Today’s a pretty momentous day in the history of my life. For most people it’s just another Black Friday, but in my world it’s also my mom’s birthday and the first time my parents and Panda’s parents met.

It started off as a nice lazy day – I woke up around 9 and lay in bed playing games on my phone for a good two hours. Missy came to find me at one point and napped by my side as I enjoyed lounging in bed. Eventually, my mom came up to discuss stuff for a bank account I’m opening and I wished her a happy birthday. She’d forgotten it was today, as usual. For the past couple of years, she probably wouldn’t have known when her birthday was if I didn’t remind her. 😛 I went through the mail that was waiting for me from my time away and went downstairs to join everyone for lunch.

Saw a rainbow on our drive!

After sitting around for a bit to chat with my mom and catch random bits of the show my dad was watching, I decided it was time to head off to Chase, where I was going to open a savings account. That turned out to be a bit of a disaster (offer had expired but I called in weeks ago to make sure to lock it in… and they had no record of it) and an hour later, I only kind of sorted it out. Oh well, I did the best I could and I might still get the offer. Sometimes I really hate large organizations. How do I ever get to the person who can actually help me? Bleh. From there, I had hoped to swing by the stores for a quick look around at the Black Friday deals, but it was time to go home to get ready for our trip out to Panda’s parents’ place. My parents, cousin, and cousin’s friend all came along for the festivities. 🙂

I made sure to get crab and shrimp!

At Panda’s, his parents and brother were there with him to meet us. My cousin had met his family before and we’d both met each others’ parents, but the parents had not met each other. Back when Panda was graduating with his Master’s degree, my parents had hoped to attend but were ultimately unable to. Little did I know that would be the very day we got engaged! Too bad my parents weren’t there for that. Since then, this was the first time we got a chance to all gather. We sat in the living room and the adults chatted about a variety of things, including their histories and us kids. After nearly an hour, we did a tour of the house and headed off to dinner.

The hot & sour soup was a mushroom-lovers dream! NOM

Throughout the night, the parents seemed to have plenty to talk about. They got along quite well and had many common threads, including the immigrant experience, being engineers, and of course being Chinese. I got a chance to catch up with Panda’s brother, who is working down in San Diego now. We had all sorts of filling food and stayed for nearly 3 hours! It went so much better than I could have hoped for and I think we all had a great time. Now his parents aren’t some mysterious phantoms that my parents need to imagine and both sides have a sense of what the other family is like. I think the way I describe his family doesn’t do them justice, so my parents had a skewed view of what they might be like. Now they can see for themselves and it was encouraging that we all enjoyed each others’ company. We are very different, yet share enough culturally and experience-wise that it’s wonderful.