SMITHS IN SHANGHAI

The End is Near

2010-09-08T15:41:00.008+08:00

Well it is time for the inevitable. I am going to close this baby down. I am obviously not posting anything.

Life here has just gotten busier (and better) over the last few years. And I simply don't have time or the motivation to do this blog. I mean, pretty much everyone who would read this anyway is connected to me on Facebook. And while I have a love/hate relationship with FB, it is just so practical for keeping my friends and family updated.

Besides, when I see how others use their blogs to share touching stories, life insights, motivate others with good ideas...and well...I just don't say much of anything, I realize I am not a bonafied blogger!

So thanks to those of you that read my blog. As pathetic as it was. ;-)

The few final pictures are courtesy of our fabulous friend and photographer Martin. Check out his blog at www.britsnap.com

Jessica

Back to Boracay!

2010-05-11T08:21:00.010+08:00

This past Christmas, Michael and I took a trip, just the two of us, to a tiny island in the Philippines called Boracay. And we absolutely loved it! And when we found air fare for $50 a person to go in April we decided to take our first family of four vacation. It was wonderful. The boys loved the beach and the pool!!! They are ready to go back...and so am I! Here are a few pictures from that trip.

PHOTO BY GABE: The sky was only pink like this for seconds during sunset. Yet Gabe managed to catch it. Good job Gabe!

Maddox had a great time. He loved, loved, loved the beach. Couldn't get enough!

Gabe enjoyed the beach as well. Though he really preferred the pool. The beach was just a bit too sandy for his tastes. :-)

Relaxing after a fun day of playing.

PHOTO BY GABE: We were quite impressed with his photographing skills. He has really gotten into photography. He is asking for a camera of his own for Christmas.

Just floating around in the water. They did this for hours!

I LOVE THESE BOYS!

Family photo time.

Michael and the boys on the boat going back to the airport.

Me and the boys. Gabe looks a little rough. But hey, what you gonna do? The sun was in his eyes!

We had an amazing trip!!! As you can see. :-)

Photo Update

2010-03-25T21:16:00.011+08:00

Cousin Aaron, Cousin Jordan, Maddox & Gabe

Swinging with Michael!

The boys (and Ellie the dog) building Legos.

Gabe jumping on the trampoline with friend Zane.

Maddox built weights so he could make the "bumps" on his arms bigger. I think he meant his muscles. :-)

Gabe built an automobile.

Maddox with the restaurant owner and some of the waitresses at our favorite eating place. He loves the ladies!

Maddox says this is, "One funny looking fruit!"

Gabe and I fed the lemurs on his class field trip. They were fun little things. This one thought my backpack was a good place for snack time.

Gabe doing some feeding.

On another class field trip we visited an organic food farm. Gabe had the best time picking some veggies! But still refused to eat any of them.

Boracay, Philippines

2009-12-31T14:39:00.009+08:00

Michael and I were lucky enough to be able to take a trip, just the 2 of us, to a small island in the Philippines called Boracay. It was amazing! The beach, snorkeling, warm weather, boat rides, sunsets and just being together! We are so blessed!

We did have some flight troubles getting there but we finally made it after a 24 hour delay in Manila. (The capital of the Philippines.) Thankfully, a good friend of mine is from there and she was able to help us trough our delay. And she met us for our night there and showed us around. Anyway, even with our flight issues, we had a fantastic time. It defiantly ranks towards the top of our list as far as vacations go. And we are planning on taking the boys there next year. Here are a few pictures. I took almost 200 but these are a few highlights.

Sitting on the beach in front of our resort looking to the right.

Looking to the left.

This is Crocodile Island. One of the days we rented a boat for just the 2 of us and went snorkeling and island hopping. This was one of the islands we went to. Awesome snorkeling here! Michael and I have snorkeled in Aruba before and thought that was great. But this was WAY better! Amazing corals and such beautiful marine animals. Wish we had a waterproof camera so we could have taken some underwater pics. :-(

Another of the islands we visited. This one has 2 caves we were able to explore. So beautiful!

In the entrance to one of the caves.

Michael in the other cave.

Back at the beach!

Ah, the sunsets were to die for! Just amazing!

