Can the McAdam/Smith Family Produce Female Offspring?

Between John and me, there seems to be more XY pairing than XX. John doesn't have any sisters, but has 3 brothers. All of my parents' grandchildren are boys. There's only two so far, but my brother found out that his wife is having a boy. We were next to find out the sex of our child. And...
It's a girl! The first in a while! Both John and I wanted a girl and not because of her being spoiled by her grandparents for being different, but we just wanted one first. I guess I don't really have a good reason why. Maybe it's secretly because one of my best friends Mackenzie is having a boy in January and I want them to secretly get married when they are older or because I wanted to dress the kid up with pink bows. I don't know, but we're happy it's a girl!

Here's the 20 week picture of me right before we went to the doc to find out the sex. Ignore the toothbrush in my mouth. We were running a little late.

Ying Yang Oriental Kitchen

My sister was complaining the other day about how I never write on the blog or when I do, it is always boring. I have to say I would agree with her. She has two adorable children to make any boring entry more interesting. However, I have to rely on my creative writing skills and photography (which, might I add, are limited) to even keep my family members interested. Just because of that, I do want to do a short review of the restaurants here in Rexburg just to keep myself satisfied and my sister off my back. This may not be helpful for all the family members out there that actually take time to read this, but hopefully at least on person in Rexburg will read my review and be influenced on whether or not to spend money at a restaurant.

Not to sound like a spoiled little brat, but going to Hong Kong, China, living in Taiwan for over a year, and having nearly authentic Chinese food living in California, I know what Chinese food taste like. But in writing this, I'm going to try to put myself in the shoes of a typical Idahoan and rate this restaurant strictly on how "Chinese" I think it is and not on the authenticity.

In Rexburg, if you crave Chinese food, there are only two places to go that claim they serve Chinese delights. First is Fong's restaurant which I give a 1/10 rating. As my Chinese teacher puts it, Fong serves "yucky sauce on top of rubber meat". Don't even think about going there. It will be the worst $5 spent. Second there is the Ying Yang restaurant which I want to give a full layout on how I would rate each category. (I took the categories from another website, so don't think I thought of them up on my own)

Here are some pictures off the internet so you can have a short eye break from paragraph writing.


Notice that the Chef really is Chinese. It just feels almost real.
And here's the real review:

Food Quality 5/10
We had some sort of pot stickers and sweet and sour chicken. The pot stickers were way too hard and lacked seasoning or any real flavor on the inside. The sweet and sour chicken was edible, but if someone brought that to my house and didn't tell me it was Chinese food, I would have never guessed. There was no sweet or sour flavor to it. Just cut up, unflavored, not juicy chicken with some sort of sauce that kept it moist. I wouldn't consider it Chinese food. Take a look at this picture someone else took.



Price 6/10
The "pot stickers" were $2.50 for 4 and the sweet and sour chicken was 8 bucks and it came with fried rice. The price wasn't horrible, but considering that it is one of the more expensive restaurants in Rexburg and I could have gotten three times as much at Panda Express (and better tasting), the price is just reasonable.

Customer Service 8/10
I was a bit disappointed when I noticed that 4 Chinese looking people worked there, but two were chefs in the back and the other two looked like they were just cleaning people that stayed in the back. They were really nice and my cup was always refilled, but the score could have been a 9/10 if they had slanted eyes or black hair.

Cleanliness 9/10
It was clean. There was even a huge windows so anyone can look into the kitchen and see how it was in the back. No problems.

Atmosphere 6/10
I wasn't in the Chinese mood while I was there, but they did do a few things so that it wouldn't look like a Denny's, but not much. All their tables were squared, and everyone knows that Chinese restaurants have at least two or three large round tables with the glass spinner thing on the top. Again, doesn't scream Chinese.

Overall, I don't think I am ever going to go there again. It might be worth trying once, but honestly, your money will be better spent driving 30 miles to Idaho falls and getting some stuff at Panda Express.

Big Jud's

Just 15 minutes away from Rexburg, there is a burger shop in the middle of Archer where each house is a quarter mile apart and has at least 10 cars in the front yard that don't start. Middle of nowhere, but they have the best burgers I've ever tasted except for the burgers at Super Burger in Santa Rosa (more grease). They're famous for their 1 lbs burger. I was shocked to learn that several people in my Chinese class had never heard of Big Juds before! To Honor Big Jud himself, here's his picture with the 3 pounder burger.



John and I went a couple of days ago and ordered the 1/2 pound burger. We shared it and still could only finish half of the burger. Each burger is perfectly seasoned and juicy. Come visit us and we'll take you there.

Word on the street is that the real Big Jud works at the Big Juds in Ashton.

18 Weeks and Abs of Steel

Here's a baby update. 18 weeks into the pregnancy and this is how I look. I don't even look pregnant, so posting the picture is almost pointless, but some people wanted to see. Ignore the terrified look on my face. I was never a fan of cameras.



Okay, that was me sucking in, which I think is the right way to show how pregnant I really am. My sister disagreed, so here is a picture of the real way I walk around. What some refer to as lack of abdominal exercise or a spare tire, I call water weight, or a baby. You can choose to call it whatever you want.



We find out the sex of the child October 28th. We'll keep you updated.

Utah and a Ridiculously Big House

Conference weekend, John and I went down to Utah. We didn't go to conference, but we did go to my mission reunion Friday night. It was fun to socialize with all my old mission buddies, but it was every more fun to hear from my mission president and his wife.

I don't really want to write much, but I do want to show pictures of my mission president's home. My mission president and his family have mostly lived in Asia as his children have grown up. They even lived in Hong Kong for 18 years! It's about time they lived in the US. Here are pictures of their huge house.

The first two we took after we left because we didn't think enough in advance to take it was the sun was still out, so the pictures are a bit lame.


The back of the house which in daylight looks twice as big as the front.


The front. All the missionaries were in the garage and the driveway because that is where we could all fit to listen to our mission pres. Plus their garage alone is bigger than our DOUBLE WIDE mobile home. (I had to add the double wide. It's a pride issue.)


Their house in the daylight, not taken by me, but stolen from a facebook album.

That's all.