Hurricane Ike and Mid-Autumn Festival

Friday all my co-workers talked about was Hurricane Ike: the cancelled weekend events; news about the silly bold people at Galveston; etc. As a result, we all went home 15 minutes early. David and I had dinner at home. We decided to run errands in case we were shut in for the weekend. One of the errands was to buy a roll of wall border at Babyrus for Eric to use as a color sample. It was sold out when I went there last week. I was disappointed that it was still out of stock although they told us it should have been in the stock yesterday. The guy who worked there saw the apparent disappointment on our faces. He offered to do a final check of the inventory and the boxes under the office desks. To our surprise, he found four rolls of the left over wall borders including the one that was displaying at the cribs section! He told us that the manager would sell all of them for $8 (the original price for just one roll was $22.99)! At the checkout line, we used a 15% off coupon on top of the $8. We were so pleased with the purchase!

David organized the closets Saturday morning. Now the baby room closet looked great! I started organizing the recipes when David studied Chinese after he finished the closets. The rain was not as bad as we thought. It sounded so soothing and relaxing. We opened the door for the most of the morning to enjoy the rainy day. By five o'clock, we began to cook for the prayer gathering at Nathan and Amy's place. Lori and Billy, Debra and Lance, Dawn and Jerrod all brought something. We had a great time talking and eating. But most of all, we had a wonderful prayer time together till 11:00pm.

We had a few visitors for Sunday class. LeCreshia's brother and his family visited the class. Maggie and Alex came back to the class too! We were all surprised that the auditorium wasn't open as planned. Everyone sat in the fellowship hall and the foyer for the services. Because of the paint fume, I stayed at the nursery at the North end. I had fun watching those babies interacting with each other. We had 39 students for Friendspeak. The noise level in the searcher's class was so high that I had to move to the church office. Andrew and Jaime bought us a box of diapers and a cute ducky! We went out with them for dinner after church since Monday they are leaving for Buffalo and next week they will be in Beijing! Andrew took a picture of David and me. After he sent us the picture, he commented, "It appears that David is an angel in this photo... " I always believe David is my angel. See whether you agree or not from this photo ...

Sunday is also the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (the 15th day of the 8th month on the lunar calendar), which is the thanksgiving holiday for Chinese. On that night, the moon appears to be at its roundest and brightest. "When the moon is full, mankind is one" -- In China, the full moon has always represented the gatherings of friends and family. Thus, Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for family reunions. Families will go together to scenic spots, parks or backyards for moon appreciation parties, lighting lanterns, and eating mooncakes in the cool night. My sister told me that starting from this year, everyone will have a day off on all the traditional Chinese holidays like this to preserve the Chinese culture. I was glad to hear that. On the way home, David and I stopped at the church parking lot to watch the moon - it was bright and round, absolutely beautiful!!! Later on when I called home, mom told me that they had a perfect night to watch the moon too! For those of you who missed out seeing the moon and eating the mooncakes, here are a few pictures ...