If you are tired of the winter’s coldness and lifelessness, you can always go to the butterfly greenhouse.

We did it today.

We went to Detroit Zoo and Butterfly House was where we spent most of our time, because it was so warm and colorful inside.

I have been in North American for 8 years. But I have never roasted a turkey, not even once.

In my family, nobody likes Turkey. It’s too big and the meat is not tender. When you try to roast it in the oven, it tends to be very dry.

But, if you don’t eat turkey, it’s not a traditional Thanksgiving.

When kids grow up, they should think of Thanksgiving as that Mom gets up very early, wears a pretty apron, and works in the kitchen for a whole day, and serve a golden giant bird with mysterious stuffing in the evening.

So, this year, with the recipes from my colleague, I made my first Thanksgiving Turkey.

It looks pretty good.

All right, here is the recipe I used.

PREHEAT oven to 350°F.
SHAKE flour in Reynolds Oven Bag; place in roasting pan at least 2 inches deep. Spray inside of bag with nonstick spray to reduce sticking, if desired.
ADD vegetables to oven bag. Remove neck and giblets from turkey. Rinse turkey; pat dry. Lightly stuff with your favorite stuffing recipe, if desired. Brush turkey with oil.Place turkey in bag on top of vegetables.
CLOSE oven bag with nylon tie; cut six 1/2–inch slits in top.Insert meat thermometer through bag into thickest part of inner thigh, not touching bone.Tuck ends of bag in pan.
BAKE until meat thermometer reads 180°F, 2 to 2 1/2 hours for a 12 to 16 lb. turkey, 2 1/2 to 3 hours for a 16 to 20 lb. turkey, and 3 to 3 1/2 hours for a 20 to 24 lb. turkey. Add 1/2 hour for stuffed turkey. For easy slicing, let stand in oven bag 15 minutes.If turkey sticks to bag, gently loosen bag from turkey before opening oven bag.

I also made stuffing with the following ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, 2 1/2 cup chopped onion, 2 1/2 cup chopped celery, 4 teaspoons dried sage, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon dried savory, 1 teaspoon pepper, 1 teaspoon marjoram, 1/2 dried thyme, 14 cups dried white bread cube, 1 cup fresh chopped parsley, 1 to 2 cups of chopped fruit, 1 teaspoon dried chopped apricots, 1 teaspoon raisins.

Well, that’s it.

I cooked it for 4~5 hours and it turned out to be successful.

My dear friend Gaelikaa worried about me since I haven’t posted for a while.

I have to admit that for the last two weeks, I was very busy. I have been traveling around China, from Shanghai to Beijing, to Dalian and back to Shanghai.

I went to Beijing for a 4-day mining show and promoted our product. It was very successful. We received a lot of inquiries and I came home with a decent order.

And then I went to Dalian and visited our distributor in that region. We discussed in details for our future cooperation. And from my point of view, it was a successful one too.

Besides the business, I enjoyed the sightseeing and tasting the gorgeous seafood. My colleague and I were received with great hospitality from our customers and distributors.

It was very pleasant trip.

I am going to show you some pictures of the seafood we had.

 
This is scallop.
 
This is Conch.
  
This is blood clam.
  
This is some type of shellfish. I only know the Chinese name is "Mandarin-duck Clam".
 
This is called flying crab because it can fly over the sea.

This is sea hedgehog.
It looks pretty and tastes so so.
  
This is where we have our breakfast.
Isn't it beautiful?

It’s the best time to eat the famous YangChengHu’s crab, I for sure gave it a try.

The crabs are directly from the lake. Those are fresh water crabs, so they taste and smell much much better than the ones from the sea.

The best way to eat YangChengHu’s crab is to steam it.

ChangChengHu crabs are cultivated in a fresh water lake, as shown in the picture below. Crabs are seperated  in huge baskets and in the water, each basket is for a specific size.

The larger the crab size, the more the client has to pay.

When the client places the order, say Size Large, the restaurant will winch up the basket that holding the large size crabs.

Now, the basket is out of the water and you can see the crabs.

This is the most famous YangChengHu’s Crab.

It’s nice weather today.

