Saturday, March 1, 2008 ;
3:30 AM
Feb 24
Sun
After church worship, the Lawrences invited us out for lunch. Judy is going to spend at least a month with her many grandchildren, who live in Texas. Sometimes they come to visit, so we have met a few of them, of which, Riley is ds1's favorite friend. They hit it off during the Teton camp last year.
Some other families including Ron and MJ went to Hometown Buffet too, and Danny/ Judy chose to go there. We've never tried it before, so we were game for it.
Dh did not eat as much because he got involved in a lengthy and serious discussion with Stan (Bradford) soon after he started lunch. For me, I ate till I was stuffed, even though towards the end the kids were getting restless and playing more and more violently with the balloons that Stan got for them. Hometown Buffet provides a whole bag of balloons which we blow up with helium ourselves (a tank was there) for the kids.
I managed to chat with Danny and Judy too, and got to know them better. They had actually been stationed in Germany for 4 years when Danny (used to be from US Air Force) was posted there. So they also travelled around Europe quite a bit during their stint there. Danny is a very loyal Air Force officer. He always has at least 2 different Air Force pins on his jacket lapel. ds2 likes to finger the airplane pins he has. Both of them are very friendly and nice to the kids, so the kids could talk with them easily.
After lunch, we went home and prepared guo tie for the fingerfood potluck in the evening. Guo tie is literally translated over here as "pot stickers". It was amusing when we first saw a menu from a Chinese restaurant here and could not recognise a lot of the items. Things like "egg drop soup", "pot stickers", "moo shu" had us confused at first.
It was also very funny when I first ordered delivery service. The guy on the line could speak Mandarin, so I said I wanted "chao3 fan4". What came later was "Chow Fun" as they call it. They must be Cantonese, because it was fried kway teow that came, something like our "hor fun". Good thing we like hor fun too.
We also found out that moo shu is something wrapped up, and egg drop soup was just a clear soup with beaten egg dropped in and stirred.
So we went for evening church service and had potluck dinner after service. This time, I sat with Elly and Gary Robinson and was able to chat at length with them too. Elly was originally from the Netherlands and Gary met her there when he was posted there by the US army. He ended up staying there for 10 years, so both their kids were born there too. They were later posted to Germany as well (same as the Lawrences), before going to South Carolina, then Utah. The Dowdys were from South Carolina too. Many of the church members we know move around a lot, especially those with the US Army or Air Force.
As I always tell them, it is so interesting and nice to get to know all of them. They have made us very much a part of their family.
Below: just the kids having some horseplay in the bedroom.
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
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