Hibbets' Happenings

This morning we slept in a little bit and then got ready to go to the store with Miranda. We had a good time browsing and buying. We got a few new things to try, but mostly stuck to our list, which was mostly for the Christmas party -- which is only a few days away! When we got home we put a frozen pizza in the oven and ate it for lunch. Then Jayden took a good nap, Joshua watched his Christmas songs video, and David and I worked. Then Joshua and I ran down to the Park n Shop to buy a few more things that we purposefully didn't get with Miranda -- you can only get so much at one time here, plus I waited on eggs thinking they would be easier to get home, etc. On the way back, who did we meet on the sidewalk -- Jayden and David! They turned around and we all came up to the apartment together. We wanted to go somewhere and decided to find the Santa's Town setup in Central. We left the house at 5:45 and made it to Santa's town about 6:30/6:45. And it only takes one bus to get there -- but by the time you wait for the bus, ride the bus (and it's going through the middle of downtown, so there's lots of traffic) and then walk to where you're going once you get off the bus -- it takes about an hour. It's a quick hour, but still, an hour. The Santa's Town was nice. It wasn't quite what I expected, but I'm still glad we checked it out. Then we were hungry and wanted to find a restaurant. Central is mostly downtown shopping: Marks & Spencer, Armani, Louis Vuittion (?), Prada, etc. But I felt surely there'd be a restaurant suitable for us. We did have to walk a little bit, but then off the main street was a little narrow street with about 6 little restaurants. We chose one and had a nice Chinese meal; we ordered two things to try, fried rice w/ chicken and pineapple (it was VERY good) and curry beef -- except we're not sure it was really beef. We didn't eat much of the meat. And the curry was very spicy. It was good -- but we liked the chicken and rice dish better. Jayden ate that one well, too. We didn't give her any of the curry. It was just under US$10. Right across the little alley from the restaurant was a neat little store I just had to check out. It was a little hole in the wall, not a fancy store at all, and inside they had all kind of imported foods -- lots of things I recognized from the US, but some things were from other countries as well. It was a real smorgasboard of things they offered: SPAM, Nestle Quick, Snickers bars, Quaker Oats (including Old Fashioned, yea!), Folgers coffee.... you just looked around and see what they had to offer. We bought some oats and some coconut cream. (I'm discovering this coconut cream and I'm curious if I'll be able to find it at the Asian market at home. I had been wanting to check out the Asian grocery store anyway; now I really want to!) Then we went back out to the main road, and crossed over to the other side where we saw a sign for a Bossini outlet. Bossini is the store we really like here. They have cute casual clothes at good prices -- and the clothes fit us well. We were curious if "outlet" here means the same thing as in the US; and apparently it does. I got a pair of pants (dressy casual) and this time Joshua got a few things! We got him 3 pairs of pants and a shirt. Everything was on sale. There was a "ULM" polo shirt I wanted to get for Dad, but they didn't have his size. I was disappointed about that. I think he would have liked it. Now we were ready to head home, but we had to find the bus stop for the return trip. We ended up wandering around for a bit and never did find it. Instead we made it back to where we had been a few days ago when we changed busses in Central to go to Stanley; there is a lift to take us down to the Central MTR station. So we rode the MTR to North Point and then caught the last #27 Bus to Braemar Hill. Oh yeah, before that I went into the "$10 store" (I call it) and got a few misc. things for the party. And while I went in there David picked out a few treats from the bakery next door. I like the bakery goods, as you can tell, but I've decided I really like the heartier wheat and rye breads better. At the Park n Shop with Miranda today we bought a hearty German rye loaf -- it's very good -- and a raisin walnut loaf of some kind (whole wheat or rye, I can't remember) -- we had bought it before and liked it. Plus we really liked my loaf of homemade bread. I've started another loaf tonight to bake in a little while. We've decided we really like toasted bread with peanut butter -- what a nice snack or dessert! David's got me hooked on it. Today at the Park n Shop we bought a cheese spread with apricots and almonds which is really good, too; we put it on the rye bread. It's yummy. Now everyone's in bed but me. I'm going to stay up a little longer and get some work done. Aleecia