Labor Day and Birthday

Our weekend was full of good food and wonderful time with family and friends. Hope yours was too! David had a nice birthday week - he had gone out for lunches with his friends almost everyday. The weather was so nice that it made us believe the beautiful fall was already here. Friday after lunch, we headed off to Tulsa for the Labor Day weekend. Here is a picture of David and Emily on the way to Tulsa:


After we arrived, Amy and Kendall were already there. Leedy Kay dropped by for a short visit. It was great to see everyone. As always, we had Mexican food for dinner Friday and had BBQ ribs for lunch Saturday. Saturday night we had dinner at Linda's house. We were stuffed with good food. Sunday we had lunch at Incredible Pizza's where we bumped into Rae B. She was visiting her brother there. Amy made peach cobbler for David's birthday. Both David and I liked it. David got to open his gifts Saturday afternoon. On the way back from the BBQ place, we also visited the house David and Amy grew up. We even found their hand prints when they were little. Monday night Terry, the new Chinese SMU student, invited us for dinner at his apartment. He cooked delicious food. When we asked how he learned cooking, he said he called his mom so she instructed him step by step ... We still remember the first night when Terry arrived at America, he asked David "What is Industrial Engineering" (his major at SMU is Industrial Engineering).

A snapshot with Leedy Kay

David's and Amy's hand prints from the old house

Opening Birthday Gifts

Emily also had a great time! First of all, she tried a lot of new food and she liked them all: the ribs, mashed potato, spaghetti, rice, guacamoli, refried beans ... I was concerned that she might have taken too much salt and spice by these adult version food. Hopefully these occasional dose won't hurt her much. From now on, no more salt and pepper for her! She also had lots of fun playing with Chloe and Presley; hanging out with Grandpa; and walking laps around the house. Despite of all the activities, she still kept her normal schedule for eating and sleeping. We were so happy about that. Hope she'll do great in China too!

Playing with Grandpa

Playing with Chloe

Reaching for snacks

Admiring Grandpa

Girls, look at camera

Walk! Walk! Walk!

Biting off the banana

David always joked that he lost his wife ever since Emily was born because I always sat in the backseat with Emily to attend her. On the way back home, I sat in the front seat this time. Emily was by herself in the backseat. We gave her a water bottle to play with during the second half of the trip. After a while, she began to be fussy. We thought she must be tired of the car ride. Ten minutes later we stopped at Sonic to grab a cup of drink. I went back to check on Emily. I was surprised to find that she was soaked in water. All her clothes and the car seat cover was wet. The water bottle that we gave her was empty! We had no idea that she could unscrew the bottle cap. No wonder she was fussy! After we changed the clothes and dried the car seat cover with towels and bibs, she was calm for the rest of the trip - of course, I was back to the backseat. We felt terrible. Here is a picture of David apologizing to Emily for what happened:


Emily has five teeth now. More are coming. Her drooling was really bad. She officially graduated from the immobile state. She wouldn't sit for 5 minutes. That's probably one of the reasons that David strained his back muscle earlier this week. He had to hold her hands and run all over the house! It was time to put away David's grandma's old quilt - we've made good use of it: when I was pregnant, I used it as stepstool to climb onto the bed; after Emily was born, we used it as playground for her; now that Emily doesn't sit down to play that much, the old quilt finally got off duty. Thank you Grandma for the quilt! Here is a picture sitting on the quilt the last time.

Here are a couple of bonus pictures:

With the temperature going down, we put socks on Emily so she won't feel cold on the tiles. But these blue socks are the only ones that are big enough for her feet. Need to go shopping now!

My co-worker gave us some toys. Emily was so happy to ride on this toy:

Emily loves to walk holding our hands. But she refuses to move by holding on other stuff. See how nervous she is when she doesn't have our hands.

Here's a short video of Emily and Grandpa:

Here is a video of Emily the little soccer player: