Xiaoniu 小妞

First off, I’m exhausted. I know that Sue is tired too. We went to bed around 9:15 last night and we are still ready for more sleep.

Like most weekends we spent time working at the restaurant. I started off the weekend with an early morning trip to Queens to pickup our wedding day photo albums and a portrait of Sue’s parents. The portrait is actually an early Christmas gift. They have very little pictures of themselves and we thought it would be nice for them to have a picture of just the two of them, all dressed up nice. The picture was taken during our wedding day. BTW the picture albums came out great. The parents’ albums are basic albums of 20 pictures. Our album was an artistic album with about 60 pictures. It is nice enough that I may just take pictures of the album to post up here.

Sunday was the start of the busy part of the weekend. Sue’s father is working hard to get the windows in his house replaced, as well as install a new front door (entry system actually), install insulation in the attic and replace the vinyl siding. So, he gets up at 6am everyday to work on the house. Sunday’s are good for him since he doesn’t have to leave for work until 10am, which means lots of time to work on the house and he gets help from Jason. I posted some pictures of the house renovations being done here

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We planned to have a small BBQ to break in their new grill. It has been sitting outside for about a month and we hadn’t cooked anything on it yet. So, we prepared some chicken, pork, turkey burgers and regular hamburgers for dinner. For sides we had corn on the cob and baked beans. Yummy! Jason came to relieve us at work early (5pm) and we ran home to get everything ready and then cook it all. I manned the grill since nobody else has even used one before.

Everything came out great, with the exception of the burgers. They didn’t cook quite like I’m used to. It may be because they are sirloin burgers, not ground meat. Oh well. They were good even though a little pink. I’m also happy to say that Sue’s dad actually ate some of it. He is a very picky eater and does not like American food. I was happy to see he ate some BBQ chicken that I cooked.

I took some before and after shots of the grill. They never look quite the same after you use them for the first time.

Before:

After:

We drove up to Albany after dinner. It was late and we were definitely feeling sluggish by then. It was a busy day, especially after playing with Feifei at work. He is becoming quite the handful. Lots of energy and now wants to get into everything. He’s always trying to get his hands on something.

Monday was the big day for us. We decided to take a trip to Lake George for the day. We wanted to see the beach, walk around the village and play some golf. So, that is what we did, albeit later in the day than we expected, but not too late.

The beach and water were great. It was not busy at all. We were all surprised seeing as the weather was beautiful and the water was warm (74 degrees). I think that the high gas prices is keeping everybody at home. If we had two days free we probably would have spent one day at the beach and another doing everything else. As it was we only had enough time to wade in the water a little.

After the beach we walked around the village of Lake George. It looked pretty nice this year with all the flowers on the side of the streets and there were no crowds. The shops change names, but sell the same crap you always see. We didn’t buy anything. Just had a pizza for lunch.

Feifei enjoyed himself:

After the village we went out for some outlet shopping. They have a fair number of outlet stores for such an out of the way place as Lake George. We got some decent deals on some Christmas gifts. By now the heat and walking a lot with the baby and assorted [baby] gear we were getting wiped out. So, we hopped in the car and went to Pirate’s Cove for a game of minature golf. Loser buys ice cream. Sue and I lost by a few strokes. Oh well. We had a great time and by now Feifei was almost giddy with delight. He saw a lot of new things and was entertained the whole day.

We poured ourselves into the car and drove home. It was 6pm when we left and we were not in the mood for cooking. We hit Smokey Bones for some real BBQ food. I absolutely love their pulled pork. I was going to get a plate of just porke, but decided on getting a sausage too. Just to try something new.

Back to the apartment for ice cream and coffee. I’m happy that we didn’t have to drive anymore. I felt bad that Mike and Amy had to drive home, but it is a short trip and Mike seemed to be fairing pretty well despite the long day. Overall we had a great time. Lake George is such a short trip from our place (1 hour) that it is worth it to go for just the day. The weather was great, not cold, but not so hot that you needed a/c. And there was no traffic or crowds. A great day indeed. Now, I have to suffere through a day of work. Oh well. This is what pays the bills and pays for trips. All of the pictures from the trip to Lake George are posted here.