My Valentine Birthday, 2017

At about 8:30 on the morning of my Valentine birthday, 
I was in my jammies reading my birthday cards 
(which I religiously save until my birthday),

and the doorbell rang.
I jumped out of the couch and ducked into our bedroom and
Roger raised our front door blind up. 
There stood the Walkie Talkies, a group of friends and neighbors who gather every morning 
at first light to walk together. 
These cute friends have invited me to join them many times, 
but my style of exercise, 
not being much of a morning person, is hitting our treadmill about mid-morning.
I thought, oh what the heck, and reappeared in all my jammie glory. 
 When they saw me, they burst into singing Happy Birthday, and they gave me these delicious tarts 
that one of them had made. 
As is evident in the pic, I couldn't wait to taste it before I got a pic.

Ever since we moved to St. George, my very-much-loved visiting teacher, Janice, 

has sent me flowers for my birthday every year.

Aren't they beautiful?

Roger and I have the tradition of spending one night in Las Vegas on or around my birthday and Valentine's Day. We got ready and drove there in time for lunch. 

We ate at the Cheesecake Factory and shared my favorite there, Chicken Marsala and mushrooms.

Neither of us like cheesecake, but the waiter brought me this cute little sundae.

After shopping a little in the outlets off Charleston, we checked in at the Wynn's Encore, 

a hotel we haven't stayed in before.

Our son, Ryan, and his wife, Emily, treated us to a night in Vegas, including dinner,

 for Christmas and my birthday, 

so, thank you, guys, it was absolutely wonderful!

We changed and then went for a walk through the Encore and the Wynn. 

They are beautiful properties with the theme of flowers and butterflies.

The mosaic floors are works of art.

The Wynn had gorgeous lanterns up celebrating Chinese New Year.

A month earlier, Roger made reservations at AquaKnox, a wonderful seafood restaurant in theVenetian.

We shared their Valentine special, a crab-stuffed lobster tail and a New York steak.

Probably our very favorite part of the meal was our shared appetizer, called The Trio.

It was a lobster cocktail with champagne mignonette, 

shrimp ceviche and a crab cocktail with mustard sauce and caviar.

Oh my goodness, we were in heaven!

For dessert, we shared a delicious chocolate souffle.

Yum!

I love getting calls from my kids on my birthday.

Mindy caught up with me while we were browsing through shops in the Venetian.  

I was sitting on a bench outside a store called Karma Luck, and while I was chatting with her, 

a pretty necklace hanging from a wall in the store kept sparkling in my line of vision.

After we hung up, I told Roger I had to go see up close what kept catching my eye.

After close inspection, I decided to buy it with some of my birthday money. 

This friendly clerk placed it in the white receptacle shown below, gonged it three times 

to remove the "bad" karma it might have received from other people touching it, 

then handed it to me.

I just went with it.

Kinda fun.

Next day, we shopped in the Fashion Show mall, ate lunch at Mon Ami Gabi, drove out to Primm 

to spend a gift certificate from Stacy and Tom at William Sonoma outlet and got back home before midnight.

It was such a fun way to celebrate a holiday and my birthday rolled into one!

Love Message to Roger

Just a quick little post to say:

I LOVE YOU, SWEET VALENTINE!

Off To Hong Kong, Finale

BIG BUDHA, Lantau Island, Hong Kong

Sydney took her family to see Big Budha the next morning.

It is made of bronze, is 112 feet tall and weighs 280 tons.

And there are many steps to climb to reach its base.

Roger and I didn't go, but viewed it on the internet, then walked back to the market 

near Sydney's place and spent a fun morning.

It was a beautiful day for all of us.

Roger and I enjoyed exploring, and I told him, "Take a pic of that  - 

I love its name!"

It was fun to be in Hong Kong during Chinese New Year celebrations 

and see all of the colorful things for sale in the markets.

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I was so curious and interested to see many unusual and strange foods for sale. 

I was able to find out that those are duck legs in the left metal pan. 

I wondered if they are used for the duck fat, which is a highly desirable fat to cook things in 

in the gourmet and, I guess, Chinese world.

I think these are dried persimmons - I thought they looked so cool I had to have a pic.

We were told that these are duck eggs, but they seem to be too large.

Does anyone know?

 Note the richly-colored yolks.

There was a little bit of everything in this market, which wasn't really for the tourists so much 
as for many local shoppers.

