Almost 4 years lists

Critters in the house:

Praying mantis
Cicada
Rove beetles
Rain bugs
Moths
3 different kinds of ants
Cockroaches
Sparrows
Turtles
Sugar glider
2 kinds of hamsters

Cooking/Baking Trials:

Cheesecake
Rice cooker cakes
Dahl
Nasi lemak
Flourless cookies
Mee goreng
Bang bang tofu
Nanaimo bars
Char Koey Teow
Hawaiian salad
Taco salad
Jambalaya
...

Games tried/learned:

Blockus
Chickapig
Karma
The Game
Captain ball
Ultimate frisbee
Quiddler
Zoot!
Ticket to Ride
Taboo
Bananagrams
...

Health Hazards:

Covid close contact
Wrist surgery
3 bad back episodes
Constipation blockage
Mild concussion (maybe)
5-6 near miss bike accidents
Torn ankle ligament
Carpal tunnel aches

Languages heard/dabbled in:

Mandarin
Hokkien
Malay
Tamil
French
Thai
Nepali
Arabic

New Experiences Tried:

Ziplining
Rock climbing
Camping
4 new hiking trails
Glass etching
Sculpting
Macramé
Collage
Guitar playing

While ideas for interesting lists of the last 4 years here flow in a seemingly never ending stream, we'll stop at these 5 for this week :o)

A Few "Fun" (and not so fun) Delights

 On our nightly family walk (now kinda rare as we get other exercise now lockdowns are ended) Aiden posed for his artist sisters... whose drawings are often of sword fighting fantasy characters. We were walking and he swinging when the cry came for a photo of such and such a pose for drawing.

One Saturday cleaning discovered that overnight ants had decided to take up residence behind one of our wall decorations... why did they chose such a location?! Everyone was quite happy to leave that clean up job to Mom. It thankfully hadn't gotten too big so cleanup wasn't too messy. 

A much less pleasant job was cleaning out Aiden's bedside drawers where a cockroach family had taken up residence...

And then, the hazards of an open kitchen: those are sparrow claw prints and pecks in our rising bread!!

Chinese New Year

February begins with a week of celebrations and disruptions for Chinese New Year. We don't usually celebrate it ourselves, but this year the celebratory feel "came and got us." With fewer restrictions, there have been more firecrackers, gift exchanges, and gatherings. Grace and Aiden had the week off from Chinese classes. Rather last minute we had Aiden's best friend over for a meal and a game of Catan, and a steady but irregular stream of neighbours bringing over traditional New Year snacks to share with us (as we did at Christmas!). With an impromptu decision to take the day off school, it felt way more celebratory than usual for us, and nicely so. Even not having thought ahead to go grocery shopping before everything shut down for celebrations got in the way!

Sunday we went to our newest beach for a fire supper and laze around under the stars. We found a lot of tiles in amongst the shells and collected enough for a few coasters.  So all week mom has been experimenting with hot glue and a plaster of paris substitute to find a workable means of making coasters that will stay together. Not sure we've found it yet...but they'll look good when we do!