Axel, Phoenix, and Rubix: Spring Break in Tahoe Donner, Axel turns 12, Easter and more!

So amazingly my March 17th post did not post so now you will see two posts for today, April 7th. That is a testament of how tired and busy I have been. I taught a 4 hour course on March 21st and I am just about to start developing an 8 hour course for July that is due in about 6 weeks from now. But lets go back to the past 3 weeks of fun.

Right after Rubix's birthday we had amazing winter weather in California. We had multiple days of rain and Tahoe received 10 feet of snow over 2 big multiple day winter storm systems. Rubix and I took advantage of a break in the rain to go worm hunting. To our dismay, we found 4 dead worms and only 2 live worms.

On Sunday March 21st, Axel had his Zoom birthday party. This year he invited a few friends to do a breakout room with him.

Him and Shamik, Cole, Sophia, Luca and Amira were able to crack the code and complete the break out of the 3 rooms. They were a little stressed, but managed to beat the 1 hour clock. Afterwards, his friends sang him happy birthday and deciphered over 12 languages that Daddy posted saying Happy Birthday. I tried to guess the languages and Axel and his friends were able to recognize more languages than myself. It is amazing at how smart and cultured his friends are. It does help that most of them speak at least 2 languages with ease and some speak more.

In preparation for our Spring break to Tahoe, Daddy started getting the family out for evening walks. This was one particular walk where we ended up at the par, taking a picture of the three kiddos with our favorite purple tree.

We also snapped a shot of the kids with a chicken on the fence. This was one of our longer 2 mile evening walks, rather than just a mile.

Here is Phoenix with her art piece that she submitted to Harker's virtual art show. Phoenix had to select one piece and upload to the Harker drop box in order to be apart of the art show this year.

On the Friday before Spring break, Phoenix's class had Hawaii day. She had a lot of fun dressing up and pretending that she was taking a real trip to Hawaii.The teacher did a great job of incorporating this theme throughout the entire day with each class.

On Sunday, March 28th we drove up to Tahoe Donner. When we arrived there was lots of snow on the ground and the kids got dressed and dove right into the snow. We stayed at a cabin just a mile and a half away from our friends Tyler and Cynthia and their twins, Jade and Zoe.

I had to force the kids to eat dinner, so I brought it out to them.

Jade and Zoe came over and played in the snow with the kids. We ended up going to their place for sledding after an hour of play at our place. It felt like a full day with the 3 hours of snow play from 4pm to 7pm.

The next morning we met them at Glacier way and hiked up to the vista point that overlooks several of the ski resorts.

It was a beautiful view. The kids decided to play in the snow while the adults enjoyed the view.

The kids played for hours in the snow later that day. The next day we met Tyler and the girls at Donner Lake. It was really fun to be on the sand with the snow. The kids threw snow balls into the lake.

They also enjoyed playing in the sand. We were laughing at each other because we were a little over dressed. We thought we were going on a big snow hike and then ended up just walking close to the lake which was sandy with little snow in some parts.

The kids continued to play in the snow that afternoon.

The next day was Wed, Axel's birthday. Here is the birthday boy with his scrambled eggs and bagel.

Mommy with the new 12 year old.

Daddy with our big kid!

The Jolleys drove up from Sacramento to make Axel's day even more special. We went back to Glacier Way and had a blast sledding together. Here is the birthday boy sledding.

The view was amazing!

We went back to the cabin for lunch and then more snow play.

Braylin caught soaked through to her under clothes and became very uncomfortable.

So after just 30 minutes of snow play she disappeared from the Szolushas.

We patiently waited for her and Aya to return to the snow while we built a fort.

We didn't realize that Braylin was soaked and cold. Instead of having the Jolley's turn back early, we offered them to come inside. One of the first gathering in door. The kids played games and the adults chatted from a distance with our masks on. Having the windows opened made it a little cool, but we enjoyed a couple more hour visit before they decided to head home.

Here was one last picture of the cousins!

On Thursday we drove up to Mt. Rose on the North East side of Lake Tahoe. I think Phoenix needed to throw up so we lucked out and stopped at a vista point overlooking Lake Tahoe. I had Axel take a picture for me since I was in the driver's seat and didn't want to get out on the Hwy side.

We hiked up Chickadee Ridge and Daddy and Axel fed the Chickadees. They had so much fun!

The kids got to belly slide the steep ascent/descent up to the ridge.

Afterward we drove to Incline Village and checked out their beach. We then drove through King's beach and stopped in Tahoe city to walk around and acquaint ourselves with the area. We liked it so much we booked a place near there for our summer vacation in August.

On Friday we were ultra adventurous and navigated through 2.5 of the 6 train tunnels. The first one was the hardest with huge sheets of ice and a big ice obstacle that we had to transverse without slipping.

Here the kids are on the outside of Tunnel 4 (we started at tunnel 6). You can see there was a lot of tunnel left and the conditions were not easy, so we decided to head back to the car.

Here is the view of Donner Lake from the outside of tunnel 4.

Everyone was hungry so we ate at the top of the shortest tunnel, tunnel 5. Afterwards we headed back and then over to Tyler's to say thank you and goodbye. We then packed and got ready for bed.

On Saturday we had exciting plans to see Grandma Susan and Gpa Brian for the first time since Dec. 2019!

We all enjoyed our lunch and visit with them before heading the rest of the way home. We were exhausted, but excited for resurrection day on Sunday.

Rubix was especially excited and ready to celebrate Jesus's resurrection from the grave and our eternal life because of him. The day started with opening up Easter baskets and yummy breakfast.

I had planned on making scones, but unpacking, grocery shopping and preparing the eggs and Easter baskets took the rest of the night, considering we got home around 6:45pm. Instead, I found this delicious chocolate laced Babka bread that we ate instead.

Who doesn't love chocolate and milk for breakfast!

Yum!

Happy Easter to our Easter Bunny!

After breakfast was our traditional egg hunt. Rubix was geared up and ready to find all of the eggs.

He was ultra competitive and ran the entire time.

The kids worked together to find all 77 of them.

Yay! They found the last one!

Rubix loved opening them, despite the fact that I did not fill the eggs with chocolate or money this year, but carried on the tradition of recycled little erasers, bouncy balls and other toys that were lying around the house.