I must have taken over 50 pictures of just the sunsets! They were just so beautiful!

Maddox is 4!

2009-09-23T18:42:00.018+08:00

Hello out there to my blog readers...all 3 of you! :-) Sorry I have been so lousy with updates. We had a very busy, eventful, and quick summer over here. And China has this website permanently blocked so I keep having to find new ways to access it illegally. I'm such a law-breaker!!!

Anywho, Maddox turned 4 a couple weeks ago and we had a "FISH" themed party with good friends to celebrate. This year Michael and I decided to have the party at our apartment's clubhouse. Let me say it was totally worth the cost. Not having to prepare food (other than the cupcakes), pre-clean or post clean was awesome! And all the guests enjoyed the food buffet, the pools for swimming and the "beach." It worked out well with the theme too! Below are some pics.

The boys checking out the gift from Michael and I.

Gabe got some of this train set for Christmas last year and Maddox got the rest for his birthday. The boys love it! And so do I!

Making sand angels.

Before Maddox could blow out the candles the wind did it for him! His reaction was hilarious!!

Now he did it!

Eclipse

2009-07-24T21:57:00.009+08:00

I was super excited to be on the side of the world where one could view the longest solar eclipse in the 21st century! Sadly, I was on the tail end of a 24 hours stomach virus but I knew I HAD to suck it up to see the eclipse!! So that morning the boys and I headed outside to watch a little piece of history transpire.

Needless to say it was amazing! And the boys thought it was awesome too! Here are some pictures of the boys watching the eclipse.

Yes, they are in my bathtub! We got outside to watch and within 2 minutes the sky clouded over and it started to rain. :-( So inside we went to watch on TV. But, all of our TV's get an illegal satellite from the Philippines and so there was no coverage. With the exception of my bathroom TV. So there is where we camped out. Maddox was convinced if he looked hard enough he would be able to "see the Sun melt away!"

A crestfallen Maddox finally gave up and decided to watch the it on TV.

This picture was taken at 9:46 am. Looks similar to the night time photo in the previous posts.

It was SO DARK!

Our View

2009-07-12T21:41:00.009+08:00

This wonderful country that I live in has blocked several websites, Blogger being one of them. Thankfully, a wonderful friend of mine recently showed me a way around those walls.

There are a lot of things I could say but, it's late and I am tired. So instead I am going to post some pictures of our views from our new apartment. Unfortunately, the pictures do not do the views justice! We LOVE our new place!!!

DAY TIME VIEWS
This is the view from the master bedroom and our living room balcony. It's the Huangpu River. The boys NEVER get tired of watching and listening to the boats go by!

The Nanpu Dachao, or Nanpu Bridge over the river.

A "house boat" in the center of the picture.

"A big 'un!" -Maddox
We see boats of all sizes and shapes.

Rush hour.

A FEW RANDOM SHOTS
The wave pool and beach right outside our back door. Our weekend home away from home!

Gabe, Maddox & the window washer.

The boys in their new room and custom made bed. The ladder was being adjusted by the craftsman during this picture.

Gabe, Samuel & Maddox just chillin'.

NIGHT TIME VIEWS
The view of our side of the river's downtown. Half the downtown anyway. This is what we see out of our dining room window and the boys bedroom.

Huangpu River at night.

The river again. Nanpu Dachao (Nanpu Bridge)

Baobei Foundation

2009-05-03T13:49:00.006+08:00

Hello All!! I hope things are going great for you where ever in the world you might be. We are blessed to say we have so many friends all over the world!

I wanted to introduce you all to our new friend Samuel. He was brought to Shanghai by a WONDERFUL organization called Baobei (check it out @ www.baobeifoundation.org) just days after birth because he was dying from several major medical conditions and had no one to care for him. Samuel has and continues to receive excellent care because of Baobei and the generous donation of one caring man. And now, we are excited to be providing a "Healing Home" for Samuel! After the Baobei babies are discharged from the hospital they are placed in homes to give them a continued to chance to heal. As you can see from the photos, he is thriving now and hopefully will continue to do so our care. Samuel has been with us for 4 days and will be with us until his is placed into his "Forever Home." Which could be for a couple months or maybe a year.

