adventures around home

I was home with the kids on Tuesday, and we had a great day of small adventures together - we played at Peninsula Park for a couple hours in the cool morning, ate soup dumplings at XLB, and went to the golf driving range at Topgolf. Peninsula was lovely and shaded - we played at the playground, did a circuit through the rose garden, admiring the gazebo where Steve and I were married, played catch with baseballs, shot foam arrows at tree targets, and ran through the splash pad.

Playing Robin Hood with our foam arrows (yes, that is Seb standing in front of my target tree).

I love taking the kids out for pork bao (buns) and xiaolongbao (soup dumplings). They inhale them, and ask for more, and it makes me feel like at least I've preserved this small part of their Chinese heritage.

In the late afternoon, we went to a driving range at Topgolf, and hit balls for an hour together.

On Wednesday, our babysitter came for the day and helped the children construct this enormous airport in our living room, complete with parking, light-rail transit, runways, crosswalks, and various structures. It was pretty impressive engineering work. They also went to OMSI and made cardboard masks - all in all, a good day of construction.

Sadly, on Thursday the air quality in Portland was absolutely wretched, which in combination with the 100+ degree heat made outdoor activities unbearable. I cleaned the house while the children played, and then in the afternoon we went to the indoor pool at the SWCC.

One thing that has been wonderfully sweet about this summer has been watching and listening to Sebastian and Liesl play together - inside, outside, at the pool, at the park, while camping, with toys, and games, and rocks and mud - during the school year, they are both very focused on their friends and activities, and their interactions are not very sweet or sustained. But they have only each other during these summer weeks, and they play so well together in imaginative, cooperative ways. They make each other giggle - they entertain each other - they wrestle - they follow the other's lead. I know that Sebastian's time playing with cars and trains and pretend games is going to end soon - he already knows that kids his age don't play in such ways with their friends, and he doesn't - but for this summer at least, he is still immersed in a world of imagination and play with his sister, and I find it heartwarming.