Thursday, February 25, 2010

Chris’ Chocolate Chip Birthday

Like all years, I made Chris’ his traditional (and FAVORITE) chocolate chip cookie cake. This year it had 39 candles in it and he blew them all out in one breath!

Chris bday 01 Chris bday 02Chris bday 03Chris bday 04

Happy Birthday Chris! We love you very much!!! Hope you have a super fantastic year!

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Valentine’s Banquet

This year’s youth group Valentine’s Banquet was bigger and better than ever before thanks to Andy Bernard’s fantastic catering skills and a terrific youth group! We had 54 people RSVP and raised a lot of money for the Acquire the Fire and Great Escape trips this spring and summer. Thanks to everyone for all their hard work and to those who supported our youth group! (I also want to thank those of you who posted pictures that I could “steal” from FB, since I didn’t take very many)

Although it was a bit harried at times (thanks to the fact that the ovens tripped about every 2 minutes or less when we had the stove working, we could never make coffee fast enough,  and getting about 50 meals out all at once) and Chris and I (mostly Chris) did dishes for about 4.5 hours, we had a BLAST!!!

valentines dinner 01valentines dinner 02valentines dinner 03thanks to Susie and Renee the decorations looked great

valentines dinner 04   

v-day dinner 05the hustle and bustle in the kitchen

v-day dinner 01 

v-day dinner 03the youth stayed hoppin’ waiting on tables

v-day dinner 14

orange chicken

v-day dinner 15

roast pork

v-day dinner 04 

v-day dinner 06

Renee also did a good job with the entertainment

v-day dinner 08

v-day dinner 07

everyone enjoyed the “Valentine’s Game” (a version of the Newlywed Game)

v-day dinner 09

Chris and I are still doing dishes…

v-day dinner 16

v-day dinner 17

the chocolate-strawberry cake was beautiful and delicious

v-day dinner 12

thanking everyone for coming

v-day dinner 13

our AWESOME cooks: Andy & Shawna!!!

v-day dinner 10

Will and Tia are enjoying the bucket ‘o cake that Andy made for the youth from the scraps

v-day dinner 11

but bucket cake and all that hard work makes ya thirsty :o)

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Dim Sum

William had a bit of trouble deciding on what to do for his birthday but finally settled on going to Wong's King for lunch on Monday.

We took the whole day off and spent the morning going to Powell’s City of Books and Apple Music to use Christmas gift cards. They are both really fun places to go and see all kinds of things you would like to have! Chris bought a few books, I bought a book on preserving foods and chickens and Andy bought a cymbal for his drum set.

Then we headed to lunch. They sat us at a large round table with a lazy susan in the middle. Perfect for dim sum! As soon as you sit down, they carts start coming!  They tell you your choices so quickly as they flash you a quick peek at what’s under the lid that you often have no idea what it is you just caught a glimpse of. So we went with the safe bet and only took items that I had last time, recognized, or had a pretty good idea of what was said. We did pretty good! We passed on the chicken feet more than once, despite the fact that Will was kind of curious about trying them and they didn’t look that bad. Most of us liked everything we got. Our favorites were the sugar cane shrimp and the sticky rice wrapped in leaves. My favorite was the red bean dumpling dessert! Yummy! And we got better with the chopsticks by the end of the meal (no silverware at all)!

dim sum 01I wish we had remembered to take some pics of all the food 

As we were leaving, we took a peek at a menu and discovered that they had a menu for dim sum. After perusing the dishes, we were relieved that we didn’t accidentally order the pig intestine (it actually didn’t look that horrible in the picture) or the preserved egg & pork soup (so that’s what she kept trying to tell us…). Next time, we’ll definitely take a menu. Not as adventurous, but a whole lot safer… :o)

Great choice Will! We had a great time!!!