Xin nian kuai le! (Happy New Year!)

Well, so much for posting pictures of my weekend with Cindy in San Francsico. The night before the trip we realized that the camera was broken, so I'll just have to fill you in on the highlights. The day of the trip, Cindy called me at work to let me know that she had the stomach flu...oh noooo! So it was a few hours of should I go, should I stay home, etc. So after a last minute call, I decided to go anyway and hope that she made a miraculous recovery. When I arrrived I took one look at her and thought, we're not going anywhere. The girl looked miserable, but I really appreciated her using any bit of strenth left in her body to pack the girls into the car and pick me up at the airport. Needless to say, I drove after that. After making her some rice-a roni (after all, it's the San Francisco treat!) and giving her some crackers, I sent her off to bed and hoped for the best. Well, Saturday was a new day and she felt a lot better, so we took the kids up to Grandma and Grandpa's house and off we were to San Francisco! We made it to the city about 2 pm and just when we arrived the weather started to clear, it was meant to be! We checked into the hotel, dropped off the bags and we were off. We went to Chinatown and had the best time! Tons of shops, restaurants, bakeries, and nice people. I started to make a mental list of exactly the types of items I will plan to buy when we go to China. Cindy bought a pair of shoes and a very cute pink purse. I bought some fortune cookies and some wooden tongs for my wok. After that it was more shopping, shopping, shoppping. The hotel was situated in Union Square and was literally 1 block away from all the best stores, perfect for a girl's weekend. That night we had a wonderful Italian dinner and bottle of champagne followed by a late night of martinis. Needless to say, we were moving a little slow on Sunday, but that didn't stop us, it was off for more shopping and eating. Overall it was a fantastic weekend, considering it almost didn't happen. Too bad about the camera not working, but let me just say that after 26 straight days of rain in Portland, it was awfully hard to leave clear blue skies and 60 degrees!

This weekend we are going to Fei's house (our Chinese instructor) for a Chinese New Year party! We're really looking forward to her homemade dumplings and to seeing some of the nice families we met last time we went to her party. I just love being able to play with all the Chinese babies. Next weekend our local chapter of FCC (Families with Children from China) is holding their annual Chinese New Year celebration. This will be our first year attending, but it's a pretty big deal. Apparently it is sold out with 600 people attending! Lots of Chinese music, dance, food and of course lots of kids. We're really looking forward to it and hopefully we can get our camera to function before then.

Happy Year of the Dog!

Andrea

Fun Weekends

With all this time to wait and wait (ugh!) until our referral, we've decided now is the time to make the most of our weekends. In our ten years of marriage, Daren and I have always been pretty good at this anyway, but now I feel like we are really appreciating this pre-baby time in our lives. It sure beats sitting around and feeling bad about the fact that we have no idea when our referral will come. So last weekend, I decided to surprise Daren. We planned to go out to the Evergreen Aviation Museum, in McMinnville, and afterwards I suggested we go to the local McMenamin's in town for some lunch. Well, I knew that Daren would love this suggestion, as he seems to love all the McMenamin's establishments that we've been to. So we head off to McMenamin's Hotel Oregon and decide to climb up to the Roof Top Bar for some food and beverage. As we're sitting, eating and relaxing, our conversation went something like this:

Andrea-"We should stay here sometime"
Daren- "Yeah, that would be cool"
Andrea-"Well, how about tonight?"
Daren "Well, we can't really do that, we haven't even packed anything"
Andrea-"That's already been taken care of, we ARE staying here tonight"
Daren-"What?!!!"

So then I explained that this was my surprise to him and while he was busy in the morning I was being extra sneaky and had packed a bag for him and managed to sneak it into the back of the car. Needless to say, he was thrilled. We ended up playing some pool, eating good food and went down to the Cellar Bar to hear the music. The band was called Terra, and they are awesome! Wonderful guitar, beautiful voices and moving lyrics. We just had to buy a CD, it was that good!! All in all, it was a great weekend for us. I really loved surprising Daren and watching him enjoy himself as much as he did, it was very fun!

This weekend, the fun continues (for me anyway). I'm headed south to Sacramento for a much needed, long overdue, girl's weekend with Cindy. For those that don't know Cindy, she's my best girlfriend of 25 years. Bob and Sandy (Cindy's parents) are babysitting the girls for the weekend and we are off to San Francisco for some good shopping and good food! We also plan to hit a couple of touristy things while we're there too, like a cable car ride and a trip to Chinatown. I'm really looking forward to seeing Chinatown as they gear up for Chinese New Year. I may even feel brave enough to give my Chinese language a try (Fei would be proud!). Anyway, I'll post again next week after our trip with some photos from the weekend. I hope 2006 is treating everyone well.

Love,

Andrea