Smushed

Smushed.

Future Cardinal?

Oh, hi! Sorry, we kind of forgot about the blog. We've been having so much fun with our crazy cousins! As Juno told you, we went to Yee Yee-Pau's house and had another Chinese New Year dinner. But before we got there, we have an adventure further down the Peninsula in the Bay Area. I visited my first college - Stanford. Mommy and Daddy figure that given my rate of learning, I should be off to college in just a few short years. 

While we were waiting for Keira and Audrey to meet us, Everett and I hung out with the Burghers of Calais and then decided to run around the quad and make funny faces at the camera.

Once they got there, we took the elevator up to the top of Hoover Tower to inspect the campus and figure out where we wanted to go. Mommy and Coufou pointed out some buildings to us and the dorms they used to live in. They kept saying how much the campus had changed.

We pretty much ran around most of the main campus - checking out the sculptures and fountains and, um, causing a bit of a ruckus. Mommy, Daddy and Coufou has a hard time keeping up with us! We did stop to have lunch at the Coffee House, apparently one of Mommy's favorite spots on campus.

Then, it was finally time to leave. We were exhausted! We had one last walk across the Oval and then off to our cars and to Yee Yee-Pau's house.

What do you think? Future Cardinal?

Skiing!

Phew! It's been a busy week. As you may have seen from Juno's blog, we've been busy taking over Northstar, hitting the slopes, hot tubbin' and skiing some more!

As you can see from Juno's pictures and videos, we all loved skiing. I actually took my first official lessons! Two days of them!!

Since I'm just a beginner, I had to stay towards the bottom part of the mountain. The main thing that I was working on was how to ski in a straight line. The first video is from my first day of lessons. The second video is from my second day of lessons. I'm getting better!

Then I got to ride the gondola up and explore mid-mountain with Daddy.

And look who we found!

Mommy was nice enough to give me a lift.

After a long day of skiing and a dip in the hot tub, we settled back into the condo for story time. And since Jasper can now read, he was the storyteller!

And apparently, he had a few more s'mores with Yee-Ma, Uncle James and Juno. Where was I?

s'more monster

Everett: "Mommy. I'm really sticky"

San Francisco Adventures

As Juno mentioned on Saturday, we're in San Francisco! We managed to escape Nemo - the blizzard that dropped a whole lot of snow on the East Coast. Luckily, Mommy managed to get us on a flight a day earlier. Good thing too because our original flight ended up being cancelled! 

We've been having a lot of fun running around with our cousins and celebrating Chinese New Year. We went to the playground and then, after working up a good sweat, we headed to Coufou and Couma's house to shower (all 6 of us in the shower together!) and get ready for dinner.













The next day, we had more time to play together. We went biking and scootering on the Embarcadero. We each got to go for a ride with Uncle James on the big bike. It was so much fun!





We worked up quite an appetite for brunch! What, didn't you know that french fries are a traditional dish on Chinese New Year? The older cousins busied themselves with books and iPhones while we waited for the rest of the food to arrive.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

Reading in fun

I'll admit that when I got a few chapter books as Christmas gifts, I didn't really understand why anyone would want to read a book with all words and no pictures in it... But then, Mommy and Daddy started reading some of these chapter books to me, and I realized that the stories are really interesting, and the books are written in such a way that you just want to find out what happens in the next chapter and then the chapter after that and after that...

But of course, Mommy and Daddy don't always have the time to read chapter after chapter to me, and I can read myself after all - which is exactly what I've taken to doing. I'm now reading chapter books on my own!

I love them because the stories are much more involved than in my picture books, and you really get to see plot and tension develop from chapter and chapter. I usually can't put a book down without reading at least 2-3 chapters, and sometimes I get so into it that I try to finish the whole book at once!

And guess what - Everett has been watching me and realized that reading is fun, so decided that he'd like to learn to read on his own, which is exactly what he's starting to do. Here, have a look - 

Not bad for a three year old, huh? And here's part two (sorry about the background noise - Daddy recorded this particular reading session at the allergist's office, where apparently another kid's food challenge wasn't going nearly as well as Everett's...)

We love reading!