Egg-citing Easter 2014

The snow is gone - so a proper easter-egg hunt could be had.  Kind of hard to miss that first one - yep, she made out like a bandit. We'll be working on this well after the 4th of July...

Ooh, the international Kit Kats - Ann & I will hide those away for our own stash...

 

So excited she kicked off one of her shoes!

Quiet time afterwards with a fashion-drawing book - look at that focus

Absorbed!

A Passage to China 2014

Here's a dilemma: this community-led event is becoming too popular, but it can't move to somewhere with more room because then it will lose its traffic.

I believe this is the 5th year for "A Passage to China" at the Mall of America - and its biggest incarnation with vendors and information booths in the East Rotunda and performances in the NE and SE courtyards.

But the full crush of crowds is now working against the goal of being able to interact one-on-one with representatives of the different Chinese schools, merchants, and nonprofits. (And frankly, the food could be a lot better.)

We still managed to have a good time of course - -

There's the booth for Yinghua! And I've used China Sprout's catalog for learning supplies...

 

After the visit we had an authentic treat of bubble tea - Chatime is a brand from Taiwan with franchise outposts all over the world now...

Yinghua Chinese New Year Pageant 2014

The Chinese New Year pageant put on by Yinghua becomes more and more the capstone to our holiday season each year. We get so happy thinking about it and so excited to see what the teachers and kids have come up with.  This year's performance clocked in at 2 hours 40 minutes!

Held at Bethel University again - and this space barely holds us now! Over 500 students were participating!

 

Here's our girl!

Winter Carnival Snow Sculptures

It was a cold, windy, sunny day here in the Twin Cities but it's expected to get even colder next week. We used the clear skies as an excuse to cross the street into the State Fairgrounds to check out the St. Paul Winter Carnival's snow-sculpting contest.

About a dozen 10-foot cubes of compacted snow were delivered onto the Kidway of Machinery Hill this week, and today was a working day for the sculptor teams to put their creations together.  This year a new feature was added; a giant snow slide that Wynn and I took a ride on (very fast and no way to brake...)

They had speakers up around the perimeter of the grounds playing Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers tunes - it's cold enough now as I write this in the evening that I can hear the music, and we are about a mile away...

That's Wynn and Baba in the orange sled!

 

Click on this picture to expand - notice the little grey clay model on the snow chunk in front - that's the pattern the sculptor is trying to achieve with the big piece

8 years of awesomeness!

After a mid-day visit from Grandma Marilyn and Grandpa Ben with the gift of a nice jewelry box / music box (which Wynn immediately wanted to take apart to figure out how it works), the fun times kicked in again before dinner when Grandma Barb, Grandpa Ken, and Uncle Paul came by the house - and take-out from our local Sichuan restaurant was on the menu!

Showing off her knitting work!

Looking for Uncle Paul, who's bringing the food...

Not even all of it!  Two different kinds of duck - tea-smoked and crispy ... both were scrumptious

Dragon cake!

Learning the basics of chess with Uncle Paul

Our girl is so smart and so beautiful and interested in so many different things - it is so wonderful to have her in our lives!

Birthday Breakfast

It's going to be Asian food all day by Wynn's request - she's 8 years old today!

A fairly authentic northern-Chinese breakfast - on the left, deep-fried sesame-coated rice balls with red-bean filling; two different kinds of oranges in the middle; steamed pork bao on the right

She was excited to see what I was making - and told me the significance of each item before we started eating!

Happy New Year 2014!

No big trip this Winter Break - the biggest journey we took this season was to Hogwarts as we introduced Wynn to Harry Potter. Finished Book 1 yesterday and showed her the first movie today.  She is still trying to get her head around the idea that we had to wait about a year and a half between the books!  ("Now, imagine that the next book we'll read sometime between third and fourth grade!")

New Year's Day was cold - we had lunch at Masu at the Mall of America, but the service was dreadfully slow.

Bored, bored, bored

The Polar Vortex descended on Minnesota today, and Governor Dayton has closed all the schools tomorrow, so Wynn and Ann are getting one more bonus day of Winter Break. They'll be picking up the house & getting ready to go back to school Tuesday...