Sunday, July 29, 2012

Birthdays, siblings and Olympics


We had a lot to celebrate this week.

On Wednesday we went to my in-laws to celebrate our niece and nephew’s birthdays.  Since their birthdays are only 2 weeks apart and our niece is too little to really understand what her birthday is (except an excuse for presents!)  it works really well to celebrate them together, so we’re taking advantage of that while we can.     We kept it small this year, just family, and had pizza, ice cream cake (so good!), and presents.   I love that our nephew felt he had to explain to us that the candles on the cake were a 7 for him and a 3 for his sister, not 73 in case we were confused.

Kevin picked out some binoculars for our nephew, and I had fun picking out clothes for our niece - a cute Tinkerbelle dress and a watermelon rainbow shirt.  She loved the clothes, whereas our nephew told us repeatedly to get him “anything but clothes”.   He liked the binoculars and we hope it’ll
I think he liked the binoculars, and we hope he’ll  be able to use them at Texans games, or camping, and probably for spying on people on in the neighborhood (sorry neighbors).    They are designed for kids – can withstand being dropped, sounds like the kind this clumsy girl needs!



On Thursday, I was able to visit with both siblings.  My brother & wife were in town from Austin for the day and had made plans to go to new Chinatown with my sister and her guy.  I was really happy to be able to join them.   We had Malaysian food (a first for me).    Sister’s boyfriend ordered some dishes for us to share family-style, and I had my favorites – a beef curry dish, and a beef noodle dish – but don’t know what they were called….after dinner we went for a shaved ice dessert.   Luckily we all split one, it is shaved ice, covered in cut-up fresh fruit of your choosing, then smothered in evaporated milk, and topped with a scoop of ice cream .  it is just as decadent (and cold) as it sounds, and the dish is huge…5 people all got their fill from that one dish.  Its not often we can all get together and we had a great time visiting.    Kevin wasn’t able to join us L, he’d had to spend most of the day on school stuff – he was getting things set up for the classes to take a test next week, including putting his tech skills to the test figuring out how to load everything needed for the online class. 


On Friday we watched the Olympics opening ceremonies.    I loved it!    Seeing the progression of England from pastoral times to the industrial revolution and then to the digital age.  I couldn’t get over HOW the transitions happened.  I also loved the cameos – Mr. Bean, hilarious! 

I think this is the first time I’ve watched the entire parade of nations, and am always astounded at how many countries I’m not familiar with.   I do love that they show where they are on a map on the tv screen.  I feel like I need to study a world map afterwards, and am amazed at how small some countries of the world are, one had less than 10,000 people!  (finding someone to date and marry must be tough, wouldn’t’ you be related to almost everyone?) We’ll be watching a lot of Olympic coverage over the next few weeks, and I love seeing the sights of London, this is one of the few Olympic cities (maybe the first?) I’ve actually been to..

After the busy week, it was nice to be at home yesterday, we were pretty busy taking care of things around the house but being home is a different busy then being out.  We got a lot done - yard work, cleaning the house and laundry, and even gave S a bath - so today we should be able to sit back and relax a little bit (and watch some Olympic coverage)

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