Well, one of us enjoyed Easter services...

Happy Easter, everyone!

A very meaningful day (for 2/3 of us...)

Today is our third Family Day. I can't believe it's been three years, and yet it seems like we've always been together. We let Quinn take the lead, so we went out for a bagel breakfast, and after preschool we went to the zoo and out for "Chinese noodles."

It was a lovely day, marred only by the grownups' repeated attempts to get a nice family photo. Quinn thought this was a terrible, boring idea that was sucking important fun time out of his day. He did a bit of whining and trotted out the fake cry he has just about retired, but all in all he put up with us  pretty well. We didn't get the perfect Christmas card photo we had envisioned, but we did get some photos that made us laugh (especially the one at the bottom of this post, which is the most perfect image ever of his goofy personality). And that's probably better in the long run anyway.

To Quinn's BCWI cousins Malia and Anna, Happy Family Day and lots and lots of love. To everyone waiting for a Family Day of their own, I hope your wait is short and sweet. And to Quinn Jianrong, we love you more than all the love in the world, times 27 million.

Trunk or treat!

I zipped home from work early today and we carved a couple of pumpkins. Quinn drew on the faces, I did the carving. He tried to convince me to trade jobs, but I didn't fall for that one...

We all went trick-or-treating as the royal family. Tom made us crowns (Quinn chose one from his massive collection, and Nana found one that fit her, too) but Quinn also wore a cape. He is always very serious when he puts on a cape...

Here we go!

Our little dog Baxter is having some severe fainting spells due to a leaky heart value, so we're not supposed to get him too excited. A constantly ringing doorbell seemed like a bad idea, so we handed out candy from the back of one of our cars. It turned out to be a really fun thing to do and we got to talk to the neighbors a lot more than we do just opening the door and tossing out some candy while the dogs go nutty. This (and Quinn, of course) made for a really fun Halloween!

Who is scarier?

I love this photo of Tom and Quinn at Panda Club today. We combined Autumn Moon Festival and Halloween, and the girls of the Asian sorority at the University of Arizona helped the kids make paper lanterns, decorate foam pumpkins and masks, and decorate some seriously delicious sugar cookies from a local bakery. Once everyone was hyped up on sugar we went outside for a rousing game of "red-light, green-light" and "duck, duck, goose." Ah, the classics. And the kids LOVED it!

A new best day ever: Day Out With Thomas

Last week we went to a preschool spectacle called "Day Out With Thomas." The kids get to ride in a train pulled by Thomas and also have access to a boatload of related activities: Thomas face painting, coloring pages, jumping castles, train tables, temporary tattoos - and, of course, an entire airplane hangar packed with Thomas merchandise for sale.

Quinn loved every little thing about this event. Tom snapped this photo after we boarded the open-air train and just before it took off. His expression shows the joy and wonder that was on his sweet face the whole day long.

Well, at least someone is enjoying this heat...

"Gotta go poo-poo on the potty, get Lightning McQueen!"

Yes, friends, we have resorted to full-scale bribery to get Quinn to poop on the potty. Why? Because he's 4 years old and fully capable of using the potty. Because his sensory-seeking tendencies make him unusually nonplussed about sitting around in a stinky diaper. And mostly because, well, it works.

Yes, indeed. On Wednesday I told him that if he went poo-poo on  the potty he could go to Target and pick out a toy. "Blue Star?" he negotiated. That's what he calls Toys R Us, whose logo is, yup, a blue star. In other words, the kid won't poop for a trip to Target, but if we up the ante to Toys R Us, he's in. And he was. On Friday, bingo. He was VERY proud of himself and we got off fairly easy with a $16.99 Lightning McQueen car. Of course, now each time he heads to the bathroom, we hear a very excited boy tell himself, "Gotta go poo-poo on the potty, get Lightning McQueen!"