty iPad.  He didn't want to sit on his on seat, which we paid for.

For the girls, we whipped out a new sticker book for them.  That kept them busy for almost the whole flight.

After we arrived in the San Jose airport, there were hugs all around.

It was sunny and warm in California.  So the kids jumped into the pool.  They had really been looking forward to this, especially Eliana.

Gabriel at first didn't want to get in--he doesn't love the water.  But after watching the girls have so much fun, he changed his mind and got in--in his pajamas!

Here is Karina enjoying herself.

Later on, Eliana wanted to show Yeh-yeh her piano skills.  She has started up piano lessons again, after a hiatus during the summer, and has been making slow but steady progress.

For dinner, Elvin's brother's family came over and so did Elvin's cousin's family.  We hadn't seen Elvin's cousin, Priscilla and her husband Augi, for over a year.  And we had not met one year old Sylvie before; unfortunately, she was not very happy about posing for a picture.

We also celebrated several September birthdays, including Emily's birthday.  By now, Karina, our sleepyhead, was very tired because we had woken her up early this morning.

We changed into jammies and she feel asleep in about 10 seconds, it seemed like.

The next day, a friend of Sue's (Elvin's sister-in-law) came over to take professional photos of our whole family and various combinations.

Gabriel, unfortunately, does NOT like posing for pictures.  He will smile for you if you are taking spontaneous, candid pictures.  But when it's a formal photo shoot, he will absolutely NOT pose for the camera.  So here he is, running away from the photographer.

For a change of scenery, we took the photo shoot to a nearby park.  The kids had fun playing around.

Gabriel enjoyed climbing up the climbing wall.

And we were able to get more photos...  Here is a sampling:

Here is a picture with Eliana's in one of her classic laugh-out-loud moments.  She does this every day.

We tried bribing Gabey with Pez candies.  Here is Eliana floating one in front of him in hopes that he would pose for the camera...kind of how they wave sardines in front of Shamu at SeaWorld.

Here's one of the whole family...

 We then went to the park...

 Finally!  Got one of the cousins together!

After the photo shoot, we grabbed lunch at a local Chinese restaurant.  Gabriel enjoyed the meal and had baby corn for the first time.

Then the kids were back in the pool!

Eliana is learning to swim and is sort of reliable without a life jacket.

Eliana wanted to jump off of the diving board, just like what she does in swimming class.

Splash!

Elvin was at the bottom to make sure she floated back up to the top...

That afternoon, we drove to Stanford Shopping Center to take the girls to a very special store...The American Girl Store!  It is two stories tall and is packed full of dolls, accessories, and more dolls.

It was pretty overwhelming, especially for Eliana.  There were many many things to look at and admire.  Each of the girls were allowed to pick out a certain thing, and Eliana simply could not make up her mind.

Karina, on the other hand, took 5 minutes and then decided that she wanted to get a set of twins.  Our girls are so different!

Gabriel also, was fairly impressed with the offerings in this store.

And for dinner, we ate at In-N-Out.  It brought back memories.  The kids enjoyed the burgers and milkshakes too.

That evening, after baths, the girls got to open their presents from the day's outing.

Here is Karina holding her twin toddlers.  ("They are not babies!", she will tell you.)

Eliana got a Rebecca doll, who has white pajamas.  Eliana also got the matching person-sized pajamas.

The next day, we decided to go to Happy Hollow, which is a small amusement park and zoo for little kids.  Our kids love that place and we go there every time we visit California.

The merry-go-round is a favorite of the girls.

We also took Gabriel on...but he didn't want to sit on an animal by himself.  He was very unsure of the whole thing.

He did enjoy going on the cars that go round and round, though.

The girls also enjoyed it.  If you sit on the red firefighter cars, you can pull on the rope to make the bell go "ding!"

We took a ride on Danny the Dragon.  But only the girls.  Gabriel started freaking out when we were taking our seats so Emily took him out before the ride started.

Gabey enjoyed playing on the huge play structure they have.

We also visited the snake lady giving a talk.  Only Eliana was brave enough to pet the reticulated python.

Gabriel enjoyed petting the goats.  He also thought the poo pellets on the ground was goat food and tried feeding those to the goats.

The girls also enjoyed pretending to be archeologists and digging up dinosaur bones that were covered with sand.

Afterwards, we came back home to Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai's house.  After Gabriel got up from his nap, the kids entertained themselves by jumping on the bed.

Then back to the pool!

Gabriel was more amenable to getting into the pool this time...

The next day, on Tuesday, we drove to Santa Cruz to visit one of Emily's childhood best friends.  This friend has a two year old boy, and also, 3 month old twins!  Our kids were excited about meeting real live twin babies!  A boy and a girl...

