Lunar New Year Celebrations

While my mom and brother were in town, Beck's school had their Annual Lunar New Year Event. It includes class performances, silent auction, live auction, and a buffet lunch. This year I found out that we could get non-lunch tickets, which was a nice discovery. Last year the buffet took a while as is usually the case with buffets. Without going through that, we could get home at a reasonable time for Mathis to nap.

They had the silent auction items set up outside the hall. We bid on a week's worth of hot lunches and rock-climbing lessons for 3 kids. Hansel went back out close to the silent auction end time to check on the rock-climbing bids. He ended up raising our bid but still under the estimated value (we are cheap contributors). We ended up winning the lessons. Almost 3 months later, and we still haven't set up the lessons.

Even though it's the year of the rabbit, Beck's class did the story of the mouse bride, which is a Chinese Zodiac story, for their performance. The room parents made the cool visors and veils for the kids. 

Maile's class, as well as the other Mandarin-Immersion classes, performed for a school assembly. Maile's school has combined-grade classes, so Maile's class is made of up Kindergarteners and 1st graders. The Kindergarteners sat at the foot of the stage and sang (softly) while the 1st-graders danced with ribbons. I took Beck with me to watch before dropping him off at school.

The Kings Visit

My mom and brother were here during their Lunar New Year break. My mom came a week or so before Ed. We always eat well when she is here. All the kids love Ed because he really gets down and plays with them. Below are some photos from their visit.

In the first photo, Ed is holding up Mathis while Maile is grabbing the bottom of Ed's leg.

 

 

Random January Photos

First, a couple more photos from the January Tahoe trip.

Below is a family photo we took early in the month. Looks like all of us except for Hansel are watching the TV not the camera.

Before Christmas Maile only had shoes with velcro, a buckle, or slip on. So, she never needed to learn how to tie her shoes. But during Christmas break in DC, GrandMama bought Maile some light-up shoes with laces. So, below is a photo of Hansel teaching Maile how to tie a bow.

 During the month we watched a stick sculpture go up in front of the Palo Alto Art Center. We went to visit it a couple of times when it was almost done. Not only is it a cool-looking sculpture, but you can go in and out of it.

Tahoe in January

For the last weekend in January, we planned a trip to Tahoe with 3 other families -- the Lins, the Shens, and the Yaus. We ended up booking a house in Kings Beach about a 10 min drive to Tahoe. The house had 4 bedrooms and 4 full bathrooms, having a bathroom for each family was nice. We took the bunk room, which had two sets of twin-over-full bunk beds. There was also enough air mattresses to go around that noone had to sleep on the actual floor or on a couch.

The house was a two-story, so there was a flight of stairs that the kids, especially the boys, couldn't get enough of. Although in the below photo, there are more girls.

Saturday morning it took a while for people to get gear and tickets and head over to the Highlands gondola since the main gondola already had a long line. So we didn't all get on the mountain until mid-morning. Hansel and I with Mathis in tow tried to show Beck some moves on a little incline by the Snowboard school while Maile skied with Al, Hannah, and Zachary. We were on the mountain less than an hour when we figured we needed to head back down to get our car from 2-hr parking.

All of us except Al, Stew, Hannah, and Maile headed back to the house for lunch and naps. Al ran into a friend who was now a ski instructor and got in a few runs with him and some helpful tips. For dinner we had pasta and pizza, and the kids helped make cookies for dessert.

We had brought some loops that is meant to be used with a loom, but I didn't realize the box did not include the loom. Maile and Hannah had strung all the loops together, and Hansel helped string the loops across the bunk room. We told the kids to pretend they were lasers and to not touch them or an alarm would go off.

There was also lots of movie watching and iPad/iPhone playing with some trains mixed in.

Sunday morning the Yaus, Hansel, and Maile headed out first. They had planned to return to pack up the cars and leave from the house. But after Leilani had a driving scare, they figured it would be easier if those that were still at the house just put the Yaus stuff, which was already packed, in our van and meet them at Northstar. Doing that and the minimal cleaning that was required actually took the rest of us a while. The clean-up stuff made me appreciate our timeshare, where we don't have to clean anything (can we say spoiled?).