My sister and David got married!

Yea!  We are all celebrating the good news that Vicki and David got married.  A private civil ceremony at the State capitol on a wintry day in January.  Here are some lovely pictures that Sophie took.  Sophie had a lot of responsibility that day.  She was photographer, ring bearer, witness and read a poem.   

What a great way to start the year!

I'm Home!

I arrived in Richmond on Wednesday Jan 12 at 12:30pm just in time for........lunch? breakfast? I had no idea as I was so screwed up with the jet lag!  And only fourteen and half  hours late due to weather in both Chicago and Richmond on Tuesday night. 

When I disembarked from my 13 hour journey from Shanghai to Chicago on Jan 11th, we were informed that all the flights to RIC had been cancelled.  A quick re-booking for the first flight out the next morning (7am), a discount coupon voucher for the lovely Marriott O'Hare Hotel and into a shuttle bus I was directed.   Ten minutes later I was standing in line waiting for a room.  Easy as can be, checked in and headed to the room.   After a nice dinner of Chicago style pizza and a glass of wine I went back to the room and had a power nap from 10 - 2am and then I was up and hungry!  Fortunately I had taken my leftover pizza from my dinner to the room, so a snack of cold pizza satisfied me!

I watched a bit of TV and then grabbed the shuttle bus at 5:15am back to the airport. While waiting for the first flight I happened to glance out the window and I noticed two guys on the top of our plane taping the tail with duct tape.  OMG.  Really? So when I saw the pilot get off the plane I walked over to him and asked about the duct tape and then re-confirmed that he would not fly if the plane was not suitable.  (Hey, you never know) He said no problem, we often use duct tape.    OMG.    I left it at that.

As you can ascertain, I made it safely to RIC.   After a wonderful week visiting with Vicki, Mom and Sophie I am now in Sarasota, FL visiting with my dad.  The weather was a balmy 79F yesterday and will be about 66F today, we had some rain this morning that cooled off the air temp.  I shall be here for a week before returning to Virginia.

New Years Eve 2011

After all the fun and excitement of Christmas we decided to stay in and just enjoy the each others company and some music on New Years Eve. 


We started with some "caviar" and a Rose Champagne.  The caviar was from the North Sea not from the Caspian or Black Sea where the Beluga fish roam!  It is quite cost prohibitive to purchase Beluga caviar here in China.  There is a 35% government tax on top of the import fees, actual cost and of course the mark up as the shop keeper has to make a profit.  Our non-Beluga caviar was quite good and we wondered if we would even know the taste difference if we had what is considered the "good stuff".  I said yes we would but Tony thinks it's all the same, just nice and salty!

After a pleasant time of eating up 6oz. of caviar - it was a big jar!! We fired up the grill to have our favorite meal - grill salmon.
It was very windy and cold out on the balcony and we were having a hard time getting the charcoal lit. We had these little fire starters in between the coals but the match kept going out before we could light them. Never fear as Liz is always prepared and had a can of lighter fluid under the sink. So we soaked the charcoal and BOOM!!! A nicely lit grill, thank you very much!


 Just a bit more!

 Strike the match and......

 Me doing the happy fire dance! Too bad it's blurry, I have a BIG smile on my face!!!

 It's all in the timing, Tony grills the best salmon, always moist and cooked to perfection!

Here is the final product!

Tony excited about his dinner and the success of the lit charcoal!

We were in bed sleeping by 11:00pm but the next morning we were able to watch CNN and see the US bring in the New Year at Times Square!

Happy New Year!

A great way to end the day! Dec. 25th

 After our wonderful Christmas dinner we headed to the fabric market so the kids could pick up some items that had made.  A nice coat for Kris and one for TJ too! Also some custom made shirts and jeans for TJ. Too bad I didn't take any pictures of the event. Everyone was very happy about their purchases.   Next on the list to see Shanghai all lit  up at night.  Since it was already 5pm and already dark we headed over to a neat little restaurant, New Heights.  This restaurant has a great balcony to view the Bund and the sparkly lights on the Pudong side.  In the pictures below the scene behind us is the Pudong side and the pearl tower is to the far left.  After the picture taking we all sat around and had a drink and enjoyed the view!

Dec 24th Lunch at Amy's

On this day we spent the morning shopping at the Pearl Market and then lunched just down the road from the market on HongMei Lu.  It's a neat little pedestrian street lined with about 30 different restaurants.  Of course everyones' choice, except for Tony, was Chinese food please.  So I took them to a favorite of mine - Amy's.  Even Tony admitted later that it was pretty good.  We each selected one thing and ended up with a table laden with 5 different  plates to share family style!  Here are the kids looking at the pictures they have taken.

 Ken and Scott waiting for the meal!

Get ready, set, EAT!

TJ and Kris in Shanghai Dec. 23rd - a full day!

Sorry the posts are out of order! Hope you enjoy them anyway.

