The day before the Mid-Autumn Festival, Tao Daqiang, Xie Yundong, Jia Weidong, Liang Dacheng, and the others all happened to arrive at Li Guo's Home bearing gifts.
Li Long had arrived before them, and Gu Xiaoxia was there with their two children as well. It was Sunday, and Gu Xiaoxia had the day off. According to local custom, children spent the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month at their maternal grandparents' home, so Li Long had brought his wife and children to his eldest brother's home a day early.
Although they ate with Gu Boyuan every day, it was a festival. They still needed to share the proper holiday meal.
Dad, Li Qingxia, had not returned yet, but their mother and eldest brother were there. That was enough.
Du Chunfang rarely got to see her two little grandsons, and she adored them. The children were still small, so she spread a reed mat beneath the grape trellis, laid a quilt over it, and let the two children lie there and play.
Li Juan and Li Qiang were just as fond of their two little cousins. One tied up the dog, while the other chased away the chickens. Every so often, they asked Gu Xiaoxia whether the babies could eat something. From the looks of it, as long as Gu Xiaoxia nodded and it could be found in the yard, they would immediately fetch it.
Liang Yuemei was there helping too. The babies were three months old and had started eating some supplementary foods, so she was sharing her own child-rearing experience with Gu Xiaoxia.
Although Gu Xiaoxia was a government cadre, and many women on the Team now spoke to her with a certain awe, Liang Yuemei did not. She counted as Gu Xiaoxia's elder, somewhere between a mother