It has been raining for 36 hours straight and counting. I'm not talking about it being "rainy" or intermittent showers. I seriously mean it has been pouring down rain non. stop. for 36 hours. It's crazy! So this weekend has pretty much been shot.

At the birthday party I took G to last weekend I exchanged phone numbers with a mom of one of G's class mates. We made plans this week to meet at the pool Saturday morning but the rain cancelled that idea. So we rescheduled for Sunday lunch. She, being Chinese, suggested we meet for dim sum. We have been too chicken to take the kids for dim sum so I thought this was a great idea!

B and I are fairly comfortable going by ourselves but I still feel like I have no idea what's going on. You know, things like how to order, what exactly I am ordering... And I feel like the etiquette of it all is kind of out of my league. So how can I take my kids when I don't even know what I'm doing? I was really excited to go with people who know how it works and with their son who actually eats it.

We have been looking forward to having a chance to get to know this family better. She is Chinese, a native of Hong Kong, but has spent some time in the USA. So her native language is Cantonese but her English is pretty flawless and she speaks great Mandarin too. Her husband is American but hasn't lived in the US for maybe 10 years. He speaks Mandarin and pretty good Cantonese. Very nice people and I think it will be great to have them as a reference for school questions and just local info in general.

We have a children's book about dim sum (called Dim Sum For Everyone by Grace Lin) so it's something my kids have heard about before. And there is a mall we go to frequently with a huge beautiful dim sum restaurant on the first floor. The floors above are open and you can look down into the restaurant and see the big round tables full of little dishes. So my kids have seen it before too. They just had not had a chance to eat it.

Did they eat it you ask?

G took one single tiny bite of the fried crispy part of a shrimp dumpling and one single bite of steamed bun that was untouched by anything saucy. She asked for a pb&j as soon as we got home.

D, on the other hand, did awesome! He ate mass quantities of fried squid. !! He tried the shrimp dumpling, he tried congee, and he tried BBQ pork buns. And the cutest part--he loved the tea. I was pretty proud of him.

My kids are funny. They are both picky sometimes and both adventurous sometimes but they are never both adventurous at the same meal. They can both be picky at the same meal though so I was thrilled that we got 1 out of 2 to try some dim sum! Success!