Goodbye old home, Hello new home

We've been sort of in the market for a new home in order to have more bedrooms for our kids, and so have been looking...for the past four years.  

After looking at various houses, nothing was coming up that fit the bill until this past July.  We made an offer on the house in August, closed in September and started moving in on October 1.

The last time that we had moved homes was when the Yuen family was kidless and moving from a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles.  This time around, we have four kids and lots more STUFF.

To move stuff, we needed boxes, lots of boxes.  Which are great to build towers with.

In preparation for moving, Karina got excited about designing the layout of their new bedroom.  She got our her house layout stencil set which she has and started mocking up the girls' room.

She really likes doing this sort of thing and cut out the shapes of the furniture to see where it would fit best.

Part of moving means packing.  However, the new house is only a couple of miles from our old one.  So instead of putting all our clothes in boxes or suitcases, we stuffed most into large Ikea bags and drove it over.

Here is Xiao Yu's room at our old house...all vacated!

And we needed to move the chickens as well!  They probably didn't like it very much but we stuffed them into large Rubbermaid bins.

Had to catch them first!

This one got away!

Because it was the end of summer, our sunflowers were all mature and full of seeds.  So Karina collected the seed heads to feed to the chickens later on.

And here is our house empty of almost everything except furniture.

We moved houses on this day...

We had a bunch of friends help us move our boxes on a certain Saturday.

It took several hours, but with about 10 people helping, we moved all our stuff into the garage.

The movers came several days later to move the large things.  Like our super heavy piano.  The movers moved all our couches, coffee table, dining table, beds, bookcases....everything...in only 3 hours.  They were fast!

Our first meal at the new house consisted of Costco rotisserie chicken.  Mostly because now Costco is less than a quarter mile from our new house.  

The new house happens to have a little 2-bedroom extra dwelling on the land, which we call the cottage.  It was the original little farmhouse on the land before the farm was developed into a neighborhood and our current house was built.  It turns out that it did not have a proper foundation so we had one put in.  The foundation contractors had to excavate a huge amount of soil under the cottage and did it by using a vacuum truck to vacuum the soil.  The truck sounds like a vacuum cleaner on steroids...it's super loud, even from 30 feet away!

There are a few things that are different about the new house.  It has a more expansive pantry.

The stairs has walls on both sides, which our resident monkey like to take advantage of.

A bigger grassy area in the back to play soccer on.

It also has a bunch of moles living there.  Lucky likes to dig into the tunnels they make, but has yet not caught any.

It also had a nice maple tree in the front which is good for climbing.  Unfortunately it was planted super close to the foundation and we're going to have to cut it down soon and plant a new, baby tree further away from the house.

Here is Karina setting up her new room.  She got a loft bed, and so has lots of space underneath for her stuff.

Another advantage of the new house is that it is SUPER close to 7-Eleven.  Which means easier access to Slurpees, which may be Karina's favorite food (if it can be called a "food".)

But being in a new house does not mean that everything in life stops.  Some things keep marching on, such as piano lessons, for which you have to practice for.

So that is our  the new house.  We are getting settled in and adjusting to it!

Fall happenings

Before we knew it, summer was over and fall was upon us.  The kids wanted to celebrate by going to a local diner that they like.  It has really big portions of breakfast foods, including a huge cinnamon roll the size of a dinner plate.

This year, Karina started attending middle school along with Eliana.  They went to the bus together and attended three periods, and then Emily would pick them up after that to do home school at home.

After encouragement from Emily, Eliana started band this year and chose to play the alto sax.  She picked it up really quickly and is enjoying band quite a bit now.  She even decided to join the jazz band which means that she has to go to school early for 7am practice three times a week.  What dedication!

Gabe attends all day school one day a week on Fridays and also rides the bus for that.  He has a really good friend that goes, which is nice for him, but most of the work is project-based, which he says he does not particularly enjoy.  

In September, it was Mommy's birthday.  As per tradition, we prepared an angel food cake for her, with 7-minute frosting.

Gabe and Karina decorated it, including placing a message using the sugar candy letters.  They used as many letters as they could and the bottom part of the cake said "YOU'RE *45* NOW!"  They were quite proud of themselves.

Happy birthday, Mommy!

Amongst other things, she got a bag of Reese's peanut butter cups and other treats.

One thing that happened this fall was that we went to see Hamilton again in the theater.  This was in Eugene and part of the Broadway across American season tickets that we got.  Our next show will be in March.

