Date Night with the Kids

Date night started off with the idea of just me and Dae at dinner and ended up with us bringing the kids to the bowling alley, it being closed for League play until 9pm, and us arcade-ing next door...all was not lost. Kids loved the arcade and the tickets and prizes.

We let them play this just once. Not my favorite.

Work costume contest. Department with the best group costume wins. I hope we win!

Yesterday a patient at work said I was "muy feliz" - he then said in English "You are so happy!". Funny, because about a month ago we were all chatting in the lounge and Mehak says "yeah we talk and say how come Dr. Lee is always so happy. We figured it must be because you only work one day per week!". I was like yup, that's pretty much the truth! hahaha.

Seattle - Ear Piercings and Huskies

Huskies took on Oregon and it resulted in heartache (again). BUT...it wasn't a blowout, we went with Ev and Jeff so it was a lot of fun, and the new stadium is really cool and it was packed.

Puops watched all 4 kids, and the resulting photos were hilarious...

How we found them when we got home (at 1am!)

Lots o booty

With Morgan and Tyson

Go Huskies!!!

Unfortunately I now need glasses to watch anything at distance.

Pre-funking in the Zone. Ponchos were necessary for the first couple of hours.

I've been wanting to get a helix piercing for a while. So Ev accompanied me and we got pierced together right before the game in the U-District. 

Pierced! Gold hoop for me, stud for Ev

After the loss, we drowned sorrows in delicious Dick's. It was jam packed but so good.

Celebrating Jeff's 42nd bday a day early! Panera baked goods, cupcake, balloons, and Puop's selfie stick.

Leelee Haircut

Gave Leelee his first 'stylish' haircut. I had to YouTube how to do it. I think it turned out well, but I don't know how to get it to look good without actually styling it (like putting product on it) and I'm not quite ready for my 6 year old to have to style his hair!

He really liked it...

Big as a Whale

Olin at lunch:

"Mom, I as big as a big boy....And you as big as a whale."

Ithaca, Niagara, and Toronto - Kids Edition

In lieu of homework, which Montessori doesn't really have anyway, I brought these notebooks for the kids to write in. Leelee wrote a grand total of twice. I was, however, very proud of his last entry. He spent a lot of time on it at the airport.

Note the small sawtooth fish diagram at the aquarium. "Botse" is boats. He uses a silent E at the end to convey the long O sound. haha!
Hoorshoo krabs = horseshoe crabs.
(Also, Octonauts has been extremely helpful in their marine-life IQ!)

Meanwhile, in Olin land, here is his alphabet masterpiece. Lots of help from mom and brother. He actually did a lot of it, but always has trouble with D, G, J, K, and pretty much Q on. Every time he messed up a letter, he would start again at A, and then he said he would say he was getting "really tired". Look at the backwards C, E, J, and Z and the 'tail' on U which looks like a smaller U coming out of the bigger one. The kids are taught this certain font called D'Nealian or something which has tails on the end of its lowercase letters. I think it eases the transition into cursive writing.

Ithaca, Niagara and Toronto

...were great fun! First time to Toronto, but we had been to Ithaca and Niagara 8 years ago pre-kids. And obviously Dae spent 4 years in Ithaca for college. Now that the kids are 4 and 6, traveling with them is a whole lot easier (I still remember Montreal 2 years ago...). The only hardship is Olin frequently saying "I want to go home, to the house with the two stairs and the two floors" which is our Richland house, which actually has 3 floors. And he seems to bore or tire easily, but I guess that is to be expected. Leelee was really well-behaved. Very little complaining, crying or whining. Both slept great and liked their bedroom in our Toronto VRBO.

In Ithaca, we stayed on campus at the Statler Hotel. What fun! I love college campuses, the energy, and the beauty, and it was a great experience to stay actually on the campus in a nice hotel. We made it over to the dorm dining halls two times and of course hit up the Cornell store. Unfortunately we just missed the real leaves changing of the fall. There were still hints of reds but not nearly as vivid as photos I've seen and what Dae describes.  Also, dorm food was not what we remembered! 8 years ago the dorm dining hall was teeming with delicious eats, like sushi. At least that's how I remember it. This time, it was still good food, and much, much better than any college cafeteria I recall, but just not as great as we had remembered.

