Wonderful Weekend

The weekend was again filled with getting together with friends, which is a lot of fun, but also makes the weekend fly past. On Saturday we had our neighbors just below us over for lunch. He, Christian, is from Denmark and she, Dan, is from Beijing. They have two children close to Danny's age.

Due to the upcoming Chinese National Day Holiday and the Moon Cake Festival Holiday, our ayi asked is she could have an extra day during the week off and work on Saturday for us. This turned into an amazing blessing to me, as she was able to watch the kids while I got ready for our friends to come over. We had asked them what the kids would eat, and Dan said that Valdimar (their youngest) is really only used to eating Chinese food. I have made a couple of dishes, but decided to go all out and make quite a few for our lunch on Saturday. This of course means a lot of chopping, as most things are stir fried in the wok. I made Chop Suey, Fried Rice, Garlic Broccoli, and a Garlic Shrimp dish. I am happy to say that they mostly came out okay. They said they actually tasted fairly authentic, which is a huge compliment.

The kids had a great time playing together, and they stayed for quite some time. It was nice having them at our house, because when Josh got tired I was able to just put him down for his nap. After the boys took their naps, we left with Dustin so that he could get to the church try out for worship team. We waited in the car, as Danny had fallen asleep, while Dustin went into the apartment to audition. After about 40 minutes he reappeared, and we traveled on to go get dinner. We went to our favorite Italian restaurant D'Marco and had dinner and then went to Haggen daz ice cream store. Now this is no ordinary ice cream shop, this is like fine dining for ice cream It was quite the experience. We skipped all the widely fancy concoctions and chose to go with scoops of ice cream with chocolate sauce.

Sunday morning, Dustin had to leave bright and early to meet the tax man. Everyone in China worked on Saturday and Sunday due to the holiday, so Dustin was required to meet the tax guy on Sunday. While Dustin was meeting with the tax man, the boys and I went to Danny's first birthday party for one of his classmates. It was a fun party and Danny had a great time.

We left the party and Dustin picked us up to meet our friends Erin and Jeff for a late lunch before church. We had a nice time over lunch and then walked to church together. It was a great service and we finished the weekend with our usual McDonalds run.