A long full weekend

When we find a free day on the calendar we often spend it away from home, which made this weekend of the Qing Ming holiday fun, because we stuck around QD. (I'll try to google and find a link describing this Chinese holiday, but in a nutshell it is called Tomb Sweeping Day, a day to honor deceased family members, visit their graves, and curiously burn paper money on the street corner in their honor.) China has recently added Qing Ming to its official national holiday list, which has left business and schools struggling to know which day to take off as Qing Ming follows the Lunar Calendar instead of the Western one. So, Friday Millie and Eliza had no school in honor of Qing Ming, but on Monday when they were back-to-the-books, Sean's office had a holiday. 

We crammed a lot into those days... a coffee date and a little shopping at a cute new stationary store with the Millie girl, the Easter party with Eliza on Saturday, & a trip to the tailor to be measured for new spring coats. Saturday night was birthday dinner @ Flavours at the InterCon, where Sean reserved us window seats with great nighttime views from Fushan Bay (where the Olympic sailors, and later our own Sailing Sister, sailed)  all the way down to Wu Si Guang Chang.

On Sunday we had Fellowship, then a fabulous pot-luck style gathering @ our friends Jack & Diane's (real names, and they are so totally over John Melloncamp!) Then after a quick trip home, we were off to our friends Selin and Wolfgang's new digs @ the InterContinental. They sweetly toasted us for our birthdays and we had a good time catching up with our sweet friends who have been gone to Germany and Turkey for several months.

The weekend left us sweetly exhausted and thankful again for fabulous friends... more on that in the next post!