Deli-cate question

Mommy at live seafood section of Asian market: "Look!  Abalone!"

Evangelina: "A baloney???!!!"

Block letters

Evangelina was sitting next to me and doing her math worksheets while I was making some drawings for a birthday card we're sending out.  She called my attention and proudly showed me her block letters (numbers), something I don't think she'd done before & something I hadn't taught her.  I don't think I learned to do these until earliest 4th or 5th grade...

An academic question

While in the car, Evangelina asked me out of the blue, "Is God as big from the ground to the sky?"  I responded of course that God is BIGGER than that, & even bigger than the world itself.  She then asked, "Is God bigger than the UNIVERSITY?"

Aromatic beauty

Yesterday I was gazing at Evangelina in the rearview mirror of our SUV and remarked to her in Chinese, "Ni3 tai4 ke2ai4!" (You are too cute!)  She totally understood what I was saying to her, yet what was her immediate response?  "I farted."

C is for Creative

While closely watching a snail move with her cousin Faith, Evangelina remarked, "That's why they call it 'Snail.'  The S is for 'slow.'"

Questions from answers

The other day, Evangelina was expounding her underatanding on deep issues about when people die, along with using such terms as how one's "fake person dies" & one's "real person goes to heaven."  As she talked she paused & said aloud, "I just learned a question from my talking."

Our Chinglish daughter

Growing up, I never thought I would teach my kids Chinese, primarily because I didn't speak it myself but also because I myself was born and raised in North America where it is not commonly used.  Even in late high school and college when I started learning to speak Asian languages (Taiwanese/Hokkien/Fujianhua and Mandarin Chinese) and found it a lot of fun (even when people laughed at my accent or other gaffes), I don't think it crossed my mind that I would speak to my kids in Chinese.  When Jadon was born, I concentrated on English and Spanish (in the Inland Empire, there are a lot of Spanish children's books at the libraries) especially as I myself was learning Spanish.  Even in spite of my family being around, I avoided speaking Chinese to him, in part to avoid teaching him "broken Chinese."  Now that we're teaching Evangelina Chinese (in spite of our broken abilities), it's funny to see the effect learning Chinese has on her ENGLISH, which can be seen here with her wrong use of articles, a part of speech that is absent in the Chinese language.  (Incidentally, there have been some visible effects of Jadon's Spanish learning on his English as well, most commonly in his misspelling of words in a decidedly Spanish way.)  

To be, or not to be... what was the question?

After I killed an ant at a friend's home, Evangelina asked me, "Do ants know what people are?"

Birthday compliment for Jadon

I love Jadon because he is so "shareful."  (Indeed, from the beginning, Jadon has consistently been very good at sharing what he gets with his little sister.)

While we were suiting up to go to the community center pool...

I like it when we go swimming.

Makes me wonder what she'd been thinking about...

While walking through a supermarket together this evening, Evangelina looked up at me & said for the first time I can remember, "Daddy, you look a little handsome."

Virus-free. www.avast.com

Fw: Daddy u're the best daddy.... (thx)... But not all...

What Mina said 12/2016

Daddy u're the best daddy.... (thx)... But not all the time.

first words coming off the ice after playing hockey for the first time

I'm so sweaty!  (As she peels off each piece of gear and leaves it in a trail for Daddy to pick up behind her...)

Hello, AT&T? Would you give me the number to In-n-Out please?

Our kids' naivete regarding commercial matters is funny sometimes.  Recently, Jadon was telling me about Star Wars' large lumbering land crafts that walk on fours (AT-ATs) & called them "AT&Ts," while Evangelina recently was commenting on how her middle name Joy was like the character in the movie "In-n-Out" (rather than "Inside Out").  We HAVE been going to In-n-Out a lot lately.