Mummy dogs

I saw these on Pinterest this week and thought they would be fun. So Daniel and I made them for dinner tonight. I think they turned out pretty well. The two below are Daniel's. He did better than I did.  They were yummy too. Halloween is so fun. I'm glad Daniel indulges me with little fun things like this. 

Gardens

After 2 springs and summers of no garden, and more specifically fresh tomatoes, we thought it was time take gardening seriously. So we did. I am so excited about my garden.

We started with railroad ties and lots of dirt!

 8 railroad ties. And Oh. My. Gosh they are heavy. We found out that some of them are made of oak. There was one that I swear weighed over 100 pounds. Bruised my arm trying to move one of them.

We put down a layer that will keep the weeds from coming up in my garden.

 Strong Daniel!

 

 Conference weekend we had 2 trucks get 2 loads each. It was lots of dirt!

 Our new garden is 9 ft by 18 ft.

 Yard work is hard for a dog.

Then came the produce. And the fence. My dogs are diggers and thieves. Winston likes to eat my food. So we put up a fence. It still needs a real gate. Right now the opening is blocked with tomato cages.

 I've got Chinese eggplant, beats, Anaheim peppers, and peas.

And all my tomatoes! I got a tomatillo also. We have: Sweet 100 Cherry Tomatoes, Black Krim, Great White, German Johnson, Lemon Boys and Celebrity. It's going to be a yummy August! There's nothing like a home grown Utah tomato.

Bingo!!

Every year, for 49 years now, my Budge family has played Christmas Bingo. It is quite the party now. It started with my grandma and grandpa and their children at the time, three of them. This year we had 41 people and we were missing 7 from the family! Crazy. We're growing like mad. This year went really well and everyone had a great time. We had to split into two shifts for dinner. So much yummy food. We had bacon wrapped duck rolls, chili, clam chowder and all kinds of other yummy sides. We had brownies with marshmallows (my favorite!) and rice krispie treats. Too much food. But fun was had by all. This year we had three engaged couples and a couple more that are close. So much young love. It was fun to have all the new fiances come join us. Plus, my aunt and uncle have an exchange student here from Europe and he was able to join us. His birthday was the next day, so we brought some presents for him and sang happy birthday and had him blow out candles and everything. Next year makes 50 years. Should we do something to mark the occasion? What do you think? I think so.

 My cute sister Caitlin and her cute boy Ben.

 My grandparents like to have a picture of each of us with the santa hat.

Dan

 Daniel in one of his new shirts.

 My uncle pulling his "turtle soup" face. He's an artist and this was a face he pulled for one of his book characters. He's the artist for President Monson's book, The Christmas Train.

 Laying out the prizes and setting forth the rules.

 Eying the goods.

 Daniel does the calling because of his booming voice and no-nonsense approach.

 Concentrating on the spots called.

 Caitlin won!

 Ben's first bingo prize ever.

 Tim got married on January 3 this year. He got tools as prep for becoming the man of the house.

Everyone minus the 7 who were missing. My cousin Ian and his wife Sara live in California and my cousin Jared and his wife April and their three kids live in Richmond, VA. We missed you guys! (Notice to two kissing in the back right? Yeah, that's my brother. He generally does something silly in pictures. We love his girlfriend Aubrey.)

So much fun!

Hong Kong

We did a few other things while in Hong Kong. We headed over to the Kowloon Walled City Park. (Click the link for more info and old pictures). It was very interesting. It was a small area that had been walled in sometime in the 1870s by China has continually remained Chinese land throughout this whole Hong Kong/England land exchange. It was set up a little like a fortress. In the 1960-1990s it had buildings that were 8-10 stories high with almost 15,000 people living there. It occupied space just under 700 feet by 400 feet. The sidewalks were about 3 feet wide. The buildings were extremely close together and the neighborhood had become known as a place of drug dealers, shady business and lasciviousness. So they knocked the whole place down and created a park with monuments and remnants of the original wall. It was a nice little park. Hong Kong is very rich in history. The more time I spent there, the more I realized how little I know about it.

 The dog in the Zodiac garden.

 The Zodiac garden.

What the city inside the walled area used to look like. Pretty dense, right?

We went to the temple and did a session in English. We met a wonderful young woman there who was a Chinese national. She had returned from her mission to Temple Square just a month before and was in town to spend time in the temple before returning home. I could tell it broke her heart to be back in a country where she couldn't share the gospel with friends. She gave me a hug. She says she's applying to BYU-Hawaii for next fall. I hope she gets in and is able to return to America.

After the session we went over to the ward house and changed. There was a wedding there. It was interesting to see Mormon wedding culture mixed with Chinese wedding culture. Very few of their friends and family were members so they did the Chinese customary ceremony afterwards at the ward house, without the alcohol. She was beautiful. We told them congratulations and were on our way out. 

Then we went and did the Mid-level escalators. That's the next post.

Dinner, fireworks, and bobing.

After the afternoon activities, it was time for dinner. The girls did a bunch of prep and then we BBQ'd.Chinese style.

Green onions. They were actually pretty good with the oil, garlic and salt.

 Emily, Susan, and the Sunny Du on the far right. Sunny is one of the three who won a trip to the US with the company. She will be there the first week of November.

 Bread, cucumbers, meat, and potatoes. The potatoes didn't work too well... But the rest was good.

 "Hot pink pork" we called it. I asked about how it was seasoned - because it was really good - but they told us it was preseasoned from the grocery store with "Chinese sauce." Not helpful.

 Rulf. The only guy from the company  - besides Daniel, Matt and the guy in charge. Brave man.

Grilling.

Then Paul (in charge)  had this box of fireworks. He lit it up and then there were like 50 of these things. It was awesome. He said it only cost about $50 US.

 

 The box.

Then: bobing. It's a dice game that is played here in Fujian, only, from what we understand. They play it t Mid-Autumn festival. You roll the dice for various combinations of four.

 Selena. She is Daniel's assistant. She's very helpful.

 The bowl you roll into.

The prizes. The better you roll, the better your prize. For the lowest there was a lottery card, the next was toothpaste (green tea flavor) then various amounts of gift cards for Walmart.

We made out like bandits. I won the biggest prize at our table. Total we got 9 lottery tickets, 2 tubes of toothpaste (that we gave away!) and then 450RMB to Walmart. That's like 85$. Awesome. That's pretty much our groceries for the rest of the time we are here.

It was fun. We were quite tired by bedtime and slept pretty well. We got up and were out at 9 the next morning. On a death march. That's the next post.