Samuel has the sweetest nature of any baby I have ever met! His "crying" is like 1/8 of the volume and intensity of our kids. He is content to lay or sit for hours and just look at his surroundings. For those who know us well, you will understand how unsettling this is for us after raising our boys! :-) We keep looking at Samuel and thinking there is something wrong with him. He is too quiet and happy. Haha! We would be glad to have Samuel with us no matter what his temperament, but having him be so content is a blessing.

Gabe & Maddox have adjusted amazingly to having Samuel here with us! They are so pleased to be helping Samuel. It touches my heart to see the tenderness and kindness they are pouring out on him. We are super excited about the opportunity to bless this little guys life. Yet, at the same time aware of all the needs he has and the concerns of providing a healing home. We trust that God will provide for us and for Samuel all that we require!

Formula 1, Shanghai Grand Prix

2009-04-20T17:42:00.011+08:00

This past weekend Michael, Gabe and I (we decided it would be too much/too loud for Maddox) were treated with fantastic tickets to the Formula 1, Shanghai Grand Prix. Let me just say it was UNBELIEVABLE! I have a new passion!!! On Saturday Michael & Gabe went to the qualifications. Then on Sunday Michael and I went to the finals. It was like nothing I have ever experienced before. Gabe is infatuated with Formula 1 now as well as I. He has talked about nothing else since then!!! Formula 1 will be in Shanghai again later this summer and you can bet that we will be there!

We had spectacular seats. Dead center on the straightaway. Our seats were under an overhang which was helpful since it was raining on Sunday when Michael and I went. The rain made the racing even more exciting because of the slippery conditions. We saw so many cars sliding out of control which both terrified and enthralled me at the same time! When the cars came down the straightaway it was loud in a indescribable way. I could feel the vibrations all over my body especially in my ear drums. And that was with ear plugs in! I was worried that it might be unsettling to Gabe, all that noise. I should not have worried. He was in heaven. As was I!

Gabe was instantly enamored with the Ferrari's. Which was a smart choice considering the friends we were with were Italians. He also kept telling anyone who would listen that the McLaren cars were the "enemy cars." Hilarious! In the end it was a spectular weekend for the Red Bull team. Which Gabe says was, "Ok. If it couldn't be the Ferrari's then I am glad it was the Bulls. And NOT the 'Enemy's.'" Here are a few pictures.

Loving Formula 1!

Gabe leaning on our friend Paolo's shoulder...watching intently.

Michael & I.

Cars coming into the straightaway.

Easter Brings Good News

2009-04-14T10:02:00.014+08:00

Hello all! We have had some great news come our way recently. We will be staying in Shanghai for another 12-15 months!!! We could not be happier!

This has been what we were hoping to hear for awhile now but only became a reality in the last few days. We are thankful that this process of deciding our future has been much quicker than it was last year. (Last year this process to 4 months to resolve!) We will be moving, though it will only be about 20-25 minutes from where we are now. We currently live in the "suburbs" and we will be moving to the downtown part of the city on this side of the river. Our new apartment on the 16th floor will host fantastic views of the river and a view of our favorite part of the city which is bursting with action! We are very much looking forward to our change of environment though we have really enjoyed our time in this neighborhood. And the friends we have made here. Thankfully we will still be close enough to maintain our connections.

Gabe will attend kindergarten next year at the same school as this year. Which he loves!!! And Maddox and I will continue to find lots of fun activities to do together next year as well. I have started to volunteer some of my time teaching English at a local government run school for migrant workers children. I LOVE doing this! It has been a totally unique experience for me and I can't wait to keep it up next fall.

Michael will no longer be working in Supplier Development. Instead he will be taking on a new role with the company. He is looking forward to this and the challenges it brings. Which are MANY! :-)

As you can tell, we are looking forward to having more time here in Shanghai. We miss our family and friends back in the States always but we feel blessed to have this opportunity! Consider this an open invitation to come and visit!!!!!

In other news: We had a fantastic Easter with great friends! It is such a blessing to be able to celebrate what this holiday means with close friends. Here are a few pictures from this weekend.
Top to bottom: Caleb Canfield, Gabe Smith, Maddox Smtih & Emma Canfiled

Gabe on an egg hunting mission!

