Busy Saturday Afternoon

After a delicious lunch at Lao Sze-Chuan in Chinatown, we did a couple seasonal projects, if you will, around our house.

Since we have several large trees in our backyard, at the end of autumn, there are always millions of leaves covering the entire yard. They are beautiful to look at, and I love the sound of stepping on them, but we've got to clean them before the snow comes. We had already filled 6 large bags of leaves a few weeks ago, and now it seems all of the leaves had fallen from all of the trees, we filled another 6!!!

The holiday season is coming up, so we put up our wreath and little Christmas lights around the railings of our stairs leading to our front door. Scraps was being a good boy sitting at the porch watching daddy put up the lights.

Jenny and Brian's Wedding

Jeff's cousin Jenny's wedding in mid October was a beautiful event!

The location for both their ceremony and reception was very unique - the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, VA. Since Jeff's dad has many siblings, cousin weddings always feel like a family reunion!

We had so much fun spending time with many aunts, uncles and cousins during the weekend that we are looking forward to the next reunion!

Jeff's Birthday Party

We celebrated Jeff's 35th birthday by having an end-of-summer BBQ at our house and backyard. It was a really large party - we had 33 friends join us!

We prepared burgers, hot dogs, chicken, brats, as well as a few side dishes and desserts.

Everyone also brought an appetizer or drinks. I made lettuce wraps (生菜鸡松) for the first time based on a recipe from Jeff's mom. At first, I was quite nervous that it won't turn out as good, but it was surprisingly a success and was actually a huge hit at the party!

It was a rather chilly September day, so there were not a lot of people hanging out in our backyard.

Though the party was mostly to celebrate Jeff's birthday, he was helping me preparing for the party all day. He cleaned the house and tidied up the backyard, but also was in charge of grilling!