Skip to main content

Tessa's Birthday

 This beautiful girl turned 16 in China.

I don't think that's the easiest thing to swallow.  She'd like to be home getting her driver's license and enjoying other things might be part of her life.  But she doesn't complain.  It is hard, but she has a good attitude and I'm thankful for that.  

I made her one of her favorite meals:  purple sweet potato raviolis with seared steak.  Just coming out of quarantine, and still without the green health code required to ride the subway to Sam's Club, we had to order online.  They picked the steak, and it surely wasn't what I would have picked, but just coming from quarantine food, thin cut steak tasted better than it might otherwise.  And since this in China, acquiring good cheese is impossible, so the browned butter sauce for the raviolis was not quite the same, but I did find some fresh basil, so it was quite lovely!  And I figured out how to make creme brulee for dessert so there was lots of food happiness.   (Forgot to take pictures 😔)

Chandler picked out a pair of expensive Nike's for me to find fakes.  She would have never gotten these $970 shoes otherwise!   (Only like $30 for the fake...)

And she was super happy about a guitar.  Good times all around, even in China!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

While We Are Waiting: Temples!

I love the temple.  When I first learned of the possibility of us moving to China in December 2019, one of my first questions was "How can I leave the temple?"  That question was answered in part during the closure of temples in 2020. However, when the joint venture was signed and Tom was officially offered the position in China in November 2020, I began fasting and praying that I would be able to attend the temple just once before we left.  Our original flights were for July 7, 2021 and just a few weeks before that, our temple opened up and miraculously we were able to get 2 appointments for baptisms and 4 other appointments for Tom and I before our departure date.  I can't express my deep gratitude for those 6 precious appointments.  Then when we didn't obtain a visa in time for those flights and access to nearby temples was given, I took up a new hobby.  Temple scheduling.  The girls teased me it was a bit of an obsessed hobby; but since we will go ...

Service Project Report + Thank You!!

First off, thank you, thank you for all of you who donated to our service project for the children's hospital.  You made a really big difference!  I truly appreciate each one of you!  We had a few foreigners here in China who donated, but most of our $750 donations came from YOU!  Right before our deadline, many Chinese people came forward with used books and by the time we counted them all, we had over 900 books! (This is not a great picture, but sadly, this is all that I have of the books.) After contacting the hospital as to whether or not they wanted more books or other things (I made several suggestions including bean bags or comfy chairs for the library, comfort items for patients, craft kits, money to support pet therapy etc.) they said they didn't want more books and decided that they wanted craft kits for the children in isolated wards in the hospital.  So I spent all of your money on craft kits.  The cost of crafts here is so cheap compared to the...

An Accomplishment!

 The process: Cut the recipe in half so that the bread will fit in your teensy tinsy oven. Convert everything to metric--- ingredient amounts and water temperature. Get your purified water to the right temperature. Measure ingredients out. Mix it up.  Humidity changes things.... Hope you did it right. Shape and let rise. Convert oven temperature to Celsius. My little oven heats up nicely, but you get to guess when it is preheated. Notice there are no smoke alarms in your kitchen. Hmm.   Decrease the cook time and cross your fingers that is right.  Add a cooking thermometer to the shopping list. Let it cool for a long time because you only have a small serrated knife for cutting it. Slice and eat.  It probably could have tasted pretty awful and we would have thought that bit of home tasted very delightful!  But it was quite good! Needs a little more salt, but that is an easy adjustment.   And it could have been crustier, but we're at a point o...