Spring Break 2018!

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!

First bike ride!

The past couple days has been free of rain. (And it looks like we have sunny weather for the next week as well.). Because of that, and because Karina and Daddy had a couple of hours by themselves, they decided to get some Jamba Juice and to ride their bikes there instead of walking. 

It took us about fifteen minutes to get there. The drinks sure tasted good!

AWANA Games!

Most of our kids participate in AWANAs, which is sort of like a church version of Boy Scouts and they meet every week.  Every year, they also have AWANA Games, which is a competition between various AWANA groups in the area with relay games.

Karina decided that she wanted to be in these Games so every week, we dropped her off an hour early so that her AWANA Games team could practice.

And then finally came the time for her team to compete.  She got to be part of various relays.

Here a bunch of the kids had to race while holding a pool noodle on each side.

Here is the Yuen cheering section.

Here Karina is trying to dodge balls that other kids are throwing at her.

Here's a short video showing that.

And then the Games were over and it was time for the winners to be announced.  And out of the four teams competing, Karina's team won first place!

She got a gold medal and is pretty excited about that.  Congrats, Karina!

OMSI!

A few weeks ago, a friend from Xiao Yu's preschool invited him to a birthday party at OMSI, which is the science and tech museum in Portland.  All the kids were allowed to come along and so off we went!

There was a section where you could use big blocks made out of foam to build one of those arches the Romans used to build bridges.

So the kids started stacking them up.

And then we did it!

Then it was time for the fun part--knocking it down!

There was a smaller version, which was also fun to build.  First you build the base.

And then you stack blocks on top.

And then when you remove the base, if you've done it right, it stays up.

In another section, we saw some space-related things.

Xiao Yu went inside the space capsule.

And there was a 'brain fair' going on, with all these booths set up talking about different aspects of the brain.  They even had preserved human brains that the kids were allowed to touch.  The kids touched the brain of a left hemisphere, from a woman who donated her brain to science.

And then we had pizza for lunch, cake, and opened presents!  It was a fun day!

Snow Day (or rather Snow Week)!

This past winter, much to the kids' disappointment, we have not had very much snow.  However, in mid-February, we finally got a couple of little snow storms in a row.

At first, even though it was barely below freezing, it did snow--about an inch or so.  It was after dinner and the kids quickly put their snow gear on and rushed outside.

 Gabe loves his scooter and so brought it out, and looped the rope of the sled to the scooter.

 And then he got the little tricycle out, which was equally hard to make go forward.

 Eliana decided to make her mark on the hood of the car.

 Then the girls decided to build a snow man.  The snow was really slushy so packed together really well.

 Eventually the snowman got pretty big.

 The snow on the tree branches made beautiful patterns.

Eliana's hair had wet and frozen snow mashed in.

The next day, the schools were on a two-hour late start, so Eliana ended up going to school but the other kids went out to play.  They needed to be quick, because it was melting quickly!

 With Daddy's help, they built a super tall snowman!

 The wet snow was perfect for rolling into huge snowballs.

Now it was time to stick the balls together.  Gabe was using a gardening hoe to make a flat spot on top of the ball.  The ball was so big that Daddy had to help lifting it up.

And then another snowstorm moved into the area.  The kids left out tupperware in order to catch the snow.   They love eating snow with flavored syrup on top.

 Snow!  Eliana puts condensed milk in addition to the syrup.

Because there was a couple inches of snow that night, the school district announced via their website that school was cancelled the next day.

 Can you see how disappointed Eliana was?

 The next day we had a snow ball fight!

It got pretty heated.  There were lots of snowballs being lobbed.  Lucky for Elvin, most of the kids have not yet developed perfect aim.

 And here is our backyard that got temporarily transformed into a winter wonderland.

 It was fairly warm the rest of the week, so the snow was totally gone after several days.  But it was fun while it lasted!