Olympics: Hockey

The first event we had tickets to was to women’s hockey.  This was the much anticipated match between the very blond Finnish team and the very unblond Chinese team.  We haven’t lived in Canada long enough to appreciate much more than the gladiatorial aspects of the game, which were strikingly absent from this event.  We were rooting for China, as were a surprisingly large number of other people, but the Finns won handily despite a good effort from the Chinese, whose goalie looked absolutely overwhelmed by the size of her protective gear. 

Buntzen Lake

This is a place about 10 minutes from our house called Buntzen Lake.  In the summer a lot of people come to swim and fish.  January offered a few sunny Saturdays so I took the kids for a little hike on one of them.  It’s pretty wintery and cold, but they still ended up wading into the water until their feet were freezing.  Ethan was the first one in, but he wasn’t too happy about it after the fact.

Little friends

 

We regularly get what seems like a family of raccoons showing up at the sliding glass door leading to our back yard at night. They give us these very blank but hungry looks and ogle any food we've got in hand. The kids think it's great and its all we can do to keep them from opening the door and letting the whole crew in for a bite.  There is a little fish pond in the back yard and we used to have some goldfish in there, but the raccoons would turn it into a raccoon hot tub and night and eat all the fish while they were splashing around.  I guess its their revenge for our poor hospitality.

Train place

Here is a campground-ish place we ran onto on on the way from Vancouver to California.  Its somewhere between Redding and Mount Shasta.  It seemed to be closed when we stopped (for one of our many many biologically compelled stops), but it looked like you could sleep in old cabooses, which sounded pretty cool to most of us.

Full contact cookies

At the age and stage of our clan, making cookies is a full contact sport.  Why sit on a chair and decorate cookies with all your clothes on when you can strip down and get on top of the table to do the same thing?

Shark!

I used to surf at a place called Sunset Beach when I was in high school.  Its right next to Gladstones on PCH below the Palisades. I saw this picture from the LA Times taken at the same beach and thought it was kind of crazy.  Its the same place I cut my head open surfing after my freshman year at college.  I guess the rocks were the least of my worries.


http://sharkresearchcommittee.com/pacific_coast_shark_news.htm
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shark8-2009oct08,0,2454627.story

The horror of it all!

Here is the aftermath of a recent road trip from San Francisco to Vancouver.  I thought this was a good compare and contrast to the flying with children pictures.  The good thing about the airplane is that you can walk away feeling only minimally guilty, since you probably had a worse go of it than the cleaners will.  With a car you can’t externalize the grossness.

 

Travelling with kids on very very long flights

Do you ever wonder what its like to fly on a really long international flight with little kids?  Well, it generally starts out fine - an initial fascination with the airplane evacuation brochure, a bunch of questions about whether the plane is going to crash, lots more questions about when the food will come out and about how much Sprite they will give you, then a trip or two to the bathroom.  Then you take off.

After that, they'll watch the loop of kids movies and cartoons on the in flight system.  On a US airline this takes only 3-4 hours.  Most foreign airlines have much better entertainment systems so you can get a lot more time.  Eventually the boredom sets in and the questions about how long until we arrive.  The airline food gets cherry picked for the dessert and crackers.  The vegetables get squished around.  Half the fruit ends up on the floor and it eventually starts mixing with everything else that the floor begins to attract - shoes, socks, books, DVDs, crayons, sippy cups, snacks brought from home.  Then all that stuff starts getting smooshed up and stepped on until it becomes a really gross and sticky mess.  Kids fall asleep in all kinds of weird postures.  When you arrive, most are asleep.  Some are excited to arrive.  Others just want to keep sleeping, upside down covered in smashed grapes and dirty socks.

Its actually not as bad as it seems...

Halloween

A solid showing this Halloween costume-wise.  A witch with very frizzy hair.  A Transformer who didn’t really like wearing his mask, which, when coupled with the inability to turn into a machine, somewhat diminishing the authenticity of the get up.  A race car driver who wanted to be a fireman who wanted to be a race car driver who wanted to be a fireman who ended up as a race car driver.  And a lion who liked the candy but couldn’t really understand the causal relationship between the sweets and the costume.

