Happy Birthday Gabe!

In early June, Gabriel celebrated his ninth birthday!  

We started out the day by opening his presents.  Karina loves opening presents and was almost just as excited as Gabe about starting the present opening festivities.  One of his presents was a clock and alarm that he can set by his bed.  He has said that he wakes up in the morning with the sun and doesn't know if it's 5:30am or 7am!

He also got several packs of his favorite gum flavor, Juicy Fruit.

He got a little electronics set.

He also got a Voltron Lego set which he requested.

Karina made for him a little blanket for one of his stuffed animals.

He also got this puzzle thing which you can put on your arm and it will roll down your arm.  (It's hard to explain.)

He also got a card and red envelope from Elvin's parents.

Lucky was watching the whole time but found the whole thing a little boring.

We had a mini-party for Gabe.  One of his friends came over and they played the Super Nintendo that we set up outside.  

They played for hours and hours and loved it.

Then they had cupcakes with blue frosting.

And had pizza for dinner.

We were also going to have a mini celebration the following day on Sunday after meeting with several other families for church in someone's backyard.

We nearly almost always have brigadieros for birthdays, which is a Brazilian candy traditionally served at birthday parties.

It is the consistency of fudge and the kids like to help rolling it into balls and then covering it with sprinkles.

For the piñata, Elvin opted to make one at home instead of buying one at the store since the store-bought ones always seems to fall apart with only a couple of whacks.

Elvin reinforced this one with a ton of packing tape and then decorated it with tissue paper.  It was in the shape of a balloon.  It reminded Gabe of a video game that he currently likes playing.

The next day, after church, we had more cupcakes, also with blue icing.

And then it was piñata time!  There were about twelve kids they and they all had various tries whacking at it.

The kids were originally using a broom handle and one of the bigger kids whacked the piñata with it and broke the broomstick in half!

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So then they used an axe handle (with no ax head!) and that did the job.  The kids then rushed in to collect their loot.  Unfortunately, the softer candy like the Reese's peanut butter cups were smooshed and mangled because of all the blunt force.  Many of the Smarties were pulverized.  The candy that survived were things like Starburst.

So that was Gabe's birthday.  Afterwards, he started working on his Voltron Lego set.

He also put together the chocolate moose we got him from Ikea.  It's slightly easier than the Lego set!

He also got a blow-up doll which you can punch and kick.  

Which he promptly did.

What else has he been up to?  Besides home school this past year, he had school with the school district one day a week.  But since it was online, he almost never got dressed with street clothes but attended his class in his PJs.

And in this case, his PJs and his blankie.

And when not in school, he can often be found reading a book.

He reads all the time.

And assumes many poses when reading.

Even in the evenings...

He also loves playing video games, which we need to limit.  Currently he is obsessed with a game called Bloons, in which you pop balloons that appear.

We usually only let him play about an hour a day.

 

We did sign him up for a "ninja" obstacle course camp at the local gymnastics gym.  On the last day of the 4-day camp, the parents were invited to come and watch their kids traverse the course.

He really enjoyed the challenge.

He has pretty good upper body strength and likes climbing.

In keeping with the ninja theme, he likes to take long sticks or a bo staff and twirl it around like a martial arts person.  It makes us nervous when he does this indoors.

He continues to dabble in the kitchen.  Lately he's taken to frying anything and everything in butter.  Here he is frying a slice of bread.  He will also fry other things in butter, such as salami or slices of ham.

We got some peaches that were in season and he decided to make a milkshake out of it.

It actually turns out really good.  Who would've thought?

He got a microscope from his grandpa and likes to put objects underneath to look at.  He's looked at cloth, paper, hair, and other things.  He wanted to look at spit but we told him he's not allowed to spit on things.  Also, he has a hard time closing only one of his eyes and so uses his hand to get his left eye to close. 

And he continues to do silly things...

And have crazy hairdos.

And he continues to be a snuggly boy.  He made a nest here on top of Lucky's bed.  (Which is smelly but he doesn't care.)

Or he'll snuggle directly with Lucky himself.

So there's our Gabey, now nine years old!

Spring happenings...

As the weather warmed up, we figured out new ways to entertain ourselves.  In keeping with the pandemic houseplant boom, Karina decided that she wanted a houseplant so she researched and researched and researched online for which type she was interested in.  