"Oh maaaaaaan! Why did you fall silly egg?!?" Maddox

Our wonderful boys!

A Conversation With Gabe

2009-03-16T16:09:00.011+08:00

This is a conversation Gabe and I had while riding my bike home from his school today. The stuff in italics is what was running through my head during all of this.
M=Me/Mom
G=Gabe

G: Mom, God is really important right?
M: Yup. He is a pretty important fella.
G: And Jesus, he is pretty important too, right?
M: Yup. He is important too. Oh man, where is this conversation going?!?
..........LONG PAUSE..........
G: Mom?
M: Yes Gabe?
G: Then who is more important God or Jesus?
M: Ummm, well, God is I guess. Right? Yes! No, wait Jesus died for our sins. That trumps all, right? No, wait. God created us and everything so He is more important. Ok, I'm correct. Really? Holy cow! I'm totally not knowing! 27+ years of church and I can't readily say who is more important!! I suck. My parents would be so ashamed. Ok. I'm going with God. Final answer.
G: Why? Jesus died for us. Nothing is better than dying for other people my teacher said. He's thinking what I'm thinking. See, I'm not the only one confused. Of course, he's 5. He's supposed to be confused. Oh this is just great. Who decided I was ready to be a parent?
M: Jesus dying for us was very important. But God made us, and He made Jesus, and He..
G: ...made the whole world! So if God had not made us or Jesus then, well, umm, I don't know. If He had not done that, what would everything be? What would, well, WHAT would BE?
M: I'm not sure I understand what you are asking Gabe.
G: Me either. Ok, so I am NOT supermom. But, those "Raising Your Child Right" books say I should take advantage of moments like this. Ones where I can talk about God when it is already on my kids brain. Ok. So then. Ummm, what would his Dad ask him...Dad! That's a good topic....
..........LONG PAUSE..........
M: Gabe, do you know who Jesus's dad is?
G: Uh, nope. Who's his daddy? Did he really just say that? Who's his daddy? Sounds a lot like "Who's your daddy?" What TV shows are we letting him watch that we shouldn't be that he heard that phrase!!??!
M: Well, God is.
G: Really? Ok. I didn't know that.
M: Do you remember that Michael and I have told you that God is also a daddy to all of us? Even though we have a daddy here on earth, God is our daddy also.
G: Is he the biggest?
M: What? Who? Is who the biggest?
G: God.
M: Well, yeah, I guess so. He's big I guess. What on earth does he mean by "big?" What am I suppsoed to say when he asks me how tall God is?
G: Then he is our BIG DADDY! And Michael is my little daddy.
M: That's one way of looking at it. Don't know that Michael will like being a "little daddy." Might save that comment for the next time Michael needs an ego deflating. Oh, I am mean. Shouldn't have had that thought.
G: Looking at what?
M: Humm? What did you say? I'm wrapped up in my mean thoughts here and I wasn't listening to you. I wasn't really listening! Great, now I am a bad mother as well. My kid's trying to have a real "learning moment" and I wasn't really paying attention to him. I am pathetic.
G: You said, "That's one way of looking at it."
M: Oh right. Never mind what I said. It's doesn't make any sense.
G: Um, ok. I feel bad. I wasn't paying attention. I'll ask him another question and this time I WILL pay attention! We are not through with this learning moment yet!
..........LONG PAUSE..........
M: Gabe, do you know where God lives?
G: In heaven, right?
M: Right. And heaven is a really great place. Better than anyplace on the whole earth.
G: Better than Alabama? Oh just great. We take our kid to China. Let him experience a whole other culture. Take him to the Great Wall for pete's sake! One of the Seven Wonders of the World! And the best place to him is redneck Alabama!?!?! Ok, so I love it there too. But still, Alabama!?!?! I knew I shouldn't have let my mother give him all that ice cream and sweet tea!
M: Yes Gabe. Better than Alabama.
..........LONG PAUSE..........
G: Then let's go.
M: Go? Where? Home? We are on our way there now Gabe.
G: NO! Not home. To heaven. If it's the best place than I want to go. Now.
M: Well, it's not that simple Gabe. People only get to heaven after they die. Oh man! Oh man! I just said the "D" word. We don't even let Gabe say the "D" word. And I just dropped it like that! Stupid, stupid, stupid me! Now what's he going to say? Maybe I can head this off at the pass.
M: Well Gabe, what do you want for a snack when we get...
G: Die! Die! You said die Mom! Oh jeez. Too late for a subject change. I hope this conversation goes well.
M: Yes Gabe, I said die. It's not a bad word you know. It's only bad when you yell it while you are pretending to shoot someone. Again, with the stuff he has seen on TV I guess. Though I am certain we don't let him watch shooting stuff. Then again, he has been watching Michael and I play Lego Indiana Jones on the Wii. Crap! I am a bad parent!
G: Who dies? And who goes to Heaven where God is?
M: Well, everyone dies sometime. And people who have a good heart, who love God and Jesus, who always try to be good, are the people who get to heaven.
G: Mom, I'm scared to die.
M: Oh Gabe. You don't have to be scared to die. If you die, you will get to go to heaven, the best place ever, and be with God. And remember, you just said you wanted to go there.
G: Uh yeah. But NOT if it means I have to die first!
M: I understand Gabe. But really, you don't have to be afraid to die. It will be ok if you do. You will be with your Big Daddy. And it will be BETTER than Alabama even. I promise!! Not too shabby. I handled that pretty well I think. But, enough of this "learning moment" stuff. Time to wrap it up. I'm running out of good answers. Besides, I'm not sure I am the best person to be answering these questions. I mean, I couldn't even decide who was more important, God or Jesus! Hopefully we are done.
..........LONG PAUSE..........
Oh good. He's run out of questions. We ARE done!
G: Mom? If God will be my daddy in Heaven, then who will be my mommy? I should have known. There is no such thing as a kid running out of questions.
M: I guess in Heaven you won't have a mommy-God. You won't need one. Daddy-God will be enough. Both God and Heaven will be so great and so perfect! And they will be enough.
G: Mom, I just don't think so. I WILL need you! I WILL NEED A MOMMY! I love you. You HAVE to be there too! I NEED A MOMMY AND I NEED IT TO BE YOU!!!!!
M: Ok. Gabe. I understand how you feel.
G: Good. You better be there. And if I get there first I'm waiting with God until you get there. Do you understand me? Ha! He's using my own line on me.
M: Yes Gabe. I do understand. And I will do my best.
G: Good. Because I can't be in Heaven without a mommy. And Heaven will not be the best place ever if you are not there! So BE THERE! Oh man. Here come the tears!! And they are coming, coming, and coming!! I love that little kid SOOOO much sometimes! Humm, I wonder if I should remind him that he will want Michael there too. Nope, I'm going to be selfish. Make this a"Mommy & Son" moment. I'll use this moment to console myself when he is 16 and hates my guts. I'll remind myself that once upon a time he thought Heaven wouldn't be the best place unless I was there with him!!!! Oh jeez. More tears are coming...