Meet the mayor

Abby and Ben both read enough books this summer to qualify for the distinguished Super Reader Medal personally presented by the Most Honorable Mayor of Port Moody, British Columbia.  We had admittedly not heard of the Super Reader program before getting our library card soon after moving in, but it was quite an affair and everyone was excited.

Vancouver

We finally made it to Vancouver. So far, so good. Beautiful mountains, lakes to swim in, tap water you can actually drink. What more could you ask for? Here are a few early pics.

Chocolate dreams

Did you ever wonder what happens if you fall asleep at night eating a 5 pound bag of chocolate chips that you sneaked out of the refrigerator unbeknownst to your parents?

I didn't think so.

We'll here's what it looks like anyway. Courtesy of 3 year old Ethan Woodward.

Birthday Carnival

Here are a few pics from today's double birthday party for Abby (8) and Ben (6). We invited all the kids in each of their school and church classes and we ended up with over 50 kids! We hired a local streetside cotton candy guy to come for the afternoon. Since cotton candy is about 10 cents a pop here, this is quite feasible and it was a huge hit. Zachary fell down on the street right before the party. He seems to have fallen directly onto his nose, since he had no scuffs on his hands, knees etc. Everyone had a great time and the weather turned just in time for the party.

More birthday pics

More birthday pics

Chinese nursery school

Ethan attends a local Chinese nursery school where he is the only non-Chinese kid in his class. Check out the poster of his class and see if you can pick him out. The room is not really heated much so you can see the kids all wearing their coats while eating a morning snack. He loves the place and they are really nice to him.

Suspension bridge

This place is in North Vancouver, over a deep, but narrow gorge over a river.  A very pretty place, but it freaks some people out.  Here’s a picture of Jenny and Natalie. 

British school

The kids recently started school here in Shanghai at a British school called Dulwich College. Its a branch of a British school. The kids are each assigned to one of four "houses" that compete against each other in different contexts, which they think gives a Harry Potter-ish feel to the setup. Anyway, the uniforms are a bit different than the Batman shirts that they might be wearing in the U.S.

Painted face

I've been sort of slacking on posts lately. I'll catch up a bit.

Here's a pic from a funny painting gone awry day recently.

Baby shower game/quiz

Jenny recently threw a baby shower for her friend Elizabeth. Besides the lame grunt work that is normally assigned to me on these occasions, I was tasked with coming up with a game. I wrote up a baby/child oriented quiz. A few questions have a some China-living specific elements, but most are pretty generic. The answers are fairly negotiable so we had a hard time determining a winner. I suggested a sudden-death playoff involving the decidedly un-PC sounding Indian leg wrestling that we used to do in Boy Scouts, but was voted down. Anyway, try your luck!

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Baby Shower quiz

1) What’s the best way to deal with labor pains?
A) Acupuncture
B) Well rehearsed breathing techniques
C) Holding your spouse’s hand and knowing his love can sustain you through this trial
D) Heavy doses of prescription pain killers injected directly into your spine

2) Which of the following are you more likely to buy with your first child than with your third?
A) Bottle sanitizer
B) Changing table
C) Diaper genie
D) All of the above

3) What can you never have enough of?
A) Money
B) Love
C) Peace of mind
D) Sippy cups

4) You drop a pacifier on the floor of a restaurant. Match the responses below
When the pacifier belongs to your:
a) 1st child
b) 2nd child
c) 3rd child
d) 4th child

then you will:
1) Rinse it off with some Diet Coke
2) Brush it off on your pants
3) Rinse it off with some water
4) Wash in soap and water then boil to sanitize

5) What goes well with ketchup?
A) Hot dogs
B) Hamburgers
C) Macaroni and cheese
D) Pasta
E) All of the above

6) The remote is lost. Where’s the most logical place to look for it?
A) Under the couch near the TV
B) In the toilet
C) In the garage mixed in with the bike helmets or garden tools
D) It doesn’t really matter since someone has probably pulled the batteries out anyway

7) Your spouse calls you at work to tell you that one of the kids has somehow gone to the bathroom on the computer keyboard. Your most likely response is:
A) “I’ll come right home and take care of it”.
B) “Just pour some sawdust on it and I’ll take care of it when I get home”.
C) Say “Hold on just a second” then go ask your boss if there is some special project that he needs done right away, then get back on the phone and say “I’d love to help but I’ve got a big deadline”.

