Back again...

Okay, so it's been a long time again. We've been traveling for the past week and now that we're home it's been time to rest a little. I'm heading back to work tomorrow and am not quite ready to turn in tonight.

So...what's been going on? Lots and it's all good baby! We all jumped in the car and headed to suburban Detroit to celebrate Goobs' birthday. Over half of J's family has now immigrated to the US and they have all settled in Michigan. J is the only member of the family who doesn't live in a suburb of Detroit. We visited the family right after we moved to the states five years ago. None of them had seen the kids, so we figured it was time. J works for a school district here, so she had both last Thursday and Friday off due to MEA weekend. Every third week in October, the Minnesota Education Association has their meetings and schools shut down. It was also birthday number four for the Goober man, so we thought we should take a few days and head on down to visit family.

We took off early Wednesday morning and drove all the way through. The weather was cooperative and the kids actually slept most of the way there. There wasn't a lot of fighting between them, so J and I were happy campers. I don't know if it's just the guy in me...but I drove for the duration of the trip and J played the policeman for those in the back seat. The drive took more out of me that I wished to admit. I ended up with a cold and lost my voice for two of the four days we were there. J might contend that losing my voice was not a bad thing...

So, what about our stay there? We got to go to the Henry Ford Museum complex in Dearborn. That was a good touristy type of thing. We also had to go to a new temple of baseball...Comerica Park. Yes, I'm just a bit of a baseball fan, and I've been a baseball missionary as well. I've converted my lovely wife to the faith. We took pictures outside of the stadium. They've a beautiful stadium with great carvings of tigers with baseballs in their mouths on the outer walls of the ballpark. There are also these wonderfull looking 100 foot tall bats there. But, the best part of it is a giant tiger statue in front of the park. The big kitty was also fitted with a giant Carhart zip up jacket for the colder months. I'll put some of the pictures from the trip on here a little later. I haven't had time to do that yet.

What about family fun??? Well let me tell ya...We had fun. We had a big production...Filipino style. We had enough food to feed an army. It was partially catered by a local Filipino caterer besides the food that various family members brought. We had dishes like pinakbet, chicken curry, bisteak, lumpia, and other stuff that I can't quite recall. J and I wanted to contribute as well. We wanted to throw our particular twist to it...so we threw in some Korean fun. We went to an Asian market and bought 8 pounds of kalbi (short ribs) and a couple of jars of marinade. We fired up a weber kettle and grilled kalbi. We didn't have any kimchi, but everyone loved the kalbi.

Ya know...we had...oh, I don't know...about 20 people in the home. Everyone was filipino but me...Oh, and of course the kids, but they are half filipino. Basically, Bisaya was spoken the entire night. I'm getting the hang of the language, so I had to listen to conversations and get the gist of the sentences. Sometimes I was accurate in my vague translations and other times, I was completely out to lunch.

J was able to catch up on family gossip and drama. She really did enjoy getting the news and some of the dirt going on. She related some of it to me as we drove home. My god...my family is sooooo boring compared to hers. So, she ate and talked and talked and ate...and of course laughed. There was a ton of Karaoke going on. People ended up watching a tape of the latest Paquiao fight. The computer was set up so that relatives in the Philippines were able to talk with us throughout the party via webcam...so we had guests there that we talked with and had fun with, but those poor folks couldn't sample the food.

It's getting late tonight. I've got to get to work tomorrow, so I'll sign off for now. Suffice it to say we had a great time.... The Samok Daddy is back.