Christmas and snow!

We had a wonderful Christmas! We especially enjoyed Skyping our families and chatting with them. The kids were pleased to receive Play Doh (especially for Dana)toys and Lego (especially for Eli). The best toy of all was the box the Play Doh Creativity Center came in: the kids are sitting in the box and it reminded me that they are two of the best gifts I've ever received!

We also had a big snowfall (after Christmas), the biggest in 20 years. I went around taking pictures of "typical Chinese snowmen." Here are a two examples.

Yep, just piles of snow, with heads on top, but points given for creative decorating of the heads nonetheless. It was entertaining to me (since I do not own a car) how upside-down the city was rendered by this snowfall. It really slowed things down for a few days there, and it seemed to clean things up a bit (rather refreshing to see clean white snow on the ground for a few days rather than the usual dirt and frozen loogies!)

i'm thankful for...

Eli because he is enjoying school and learning how to play board games.

Dana because she likes putting blocks away and putting things back in general.

Scott because he is easy to talk to and a great listener.

my breadmaker because it makes the house smell so nice.

AND....my pregnancy that is going so well (due in early May).

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summer highlights part two: murtle lake

After our ocean adventures on Vancouver Island, we were able to spend some time with my brother Rob and his family in Prince George. My favourite part was watching the kids interact and get to know one another --the boys got along very well, whereas Dana and Rachel were... well... acting their ages.
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My brother Rob has only recently discovered Murtle Lake and has made it one of his yearly vacation destinations. We were lucky enough to be able to go with them on one of their five-day canoe-camping trips. Look how beautiful it is!

Another reason why it was so memorable was because my whole family (except for my oldest brother Otto, who had to hold the fort in Williams Lake) came, making it a total of 13 people. We missed Otto, but he didn't miss us! He had a good time on his own he said. Here's a good picture of my dad sitting on the beach.

We had four canoes total. In one canoe sat my brother and my parents. Don't worry though, despite what this picture looks like, my brother Albert did his share of the paddling too! Even if he had to arm-wrestle my mom at times to convince her to have a rest!

And here's a rare family picture of Tricia, Rob and their slugs. Rachel is in the front with Tricia and the three boys are in the middle. Some of the time, the boys were in their own canoe too, paddling, fishing and hollering away. Eli got to ride with them once and he really enjoyed that.

This is a view from behind me: Serious Scott and the giggly, restless kids. I think Scott was giving me that look because I had just had a nap while he paddled and he wondered when it was his turn.

Rachel and Dana would get the same great idea from time to time:

Nothing like napping in a canoe...

Or playing (in your underwear) on the beach...

I love this picture of Tricia and her boys! It was taken on the way to a trailhead along the shore as there are various hikes near different campsites. The boys had an easy time finding gun, knife or sword-shaped driftwood, but maybe not such an easy time of it trying to carry it all.

Rachel was asleep in her dad's arms as we hiked along the trail. The kids were too little for us to make it the whole way, but Scott, Albert and my parents went the whole way.

Here is a picture of my parents and brothers on the fifth and last day of the canoe trip. Slaviks, by nature, can usually be seen doing one of two things: they are either upright, working hard or horizontal, napping in the sun.
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It was a great trip.

summer highlights part one: vancouver island

We were fortunate enough to spend some time back in Canada over the summer. Here are some summer highlights. Thanks to Scott, I have two recently adopted favourite places on earth, both located on Vancouver Island. The first is Parksville:

Parksville has a perfect beach for little slugs like Eli and Dana. It just stretches out for about a mile at low tide, has lots of sandbars and little crabs to chase and catch. The tidal pools are warm and inviting for even the littlest people (barely walking types).

Here are Eli and Dana walking back to our beach house with their Nana and Boppa. This shot almost reminds me of PEI (another one of my favourite places) with the grass on the side. We had wonderful, I mean just fabulous weather while we stayed here.

Here's the sweet woman that made it all possible! Scott's mom has a real knack for planning trips. She and "Boppa" are also extremely generous people...this trip was a gift to our family.

We spent lots of time in the ocean and Eli had fun using his net to catch all manner of strange creatures (as you can see)!

I liked playing "shark" and grabbing Eli's feet as he scrambled like a crocodile on all fours in the water.

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The second new favourite place is Tofino which is on the west coast of the Island. It is wild, more rugged, considerably cooler and seems to have more varied sealife.

Here's Eli on a walk with his Boppa on the beach, yep we had to break out the jackets here, but it was so beautiful and restful all the same.

Here Scott is showing Eli and Dana some of the neat things that are in the inter-tidal areas on the beach, Eli was especially interested in feeding the sea anemones.