Tell Me What YOU Want

2009-03-06T08:58:00.003+08:00

I have been neglecting my blog for good reason....I don't know what to put on it. I mean I could just put a new pic of the boys up every week or something. I could keep telling stupid random stories like my recent coffee story. But I was thinking. If there are in fact some of you out there that actually check my blog and have been disappointed at the lack of posts, then now is your chance! Tell me what YOU want. Let me know what you want to see photos of and what kind of stories you want to hear. I can't promise I will deliver on everything. I am not that good of a writer or photographer. But, I can promise you this: If no one sends any requests my way, then I am officially done with this blog. I hate feeling guilty because I know this is hanging over my head without a good update. And I read some of my other friends blogs, like Kristin's and I realize just how boring and meaningless mine is compared to hers. (If are looking for a good blog to read, check her's out. It's fantastic!) So, without some requests from you all I am going to quit my attempts at this blogging thing. I am just not creative enough! I am hoping your feedback might bring some life into it!!! So if you have any requests or suggestions, send 'em on.

Images of China

2009-03-02T22:12:00.012+08:00

Suzhou, China

Suzhou, China

Suzhou, China

Shangahi, China

Shanghai, China

Shanghai, China

I know this one isn't really an image of China. I just wanted to post a pic of the boys as well. One afternoon we went exploring. The boys favorite part was this....the ferry rides!