She decided on a philodendron; there are various types and she said she wanted one that had variegated leaves, which make them multicolored and they look like they've been painted by hand.  This type is called the "Brazil" type and Elvin had to visit multiple nurseries to find it. 

First she used a wet paper towel to clean all the dust off of the leaves.

And now her plant lives on a stand near her bed.  It gets lots of attention, including spritzes from a spray bottle, and is doing well.

She has also done quite a bit of baking.  Elvin wanted to have some gluten free snacks on hand and so asked her to make gluten free pop tarts, which are made with almond flour and cassava flour.

So she first made the dough (using plenty of butter) and rolled in out.

She then cut them into rectangles and put dabs of jam in the middle.

Then she put another layer on top and sealed the edges using a fork.


Here they are after being bakes.  One can put icing on top, but Elvin likes them just fine the way they are.


And the other day, she also made a cake to take to church on Sunday, and topped it with whipped cream and raspberries.

While Karina is busy baking....Gabe is busy being a monkey.  Here he is scaling our little cherry tree in the backyard.  From there, he has a clear view into the neighbor's yard!

Elvin has been eyeing a donut shop in Portland for a while and wanted to visit it.  It's called Doe Donuts and is famous because it's completely vegan but supposedly makes donuts so delicious one can't even tell.

He drove all the way down with the girls, only to find out that it was closed.  After another try, they made it and got a dozen donuts of all different types.  It came in a long skinny box.

They had lots of unique flavors, such as tahini+pistachio, birthday cake, tiramisu, and Portland Fog (a twist on London Fog.)  One of Elvin's favorite was their pineapple fritter, which may sound like a weird combination but actually tasted really good.  Eliana really liked the tiramisu one.  

One that was not good was the bacon and maple.  The vegan bacon, unfortunately, was nowhere near the real thing.  But overall we enjoyed sampling their interesting flavors.

Another thing we did was to visit a new cookie store that opened up in Vancouver called Crumbl.  It sells freshly made cookies and these cookies are about the size of your hand.  You can eat one by yourself but often people cut them into half or quarters because they are so big.  We went on opening day and all got free cookies.

They rotate flavors every single week and that week we were able to get PB and J, smores, Twix flavored, and birthday cake.

On a particularly warm day, Eliana got the idea that she wanted to make watermelon granita.  It did use up a large portion of a watermelon and and quite a few lemons.  Then you put it in a container and stick it in the freezer overnight.  After that, you take the container out and let it sit on the counter until it is a little bit soft, and use a spoon to scrape to make shavings out of the ice.  It's pretty good and yummy on a hot day!


And one day, Karina decided she wanted to make Cream Puffs based off of a recipe in Cooks Illustrated.

It's a French dessert and is basically a hollow ball of dough that you fill with cream.  Also, on the outside there is a coating of crunchy, crackly sugary goodness.  The first step is to make that outer shell by mixing together some things including a bunch of sugar into a dough, then rolling it out and cutting out circles.

Then you make the dough that will become the puffs themselves by mixing egg, flour, and some other things.

She piped this creamy batter onto parchment paper and then topped them off with the discs she made earlier.


The theory is that as they bake, the discs will melt over the puff and coat it with a crunchy topping.  Here they are!

You then make a hole in the side from which you pipe in the filling.  She actually didn't want to make a cream filling but filled them with vanilla ice cream instead.

They tasted delicious!

Other things that we did is to have some special meals during dinner.  Gabe wanted to have hot pot so on a day that was fairly cool, we set up the whole thing.  He is the little chef and very much enjoys dunking the raw meat into the boiling broth to what then turns the meat from raw to cooked.

We also sometimes still do homemade pizza at home.

Everyone gets their own pizza customized to the way they want it.

And to give you a health update...Karina lost one of her lower canine teeth in the spring.  It took a looooong time of being very loose to actually coming out.  It bothered her a lot because it made eating things like apples and steak difficult for her and she was very relieved when it finally came out.

And...when Eliana became eligible for the vaccine, she jumped at the chance!  It became eligible on a Thursday and she was there on a Friday getting her shot.  She is now fully vaccinated and glad that we are less restrictive when she is hanging out with her friends.

We hope you had a good spring as well!