On the drive back to San Jose, the kids were exhausted and Karina fell asleep--she was pretty tired after 3 full days of fun and activities.

We flew back home, to rainy Vancouver.  When disembarking the airplane, Karina put on her hoody sweatshirt, and made sure that her new baby doll wouldn't get wet by tucking the baby into her sweatshirt.

And finally back home, our little sleepyhead fell asleep early that night...

Modern Art...

Eliana's artistic side is starting to show more and more.  The other day, we noticed that she spent quite a bit of time on a drawing, but we needed to sit down with her to make sense of it...

It turns out that she wanted to draw two people in a theater watching a movie.  The movie was about imaginary shapes (meaning...shapes that don't exist.)  Notice that there are triangles, circles, and stars in the drawing.  But there are also squiggles and other odd shapes--these are the ones that don't exist. By the way, the two little figures on either side of the people are mice; they too are watching the movie.

So we're not sure what was going through Eliana's brain when she drew this, but it certainly is creative and original.

Camping...

About a month ago, we went camping with a bunch of other families from our church.  We went to a campsite called Cresap Bay, which is about one hour north of where we live.  It was a pretty nice campground...it was really woodsy, the bathrooms were relatively clean, and there was running water close to each campsite.

As is normally our luck when we go camping, it started raining!  So the first thing we did was setup the tent--in the rain.

Eliana wanted to help hammer the stakes into the ground.

Once we had the tent set up, it didn't have as much rain inside of it as we feared.  It was easy to mop up and then the kids settled right in.  Eliana, our little nester, enjoyed setting up her sleeping area.

Gabriel had fun zipping the windows shut and open, and shut and open...  We like this Coleman tent a lot because it's ginormous.  Maybe 12' by 14'.

Because it was raining, we had to stay under the awning.  We were afraid we would have to be cooped up all weekend if the rain kept up!

Thankfully, after a while, the rain died down so we had lunch.  Then the girls wanted to ride their bikes.  They rode and rode and rode.  They got lots of exercise that weekend.

And then after that, we went down in to a reservoir lake which had a beach area.  It was nice because this area is blocked off from boats and is reserved just for swimmers--or waders in the case of Karina.

Gabriel also was not keen on getting into the water.  He did enjoy standing on top of rocks and also throwing rocks into the water to make a big splash!

That night, we had a communal dinner with the other families.  We brought something simple--watermelon.  This one other family brought beef ribs and mushrooms stuffed with blue cheese and wrapped with bacon!  It was the most yummy camp food I've ever had.

That night, we were afraid that Gabriel wouldn't sleep very well.  Ironically he slept the whole night and it was Eliana that kept waking up multiple times!  Here is Gabey waking up all cheerful!

Before breakfast, the kids came out of the tent to explore what was going on.

Gabriel enjoyed a breakfast of hard boiled egg.

And they are back on their bikes!

It turns out that almost all the kids in the families brought their bikes as well.  So they all rode around the campgrounds like a giant pack of animals.

The family we were sharing a campsite with had a 3 gallon jug of water with a spout you can twist "on" and "off".  Throughout the weekend, this was one of Gabriel's favorite activities...to fill up a cup or bowl of water, stir it around (and maybe add a few leaves in the process), dump it out, and repeat!

We also went hiking a little bit.  Gabriel was a trooper and walked most of the way instead of being carried.  Eventually, though, he got tired and wanted Elvin to carry him.  It was also close to nap time and he fell asleep in Elvin's arms--which was convenient because we didn't know exactly how to get him down for a nap.

After lunch, we went down to the beach area again when the sun came out.

Gabriel enjoyed digging in the sand.  This is the first time that he was willing to walk on sand.  Every single time we've gone to the beach before, he would refuse to have sand touch his feet and he would stay on a towel only.

Eliana, our amphibian child, stayed in the water the entire time.  Except when she needed to come out to re-fuel.

For dinner, we had a communal meal again.  But we made mac-n-cheese for the kids to make sure they would have something they liked.  Gabriel got to stir...

And then it was time for bed again...

The sun rose at about 6am, but Gabey was still sleeping...

In fact, all of our kids slept fairly late, considering the day before, they woke up with the sunrise.  They were very tired and even birds chirping and crows cawing did not wake them...

Then it was time to take down our tent and pack up!

The kids are eating our last breakfast while camping and then we headed home after that!  It was nice that we only had to drive one hour home, which gave us the rest of the day to unpack and clean up from camping.

A few days later, Eliana drew a picture.  It turns out that she drew about our camping experience, with our lantern inside our red Coleman tent, surrounded by the trees and night sky.