Ernie Wine and Dine

We took the small gentlemen out and about today.

Depending on the angle or the expression I think Ernie looks like me, sometimes more like Lydia. I do know where he got all that hair, though.

We met up with our friends Kuoling and Jason for some sips at Covington Cellars in Woodinville, WA. This was their first time doing a wine tasting which was fun and exciting. We've been taking Ernie on tour because we don't want to be those loser parents who become recluses and lose all their friends.

After wine it was time to dine. These two are like our hot pot life coaches. This time we went to Boiling Point which specializes in Taiwanese hot pot. Don't ask me what that means. 

Lydia is running like a meth lab level breast milk operation out of our house. None of this stuff looks explosive but you never know.

I had some guavas out of my exotic fruit birthday box.

I'm not sure if these were ripe but I'm not an expert. They were fine but a little hard.

Ernie got his first piece of mail today. Some kind of healthcare thing. Probably a bill.

Escape the Train, Eat the Meat Cake

Today we went to an escape room with our friends Kuoling and Jason.

Conundroom is a pretty rough name for an escape room company. Sheesh.

The theme of today's escape room was Stop the Train! and involved a runaway train that will crash in an hour if you don't solve a series of mind bending riddles in order to stop its engine.

Annoyingly one of the hardest parts of the whole thing was that old timey luggage has all of these weird fake locks and sliding keyhole things that you have to deal with even if you have the correct key. Not being from 1932 I did not know this, and so was frustrated with opening these containers despite it not really being a riddle. There were a couple of sort of rough edges in this escape room that were annoying, but I enjoyed the time with my friends anyway.

Kuoling and Jason love hot pot places so we go with them a lot. This time the joint was Shaburina. These places may as prevalent in the Seattle area as bubble tea and that's saying something.

The people next to us were celebrating a birthday and were presented with some sort of majestic cake made out of meat. I didn't know what it was but I did know that I needed one.

Happy as a Lamb

Kuoling and Jason have turned into our Chinese food life coaches. They give us good invites to restaurants at which I can sometimes not even read the menu let alone order for myself.

They are hot pot aficionados and this time they took us to Happy Lamb Hot Pot Restaurant in Bellevue. 

I do not know what any of this stuff was but I can report that there was a lot of it.

Lydia must have found the ice cream machine. Luckily there were plenty of staff around watching or she would have put her mouth under the spout to save time.

My First Hot Pot

Because it was close to Chinese New Year our friends Wing and Joel had us over for a hot pot, which was pretty amazing. It was sort of like a cross between Japanese oden and shabu shabu plus noodles. There were all the delicious things. 

Oden is like a stew of fish cakes.

And shabu shabu is dipping thinly sliced meats in boiling broth in order to quickly cook them.

Lydia had the honor of trying her first taste of SPAM. Surely not her last.

Success!