A family meal in our cabin: ever reliable, Jill served as a booster seat for Eli on at least one occasion. I told you Scott's whole family is the generous type! She can also make a mean clam chowder and is a great teammate for bocce ball competitions!

This is what our cabins looked like: I don't mind making a plug at all for Ocean Village in Tofino, British Columbia. Sunny weather cannot be guaranteed, but if you are prepared, you will always find a way to enjoy your stay. Scott grew up coming here and we came here on our honeymoon too...gosh! 8 years ago now!

Dana loved it too, there's no faking a smile like this on a 2-year-old!

Eli turns 4!

We invited a few of Eli's classmates and some friends to to help us celebrate Eli's 4th birthday. When everyone got to our house, we went outside and had a water fight. It was fun for Eli and his older classmate, all the other kids either cried or were not interested. See the video at the end of this post.

Below is a picture of Eli's younger classmate looking fiercely poised with his watergun. Once he got sprayed with a bigger, more powerful watergun and he got upset and made like he was leaving. This was a good language experience for me: trying to coax a toddler back with the others (his parent's had dropped him off)! I eventually called for Scott to help me with this.

Eli and his best friend Caleb are playing with some of Eli's new toys.

Caleb's mom and dad made a very tasty ICE CREAM cake for Eli's birthday (this not having an oven businesss is really working for me!). It had wine gums on the top of it, which Eli and Dana call "gummies."

Here's an aerial-ish shot of the action at the dining room table. It was a similar deal to Dana's party, fruit, cake, veggies and pizza. We tried to have a balloon stomp game outside, but it was once again, over most of the kids' heads and the oldest boy ended up stomping on all the younger kids' balloons before they even knew what was going on...sigh...at least it was fun for him I guess.

Here's a short video of the waterfight action. Eli got a new watergun for his birthday so he was pretty into it.

Afterwards as things wound down, Eli announced to our few remaining guests, "I want you to go home now, I'm tired." Nothing like being direct, but we all (parents included) were tired and so our friends graciously took their leave. It was a fun-filled morning, but I'm glad birthdays are only once a year.

Great Wall camping

My school offered a two-day, one-night camping trip to the Great Wall and so I jumped at the chance to go. Scott stayed back to work on his two papers and enjoyed the fact that he could work uninterrupted for more than 2 hours at a time.

Here's a picture of Eli amusing himself with our camera on the bus. There were about 30 of us total, with two other kids also going. I was a little worried that Eli might play too rough with the other kids (all younger and all girls) so I asked some of the single guys to go ahead and rough-house with Eli whenever the opportunity arose.

On the first day we walked into a village that is located near the Great Wall, about a 2 hour hike through trails, and woods and corn crops. The villagers put on a show for us, with drums, singing and dancing. The boy in the fore-ground of this picture isn't shy about showing his dislike for the music!

I carried Dana is this pack while Eli walked or was carried by those blessed obliging single guys.

This was my favourite dancer, one of the few males, he was just delightful in his expressions and really enjoyed having a large audience.

Didn't get a picture of our tent this time, but pretty much exactly the same set up as last year, we camped in one of the towers. It was a gorgeous night, clear, not too hot, with a pleasant breeze and a bright almost-full moon. It was not the best sleep of my life, sleeping between Eli and Dana, but it sure was memorable!

The next day we walked the Wall itself. I again had Dana and I borrowed a pack and a mule...uh I mean, another student...to carry Eli. So thankful for the help of everyone who went! Otherwise soloing it with both kids would have definitely been too much for me, and an experience not worth repeating!

Dana turns 2!

Dana celebrated her birthday with her "Chinese twin," they are only 3 days apart and we thought it would be fun to celebrate together. It was a fun morning, Dana picked out her birthday outfit (the top was from her Auntie Pam in Canada) and her dress was one she got in Thailand.

Scott's dad was worried that our kids are "too healthy", here they are having juiceboxes with their friends on Dana's birthday of all occasions! He hopes to remedy the situation when we head back to Canada for a visit in late June! But we hope yogurt remains as Dana's all-time favourite food.

We made fruit kebabs for our mid-morning snack! Not only visually appealing, but very tasty!

Of course we had cake too! It was absolutely huge and brought over by a friend. (I don't have an oven yet in my new place! We did a lot of eating, washing hands, playing, (repeat). Following Chinese tradition, we had cake first, then pizza.

Eli approved of the cake, as you can see.

"Put the nose on the Elmo" was a game we tried to play. It was the adults that humoured me and joined in because the kids were not too into it. The kids liked watching their parents play and helping their moms or dads get the nose in the right spot though though.

Let's not forget the presents! By this time Dana was fading and thinking: "When are you all going home so I can have my nap?" I was thinking that right along with her!