I had a pumkin carving night at Legacy tonight with Sophie. It was lot of fun! Each year, the preschool Dads all come with their preschoolers and carve pumpkins. The kids love it, and it’s a great way for the Dads to get a chance to know some of the other Dads.

We had donuts and cider afterwards, which is always a huge hit too. And the highlight of the night was when they turned the lights out in the gym and you got to walk around and look at all of the really cool pumkins that were just carved by all of the kids and their Dads.

We carved pumkins with the kids tonight. We actually only did Gracie’s and Micah’s tonight, because we have a pumkin carving event for Sophie at her school tomorrow night.

Faythe found some cool templates from the internet, and the kids each picked out the patterns they wanted. So we poked all the holes in the templates and then carved them out. I think the kids favorite part was when they kept getting to pull the center stuff out of the pumking and kept yelling “Guts!! Guts guts guts!!”

Anybody remember that old song, and who wrote it?

I came home from work today to find that they are (finally) digging up the ditch in my back yard. My yard was flagged for digging well over a month ago, and I have had multiple conversations with the drainage commission since then.

I was concerned that my sprinkler heads and my trees near the back edge of my yard might get messed up, but the guy doing the digging did a great job being super careful to stay clear of my things.

They are digging out the ditch because there are some drainage issues, and I was pretty suprised by how much deep it is now than when we first moved in. I think I might even have to build a bridge over this thing so I can cross it every now and then!

Today was the start of a new “season” of Bible Study Fellowship for me. Actually, last week was the first week; but I missed it because I was out of town. I’m pretty excited about this upcoming year, because we will be doing a brand new study this year (that BSF has never done before)

This year we will be studying the book of Isaiah, and I can’t wait to dig in and learn what God has to teach me!

Faythe pulled the carrots from our garden today. We were suprised to see how short and stubby they were! We’re not sure if they were supposed to turn out like this or not. Oh well, they tasted good either way!!

Day 262: Mr. He and I relax on the zillion dollar hand carved furniture…, originally uploaded by patterbt.

After lunch today, we were walking thru the lobby of the hotel where the restaurant was and I saw this amazing hand carved furniture. I was busy checking it out, and Mr He told me I could go ahead and sit down on it if I wanted to.

I was somewhat nervous, as the price tag for each piece was thousands of dollars, but Mr. He assured me it was fine. So we sat down and snapped a few pics. It ends up Mr. He is a bit of a photographer himself, so he was giving lots of compositional advice to the guy taking the photo. It was too funny!

When we arrived at our hotel in China last night, I was blown away to see all of the cool decorations and even nature inside the center of the hotel. They have this really cool waterfall, with all kinds of vegatation around at; and they even have a few little ponds with fish swimming around in them. The cool part is that this place isn’t even very expensive to stay at, compared to normal “American standards” for hotel pricing.

We had dinner tonight at a really fancy restaurant at our hotel, after making the flight from Japan to China this evening. We were met at the airport by the 3 guys from China that we will be meeting with for the next couple days; and then they guided us to our hotel and eventually to this restaurant.
We had all different kinds of chinese food, most of it I liked quite a bit. My boss, Ken (sitting to the left of me), warned me that they might try to “suprise” me with some super spicy chinese food. So when they asked me if I liked spicy food, and I said yes, the ordered up something special right away.

I was a little nervous at first that it might be too hot for me, but it was fine. It actually was just about the right level of hotness for my tastes; hot enough to make you sweat and your eyes water, but not so hot that you run away screaming for a glass of milk!

Oh, and our Chinese hosts were very friendly and kind to us during our time here. They really made the visit a real pleasure.

I have been working at my company for 10 years, and I have always heard how the special Kobe beef that they have in Japan is some of the best beef you can get anywhere in the world. Well, I finally go to try some tonight!

We went to this really cool restaurant where they bring you out your meat in slices, and it is served on a skillet-plate which is SUPER sizzling hot. Then you cook the meat yourself on your hot plate, and cook it to your liking of done-ness. The tricky part is that the plate is cooling the whole time, so you have to act fast or your meat won’t get finished cooking!

The meat came with a whole bunch of really tasty vegetables, and a dollop of butter, and a whole bunch of sliced garlic. I spread the garlic and butter all over and around my meat as it was cooking; and it was just amazing! The flavor was outstanding, and they also served it with this really good Japanese sauce that just finished it off perfectly.

I spent a great deal of the day travelling today. I travelled via boat, train, bus, and taxi!! This is just the first of multiple train ride trips I took today. I always find it interesting to observe common everyday things we have at home, but from within a totally different culture.

We had meetings at a customer site in Ise, and then travelled back to Sanda/Kobe in the evening.