A quiet weekend

It's been a quiet weekend, which has been weird, but very welcome after six straight weekends of wrestling.

The name of these harks back to when our boys were
younger. I modified Jam Drops to be Monster Eye
biscuits because not everyone around here likes
jam, but everyone likes chocolate.

Two of our boys were away on a youth group camp, leaving us at home with our 14 y.o. That was weird.

He was the boy who didn't wrestle this year, so we took him out to a restaurant of his choice. We went to a Japanese all-you-can-eat restaurant at our local shopping centre called "Farmer's Market". It's a great place that we've been a few times. At about AU$17.50 for lunch (and 70 minutes to eat) we did pretty well, especially with how much he ate. 

What was especially amusing was a five y.o. boy on the table next to us. He couldn't stop staring at us and I finally talked to him. He was fascinated by how much our son was eating. We chatted for a bit, then his family had to leave. By that time we were trying on a few English words. We tried out "See you later" and he asked, "Will I really? Do you come here often?" When his parents finally got him to leave he came back several times to say goodbye. It was hilarious.

At 4 I had a video chat with my life-long friend, Mel. That was, as usual, wonderful and life-giving. We're already making plans to spend face-to-face time when I'm back in Australia next year at this time helping our eldest to settle into university (Lord willing).

Not much else happened yesterday. It was wonderful.

Today we went to church as usual. We're now dealing with "fame" as various people stop us and congratulate us on our son's win. The first thing our pastor said to us when we arrived was, "Is your son coming today?" Well he wasn't, but our pastor wanted to tell congratulate him in front of everyone!

After church I met with my Taiwanese friend to learn a new Bible story and review the previous three we've learnt (see here about how this started last November). Unfortunately our Malaysian friend has moved and couldn't join us, but I continue to be amazed at how fun it is to go over these stories that I'm so familiar with, and help someone else to learn them. A very different feel to an intellectual Bible study.

It was a gorgeous day and I rode home as usual along the local rivers. The temperature was about 12C with no wind and a clear sky. Plum blossoms are appearing around the place. I've seen them on people's FB pages, but not had a chance myself to stop and take a photo on a nice day. Here is what I snapped on the way home today.

After lunch I had my usual time-out in bed, reading, playing games etc. Then I came downstairs and did some baking. I tried a recipe that's been in my typed recipe book since I left home (during university holidays more than 20 years ago I typed out a lot of my mum's favourite recipes, and I'm still using many of them). I don't believe I've ever made this cake: Gugelhupf. It's turned out well, though I didn't have a special Bundt pan to use. I hope the boys enjoy it. If it's okay I'll be taking some with me to the women's retreat I'm going to on Wednesday. I also made the Monster Eye biscuits that I put at the top of this post.

Then the rest of our family came home and all of a sudden we have a full table and and full washing machine. The fridge, however, is considerably more empty...