We had a very fun and full Halloween weekend. I took Friday off work, and Parker An and I headed up to Michigan. Friday we visited Madison Heights, which has several Vietnamese stores. There’s a few restaurants, a couple of video and book stores, a market, etc. We ate at the Little Saigon restaurant – we got chả giò (Vietnamese egg roll) and phở and cơm (cooked rice) – it was quite good. From there we visited a little book store/video store/herbal medicine store/immigration resource place – they did it all!

While there a young woman started helping me pay, as the owner spoke only Vietnamese and was trying to get across that one of the things I wanted to buy was not actually for sale – we got to talking about Parker and his adoption, me learning Vietnamese, Tết, etc. She was so nice and gave me her card and told me to email her sometime and she’d give me some info on coming to Tết in Dayton sometime and hooking me up with books and whatnot.

That night I visited my sister, and then went out to dinner with her and her boyfriend. We ate at a very good Japanese Hibachi place – Parker’s favorite – he LOVES hibachi chefs!

Then we went to my great friends, Julie and Jasmine’s home, where we stayed Friday and Saturday night. They have two girls, ages 5 and 2. Saturday we all went to a kids movement class, which Parker was luke-warm about. Here’s a partial picture of us in the class.
 
Of course the kids went trick-or-treating, here’s a picture of that. Parker is a spider with baby spiders on him. While trick-or-treating there was a lady handing out yummy shots to the adults and one house was popping popcorn in the front yard for everyone. It was really nice.

Parker and Jaden ready to go trick-or-treating.

The adults hung out after the kids went to sleep. It was great to catch up with the Js.

Some more pictures…

Here are Parker and Devin playing in the leaves.
  

Parker at the zoo last week