Back to school!

Summer has zoomed by and the yellow school buses are starting to make the rounds in our neighborhood.

Last week was the first week of school for Karina and Gabriel, who are attending the co-op preschool that Eliana attended, and that Karina attended last year.  Karina loves school and was very excited.  You can see in the picture below that during breakfast, she was wearing her backpack while sitting on the chair.  Gabriel also said that he wanted to go to pre-school, but we weren't 100% sure how he would do.  He had it in his head that he would be in the same classroom with Karina and we kept explaining to him that he'd be in the classroom next door.

Xiao Yu unfortunately was NOT going to attend pre-school but as with everything that the other kids are doing, he wanted to be part of the action.  

We arrived at the pre-school.  Elvin came along to drop Gabriel off.  Even though he is our third child, it still seemed like a big milestone since he was the baby of the family (up until recently.)

Walking into the school, which rents out space from a church.

The obligatory picture in front of the pre-school's sign.  As one could have easily predicted, Karina cooperates with the picture taking by flashing a nice smile while Gabriel does his usual averting his eyes thing.

The kids have to hang their backpacks on coat hooks and each kid has a specific number.  Being a Yuen, Gabriel is of course at the end of the alphabet and the last hook.  He was a little disappointed because he wanted to be number 3, not number twelve.  Karina, ever the logical and helpful one, pointed out to Gabriel that 1 plus 2 equals 3!  It was kid logic, but it seemed to have made sense to Gabey and he was happy again.

Then we drop off Karina in her class.  She has Mrs. Walker again, who is a great teacher.  Karina has pre-school three days a week this year, while Gabriel's is two days a week.

Xiao Yu found Pixie the guinea pig.  He has no fear and lets his finger be licked by the guinea pig.

Then it was Gabriel's turn to check in.  He turned in his folder and got a sticker.

We (especially Elvin) were wondering if he was going to be apprehensive or not.  Our fears were unfounded as Gabriel found the play-doh that was out and sat down to play.  He did great!

The following Friday, Elvin was a "helping parent," which means that he gets to help out with tasks in the classroom and also gets to play with the kids some.  Here is Gabriel listening to Mrs. Nuce read a book.  She is a very gentle soul and so nice with the kids.  Karina also had her as a teacher.

Gabriel also got to play with the trains.

When your parent is a "helping parent", you get to turn the lights off, then back on to signal that it's time to clean up.  All the kids think this is pretty great.

After cleaning up, it was story time.

And then, as the "special kid" again, another perk is that you get to bring a toy to do show-and-tell.  Gabey brought a toy laptop computer, which he thinks is his (even though it was a gift to Eliana when she was little.)  However, Gabey doesn't feel 100% comfortable in class yet, so when Mrs. Nuce asked him what he brought, and what it does, he wouldn't talk.  He just nodded "yes" and shook his head "no".  We think that in a few weeks, as he gets more used to school, he will start talking freely.

Gabey does love recess time thought, especially with all the shovels and buckets they have.

And here is Gabriel's first artwork from school.  With his two favorite colors--green and orange.

And, Eliana also started her school as well.  In addition to her home school, she attends Flex Academy one day per week.  It's a program through the local school district specifically for home schooled kids.  They get to do art projects, write poetry, and other fun things such as raise pet snails (no kidding!)  She attended last year as well and she absolutely loves it.  It is an all-day class so here she is packing her lunch.

And she also had to pack her pencil box.

And so here she is...off to school again!

Trip to Lincoln City!

About two months ago, we made our annual trek to the Oregon Coast for our trip to Lincoln City.  The older girls of course remember Lincoln City and were super excited about our trip all through the week leading up to it.  The boys, however, didn't know what to expect.  On the morning of, the kids were supervising Daddy who was packing the van.

With the addition of Xiao Yu, we really had to use all available space in the van for our luggage.  You can see that we put sleeping bags on the floor in between the car seats.  Xiao Yu fell asleep during the two hour drive, which was part of the plan.  He is funny because he likes to wedge this arms up into his car seat and fell asleep that way.  Karina kept herself busy with a sticker book and Eliana listened to a book-on-tape.  She can contentedly listen to books-on-tape for literally hours.

Finally, we arrived at the hotel we've always stayed at and the kids are always excited to see the ocean.  Even Xiao Yu realized that something was different as he ran to the window and kept pointing and yelling "Wah-wah!  Wah-wah!" (meaning Water, water!)

We stay at this hotel because it has rooms with kitchenettes.  This way we can eat meals in the room instead of having to eat out in restaurants.  Also, they have a room with an adjoining extra bedroom, which is ideal for our growing family.

