Xiaoniu 小妞

This past weekend was my mom’s birthday and my parent’s 29th wedding anniversary. Happy Birthday and Anniversary!!

The family came over to visit and celebrate on Saturday. We got there in the afternoon, but we did get to spend a few hours talking with everybody. It’s always nice to catch up face to face. Email and blogging is nice, but nothing beats real conversation.

I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures, but mom did. I helped dad pick out a nice digital camera for mom. The days of blurry, questionable quality pictures are over. So are the days of accidental film exposures and dead batteries. Her new camera is your standard digital which allows you to view and delete any pictures you don’t want. The camera also turns itself off if you leave it on by accident. It also takes great pictures. Much better than the golden oldie I’m still using. (hint hint). I’ll have to post her pics once I get a hold of them.

Dad also moved up to 21st century technology too. His CD player kicked the bucket and I worked with mom a little to get him a nice little MP3 player. Personal CD players are harder to come by these days. They are going the way of the VCR. With an MP3 player he’ll be able to listen to many more songs without changing discs and it won’t skip.

On a more somber note we brought grandma’s remains to the temple on Sunday. The family paid their repects to her at the house and then brought the urn to the temple. The urn will stay there until the ceremonies in October. I got a chance glimpse at the other urns waiting there for the ceremonies and there was one for a small baby. Born 6/30/06 and died 7/12/06. It was very sad to see.

Before we left we paid a visit to the Big Buddha Temple. Inside is a very, very large Buddha statue, surrounded by 10,000 small Buddha statues. It’s a pretty imposing site. The building is also very large. I did not take any pictures. I learned on my trip to China that it is rude to take pictures inside the shrine. So, you’ll just have to use your imagination.