Celebrating Mother's Day

This past weekend, Howard and I celebrated Mother's Day with our families. On Saturday, we drove to his parents' house and then we all piled into the minivan to a restaurant in Flushing called Fu Run. Unfortunately, because it was a Saturday night, it did take quite a bit of time to be seated. It was longer than the wait for other patrons because we were a group of 6 and only a few tables would have been to accommodate our group size. We watched as the bigger groups just sat there looking at pictures on their phones even after they were done eating. Seriously? C'mon now! I know that there are some restaurants that don't mind people who linger, but I feel that Chinese restaurants have more of a "order-eat-quickly-move-on-out" especially when there are so many people waiting for tables that the employees are having trouble moving around all of us!

Despite the rather long wait, Howard and I still were able to have some laughs. The restaurant was next to a smaller shop where there were a bunch of men sitting outside on portable stools. One of them brought out this wooden box and opened it for the other men to see. We were making up scenarios as to what was actually going on, and we were entertaining ourselves with our silliness. That is, until a random pigeon decided to fly down from the top of the awning to under an apparently secretive spot under the awning. Then we began giving the pigeon an entire life story, haha. I imagine that we'll do these sorts of things with our kiddies in the future. I truly hope that Luke and Leia will have vivid imaginations and can entertain themselves if we have to wait anywhere (you know, like on line for a ride in Disney World) or sit in the car for a long time (you know, like when driving from NY to Florida for a vacation in Disney World). I'm not against technology, but I don't want it to prevent their thinking and wondering. They should be able to sit in the car and look out the window and have that be enough.

Anyway, we were finally seated around 8:30pm, which was strange since Howard and I are usually thinking about getting ready for bed during the weekdays since he gets up so early for work. The family decided what dishes to order including some of the restaurant specialties like the Muslim lamb chops covered in cumin. I think the funniest one was corn and pine nuts because I had never eaten corn with chopsticks before! They also gave these huge plastic gloves for the pork knuckles although there wasn't much meat on them. The thing I enjoyed the most was the seafood and tofu casserole, which actually came out as a soup. I had been craving tofu for a few weeks, so that satisfied part of the craving. What I hope to get soon is some rice smothered in "mapo tofu" although it is a spicy dish, which is really something I should avoid. Oh well!

After a bunch of us made trips to the solitary restroom, we left when it was already pretty late. I slept going there and returning to their house since I had woken up at 5:45 that morning and actually got out of bed around 6:30am. Once Howard and I actually got back home, we took showers and went straight to bed because we are an old married couple now and can't stay up too late, haha.

Yesterday we went to church and then we celebrated Mother's Day with my mom. After the events at church, Howard and I went with my parents BACK home to actually order food before driving out to my brother and sister-in-law's place. My grandma and Matt were already there because Jon had picked them up from Chinatown. It was nice getting out of church clothes into "home clothes" because it was a lot warmer yesterday than we had anticipated! I also slept in the car on the way to my brother's place. Wearing Sea Bands and closing my eyes to hopefully fall asleep is the best way for me to combat any potential carsickness!

My parents had ordered two specialty pizza pies and 5 entrees along with 2 sides of broccoli rabe from separate Italian eateries near us. I was happy to have some penne alla vodka because I haven't had it in a while along with the broccoli rabe since we don't have leafy greens as often as other veggies. I also devoured a slice of pizza. We had Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on TV, and it just made me so hungry that I was the first to want a slice of pizza to eat while we were watching, and that set everyone into dinner mode, haha. My older brother said he chose that show on purpose.

At one point, my brother popped in The Bible DVD, which originally aired on The History Channel. Last year, many of my 8th grade students would mention what had happened in the previous day's episode when we were in Bible, so it was interesting to watch it for the first time. My mom, sister-in-law, Howard, and I got into a discussion about how they had cast a good looking man to play Jesus, but my mom said that the Bible said that Jesus wasn't good-looking. I was like, "What? It says that in the Bible?" Haha, I was thinking I completely missed a verse that said like, "And thus God spake and said thou shalt not be good-looking" or something like that, haha. But my mom clarified that she was referring to a verse that said Jesus looked common just like everyone else. Today she sent me the verse she was thinking of, and it was the one in the latter part of Isaiah 53:2 that says, "... he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him."

It brought to mind the book The Bronze Bow, which is what the 8th graders always read before they graduate our school. It is an amazing book and probably one of the only books other than the Bible that legitimately changed my life and how I think. It really explains what that verse states, that Jesus didn't draw people to him because of how he looked, but there was still something so special about Him. The way that Elizabeth George Speare wrote these descriptive passages about how Jesus spoke and how intense yet kind His eyes were just wowed me. Definitely worth the read!

Anyway, even though many of the stories were combined in the episodes, I still think it's a pretty awesome representation of what things have been like back then and really makes things more realistic just because we could visually see things. Of course, I personally think that Jesus looked a bit too much like a "pretty boy" to actually be Jesus!

We were all stuffed with food, and we knew we were going to leave early since we had to drive back and people had work today. I did the dishes and gave the plates and utensils a good scrubbing because of how picky my brother is with washing dishes as evidenced in what his best man mentioned in the speech at his wedding! Once that was done and the food was divided (there were a ton of leftovers, and thankfully I changed my mind about taking the rest of the penne home because that was the base of our dinner tonight!), we said goodbye to Jon and Theresa and piled into the car to head home.

It was a lovely way to spend a weekend even though Howard and I don't typically have busy weekends. Now that my older brother and I are both married, it's interesting how we both have two other family obligations whereas in the past, it was a lot easier for plans to be made. I'm glad that it worked out the way it did and that I could spend more time with my own momsicles!