Camping at Sauder Village

How many milk can I squeeze? Let me use both hands.

Sean had been working lots of over times in the past few weeks and we wanted to use our pop-up camper one more time before school starts, so we decided to camp at the Sauder Village, OH that was only 75 minutes away this weekend. I quickly loaded the camping gears and prepare meals. Kids were having fun pick up a treat for their camping trip.

We ate at a local Mexican restaurant on the way to the camp site then set up our camper. Kids were being very helpful helping us unloading gears and set up the bed. We played Uno that night and went to rest ready for a busy Saturday.

The village has many exhibitations and live demonstration in each cabin, such as weaving a basket in the basket shop, making a plate in the clay shop, and cooking at outdoors. We all had such a good time learning about people's life in the early Pioneer era, late 19th century and 20th century . It was very educational.

Kids' favoriate part was milking the cow in the barn. You see a cow standing in the barn and there is a basket underneath her nipples. You can squeeze the nipples and the milk (water this time) will come out and drip to the basket. She then would moo.....We were the only family there so Xander and Khai milked the cow for a long time. They then busy picking up eggs in the chicken house.

We stayed at the village for a good 5.5 hours. It got really hot in the afternoon, so after taking a nap we went to swim pool to cool down. It was a short vacation but we all had a great time and felt very relaxed.

肖恩最近每天都加班再加上學校快要開學了. 我們想要趁開學前再用我們的露營車一次, 所以決定這個週末去隔壁州(Sauder Village, Ohio) 露營, 開車只要75分鐘. 由於只待2個晚上所以要準備的東西不多. 禮拜五等肖恩一下班我們馬上出發去旅行.

在去露營的路上有一家墨西哥餐廳, 我們去年在露營的回家路上有吃過, 所以今年照例也在那吃晚餐. 吃完晚餐到了露營的地方就準備架好露營車..小朋友們很喜歡戶外活動也長大了, 都會主動幫忙我們拿東西下車或是幫忙舖床. 真是爸媽的好幫手. 玩一下下遊戲就要準備睡覺了, 明天會是忙碌的一天.

起床後吃了早餐就準備去參觀村子了. 這個村子在每個房子裡都展覽了很多1830~1900 年代的東西還有真人實地表演, 像是有印列機及當時如何列印報紙, 如何編籃子, 如何造房子. 這村子整體的感覺很像是台灣的九族文化村. 很有教育性質也很有趣. 小朋友最喜歡的地方就是農場裡, 在裡面有一隻假牛, 她有四個乳頭, 地上有一個罐子在那裝牛奶. 你揑一下乳頭, 假牛奶(水) 就會噴到罐子裡. 哇, 小朋友玩的可興奮了. 旁邊有一個雞舍裡面有母雞在孵蛋, 小朋友把手伸進去拿雞蛋放在籃子裡. 在這可以體會農村的生活. 是很好玩啦, 可是如果真的要這樣生活下去的話, 擠牛奶跟拿雞蛋可能就變的不那麼好玩了.

我們在這村子裡待了5 個多鐘頭, 下午變的實在是太熱了, 吃個冰淇淋就跑回露營車去納涼了..還是好熱, 我們就跑去旅館裡的泳池玩水消暑一下. 好玩的一天很快就過去了, 雖然是很短暫的一個週末, 可是我們玩的很高興. 可是再過一個禮拜就要開學了, 要開始收心了.

Olympic Open Ceremony

Proud athlets.

We are so excited that Olympic start this Friday. To let kids understand what Olympic is, we decided to have a small Olympic open ceremony in our back yard. First of all, we designed our own country flag, then athlets enter the stadium and show their flags. Time for the torch. Xander and Khai are very proud running around with their torches. We had few competitions such as running and throwing balls. Xander ran the fastest and Khai threw the ball the farest. Yeah, proud parents. Make sure that you see all of our pictures on the right.