Here is our day on the 23rd of December. It was a full day starting with Yangs Dumplings!  These dumplings are also a favorite with my Dad, Charlene and Aileen! They are so good that they have been written up in the NYT's Travel Section - 36 hours in Shanghai. Yangs has about three locations but I only know two of the locations.   

 Kris's Dad, Ken and her brother Scott full and satisfied!

Off to our next adventure in Shanghai - the Expo! 

The Expo is officially closed, but the Chinese Pavilion re-opened on Dec. 1 and will remain open until May 2011.  The Expo in Shanghai ran from May 1 - Oct.31 2010 and 72 million people attended.  About 2% or 1,440,000 people were from abroad.  The remaining  70,560,000 were Chinese nationals who came to visit the Expo.  Most attended at the 'request' and expense of the government.   Free tickets were given out and companies would close for the day and the employees would be bused in so they could spend the day enjoying the Expo.  The cost of the ticket was about $24.00 USD or 160RMB.  With many people making about 100RMB a day it truly was a gift from the government to be able to visit the Expo.

We arrived at 9:30am bought our tickets - 20 RMB per person or $3.08 USD; And then proceeded to wait in line, a line which moved along like any line at Disney. Good flow, moving you from one corralled area to another. Then finally into the elevator and up to another waiting area until the doors of the movie theater opened and everyone  "rushed" in to get a good seat in the HUGE movie theater - time invested in waiting to get in one hour!  That's pretty good when you consider during the Expo people waited as much as 9 hours to get into some Pavilions.  The most popular pavilion with the Chinese, besides there own pavilion - Saudi Arabia!  Who would have guessed that one?

Here we are waiting in line.

The movie was really good, showing the 'rise of Shanghai' from the 1960's to present day and all the people who helped create this new 'better city better life'.  That was the slogan for the Expo - Better city, Better life.  After that it was all a bit boring.  The rest of Pavilion, all 5 floors were less then interesting.  I did enjoy the water fall which was between two sheets of glass that somehow created pictures.  I suppose water was shot out at different intervals to create the images, I though that was quite clever.  And the bronze statue of the warrior with his four horses was magnificent.

It's a 1,061-kilogram (2,334.2 pounds) bronze Chariot and Horse of China's Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) The work, four horses drawing a chariot steered by an armed warrior, is about one meter (about 3 feet) tall and three meters (9 feet) long. The sculpture is half life size. The sculptures were unearthed in 1980 among the terracotta soldiers in Xi'an, the capital city of Shaanxi Province. It is representative of Chinese civilization of more than 20 centuries ago.

After the Expo we all wanted to go to a hot pot restaurant for lunch.  As we were on the other side of town we didn't know of one but Jason, our trusted driver had a recommendation for us and it turned out to be a great choice!

We each had out own individual hot pot filled with a delicious soup and we could pick and choose among the vegetables and meat and place them in our pot to cook and then eat with a yummy dipping sauce.  You could consider this Chinese fondue.  It's much healthier then the cheese venison that's for sure. 

We then proceeded to the river walk to enjoy the view of the Bund!

The river walk, as you can see was flooded, due to the high tide. I had never seen that before.

And the only think left to do on this day is go to dinner.....and we did, at our favorite Italian restaurant Bella Napoli.

Christmas Dinner in Shanghai

Maybe you have seen my kitchen in previous posts, it's not a large kitchen and it's not a small kitchen, it's quite adequate.  A smallish oven, 4 top electric burners for cooking.  A midsized, apartment size, refrigerator and a two well sink.  Also a balcony for soda and beer storage - when the weather is cold, as it is now.


As a build up to Christmas Day dinner, I had a wonderful cocktail party the evening before, a Christmas eve cocktail party for 30. Yup, 30! I know I couldn't help myself, every time I was speaking with a friend and I asked their plans for the holidays and they said they were going to be in Shanghai, I said - HEY!!! Why don't you come over I'm having a party, just some beer and wine and snacks, please come it's from 6 -8.  So of course my mid size fridge was filled with snacks and wine for the party on the 24th. Here is a lovely picture of the table before the guests came to demolish it!

So, how was I to do dinner the next day?  No room to prep anything for the dinner on the 25th.  So I thought, cater it! And I did! It was very yummy. Here are pictures of the delivery and dinner!

Everything in the box was nice and hot, just open, replate and serve!

The turkey with all the trimmings!

Mushroom sausage stuffing - no one liked it as it was more like a sausage loaf. No one makes stuffing like my mom!

Master Chef slicing the turkey.

Time to eat!

From the pumpkin soup to the lovely mashed potato and 14 pound turkey cooked to perfection it was a delicious meal! Also included in the Styrofoam coffin - green beans, sweet potatoes, sauteed leeks, ham, bread and butter, glazed carrots and gravy.  There was dessert too but no one ate any as we were all too full! Merry Christmas!

Still trying to figure out google groups.

Sending out one more test.