An-tee is here! Yi Yi! Marshall loves his aunt Ora. For the non-Chinese, Yi Yi is Auntie in Cantonese. Ora arrived in the late evening so as soon as I got Ora through the door from the airport we rushed into Marshall’s room so that he could say night night. It was so sweet to hear him say “An-tee” and “Yi Yi” for the first time. Big hugs!
The next day Ora gave him an early birthday present – a red envelope with greenbacks. No, the money won’t be used to buy toys. I let Marshall look at it for a while before taking it back to put in his Sharebuilder account. When you read this 20 years from now Marshall you’ll be glad we started one for you!
After dinner one night we had some mooncake that Ora brought from Edmonton. The mid-autumn festival is coming soon (mid-Sept). Marshall watched intently as Ora sliced a piece of the mooncake for him.
We went blueberry picking on Saturday at Mercer Slough in Bellevue. They have several acres of U-Pick organic blueberry bushes. We had two large buckets with us and it quickly dawned on me that we weren’t going to fill them even halfway, never mind full. The berries were sparse on the branches and tiny, not like the commercial blueberries in the store. They also stained everything a really true, dark blue/black. We showed Marshall how to find and pick them off the bush. The real reason why we only walked away with 3.5 lbs of berries after an hour was not our lack of efficiency. It was because Marshall had discovered almost immediately that he could get more berries in his mouth not by picking but by taking handfuls of the berries out of the buckets. Check out the next few photos.
Here I am offering Marshall some of what I picked.
Here he is depleting whatever yield Ora had picked in her bucket.
Hard at work trying to keep up with our picking.
Look at how few blueberries he has in his bucket. Time to move on to Ora’s!
Helping Daddy pick/eat.
After an hour we were exhausted and hot. Time for lunch! We got in the car and headed over to Udupi Palace, a vegetarian Indian restaurant that offers a buffet Thali lunch.
Marshall is shown here inhaling his kheer – a sweet rice and milk dessert with cardamon. I knew he would like it because it has three of his favourite things – milk, rice, and sugar. Mmmmm!
We went to Bumbershoot on Monday.
Walking out of the parking lot towards the EMP.
Watching the band Smoosh. The weather was perfect that day.
A photo of Marshall imitating Marc talking on the phone. Marc was talking to Kip who was in the front row with Josh and Kendra.
We went over to the stadium to see the Joss Stone concert. Here’s Marshall doing the “more” sign. Ora was feeding him dried cherries.
Inspired by all the music, we went home and made some noise with our amateur instruments.
Me and the future rock star.
Ora on the harmonica and Marshall with the gee-tar. Yee-ha!
One last photo with his yi yi.
Here he is fresh out of the car, already looking very much at home on the farm. He kept a respected distance from the chickens as he intently watched them.
Marshall and Marc admiring the Silkies. I thought it was interesting that they had white feathers. I’ve only ever seen Silkies in the Asian grocery stores with their black skin underneath shrink wrap in the refrigerator :^(
Marshall had just touched this sheep’s snout. Awwwww…
“Young Little Marshall had a farm, Ee i ee i yo!”
Upon closer inspection we see that this farmer’s having a grand ole time on his tractor.
The only thing missing on this is a horn.
He had such fun sitting on this rusting machine. It was very unpleasant when it was time to go; he did not want to get off the tractor.
The kid hanging out with the other kids.
Me and Marshall admiring the “mobile sheep grazing pasture”. It’s used to promote sustainable farming.