奧運即將開始了, 為了讓小朋友們了解什麼是奧運, 我們決定在開幕式當天在後院舉行一個小奧運. 首先我們要先設計自己的國旗, 然後運動員拿著自己的國旗進場囉... 當然少不了拿聖火, 做了2 個聖火讓小朋友們跑來跑去. 好了, 接下來重頭戲上場了, 看誰跑的最快及球扔的最遠..結果傑升跑最快及煒勳球扔最遠...頒奬牌以資鼓勵. 記得要按右邊看我們所有的相片哦.

Read, set, run..Khai, it's time to run.

Swim term I

Khai in the pool.

Xander in the pool.

It's only the second day of summer vacation and the kids are already driving me crazy. I've got to find some activities to use up their extra energy. YMCA has swimming lessons from Monday to Thursday, let's sign them up right away.

Xander has always been a very good swimmer and a good student in the pool, he kicked very hard and learned how to swim pretty well. Khai is doing so much better compared with last year. He can start moving forward (last year he stayed at the same place although he kicked very hard) and kicks pretty hard under the water.

才剛暑假的第二天, 小朋友們就已經快要讓我發瘋了. 不行, 不能讓他們每天待在家裡什麼事都不做, 這樣媽媽我遲早會被他們折騰的不成人形. 趕快去幫他們報名游泳把多餘的精力都發洩出來吧....

傑升是個很好的學生, 會乖乖的聽老師的話, 該踢水就踢水, 該擺手就擺手...他很快的就可學會應學的姿勢...那煒勳呢...他目前還處於過度興奮的狀態, 常常會一興奮就在水裡跳來跳去的..可是跟去年比起來,他今年好很多了...他已經可以往前游, 去年只是在原地踏地...通常游完泳之後小朋友們肚子會很餓, 所以要幫他們準備些小點心..我猜這就是為什麼每年我家小朋友都在暑假期間突然長高許多的原因--運動加上食量變大.傑升現在已經到我胸部高了, 而煒勳現在只矮傑升半粒頭..幾年前煒勳矮了傑升一大截, 現在快要追上傑升了.

Pei-I is learning how to upload video clips

I enjoy watching my sister adding new video clips about her baby on her blog. I got to see her baby's action and see my house and family in the background. Sean has been really busy at work and I really want to try it, so I shoot a short video clip of Xander and Khai helped me peeling carrorts and managed to transfer this video clip to my computer. I was amazed how easy to upload to the web. I guess it's too early to tell, have to see how it looks like after I done editing this post. If it works great, then you'll see more actions from our family in the future and Pei-I would be very happy to take over updating our blogs. Please don't laught at her English and she is very proud that she managed to post a video clip and wrote her first page of blog.

我平常很期待大姐貼新的網頁, 因為她常常會放小寶貝的影片, 而在影片背景上我可以看到家裡或熟悉的地方及看到家人. 受到大姐的影響, 我也想放些小朋友的影片上來我們的網站, 這樣2邊的家人都可以看到小朋友成長的過程.

可惜老公最近上班太忙了, 沒有辦法教我, 自立自強好了. 問了大姐怎麼將影片上傳到網頁, 她說每個網頁的做法都不一樣. 好吧, 那我來試試看好了..先拍一小段影片再存到我的電腦上..吔, 我的網頁居然很簡單就可以上傳影片吔.. 好, 打幾個字再來看看會不會成功. 如果成功的話, 大家就可以常常看到我們在美國的日常生活了哦.

May 24, 2008 - Camping at Hoffmaster State Park

05242008 - Camping Hoffmaster 006, originally uploaded by The Whittier Family.

We took advantage of the long weekend to go camping at Hoffmaster State Park. It is one of our favorites, as it is not too far away from home, it is right up on the dunes of Lake Michigan, There is a lot to do, and we always have a great time. While we were there, we got lost in the forest while geocaching, swam in the cold waters of Lake Michigan, bought flowers at the local farmers market, made lots of yummy food (pizza, snake river stew, dutch oven potatoes, etc), and got in lots of storytelling and relaxing in front of the fire. It was really hard for all of us to come back to civilization. Camping in the pop-up is so much better than lying in the dirt.