Thanksgiving 2019

Wikipedia describes Thanksgiving as: 'Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, some of the Caribbean islands, and Liberia. It began as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Similarly named festival holidays occur in Germany and Japan. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and Brazil, and around the same part of the year in other places. Although Thanksgiving has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has long been celebrated as a secular holiday as well.'

This year, my father drove two hours from near our state capitol, where he lives, to share Thanksgiving with my older daughter, her boyfriend, and myself. The rest of the family went to Missouri to have Thanksgiving with other family that could not make the long trip here this year.

We had a very nice visit with my father, as well as some wonderful food.

broccoli rice cheese casserole 

deviled eggs 

green beans casserole 

ham 

mashed potatoes and gravy 

pumpkin pie 

rolls 

sweet potato pie

Mean Pig!

I had a memory pop-up on Facebook I want to share with you. This originally occurred four years ago:


How many stupid things have you done in your life? If you are like me, too many to count. What was the last stupid thing you did? I don't think we often plan on doing something stupid, it just turns out that way after the fact. I went to visit family in Jacksonville yesterday and went to lunch at 'The Mean Pig' and took the challenge. What is the challenge? It is a pulled pork sandwich with BBQ sauce made from some of the hottest stuff in the world. Turns out there are a lot of people out there that have done this same stupid thing. Very few have completed the challenge by eating all of it. I love spicy hot stuff, but could only do three bites before I threw in the towel. When I opened my mouth to breath, I felt as though flames should be coming out. I don't know of anyone who has died from the challenge, but I can tell you that the pain I went through for the next eight hours as those three bites passed through my body was not fun. I AM A SURVIVOR OF THE MEAN PIG SHUT UP JUICE CHALLENGE! (barely)

Arkansas State Fair / New car

This last weekend, Suzanne, her boyfriend, Destiny, and I, drove to our state capital, Little Rock, to go to the Arkansas State Fair. The fair is held each year. They have rides, food, games, exhibitions, vendors, contest, music, and live performances. When we went, it was raining, so there weren't very many people there, and the rides weren't operating. We still walked around looking at all the animals, some of the exhibits, the vendors, and tried some of the food.

Before we went to the fair, I bought a new car.

It is a 2017 Ford C-Max energi Titanium. It is a plug-in hybrid. It can operate as a hybrid, using gas and electric together, getting up to 42 miles to a gallon. Or, it can operate as an electric only, with a range of about 20 miles. The total range of the car is around 570 miles on a full tank of gas, and full electrical charge.
I bought the car because my older daughter, Suzanne, needs a second car for her and her boyfriend to get to work. The car she has is old, a 1997, and needs a lot of maintenance. So, I am selling her my old car, a 2003 PT Cruiser, in very good condition and a brand new set of tires that cost $400. It is worth $2,000, and I am selling it to them for only $800.
I only drive twice a day, 0.3 miles, during the week to my other daughter's school, and back. Then I drive twice a week to our church, and once a week to the grocery store, each only a few miles distance from where I live. So, I mostly only use my car in electric mode. I will use the gas motor, in hybrid mode, if I have to go out of town, like we will do next weekend, to go to Magic Springs Theme Park in Hot Springs, for something special before Halloween.

Here is a little preview of what I will be wearing for Halloween.

Sharing old photos.

First, let me introduce my older daughter, Suzanne. She likes animals, including snakes, coloring her hair, piercings, tattoos, and Harry Potter.

This is Suzanne's snake, Banana.

This is our guinea pig, Moe.

And now, this is my younger daughter, Destiny. She is twelve years younger than her sister. She likes 'Frozen', animals, watching cartoons, and playing.

This is her school, Victory Christian School, which is only a ten minute walk from home.

This photo was taken just after Destiny was baptized.

This was in Little Rock just before Chinese Spring Festival 2018.

It was very cold to go see the lanterns and performers.

This is an old car we saw in a parking lot going into Walmart.

We were at Mid America Museum in Hot Springs.

Just before baptism.

Halloween 2015 at the nearby White Oak Lake State Park.

This is a little water park our town put in for the kids to have fun during the summer.

This is from Destiny's eighth birthday part.

This is at the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum.

They have a real submarine, the U.S.S. Razorback, which you can go in. You can see a video tour here.

It was the longest serving submarine in the world, serving for 26 years in the United States Navy, starting in 1944, followed by another 31 years in the Turkish Navy.

This was our 2017 Christmas tree.

My little girl's bed.

I chop about ten different vegetables to make a large salad. The salad is seasoned, and I will have a little salad dressing on it for my lunch, and sometimes dinner each day. I keep the salad refrigerated, and it will usually last all week.

Easter 2018

On Saturday, Suzanne, her boyfriend, and I went to Little Rock to the movies. I went to see ‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’.