As part of the girls' involvement in their local youth theater company, they signed up to be part of the Christmas Carolers.  There are about 24 kids in the group and they learned all four parts to about a dozen Christmas songs, some of them traditional carols and others less traditional.  They even had to learn how to sing Silent Night in German.

They had costumes that made them look like they walked out of a Charles Dickens book.  In December, they will be performing in nursing homes, company Christmas parties, and other places.  Karina had been selected, along with several other kids, to be part of the photo shoot they would use on marketing materials to advertise their services.

Also in the fall, Karina took up soccer again after a hiatus during the pandemic.  She ended up liking it and meshed well with the other girls in her team.

Gabe loves soccer and enjoyed another season of it.  Elvin also helped as the assistant coach.  This team of boys have been together for several years.

After the season was over, the boys had a party at Round Table.  

Because Gabe has tons of energy, we signed him up for basketball as well and the two seasons overlapped slightly.  He doesn't like basketball as much but has been enjoying it and improved a lot this season.

He's much better at defense now and also been improving his dribbling.

Once, he got fouled so had a chance to shoot free throws.  His accuracy with distance shots are not 100%, but to our surprise, he made both baskets!  This is the second one.

Xiao has been busying himself with various crafts at home.  One day get got some water and dish soap out and blew himself a bubble structure.

He's also gotten very adept at building things using these magnet toys we have at home.  He has built structures, spaceships, and apparently a Trojan horse.

And he likes folding paper and made a bunch of flowers one day.

One day, the kids had a hankering for pomegranate so they brought home a tray from Costco.  Then we learned from a friend that to remove the seeds, you can cut the fruit in half cross-wise and then beat the back of it with the flat of a spoon.  Here is Karina demonstrating it.

Then Karina realized that if you took the garlic press, you can squeeze the juice out of the seeds.

And when you mix it with sparkling water, then voila, it becomes a super fancy drink that is especially tasty if it's in a fancy glass.

And Mommy and Daddy actually went away for a day this fall.  We had tickets to go on a winery tour and so had a lovely afternoon at a winery in the Willamette Valley.  Emily doesn't drink so Elvin tried to make up for it.  It was lots of fun.

And that was our fall!

Happy birthday Karina!

Karina turned 12 this year in August.  She chose to have angel food cake, but without the icing because she doesn't like most types of icing.

She does love whipped cream though, and so we had that and strawberries, for a strawberry shortcake-like dessert.

And then it was time to open presents.  She got a Squishmallow, of course.  There are now lots of these floating around the house.  This one is a blue seahorse, which was her role in The Little Mermaid production the girls are in.  

She also got a couple of gift certificates.  One is to take Lucky to a dog obedience class.  She likes training Lucky to do things.

The other gift certificate is to $50 to spend on Chewy, which is a online store for pets.  Notice a theme?

Another Squishmallow.  Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai were in town to watch their musical performance and so they got to watch the presents being opened.

From Eliana, she got a canister of slime.  She likes playing around with it and holding it and stuff.

She also got her very own sewing machine!

And a big box of Hi-Chew candies!

She also got some treats.  One was the Japanese drink Ramune that comes in a special glass bottle, which has a glass ball in the neck of the bottle that you have to push in to open the bottle.  It takes quite a bit of force!

So how has the last year been for her?

When last year's school year ended, she got a certificate from her class and one thing it said is that she's most likely to have the most pets.  

It may prove to be very accurate as she looooves pets, especially dogs.  Here is a collage she made in school.

She's in heaven right now.

She's still very much into baking and is willing to help out in the kitchen.  The other day we had for dinner hand pies made with pastry dough stuffed with curried ground beef.  She made the pies.

One of her favorite foods are Slurpees from 7-11.  She will never pass up a chance to have one.

She inherited a Zoku cup from her cousin.  It is a cup that has super thick walls that are filled with a material that freezes.  Then you can pour juice or liquid in there and it will turn the liquid into a smoothie consistency.  She loves this cup because it is almost like being able to have Slurpees at home.  Here she has poured orange juice in it.

She's still into crafts and is finishing up a diamond dots poster she got last Christmas.

And here it is all done.

Here she is painting a stand for potted plants.

Here is a little holder for votive candles she got from Ikea.

And she sometimes works on crocheting.  

So that's our Karina.  She's happiest when spending time with her puppy!  Either outdoors...

Or cuddling with him at home!