Near one of the dorms

Here is an all-women's dorm. The boys in their gear, representin'

I liked looking at the plaques on the old buildings. This one was built 1869 I think. Cornell was founded 1865. (So UW has 4 years on them. Hehe :)

Collegetown Bagels. Yumminess.

We rented a car in Ithaca and drove the 3 hours to Niagara (Canadian side).

Here are the Canadian Falls. No normalcy from Olin in photos.

Here are the American Falls. No normalcy from Olin in photos, part 2

Christian and the American falls.

The Hornblower. We got wet! Both kids were hoping we'd get on the boat with the blue ponchos (Maid of the Mist - American side) but it wasn't meant to be. We got pink. The Hornblower looked like a nicer boat anyway.

That same day, we drove on over to Toronto, which took about 1.5 hours from Niagara. First impressions of our 3 days in Toronto: Quiet, clean, similar to Vancouver, good Asian food. We ate at:

1) Mt. Fuji Sushi
2) House of Dumplings
3) A Korean Tofu House
4) Guu Izakaya
5) Banh Mi Boys
6) Pho Pasteur (was gross)

Besides Pho restaurant, everything else was delicious, especially Banh Mi Boys and Mt. Fuji Sushi.

Second Cup Coffee in Toronto. They had this really cool pour-over machine that we loved ordering and watching them make every morning.

CN Tower. We had a great location that overlooked the CN Tower and Rogers Centre

Selfie-stick made its debut appearance. I am not that adept at it yet but it's way better than selfie-arm!

Observation deck of CN tower. Supposedly the tallest observation deck in the world or something

This is one of the islands in Lake Ontario. It has an airport on it.

Glass floor on the observation deck. I did not think I would be scared and I was definitely scared. The kids and Dae were scared too. No one in the family would walk over it. I finally sat on it but it was really scary. Supposedly it can hold 85,000 pounds. It's probably 18 glass squares or so, with a total square footage of 100, give or take.

Bodies were resting comfortably on non-glass, heads on glass.

Selfie-Stick. I need to figure out how to eliminate the graininess factor.

Leelee made this bilaterally Smarties-rocketed jet. hahaha.

Little bird eating udon at Mt. Fuji sushi

Ice cream at the Kensington Market area right next to Chinatown.

Ripley's Aquarium of Canada. This place was pretty amazing! There was a conveyor belt walkway you stood on underneath this tunnel, where fish surrounded you from around and above. 

Lots of decently sized sharks

This guy was hilarious. Green sawtooth fish or something. He/she was huge, and resting on top of the tunnel, sprawled. You could see its face which just looked so funny. Leelee then drew the sawtooth fish in his little notebook. (next blog post)

Christian Swimming

Dae has taken Leelee to the past few swim lessons and I haven't seen his progress. I took him today, and his swimming is so cute to me. Lots of plowing through the water with his strokes, and he rotates his body really far to get breaths in. He tries really hard, and he swims great lengths during his lesson. I was really proud of him! I was smiling pretty much the entire time during his lesson.

Patchin'

We hit two Pumpkin patches this past weekend. We always seem to hit two patches within one concentrated weekend. 

1) Country mercantile with the school, and 

2) Bill's Berry Farm with our family. I have to say, Bill's has always been fun but the older the kids have gotten, the more enjoyable it has been. We easily spent 3 hours there making cider, doing the corn maze, apple slingshot, eating donuts and lunch, riding the small train...

Christian's Elementary School Class

Christian, a vision in head to toe orange

Dae had wandered off to pick up our food, and I looked back and saw Olin sitting at a table by himself eating.

I am not good at, nor do I enjoy, corn mazes.

He was pleased with his outfit. Cute J. Crew shirt from cousin Jocelyn

Goofing off with big hair at Christian's swim lesson