This is the second movie I have seen starring Jim Caviezel. He plays Luke in this movie. In the first movie I saw him in, ‘The Passion of Christ’, directed by Mel Gibson, he played Jesus. It was a very powerful role. I later saw an interview with Jim Caviezel that explained how he was able to perform so well in the first movie.

The bottom picture shows my two daughters and myself at our church, Grace Baptist, on Easter Sunday.

For those that are interested, if you go to the link for the church, you can find links to videos of our pastor’s sermons, and his blog.

We also have a wonderful singing group named ‘Ten Steps Back’ that sings at our church. This is a link to watch one of their concerts.

Happy Easter.

Spring Break 2018 day 6:

Wow, it was a day full of activities and walking. We changed plans and went to Hot Springs today, because it was a little cool this morning. We started by going to a toy store and then saw a museum with Star Wars and superhero stuff. Then we had breakfast for lunch, (I had hash-brown potatoes, sausage, biscuits, and eggs covered in country gravy, and Destiny had bacon, eggs, and a pancake.), before going to see some model trains and town. After that, we went to an alligator farm and petting zoo. Finally, we went to walk around some nature trails called Garvand Woodland Gardens. We are both tired, but are going to enjoy a good campfire before bed.

Spring Break 2018 day 2:

It was Saint Patrick's Day on Saturday. We went to Burger King for breakfast before going to the zoo. We were at the zoo when they opened the gates at 9 a.m., and stayed at the zoo until 2:45 in the afternoon. We saw lots of animals and even went on a train ride. We had lunch at the zoo, and while walking around after lunch, we found $28 on the ground. Our feet were sore from all the walking by the time we left the zoo, but we still had another stop to make before going back to my father’s house. We drove to the Verizon Arena in time for a real feast. There were games for kids. Destiny had lots of fun. There were a lot of people there. We ate catfish, chicken, buffalo, quail, deer, bear, turkey, and pig. We also heard singers singing songs of praise, and speakers giving their testimony. (The name of this event was called: John 3:16, which is a Bible verse that says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not parish, but have eternal life.” We left about 5:15 p.m. to return to my father’s house about 5:45. Enjoy the pictures.

Kids come first in China.

DJ is having fun eating some ham. 

This hat was her great grandfathers hat when he served during WW2 in the Pacific as part of the Seabees. Suzanne has it now and was letting DJ play with it. 

 

 

 

DJ really likes a good sucker sometimes. 

DJ listening to music with some wireless headphones. 

 

Suzanne was wearing one of her new shirts that fit a little to well, because she got stuck trying to come out of it. 

 

 

DJ in one side and Suzanne in the other side of some of my new shorts. 

She ran out of energy again in the middle of playing. 

Here she is refueling with cucumber, tomato and chicken. 

Deb and Suzanne got caught in the rain while they were out walking. 

 

Because of the one child policy, kids are the most important part of a family. Kids are special to any family, but they really understand that here more than in the states I think. Some times it is taken to the extreme though, because parents can dictate to a school how they should be teaching, whether their child should be advanced, or even if the fully qualified teachers are even good enough based on if the teacher has been teaching their whole life or not. Where I come from, I learned to respect everyone, at least until that respect wasn't warranted for what ever reason. Here, respect is demanded always, but never returned.

End of school party.

These are some of the high school students from Ivy. Today was there last day of school and I invited them over to our apartment for an end of the year movie party.

Everyone had a great time and I was very happy to have them come over.

They all brought something to snack on during the movie.

This is Joy and Susan. They have become friends.

The girls surrounded DJ. This is usual anywhere we go with DJ.

DJ wasn't too thrilled to be sitting in Teddy's lap.

There were 14 students in all.

Some were from my class and others were from other classes at Ivy.

Some of the students they came were not used to dogs and weren't sure what to make of him.

We will have to get together again and play some games next time.

Earlier in the day, the Ivy teachers went to a lunch hosted by the director, Mei Han.

The lunch was a welcome for one of Ivy's foreign directors from London, who is visiting during the summer. The beauty on the left is the London director. Her name English name is Tina. She has two girls, about two and four years old. We will have to arrange a play date for them and DJ. The other beauty is of course Mei, who thinks she is 'no beautiful'.

This is Roxanne. Roxanne is from South Africa and Scotland. She just started with Ivy, but is on break until the end of summer. George and Connie were able to make the lunch also, but Andrea and David were busy.

It was a large spread as usual. I will start with the peanuts at the bottom right and go counter clockwise to tell you what everything is. After the peanuts is some broccoli with peppers, mushrooms and shrimp. Next is some kind of rib. Then there is fried shrimp. After the shrimp is a kind of cold salad. That is followed by some fried chicken. Next is a cold spinach salad. Then there is some seasoned beef. The plate after the beef has several different kinds of stuffed pastry. And after the pastry are some stuffed pastry balls. Finally, there is a glazed pork and eggplant dish.

