Recent Shenanigans

I love how I said at the end of my last post I would write about our Christmas, and then I dropped off the face of the planet. Well, that's how my journal looks like. I've been so busy I don't know what to do with myself! Well, let's get caught up, shall we?

Christmas happened. It was awesome. You can see pics from the last post. I ate a lot. And relaxed a lot. It was wonderful. I laid by the fire. I read a book. I got to spend time with Caleb. Caleb got to relax from school. Christmas is great as always.

We spent New Year's Eve back home in Michigan. Our neighbors invited us over for fondue. This was the first time I had ever had cheese and chocolate fondue in a home setting. It was mind-blowingly awesome.

one more post for hong kong

Hey there friends. I still had some photos from my Arizona/Hong Kong trip that I wanted to share. So this post will just be a bunch of pictures with some captions with short explanations.  It's long so brace yourselves. Enjoy!

I first flew to Phoenix to meet up with my parents. I found this lovely collection of unfinished baby blankets. My mother is so cute. 

Rock Path, Anyone?

Happy Monday! So I got back to Michigan and my sweet husband last thursday. I think my sleep cycle is finally getting back to normal. Yay! Now that I am recuperated, I'll write some posts on my adventures in Hong Kong. You already saw some of the things I ate, so here are some of the things I did. 

One day, my father took me to his high school. From there we walked the route he would take to go home. Pretty nostalgic for him. I loved imagining the teenager version of my Dad as I walked the roads he walked so many years ago. This trip was all about reconnecting with family and also cherishing the memories of my grandparents. We reached the place where his old home used to be, we found a rock path. For those of you who are not familiar with rock paths, they are made with rounded rocks put sideways into cement and are meant to be used for exercise. However, don't let its pretty appearance fool you. You're supposed to walk on these paths without shoes and it hurts like nothing you've ever felt before. Your feet supposedly have many pressure points that are connected to other parts of your body and if you feel immense pain while walking on the path, your body is REALLY out of balance. I guess Dad and I have some work to do. The video is of my poor Dad. I have a video of myself, but I can't load it for some reason. Sorry the video is poor quality. In the video I say "rock garden," but I meant "rock path." I can't watch this video without laughing. 

My Dad in front of his high school

We also went to pay our respects to several of our deceased relatives. I took pictures so that I can keep a record of these places. So much of this family history is being forgotten. Since we live in the US and don't speak the language well, our ties to Hong Kong are becoming fainter. This trip made me realize I have some sort of duty to keep these ties alive, or at least record the family history somewhere for our future generations here in the US. 

A lot of cemeteries are set on a hill like this one.

This gravestone is for my great-grandfather on my Dad's side.

This is my grandmother. My father's mom. This plaque is inside a temple. She was cremated.

As you can see there are lots of plaques on the walls, and many people coming to pay their respects. It was crowded.

A lot of people go to shops like this one to buy paper goods to burn for their deceased. You can see there are paper clothes and purses. They have all kinds of things in there that are made from paper. I think I even saw a yacht. The big thing is paper money. I'm not sure if people actually believe that if they burn these items, their deceased will get them. My Dad says it's more like a tradition than a religious belief.  

Anyway, that is all I will share in this post. More to come!

Jessie

Happy Easter 2014

I am so grateful for this time where we can celebrate the resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Because of Him, we can find true and everlasting happiness. Because of Him, we can return and live eternally with our Heavenly Father once again. I know that the resurrected Savior lives and loves every single one of us. You can read more about the true meaning of Easter here.  

Tonight we dyed eggs with our neighbors and we had a blast! I hadn't dyed eggs in a long time. It was nice to bring out those artistic skills. The eggs in the picture at the top are the ones we made. 

This was Caleb's intricately designed egg.

Mine, pretty simple.

I was going for Starry Night

My neighbor was playing the Wicked soundtrack, so I got the idea...

Hope you all have a great Easter!

Happy Year of the Horse!

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!
恭喜發財！新年快樂！

Since being married in 2012, I've unfortunately been away from my parents during Chinese New Year. Celebrating Chinese New Year was an enormous part of my childhood. I mainly have memories of being in Chinese dance performances, going to our local Chinese New Year festival, eating scrumptious Chinese traditional dishes, and of course receiving red envelopes of money from our relatives.

