January

We spent the rest of the time cleaning up from our trip and Christian worked on finishing up his 3D printing robot. We got it technically working before Christmas but there were still lots to do. At least it is looking nearly finished now.

There is still a bunch of stuff he needs to do before he applies for a serial number. He has already found some things that he wants to change on it though so I think it is going to be a while. That is the beauty of the open source project that you build yourself. You can modify it any way you like...but so far it is working so much better than the Ender. There were a few parts we forgot to print but besides that, we have not even turned the Ender on since we got this one running and we don't miss it. We were originally going to give the Ender to Emily afterwards, but after hearing all our nightmarish problems with it, I don't think she wants it anymore!

The rest of our free time for the month was spent mostly visiting family. January is usually a busy month for visiting with my family depending on when the lunar new year lands on the calendar. My mom's birthday is at the end of the lunar year cycle. Whoever was in town got together to celebrate her birthday early.

We went out to eat and returned back to her place to have cake.

Unfortunately, most of us did not feel that good the next day from the food. We think one of the pork dishes was not so fresh. It is a restaurant that we've been going to every time we go out for several years now. I believe Tommy's family goes there often as well. My mom reached out to the restaurant afterwards to talk to them about it but they just said that they would talk to the kitchen staff about it but was not apologetic at all, so we will not be going back.

Wendy took my mom back up to Pacifica with her. She got to go take walks along the beach and visit with extended family, so that was nice. She spent nearly two weeks up there. They did not plan to fly back down until the day before we were supposed to get together again to celebrate the New Year.

Since they were going to be out of town, it was up to me to make the stuffing again for the dumplings if we wanted to make it this year.

I was going to make a concerted effort to take more pictures of us making the dumplings but once you get there and get started, it's hard to stop to take pictures. Especially since we've got like an assembly line going and you have to extract yourself from it, wash your hands, take pictures and the wash again before getting back into the production line. There's too much going on. 

It's nice that everyone knows what to do now and can chip in. I seems like we are so much more efficient...even though I feel that Christopher was only there half the time and Collin was at work still. Plus Emily and Caitlyn are in Idaho.

My sister has also been growing shark's fin melon for the last couple of years. She got her original seeds from a friend and has been growing them ever since. She brought back a few melons to share with whoever wanted them to make soup. Christian chopped one up so we could cut them up and bag them to distribute. 

We pretty much just eat and make food all day. Because my mom was out of town with Wendy prior to this though, we only planned to make two different kinds of dim sum. We actually kind of finished earlier this year because of it. Christian and I were going to nip off and go to the asian market to get a few treats to send to the girls for the New Year. My mom decided to come and get them some things instead. She got them a few more sensible things along with a few treats. 

When we got back, Wendy and her family were meeting with her in-laws to go out to dinner. Norman had picked up some duck, chicken and pork for lunch and we had what was left for dinner along with some fresh vegetables we picked up when we were out. By the time we were done, Wendy and her other sided of the family came back. They decided to stay and chat awhile. Since we had been eating all day, we needed to go for a walk. Christopher took us through his neighborhood to a spot that overlooked the city on a hill. It was drizzling a bit when we took off but after we got there, it started to come down for real so we figured we better head back. We were pretty wet by the time we got back. It was kind of refreshing and none of us minded but I knew my mom would not be too happy with us. She made us dry off when we got back. 

Collin wanted to know how to sharpen a knife and had asked Christian to teach him. Christian had taught Wendy's family one year a couple of years ago. Jared had finally actually tried it on his own this last summer.

Afterwards, we showed them a few of our videos that Christian had made from our trip over the summer. When that was done, we called it a night and headed home as it was getting pretty late.

Chinese New Year was actually on January 29th this year. I made the shark's fin soup from Wendy's melons for our dinner along with some har gao (little shrimp dumplings).

The shrimp dumplings are not so very different than our traditional New Year's dumplings. They are just a little more elastic (more starch) and have a different stuffing. They are also much smaller. The filling is simpler though, so it's easier to whip up a small batch...although it is mainly just shrimp, so it is more expensive.