Our weekend

Beautiful 17 miles drive.  The photo was taken on our trip in last Nov.

Our weekend is full of...

Excitement at preparing for our short trip to Las Vegas.  Planning, shopping, and a lot of laughters were all related.

Happiness at playing with kids at the Church.  I served at the Church nursery room on the Lord's day.

Contentment at seeing smooth water flow through our kitchen sinks after a half-day laborious hard work at repairing the pipe blockage.  All credit went to Hubby. He has successfully transformed into a handy man, all by self-learning.

Pleasant evening chat between daddy and son.  These two are good buddies with similar interests.  Topics include game playing strategies and mathematics concepts. I feel relieved that Hubby got a good little listener to his mathematics, physics, and chemistry knowledge.

31/52

Eric: Learning origami from Youtube. Paper planes and boomerang are his favorite.

Daisy: We were visiting a local book store. Daisy is currently craving for book readings.

I am joining Jodi's 52 project.

Easy Recipe | Apple pie

While brainstorming what's for breakfast, I stumbled upon this apple pie recipe.  This recipe is as easy as 1-2-3. With freshly picked apples from backyard and a leftover pie crust, within an hour, the delicious apple pie was served on table.  Hubby gave very high appraisal to it and ate several scoopful.  I only wish the kids can like the pie more.

{I feel grateful for having apples freshly picked from our own backyard.}

Simple fun: flying boomerang

Eric was flying a paper boomerang at a nearby park in above pictures. He learned to make this wonderful boomerang from Youtube, step by step by himself, and only at some complicated point, he needed a little help from me.

Throw, watch the boomerang twisting and turning in the air, expect it to fly back, and do the best to catch it when it does fly back...These acts bring Eric hearty laughter. He can spend hours repeating these acts with pure joy.

He's currently into origami -- all kinds of paper airplanes and paper boomerang. And his paper airplanes can fly far away, more than 20 feet.

It is amazing how easy and cheap the fun is -- all the material a kid need is a piece of paper (Eric always grab recycled paper to fold his works.) .

Botanic garden

This Friday Eric's summer school organized a family short trip to a nearby Arboretum.  I have heard before that this botanical garden is beautiful but we have never been there. Taking this opportunity, the whole family went together. We all had great fun there. The scenery is absolutely pleasing with lakes and small waterfalls; various trees and shrubs; ducks,turtles, and even tadpoles. Although the weather is very hot, in the 80's, the garden has plenty of shades of trees and keep us cool.

What a pleasant surprise to find these little waterfalls inside an arboretum. These waterfalls are tiny and tricklets compared to splendid ones. However, they surely give you a peaceful feeling of idyllic settings.

...Ducks,turtles, and even tadpoles. Duck is Daisy's most favorite animal at the moment.  Eric was very excited to see turtles and tadpoles, and he made sure that I took a photo for the turtles.

The place we live is called Orange County.  Orange trees are seen everywhere, almost from every backyard, and it is of course no exceptional to be found in this beautiful botanic garden.

The teacher told kids that bamboo new shoots grow straightly and vertically into a culm without any branching out until its mature height is reached. In Chinese culture, bamboo symbolizes integrity and uprightness. That's why people use bamboo to describe gentleman.

Eric and his friend was climbing up a man-made hill.  This hill has a tunnel underneath.  Did you peek the little hat on the left?  That's Daisy exploring the tunnel.

The school arranged several activities for the summer school kids.  They played high with great interest and excitement.  While standing aside observing, Daisy admired the bigger kids very much. We then gave her a hola-hoop.  She took it and practiced in real earnest.

Snow day

I am trying to catch up with the blog posts. Gege and daddy went to snow mountain on new year's day.  Ah, that's long time ago already.  They went there with other parents and kids from the church. Meimei and I didn't go.  From the picture, I can tell that gege had a good time there.

A good day

 Eric:"Mom, I have such a good day today."
Me:"Because we went to the park?"
Eric:"And also because we are going to the Bible study group tonight."
Me:"Do you like the Bible study group?"
Eric:"Yes. I like it very much."
We haven't participate in the Bible study group for several months since Daisy was born. No-time was always the excuse.  Now Daisy is five months old, we decided that it's time to resume our Bible study. :-)

Here are some photos we took in the park.

P.S., Today Daisy called Eric Ge Ge (which means Brother in Chinese.) She pronounced it clearly and the sound was very loud too.  It happened when Daisy was sitting in her chair, watching Daddy and Eric having their lunch. We were so pleasantly surprised.  Actually this is the second time that Daisy called Ge Ge.  The first time was about two weeks ago.  Ge Ge is the first word that Daisy ever spoke out. :-)