Dinner Time Fun

I love being back in Eagle, Idaho!  I always envied my friends in Portland who enjoy Sunday dinner with their kids and grandkids each week.  Now I have that same opportunity!  Monica, Johnny and Isabella come over every Sunday.

This last week we celebrated Chinese New Year.  According to Chinese mythology in our family we have 2 rats, a snake, a monkey, a ram, and a rabbit.

Rats are quick witted, resourceful, versatile and kind

Snakes are enigmatic, intelligent and wise

Monkeys are sharp, smart and curious.

Rams are calm, gentle, and sympathetic

Rabbits are quiet, elegant, kind and responsible.

Not sure how accurate these descriptions are.  John and Monica are rats.  I am a snake.  Matt is a monkey.  George is a rabbit and Isabella is a ram.  

Whatever....we did have fun celebrating the Year of the Pig.

I love my paper dragons.  I bought them from a funny little man with 3 or 4 super long chin hairs....like maybe 12 inches long...he was selling the homemade dragons just outside of the dam museum on the Yangtze River.  I later learned that they were made out of cigarette papers!  Oh well!

Orange chicken, veggies, egg rolls and rice were on the menu.  Followed by some wonderful almond cookies and fortune cookies too, because they are fun, even if not traditionally Chinese!

Monica quickly learned to use her chopsticks with ease.  Isabella used them for drum sticks and to jab into her food but she is so cute who cares???

I didn't agree with the Chinese zodiac symbols but I love Matt's fortune from his fortune cookie.  Real wisdom in this one! 

Sunday night was the Chinese dinner and then on Monday night we invited Matt's good friends Zach and Jessica and their adorable children over for dinner and to decorate Valentine cookies.  

 Two 3 year old girls meant that we had lots of pink icing and lots of sprinkles.  Some of the sprinkles even made it onto the cookies!

 Isabella and Addie had lots of fun and had to hug each other good bye.  Then Addie looked at me and said, "You are old. Will you be my grandma?" I guess having three grandmas is a good thing!

I am so blessed to be close to family and that our children have such nice friends!

Rain Give Rainbows

Our week in Maui was a bit rainy.  Truthfully, I believe I could safely say that is was very rainy.  Most of the time the view from our window looked like, this still not too shabby!

My visions of spending days like this in the sun actually became days of relaxing in the rain. 

See those people huddled under their beach towels.  We would get all set up for an afternoon of relaxing by the pool and then the rain would start.  Optimistically, we would think that it was going to be a drizzle and try to wait it out and then the heavens would open to give us a tropical deluge.

I spent one whole afternoon on the couch in our room, under a blanket, reading.  Still it's not a bad place to be!

And as the Hawaiians say, "Without rain there are no rainbows."  Photos never quite show the true colors of a rainbow!

We talked to lots of people who were in Hawaii from the midwest where the temperatures were colder than Antarctica!  In some areas, considering the windchill, it was 50 below zero. No one was feeling sorry for us with a bit of rain in Maui.  It was actually quite a wonderful week.

Captain Steve's Whale Watching boat didn't disappoint.  We saw multiple breaches, a calf that was less than a week old, and even a competitive pod fighting over a female.  You could easily hear them slamming into each other.  Such power!  Definitely one of my favorite parts of a Hawaii trip.

Her tail is very distinctive.

In spite of the rain, Maui is still my HAPPY PLACE!