New Visitors

This weekend was a busy yet important weekend for our family. B & B were able to meet their Grandma Jeriwan (Grandma Jeri) for the first time as well as their Great Grandma Sum Kee (also known as "Rose"). Both live in Las Vegas and when G'ma Jeri found out she had grandkids a couple of months ago, she has been calling and talking to the kids and decided to come and visit. After driving 19 hours, they settled in for the weekend, bringing a new puppy to entertain. Although it seemed like a crazy weekend getting used to a wild puppy, meeting new people (for the kids mostly), listening to Great Grandma Rose tell the same stories many times (she has dementia) and running various errands, it was nice to get to know them a little bit better. Both are funny and very talkative and love the kids. Jeri taught me how to make some authentic Chinese food (fried rice and egg rolls) and also made some other yummy food while she was here. We went to an Asian market for the first time together and she showed me how to look for the right kinds of ingredients and what kind of food is good to buy. HINT: if you like Asian food as much as we do, go to an Asian grocery store...Asian markets actually sell meat cheaper and also sell soy sauce, sweet & sour sauce, rice, etc. WAY cheaper than the grocery store.

Grandma J. works at Marshall's, so she brought all sorts of goodies for the kids like pillow pets, several dresses for Brynn, lots of shoes, and more. She even brought a present for Baylen for his birthday and bought each of them a toy. They were pretty excited about it all.

Great Grandma Rose speaks a little bit of broken English but mostly Thai mixed w/ Chinese. She is a bit hard of hearing and is waiting to get a new hearing aid as well as some new teeth b/c she had to get many of them pulled. She will turn 79 in two weeks. She was very happy to meet us and kept saying she would miss us. She had some really old pictures in her purse of her father and her brother. I'll try and post them later...her father was a very good Chinese doctor and used to help many sick people in his village and neighboring villages. He would find ways to mix herbal medicines to help very sick people return to good health. He was well known. It was neat to hear about the history of a part of our family.

The kids enjoyed meeting their grandmas and spent the weekend eating, talking, playing with the dog, reading to grandma, playing games w/ grandma, and getting to know them both.

Grandma J. and GG Rose left this morning to head back to Las Vegas. We hope to see them again sometime. Maybe we can visit them if we make it to Vegas in the fall for a little adult getaway...we'll see.

It was fun to have some authentic culture and learn some cultural traditions and language that our little family does have a connection to. It's good for our kids to learn about their roots too.