Photos

Due to the VPN making the connection super slow (well, things are going from China to Minnesota and back!) and I can't get the photos up now. But there are some on Snapfish, so you can check them out there.

Hi Again

This site is still blocked here, but thanks to my friend Ted who hooked us up to his VPN connection, we can get on some of the blocked sites. Something must be wrong with our computer/connection since I can seldom get on Facebook (last time was early July), YouTube and some others, but it's nice to be able to get to some things that I hadn't been able to access for a year.

Here are some photos from Nathaniel's birthday. The cake is a Betty Crocker mix and frosting from Beijing. I'm tired of eating Chinese birthday cakes for every birthday that is celebrated (about four a year) and since someone else ordered Nathaniel's cake last year, I wanted to do it. I went to Beijing in August to meet some friends and do some grocery shopping so added a mix to my list. I do have my trusty Rock County 4-H cookbook but I figured a cake from a mix would appeal to the rest of the family more. Granny doesn't eat cake since it has milk in it and the whipped cream (she doesn't drink milk) so she didn't eat it. Only the three of us, Granny and Gramps and Santiago's older sister were around for Nathaniel's birthday. I had begun teaching private lessons that day so we decided to eat at the hospital restaurant for lunch. The food was good and the cake was a hit with Nathaniel and his aunt. He liked the truck made of M&M's best! In true Chinese fashion, I put a layer of jam between the layers rather than frosting. All their cakes have some flavor of jam in them. Recently blueberry has become the favorite (though they don't have real blueberries here). I used strawberry. It was pretty tasty and we ate about half of it at lunch.