Have you ever seen such lovely gelato?

Three "locals" chillin' out on Syd and Jake's street.

There were some upscale shops down an escalator from Syd's street.

Aren't these little desserts lovely?

For dinner that evening, we ate in Flint, a wonderful restaurant in our hotel. 

Jake had a 35% discount, and we had a delicious meal.

Delicious Caesar salad with a little anchovie on top

Tooth fish with leeks and shitake mushrooms - yum!

We walked through Syd's street to a donut shop that they like for some dessert.

It looked so pretty all lit up and we took lots of pics.

On the way to the donut shop

While they were up to the counter buying the donuts, Londyn fell asleep.

We had very big days on this trip, 

but I wouldn't have wanted to miss a second of it!

The last day arrived too soon!

Roger went with the Youngs to the 10,000 Budhas Monastery, minus Syd, who had a post due. 

She is writing for My Time to Blossom, mytimetoblossom.com, and I stayed at the hotel and helped her a little. 

The stairs were even more and steeper than they were at Big Budha.

There are actually 12,800 Budha statues, each one different.

nine-floor pagoda

Buildings of the monastery

More Budhas

Yikes!

Londyn, Stacy and Maddy striking a Budha pose

They had to have a reward for their tough climb!

Pretty display for Chinese New Year in the mall

Syd and I got on the subway and walked through the huge all-connecting malls 

to meet everybody in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which is owned by Marriott International. 

Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong

 Jake had arranged for us to have snacks and then swim in the lavish pool at the top. 

Restaurant in the Ritz-Carlton

I think this beautiful restaurant is on the 108th floor.

We shared crab cakes with mango salsa . . . 

. . . and crunchy crab rolls, tomato soup and Buffalo chicken wings.

We got on another elevator and rode to the 118th floor to the amazing swimming pool and spa. 

This is the highest swimming pool in the world and is an engineering marvel!

For a little while, we had the pool to ourselves. 

Roger taking a swim.

Looking at the views out the windows was like looking out of an airplane window, 

high in the air.

AHHH! They loved the hot tub.

Maddy taking the ice water challenge - this little pool was freezing!

I hadn't brought a swim suit so I lounged poolside and enjoyed the views, 

inside and out!

This pool truly was spectacular!

Everyone showered, blow-dried their hair and dressed in the state of the art dressing rooms 

(there was even a quick dryer to dry out your swim suit!), 

then we headed to the ferry to take us to Macau for the evening.

Roger took this pic of the Ritz-Carlton from the 50 minute ferry ride.

We docked and took a shuttle bus to the huge casinos of Macau.
Macau is the unique combination of Chinese and Portuguese 
(who discovered it and governed it for many years) cultures.
It is the world's largest gambling center. 
We heard it said that they take in six times more revenue than Las Vegas.
The casinos are taller, larger and grander.

This is Macau's Caesar's Palace

We ate a delicious Italian dinner in Bene, a restaurant in one of the casinos, 
where Syd and Jake had eaten before and they highly recommended it.

Caprice salad

Pasta carbonara, mixed in a wheel of Parmesano Reggiano cheese

This was so yummy!

Their pizza was delicious, too!

Decorations everywhere were grand.

Syd and Jake had seen House of Dancing Water, an impressive water show and wanted us to see it.

It was amazing and reminded us of Cirque du Soleil's show, O.

Sometimes the floor is a pool where performers dive into from great heights 

and sometimes it becomes a floor where they dance and beautiful colored fountains shoot out of it.

There are even amazing motocross performers.

Everything in the casinos is on a grand scale.

Stacy took a quick pic of us as we made our way back to the ferry to return to our hotel.

We got home after midnight, then we all packed so we could leave for the airport at 7 AM for our flight to Tokyo.

We had a three hour layover, then flew to Denver and had another three hour layover, waiting to fly to Phoenix.

United computer systems went down across the nation as we waited on the tarmac to take off, 

so our plane finally returned to the gate, we all got off, grabbed some dinner, 

then decided to get a ticket home on Southwest, not knowing how long United's systems would be down. 

It all worked out, because United refunded our money and gave us flying credit.

It was a rather grueling way to end a truly spectacular vacation, but we were safe and we were together.

Which was the very best part of this experience for Roger and I - 

we experienced a trip of a lifetime with loved ones,

learning and laughing together!