The Zhao Family

I took an extra day off from work so we can go do many things. On Saturday went to the National Building Museum for their annual Discover Engineering Family Day and spent all day there. It was great! There was a plethora of hands-on activities to be an engineer and building things from bridges to catapults to aerodynamic airplanes and etc.






















































































And Monday's weather was very nice so we decided to visit the Zoo again. It seems that each time we visit the Zoo, we discover a new place and learn new things. This time we went to the bird house and we saw many types of birds and got really close to them too. Then we visit several more places at the Zoo!














































And the end you can see who's tired.....(I can not help because I was taking the photos)

So much has happened the last couple weeks that there's not enough time to post anything. But here's some of the things the kids did!


The Fugal's visited us and FF just took over and being her mother-instincts took over and start feeding Aaron.






Some Valentines activities with the mom's group that FF did.






SS has signed up for Young Rembrandts drawing class. Here are the first two drawings he did. The teacher's sample is on the left and his actual is on the right. What you think?




On to CC. He's just super busy with his scouts. This time of the year, they're building all their Pinewood derby racing. This is his first time doing it. Each Saturday they would have workshops to shape, color, and make their own unique cars out of a block of wood. Abbey, only mother/female at the shop, takes him to the workshop each time and barely help him with shaping, coloring, and designing. And some of the dads take over and do it for themselves as opposed to the kids.






















Well on the Saturday of the Racing, Abbey have to take SS to Chinese school. I took CC and FF to the race. Gladly they had a TV with lots of cartoons so she was watching the movies most of the time while I concentrate on taking photos/videos of the event. It was pretty exciting! And CC actually won first place for his Den!!!









Here are some late photos of the Red Envelopes from Chinese New Year. The kids have a total of $441!! crazy!



And they treated with pizza!!

Here are some random photos of us doing some interesting and crazy things in January.


Somehow, they actually do get along once in a while...



Her bling blings!






You think she's well fed?


Reading....


Reading....


More reading...the way mom reads to the kids...


No more reading...the way dad reads to the kids...laptop and ipod..hehehe


Brennan took out tooth #4 all by himself again! This one took less than 5 seconds and he snapped it out.




Clayton's masterpiece!

As a family tradition always go to my parent's house to have the first meal of the year. In almost all cases, the first meal would be at midnight which means we bring our kids to my parents house early, let them eat light early and make them go to bed early. Then around 11:30pm, we'll wake them up and get them ready to have the first meal as a family unit. And in that first meal, which consists of 7-9 dishes of all kinds of veggies/grains each representing a good blessing such as bak choi(bok choy) which relates to 'faat choih' meaning having great fortune. Etc. We must eat or try all of the dishes although some aren't as tasty as others. We also have to make sure our first bowl of rice is completely finished and cleaned and to add more rice to the bowl which represents more abundance of food.

The best part of the first meal as a family is after eating we get our Red Envelopes or Hong Bao which has money in it! I used to get it but since after marriage and kids, all the Hong Baos go to the kids.And they love it know they are getting a treat and now the boys are old enough, they know they get money and they can buy things with it like candy...hehehe

The pictures below are of 'opening' the New Year and having a feast at my parents house. My dad and mom will go all out with all kind of delicious foods, whether cooked or some bought, we have more dishes than people! It was just super delicious.














Clayton's Chinese class celebrated Chinese New Year too! In his class they made dragon faces and paraded all around the school. It was great! and he made an awesome dragon too!