Joey and the Chaos

Last weekend, the out-of-town Chaos (by the way, it's no coincidence that our family name also means craziness) came to Austin for their annual pre-Christmas visit. The craziness lasted from Thursday to Sunday. All in all, it was a fun time for everyone, especially Joey who completely took advantage of all the attention he received.

THURSDAY: We ordered Rudy's to go and had a nice evening at home with good food and the first of many nights of mah-jong.

Here's Joey showing off his jumping skills for Aunt Minna.

It's too bad for Joey that most of the fun usually started after his bedtime. Here he is saying goodnight to everyone while we chomp down on some delicious bbq.

And here we are playing mah-jong. If I remember correctly, I raked in $40 on this particular night.

FRIDAY: Before the weekend, my cousin Steve and I decided that it would be fun to make homemade chinese dumplings and potstickers during his visit. We made everything from scratch so it was a complete family effort. And yes, there was mah-jong action this evening too but somehow we don't have any documentation to show for it.

Here is Grandma wielding her big rolling pin to make the dumpling wrappers.

Here I am kneading dough with my cousin Steve and Aunt Minna is in the foreground putting the dumplings together (which is a delicate skill that I've never quite mastered).

Here is Uncle Jeff taking a break from the dumpling-making to hang out with Joey for awhile.

Mommy hanging with Joey at his personal little kid table while the grown-ups enjoy the delicious meal.

Cousin Steve brings his dumplings over to eat and keep Joey company.

SATURDAY: We spent Saturday just visiting with each other and catching up with everyone's lives. Since we had some leftover dough from our dumpling night, we decided to make some traditional Chinese green onion pie for dinner. My dad also contributed some Korean bar-b-que and some other delicious fare. And of course, mah-jong!

Joey spent Saturday morning hamming it up for everyone while he ate breakfast.

Here is Aunt Minna feeding Joey a bottle. He got so much attention over the weekend that I'm sure on Monday morning he was missing his audience.

We took this picture to show how big Joey is compared to Aunt Minna. Look at their heads - practically the same size!

Here is Joey learning how to make Chinese green onion pie.

Here is Joey observing a mah-jong game. This is a skill he's going to need to pick up pretty quickly if he wants to hang out with this side of the family.

Joey sitting down at the mah-jong table for the first time.

We didn't plan it this way, but Saturday evening turned out to be such a nice night outside that we moved our meal to the backyard. We're already looking forward to next year's visit from the family!