   

My parents immigrated to this country many years ago. I don't know if they envisioned the rest of their lives in a foreign country, but I can tell you that they embraced it with very brave faces. My parents went on to adopt many American traditions. I feel very fortunate in that I was given the best of both worlds. I am most decidedly going to do all I can to teach my future family about our Chinese heritage in addition to their American roots.

So for this year I sent red envelopes of money to my two nephews, Deacon and Phoenix. It is tradition that once you are married, it is your turn to give red envelopes to family members who are of a younger generation, or if they are not married yet. I still have some red envelopes to send, so I'll get to that this week.

red envelopes I bought this year

Last year I decided that I was going to carry on these traditions and so I began learning how to make some of my favorite Chinese dishes. It doesn't taste quite like my mom's yet, but someday I'll get there. We invited our friends and the missionaries from our church to have dinner with us. When I signed up to feed the missionaries dinner, I didn't realize that exact date was Chinese New Year, so they were in for a surprise. 

  

west lake soup

chinese green vegetables

cha siu, chinese-style bbq pork

cha siu baau, buns with a bbq pork filling

potstickers

Everything turned out really well. I was relieved that everyone liked something on the table. It took a lot of work, but mainly because there was so much to make. However, it was completely worth all the effort because it helps me to improve my cooking skills. That is one of my goals this year. 

May the year of the Horse be a great one for you!

Happy Chinese New Year Deacon!

Here he is. Deacon Hung-Ji Tang.

Here he is. My eldest brother's first child. My first nephew. Incredibly adorable huh?

I had to post this picture because I sent him a red envelope for Chinese New Year. It's his first. 

In this case the envelope is in gold cardstock, I made it by myself. 

The scribble on the front is my artistic way of writing the Chinese character 福.

And he's holding the envelope by himself!!!

I'm a proud Auntie.

恭喜發財！

Happy Chinese New Year!

Caleb and I celebrated Chinese New Year over the weekend by going to a coworker's party on Saturday, and then having our own family dinner on Sunday. At my coworker's party, we made traditional dumplings and also lit up paper lanterns. The paper lanterns were about three feet tall, and looked like this:

I didn't take any pictures at the party, but this picture was from Mid-Autumn Festival last year and we used the same exact paper lanterns. It was super fun. One of my coworker's friends bought about 100 of these and we lit them all up. It was lightly snowing at the time, but they still went up high into the air. You can imagine it looked a little bit like this:

(www.ecorazzi.com)

Well, maybe not THAT many; we really only had like maybe five or six up in the air at a time. Still, it was really fun.

On Sunday, we had all the cousins over from my side of the family. Since I was not able to be with my parents for Chinese New Year, I decided to take ownership of my own Chinese New Year festivities. Basically, that means I get to choose what kind of food I want to prepare. I'm so disappointed that I forgot to take pictures of our little get together, but at least I can provide internet pictures of what we ate. I'm so proud of the cuisine selection, it was all moi. Well I mainly planned the menu sinceI wanted to get together, and partly because my cousins either don't know what to cook for Chinese New Year, or they just don't know how to cook the food. So I thought it would be nice to have them over and cook homemade traditional Chinese food. Here are pictures of what we ate:

West Lake Soup (image from foodgawker.com)

Cha Siu Buns (image from biggestmenu.com)

Not too bad for our first time

Potstickers is a Must! (I got this image from somewhere, but I couldn't locate the source.  However, mine TOTALLY look like that. Ask Caleb)

Cantonese Pan Fried Noodle (image from rasamalaysia.com)

Deep Fried Milk (image from gbtimes.com)

Caleb made the fried milk, this is a pic of how it turned out. It was incredibly tasty!

And of course, tong yun. Glutinous rice balls with red bean filling, boiled in a sweet soup. 

The aftermath in the kitchen

I also had some of this on the table, a childhood favorite of mine:

White Rabbit Candy

I was so busy with the food planning that I didn't have time to make my own red envelopes!! But I will get to that soon. Technically, I need to give a red envelope to my nephew. I'm not rich, but at least I should give something. So I'll be working on that soon.

It is the year of the Snake! May it be a good one for you! Cheers!