Saturday

I love Saturdays. All my kids are home, and generally they are pretty lazy days. The kids love Saturday because I am very lax about TV watching and computer games.

Every other Saturday I do a milk run. Most of my grocery shopping I do during the week, usually twice because it involves taxis and lots of stairs. I can only buy what I, and whoever goes with me, can carry. Milk, however, requires its own shopping trip, hence the "milk run". With six growing kids, most of them teens and pre-teens, we use a lot of milk. The milk we buy comes in single serve plastic bags, 18 to a box. We go through nearly a box a day. =:O That's a lot of boxes of milk! So every two weeks we use the Eagles Wings van on Saturday morning to do a milk run and buy 10 boxes. Not that I need to do anything in particular to be a spectacle in the grocery store, but loading a cart with 10 boxes of milk definitely adds to the show. :) As a bonus for our purchase we get free boxes of tissues, lots of them. Score!

For lunch I usually make dumplings. Don't get all excited. I don't roll out dough, create exotic fillings and hand stuff them. I am introducing American concepts here -- I buy them frozen in the grocery store and pop them into some boiling water. The kids don't seem to care; it's a special treat no matter how they get here. Today, however, the two older American kids who shall go nameless (Marissa and Lindsay) were at our EW2 house where the ayis made baozi (doughy balls stuffed with savory meat and veggies -- even better than dumplings). I should have been tipped off when they called and asked if they could have lunch there, but they get brownie points for thinking of their family and bringing a half dozen home to share!

In the afternoon, I give each of the kids 5 jiao to go to the corner store and get a treat...and before you think I am becoming overly generous, that's about 8 cents each  They take their usually stinky-and-spicy treats and go to the park in our neighborhood to run around, play games and meet other kids. I am happy to get them out in the sunshine and semi-fresh air for a bit.

But the real highlight of Saturday is still to come...GAME NIGHT! 7:30 on the dot, everyone gathers at the dining room table to play games. UNO, Swap and Beijing Match are the current roster. (We could use some new games, and really wish we could find the Jenga that we left behind in 2009. Hopefully, Santa will bring some new ones to add to the mix.) We have a blast, laughing and slapping (! you'd have to know the game SWAP) and cheering for each other. Win or lose, it doesn't really matter, everyone has the best time. Just like  the happy family we are.

Yup. I really like Saturdays. :)