Skip to main content

Happy birthday, Evie!

Happy birthday to our dear, little Evie! This beautiful soul turned 9 on Tuesday and we celebrated with some friends with a staycation on Orcas Island. It was a good getaway with decent weather and we were able to get some hiking, bike riding, tennis and LOTS of lego and Pokemon in between.

I know we aren't following social distancing guidelines but we've all been very careful (only the dads doing errands outside of the house) and the kids have been dying to hang out. It ended up being a good call because Evie had a bit of a meltdown the night before her birthday. She was crying and going on and on about not wanting to turn 9 during Coronavirus. She was pretty upset and understandably so - this lockdown has been really hard on everyone!

By the next morning, Evie was back to being her sunny self. At 9, Evie still likes dancing and reading (current faves are Rick Riordan books and listening to Little House on the Prarie) and is only fighting playing her flute half the time now. Her favorite food is still dumplings  (she can eat a whole order at Doughzone) as well as beans (mostly refried). She loves her legos and is starting to really get into Pokemon. She's pretty good with doing outdoor activities like biking and hiking, but we haven't really tried her hand at any organized sport yet.

She is still pretty shy with new people and tends to do better in small social situations with just a few friends. She is Daddy's little buddy, where she and Scott like to hang out and just talk and talk. She asks lots of questions about how this and that works, and even likes to listen to our podcasts like How I Built This or The Daily. I love that she doesn't care much about fashion yet and am hoping this lasts a while longer, but she does like making her hair curly with braids.

Evie is a wonderful wonderful little lady and we hope she has an awesome year!


Happy birthday!

My semi-homemade ice cream cake!

Smores night

My friend Helen happen to be on Orcas so she stopped by so we can meet baby Ben, who is 4 months old!

Nora loved playing with the baby.

We did the walk around Cascade Lake.

We found lots of great swim and picnic spots for next time.

Social distancing while playing tennis.

The kids played outside a lot. Here they are practicing cartwheels.

Nora finds the weirdest sleeping positions. This can't be comfortable or safe.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Family time

I had to do a quick trip to LA towards the end of July to say goodbye to my Uncle Pang, who passed away a few weeks earlier. I have fond memories of fun cousin time at his house in Palos Verdes and Uncle Pang taking us to the beach when we were younger. I remember how he delighted in making us kids squeal with laughter by pretending the car ride was a rolleroaster - we'd take sharp turns and all of us kids would slide to one side of his Volvo station wagon or he'd slow the car down to a roll and we'd all chant that we couldn't let the car stop and it would inch slowly forward at a stoplight.  Although it was a sad reason to get together, I think he would be happy to know that the weekend was also a wonderful get together with family. Because it was fairly last minute, none of the kids flew over which meant us "adult cousins" were able to have long talks and linger over food. Kin and Meredith were able to host a summertime bbq at their house and we had a nice t...

Japan trip

We got back from Japan about a week ago and we're still talking about what a great trip it was!  Japan has never been super high on my places to visit but for a lot of reasons (I've never been, it's clean, it's safe, it's different) we took the plunge and booked it as our summer vacation this year. It helped that our friends, the Wongs, went last year, raved about it and loved it so much they were going again and we were able to coordinate so that some of our trip overlapped with theirs. It helped even more that the yen is at a 10-year low (maybe all time low?) against the dollar, which, aside from airfare, made everything quite affordable.  Look how low the yen is! We lucked out that it kept falling after we booked our tix in Dec. Since this was our first big overseas trip since COVID and with kids (or, lets face it, SINCE kids), I dove into prepping for our trip - including trying to keep up my Duolingo streak of learning Japanese for at least a few minutes everyd...

Miss Evie becomes a teenager

EEEK! We officially have a teenager in our house!  I can't believe our little Evie is now 13 years old. I can still see her as a little girl saying "Swiper no swiping!"  For her birthday this year, she and a few of the neighborhood girls went to get their nails done at the salon nearby. She doesn't remember the last time she got her nails professionally done ( back in 2016! ) so she was pretty excited about it. She picked a very pretty teal color. Afterwards, the girls had some cake.  To celebrate her actual birthday, her ask was for tv time, shopping and sushi. So after a morning spent hanging out in from the tv, we headed to Bellevue Square mall where guess what? She got a phone! Technically, I got a new phone and handed down my old phone to her. We spent a good 3 hours doing all the transfers but she was very patient about it and grinning from ear to ear when we went to dinner that night.  At 13, Evie has become a very stereotypical teenage girl - she loves clothe...