8) Your cordless phone is missing. What probably happened to it?
A) It’s in the toilet
B) It’s in the toilet with the remote
C) It’s in the toilet with the remote and maybe some car keys

9) What’s a sure sign that your spouse isn’t pulling his/her weight?
A) When sudden and conveniently timed “conference calls” start popping up whenever there’s a particularly stinky diaper to change
B) When a husband tries to disrupt the natural order of things by suggesting that his wife should start taking out the trash.
C) When you suspect that you’re the only one who cares about cleaning the lint filter in the dryer.

10) What’s the biggest problem with pet bunnies?
A) The cute bunnies grow up into plain old rabbits
B) They eat all the plants in your backyard up to about 18 inches high
C) You feel guilty as they just sit there in that little cage looking at you with those rabbit eyes and those wiggly noses with a look that is basically the same always but you somehow know that this time it means they’re totally depressed and wondering about what they could have possibly done in a prior life to deserve this miserable existence
D) Once they grow up you can’t give them to your ayi to take home, skin and eat because if the kids ever got wind of it you’d be branded “The Rabbit Killer” for life.

11) What is the most difficult thing to find?
A) The lid to the only clean Tupperware left in the cupboard
B) Both of your three year old’s church shoes on Sunday morning five minutes after you were supposed to leave to be on time
C) Enough spaghetti sauce after you’ve already put the spaghetti in the water to boil
D) The remote, your cordless phone and maybe your car keys all at the same time

12) Your kids want to get some goldfish real bad. What’s the best response?
A) “OK, but fish are a big responsibility and you’ll have to take care of them”
B) “OK, but you’ve got to catch them with a mini-fishing pole in one of those little ponds in a Chinese park”
C) “No, you’ll get bored of them and overfeed them and we’ll end up with a murky green fish tank with nothing in it except for a fake mini-treasure chest and some water skeeters scooting around on top”
D) Don’t make a fuss and just let them get the fish, but know that they’ll end up in the toilet with the remote, the cordless phone and maybe some car keys.

13) You know that you’re getting old when:
A) You start thinking reading glasses might actually come in handy
B) Your child’s teacher was born when you were in high school
C) Your kids ask you if the extra skin under your neck has a special name
D) You look back nostalgically at Soap on a Rope

14) Circle who would win in a fight (for clarification, no knives, guns or bombs allowed even secret super infinity power bombs that could destroy the world a million zillion infinity times):

Transformer vs. GI Joe
GI Joe vs. Island Princess Barbie
Island Princess Barbie vs. My Pretty Pony
My Pretty Pony vs. Webkins
Webkins vs. Blackberry
Blackberry vs. iPod
iPod vs. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates
Bill Gates vs. Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett vs. Jimmy Buffett
Jimmy Buffett vs. Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter vs. Jimmy Dean Lil’ Smokies Mini-sausages
Jimmy Dean Lil’ Smokies Mini-sausages vs. Trans-fat Free Cheetos
Trans-fat Free Cheetos vs. Transformer

15) Why is it called a baby shower anyway?
A) I really have no idea
B) Because you shower the future mom with gifts and love
C) Because the first one ever held was during caveman times and they had no chairs and they sat around in the mud talking about babies so naturally they got dirty and towards the end one of them said “Man, after all this sitting in the mud and talking about babies I could really use a shower even though its not invented yet” and another said, “Yeah, me too, but first we’ve got to invent a shower curtain or we’ll get water all over the floor”

Dora in Chinese

Ethan is a big Dora the Explorer fan, but he watches it on Chinese DVDs. Its actually a version that's translated into Chinese, so imagine all the Spanish words in U.S. version of Dora being translated into English and all the normal English speech translated into Chinese. Some of the character names are still in English, Dora and Boots, for example, but others such as Map are translated into Chinese.

Ethan actually understands quite a bit of Chinese. There are some basic food words, like eggs or apples, which I'm not sure if he knows in English are not, since usually asked for these things in Chinese. we have a made here and she only speaks Chinese. She'll tell Ethan to go put his shoes on or pick up a toy and he'll go and do it, so he understands more Chinese than he speaks.