The hotel has beach access and down we went!  This was Xiao Yu's first time on the beach.  We have a sandbox at home and maybe he thought that this was a really, really big sandbox?  He was a little bit weirded out when he stepped on the sand, but after a minute go used to it.

The girls wanted to wade in the water, which was freezing cold.  They would run out and then run back in ahead of the waves.  They wanted Elvin to come in with them but he wouldn't.

The other kids went in as well, but it was a little bit too cold for Xiao Yu.

Xiao Yu seemed to enjoy himself.  Just to think that 6 months earlier, he was in a landlocked province in China...and now he was lounging on a beach on the Oregon coast.  What a difference 6 months makes!

For some reason, the top layer of sand on the beach was stuck together and crunchy.  You could pick up hockey puck sized pieces and it would stay together.

After the kids were done at the beach they decided that they wanted to go into the pool.  They had lots of fun doing that.

Eliana has been taking lots of swimming lessons and has improved a lot.  She can pretty much get around the water fine, with her quasi-swimming stroke.

And then it was time to put Xiao Yu to bed.  While one parent was busy putting a kid to bed, it's tradition that the other parent takes the other kids out to keep things quiet in the room.  We always take them to Dairy Queen across the street, which the girls remember and look forward to.  This time, the "twins" got these massive star shaped popsicles.

And Eliana got a sundae.

Eventually everyone was finally asleep!  We stuffed the three older kids into the adjoining bedroom while Xiao Yu slept with us.

We got breakfast the next morning from the hotel lobby and brought it back to our room.

And...it was time to get into the pool again.  We are getting our money's worth with the indoor pool that they have.

We eventually made it out to the beach, but it was very foggy.

It was still fun building sand castles, though.

During these types of trips, we let the kids eat treats that they normally don't get to eat, such as yummy Cheetos and Doritos.  Gabriel's fingers have turned bright orange.

This year, Emily's sister Gretchen and her kids joined us in Lincoln City.  Here is cousin Anders flying his stunt kite.  You hold it with strings connected to two handles and, with the handles, you can make the kite fly in loops or circle 8's.

The kids enjoyed watching the kite flying.

Our hotel room overlooks the beach, so Elvin took these pictures from there.

Anders also had a more traditional kite, which Xiao Yu wanted to hold.

Karina got to hold cousin Lena's kite.

And Gabriel took a turn too.

Eliana is our amphibious child who never gets cold and her cousin Lena is the same way.  They spent quite a bit of time in the water together.

When a wave would come, they would hug each other.  We think this was so that Lena could help Eliana stay up and not be toppled by the wave.  It was very cute.

Then they would run back!

Eliana wrote her name in the sand...

...including her Chinese name.

Meanwhile, Gabey played in the sand some more.

We also had some down time in the hotel room...the kids watched videos while Mommy checked her email.

We brought sticker pages for the kids and Karina likes them especially.  She made a funny face with one.

The next day, we decided that we wanted to walk north on the beach for a while to get to the tide pools.  Gabey decided that he needed to bring his backpack, but also was adamant that he would not wear a sweatshirt, even though it was a little chilly.

It was chilly on the beach and also very, very windy!  In fact, it was so windy that the sand would get whipped up by the wind and sand blast our legs.  And for the little ones, it meant that it was sandblasting them in the face.  We had to carry them for most of the way.

Once we got to the tide pools, we went exploring.

We found tons of sea anemones, as well as some starfish, hermit crabs and small fish.

Xiao Yu wasn't sure what to make of this.  Here he is touching barnacles for the first time.

Before heading back to the hotel, we took a family photo together.

On the drive back, we saw a mama deer along with her baby.  They were not more than 15 yards away.

We also decided to check out an indoor miniature golf place there.  It was very miniature...with only a handful of holes.  It had black lights, which made things a little more interesting.

Xiao Yu lost interest in the golf part but wanted to play with the vending machines.

The kids also enjoyed riding in the coin operated shuttle.

On the last day, we went to a kite and toy store.  We always let the kids pick out a new toy as a souvenir from their trip.  Xiao Yu ended up getting a toy piano.

Gabey played with this drum a lot, even though he eventually settled on getting a train.

The girls each got one of these kites.  They are called pocket kites because you can fold them up into a little pouch that will fit into your pocket.

We went out to try out Karina's kite.  It works!

Eventually it was time to drive home.  Here is Xiao Yu giving Lena a big hug.

And of course, the kids were tired and slept on the way home--always the sign of a good vacation!