Summer Time

Looking back at the pictures that I have taken this month, it is indeed summer time. I have been quite busy with school and work, and I am quite glad that I also did all these activities with the kids. They are growing up fast and I want to capture every moment.

We continued a bit with our rock climbing activity and took Max with us. Max liked it too, but he took it more as a fun game. He would try to climb it, then quickly give up and just hang on the rope to play.

Renee is a serious climber. She would keep going. She got a bit frustrated and refused to go a couple of times. I wish I could figure out what she was thinking. Anyway, she did climb up all the way to the top this time, which made me very proud.

I also took the kids out to a camping trip with a family who we used to hang out with before we all had kids. Here is Renee and Max hanging out at the site after we put up the tent. I have not been camping for a while and forgot how much time you need to spend in getting the site ready. I am really glad I did not go by myself. The other family cooked the dinner and fed them while I was fumbling through the instructions.

We then went out on a two hour hike. It had pretty steep slope. Renee and Max were both good sports. They enjoyed the walk very much. On the way down, they let me hold their hands while they try to slide their way down through the dry leaves on the ground.

Here is a cool picture I took while hiking around the Lafayette reservoir. We didn't do nearly as much hiking as I would have liked. But they got to play around in the hills. They seemed to enjoy the new game that they invented, which is called "hit the tree with the pine cones".

Max got scared of his bike for a while. We think it is because the training wheel was not working properly one day and he didn't trust it anymore. I had to lure and force him to take a few rides. After that, he recovered and enjoyed his biking rides again.

We also took them to the discovery museum in Sausalito. That is where we took Renee several times. We got a Google offer so we took it.

Max follows Renee most of the time. You can actually climb to the upper deck. But Renee is normally not a kid who likes to push around. So after getting pushed down from kids who want to come down a couple times in a row, she decided that the upper deck was not worth the trouble.

They geared up properly for the construction work. They even worked out the whole workflow of dump the load, put back the truck, and load the gravels.

Renee does not always encourage Max to play with her. But when she does, Max is always eager to help out. Max also figured out that you can chain these things together through the holes on them.

This is the area that Renee used to love. She used to stay here for hours. Unfortunately, she has outgrown it. The assistant was nice enough to let her in to say one last goodbye.

Here is the only picture I have of them on the day where we took them to the company picnic.

Redwood hiking and preschool graduation

Upon examining the pictures, I realized that I didn't take much this month. On the other hand, I feel that I have been able to spend more time with the kids. Renee has graduated from the preschool. I missed the ceremony because of my own school. I do hope I don't miss any down the road.

We took the kids to the Muir Wood park. This is the first serious hike we have done with the kids. We walked for over an hour along the hill side. They complained a bit but mostly enjoyed the walk, especially this!

Max likes to follow his sister everywhere. And Renee does like to go everywhere!

This is the ceremony party that I have missed.

So here is a cool story. I was talking to Renee one day, and I decided to ask her "Renee, what would you wish you can do more with daddy?" And she immediately mentioned in-door rock climbing. She did it once at a birthday party. I didn't think that she enjoyed it but apparently she did.

So I searched on line and found this place to go for an hour. I have taken here there twice already and she indeed loves it! She can climb all the way to the top of that two walls behind her now.

Outing, Biking, Dancing

This month' picture is actually a lot less than I expected considering I was taking a break from the school between the terms. My only excuse is that I was so busy hanging out with them I didn't have time to take pictures myself or remind Lianxin to take a picture anymore. I was out of their life for a week or two because of the finals. When I started hanging out with them, they called me 'mom' a couple of times. Now they started enjoying the joke of calling me mom from time to time.

We went to visit a family friend in Sacramento and visited a farm there for cherry picking. It was still early in the season, though. We didn't really pick a lot of things. Nevertheless, the kids had a good time running through the trees and plants picking fruits. Here is us picking raspberries. Looking at the plants, I finally realized that these are the exactly the same fruits that I used to pick in the wild when I was growing up. They were abundant around the place where I lived.

Unlike his sister, Max is normally natural in front of the camera. Personally, however, Renee is a lot closer to me. She greets me when I get home and she hugs me when she feels like it. AND she feels like it quite frequently. Max, on the other hand, has his boy way of expressing his feeling and hangs around his mom's neck all the time. Did I say that we really need to send him to school? School starts in August for him.

On the way home, we stopped at the outlet. This is the reason that we told them that we were stopping. I stayed with them while Lianxin went to the shops.

Here is a recital that I missed. I am missing a lot of events with my school and I hope I get to catch up once I am done. For my next school session this weekend, I am going to have to miss Renee's graduation, father's day event and her birthday party in school. We will have birthday party at pump-it up on Sunday so that is good.

Max knows how to ride bike now! He even learned to brake quickly after his sister. He is a lot less interested in it somehow. I have been able to run along side of Renee many times. I couldn't do it with Max. He insists that I should hold his handle for that. The whole thing ended up with me sending him back crying so that I could keep going with Renee.

Encouraged by our last hiking around golden gate park, we went to Muir Redwood park and hiked around for about an hour. They whined about it a bit but other than that the whole thing went pretty smoothly. Renee complained about having sandwich for lunch but gave in quickly upon learning that there were no other food. Max held out more. He ate a lot less and survived on water and strawberry.

Playing around in the hollow tree. Renee cried right after because she wanted to take a picture only with her brother and the other boy was having too much fun in there as well to leave. The mother was apologetic. I thought it was fine. Renee has to learn how to deal with these situations. Breaking down and crying is never a good solution.

Renee and Max are really good at climbing. Renee is more interested in exploring things that catch her eye, and Max is simply copying whatever his sister is doing (and be pretty good at it)