I picked up my kids from school at 4:30pm. And then we went to Jackson Park, where I took a lot of gorgeous pictures.

Here is one from tons of them.

It was a sunny day yesterday.

After picking apples in the orchard, I took my two boys for a walk in the Ojibway Natural Center.

There were a lot of ducks resting in the water. With the reflection of the colorful autumn leaves, the pond, the ducks and the color made a beautiful picture.

Last weekend, my friend Jeni paid us a visit in Windsor. It was full of fun, however the weather didn’t cooperate pleasantly. We have been through two weeks of rain and strong gust, and finally today, the sun clears the sky.

I am going to take the kids to Ojibway National Park and hopefully I can bring home some nice pictures.

My older son, Ted, just turned 6 last Saturday.

For the last 6 years, I have not tought him too much Chinese on purpose. But yesterday, I visted my sister’s blog and noticed that my 7-year-old niece could read what her mother had written on the blog and I realized that if I don’t start teaching my son Chinese, he will probably can only speak Chinese, but never can write or read. This thought terrifies me!

I googled on the internet and downloaded the text book for Grade 1.

Tonight, I gave Ted the first Chinese lesson. The first lesson is always about Pin Yin. When you learn how to use Pin Yin, you will be able to pronounce Chinese characters.

After we studied “a, o, e, i, u, u, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l”, Ted felt bored and then we called it a day.

We will continue the study tomorrow night. I hope Ted will like it. After all, it is our language.

On the way to work, I heard a Child Expert saying that parents shouldn’t depend on the school to teach the children reading and if you don’t learn how to read at your early age, you will never do it perfect when you grow older.

That freaked me out.

I have to admit that I am not a qualified mother. I didn’t teach my 6-year-old to read. I did read to him but never asked him to look at the book or read some simple sentence loudly. According to the Expert, this is not correct way to lead your kid to a successful future.

After dinner, I took my 6-year-old to th library and left my 4-year-old to the dad. I just couldn’t have them together. If they are together, studying or reading is the last thing that they would think of. They will find more fun in making noises, running and roaring all over the place, sometimes they will argue or fight with each other. That’s why I couldn’t bring th 4-year-old, otherwise I would have had two noisy boys in th library.

I did a wise decision.

For the first time, Ted read two books in a row. He read after me and he seemed enjoying doing this.

Before he got tired reading, I led him to the computer where a lot of kids studying softwares have been installed.

All the kids’ stuff are so well designd that Ted was totally attracted. I have been noticing that Ted is not a good listener. When he heard something that he couldn’t understand clearly, he chose to play with his fingers or clothes. But today, when he was playing some games, he listened carefully and eagerly so that he would complete the game correctly and got the claps from the little Bunny Host.

I think this is a great progress.

I will try to take Ted to the library everything from now, since it’s so close to our house.

To me, it’s a 2-minute drive; but to Ted, it  is probably a chang of his life.

I love the fun in finding the differences between two pictures. By this way, I can always test my sharpness and observation ability.

But when I tried to find out the 10 differences in these pictures of Uma Thurman, 38, I did have some problems.

I could easily find 6 differences. And the rest four, if I didn’t look at the answers, I would’ve never have found them.

Now, try your eyes. Tell me how many differences did you find.

Here are the answers:

(1) The arm holding a camera, top left, is further extended. (I missed this one)

(2) The photographer, left, traded eyeglasses for sunglasses. (I found this one very easily)

(3) The photgrapher in the sweatshirt, left of Uma, closed his mouth a bit. (I found this one easily)

(4) Uma’s index finer is in front of the barricade. (Got this one)

(5) Another balloon has been added. (Got this one, quite easy)

(6) A green balloon string disppeared. (I missed this one. I checked the strings below Uma’s hand, but didn’t check the ones above)

(7) The man right of Uma is now wearing a blue undershirt. (I usually checked shirts all the time. I didn’t do it this time.)

(8) The man, far right, is missing an ID tag. (Found it)

(9) The same man’s watch shifted. (Missed. Two differences on one same man!!!)

(10) The light, top right, is smaller. (Found it)

How good are you? I bet you are better than me. I am well known for my carelessness in my family.