Dinner at Nichole's.

How lazy is this? He has such a hard life here in China.

This is out back of our apartment. All three kids sitting and resting.

We went to dinner at a friends apartment on the southeast edge of the city. This is looking back to the north. You can see some of the low farmers housing to the left if you look closely.

The apartment where our friends live is right next to the toll gate for a busy road. Every city charges you a toll to enter or leave.

DJ and Harold get along great.

Nichole did a wonderful job preparing dinner.

DJ watched everything Harold did.

Then it was her turn.

Dead eye DJ.

She took us down one by one.

Not even her big sister was safe.

Look out DJ!

The apartment was a little smaller than ours but still nice for its age. They bought it when they got married in 1997 and in a few months they will be moving to Harbin where Nichole's husband is working.

This was just out back of the apartment. It is a local group doing organized dance marching to music.

The food was good. She cut some tomatoes for us to eat and asked if we wanted salt or sugar. I am glad she asked, because they never eat tomato with salt, only sugar. They also do not cook their rice with salt. I suggested she try it sometime.

Deb had bought me several games and we brought them with us to play. Harold and his friend wanted to learn how to play chess. It was nice to have someone to play with again.

After getting a good lead, I let them start to win a little. That was almost a mistake, because they were are both very smart. In the end they saw that I was not going to let them win.

Birthday for Zoe and Bancy.

Zoe and Bancy work together at Ivy, are room mates and have birthdays less than a week apart. We gave Zoe her birthday presents on Sunday and Bancy's birthday will be this next Saturday. We were going to take both of them out for dinner at a nice bar the Alexander's found and George told me about. Zoe got called back to work before we even got into the bar so we had a good time with Bancy.

So beautiful at 23.

Now this is the glamour shot.

A couple of small gifts.

Live music.

Beef and potato pizza. Not bad.

Here are some other photos we have taken.

Time to recharge.

Here are some of the mothers, grandmothers and aunts waiting on their kids to finish classes at Ivy.

Playing in big sister's room with her sunglasses.

At Ivy, sitting in George's chair, playing with his toys.

Decisions, decisions.

Forth day of the forth month of the solar calendar and Spring is coming.

DJ had a great time taking her new stroller for a ride.

DJ liked going for a walk in the park. It was her first time to walk on grass.

We went to a favorite restaurant of ours for lunch and DJ loved the noodles.

We ordered five dishes: beef noodles, boiled peanuts, beef rice, slices beef and curry potatoes with rice.

We even took Spot in the restaurant. We can take Spot into our local corner store or even some restaurants. Either people like Spot or they don't. There are other dogs and dog lovers in the city but most people don't have pets at all for various reasons.

The river is starting to thaw.

This is the park along the river. We can take Spot into restaurants but we can't take him here, unless we carry him through the park and down to the river.

This is a picture taken just outside a tire shop called V-Kool. The tire shop is at the first major corner between our apartment and Ivy. We pass by it just about every time we go to the river.

We were all tired after our long walk, even Spot.

Debora and I took DJ out again the next day to the underground and bought some new shoes for DJ that she loves and a couple pair of pants. Debora also picked up a new pair of shoes. I couldn't find any shoes for me that I liked that were in my size. I will have to keep looking.

Lantern Festival

 

Mei treated the Alexander family, Connie and I to dinner tonight. This is the 15^th day of the first lunar month which means it is Lantern Festival and the last day of the Chinese New Year two week long celebrations. We had a very nice dinner of mostly different fish and vegetables because David is vegetarian. We went next door to TCBY for ice cream after dinner. It is still −16 ̊ C (3 ̊ F) outside but the TCBY was busier than I have seen them during the summer because of the festival. The restaurant and TCBY are next to the river and more than half the two million population of the city was at the river. Mei’s husband purchased a paper balloon for Tigh to send up. There was probably over 50 balloons in the sky that you could count before they went too high or too far and went out of sight. Normally there is room down by the river for kids to roller blade but there were so many people that you could hardly walk without just shuffling your feet. I didn’t take my ear muffs with me and my ears felt like they were on fire because they were so cold. I new we were close to where I lived so I said my goodbyes and started my way home. The road along the river was basically closed because of so many people. There must have been around 10% of the people that were coming or going at any given time. I walked past a restaurant that Deb and I had been too once and they were setting off a huge display of fireworks. I stopped just in front to take a short video and then proceeded home. I was reaching the end of my trip and warmth for my ears when I walked past the end of our building just as someone on the fifth or sixth floor decided to set off some firecrackers hanging from their window showering me with sparks and debris. The Chinese really do love their fireworks. I am headed out tomorrow to buy us a new laptop since this one is more than two years old and nearing the end of its life. I will save it and try to get it refurbished so Susan can have a laptop for college.