One Little Word = Big Guilt

2009-02-24T08:37:00.003+08:00

Why, why, why must they always use the word "need?" When I got to Starbucks here and order my beverage of choice they then ask me, "You NEED whip cream?" Of course I don't NEED it, I just want it. I much prefer how they do it in the States, "Whip?" I always end up feeling so guilty here when I answer their questions with a yes. I have taken lately to answering with, "Well since you asked, I don't NEED whip cream as much as I just want whip cream." Which make the little Chinese girl behind the counter really confused, yet somehow makes me feel better!

Welcome to the Year of the Ox

2009-01-26T16:28:00.008+08:00

This past Sunday, was Chinese New Year's Eve. We have now entered the Year of the Ox. To celebrate, we enjoyed a nice traditional dinner of dumplings at a famous dumpling restaurant in Yu Garden with our friends Matt, Jessica, Russ and TR. Then, around 8pm, our best friends Buster & Amy came over to our place ring in the new year. We always enjoy hanging out with them, laughing and playing cards. As midnight arrived we watched an insane amount of fireworks going off all over the city. As far as you can see! I know that last year I tried to put into words how incredible it is at that moment. But words cannot describe. The sky is so bright all across the city with fireworks it looks like daytime! Right after midnight we ate some more dumplings. It is said that the number of dumplings you eat right after midnight will have a direct reflection on how prosperous you are in the new year. So just to cover all our bases, we had dumplings for dinner at 5pm. We had dumplings again right after midnight. And then we had dumplings again on new year's day. I'll let y'all know in about 364 days how all the dumpling eating worked out for us.

On Friday, LingLing (our nanny/housekeeper) made homemade dumplings for us with the "help" of Gabe, Maddox, and myself. It was messy, but the boys loved making them. These are the dumplings that we ate just after midnight.

Madd-Dog and the soon to be eaten dumpling.

Family photo time!

Brotherly Advice

2009-01-23T13:38:00.004+08:00

Just a short bit ago Maddox was being a typical 3 year old and was acting ornery. I was sitting at the dining room table and I told him to come here to me so we could talk about his behavior. He hesitated, then just sat down on the floor and started crying saying, "I don't want to be in trouble, I don't want to be in trouble." I gave him a stern look and he did get up and come over to me. We had a little chat about acting nice then I sent him on his way. He went to sit in one of our living room chairs to pout for a few minutes. I then left the room and when I came back in a few minutes later Gabe was sitting in the chair with him and patting Maddox's head. I heard Gabe murmuring to Maddox, "I'm older Maddox and I know the best thing to do. When Mom tells you to go talk to her don't sit down and cry on the floor. Just hurry to her, listen to her, look REALLY, SUPER, REALLY sad, say sorry even if you are not sorry, and then you can walk away and come play with me! It's MUCH, MUCH better!"

Michael and I have prayed so many times that our boys would have a loving brotherly relationship, be best friends and that Gabe would be a good older brother. I'm just not sure this is what we meant by that! I hope Gabe's older brother advice improves over the years. Actually, not that this wasn't good advice. It was! Just not the kind I had in mind.

Update

2009-01-09T09:46:00.005+08:00

I thought I would update the blog with our latest.

Michael: Pain! If one word can sum up Michael's current state of being, it's pain. For any of you who don't know, Michael is suffering serious pain from a bad back condition. And I mean SERIOUS PAIN!!! At times, he cannot move at all because the pain and discomfort are so intense. It started years ago in Michigan where he then saw a couple of different doctors about it. MRIs and x-rays were done then but at this moment I cannot remember what the exact diagnosis was. It was something like, "you have a serious back condition, but not serious enough for surgery...yet. So until then, take these pain pills, try some physical therapy, and suck it up." Ok, so that's not a direct quote but it's pretty darn close. Since moving to China his condition has deteriorated drastically. Especially in the last year. While we were in the States for Thanksgiving, he saw a chiropractor and received treatment everyday for 2 weeks straight. (In AL) This guy's diagnosis was almost completely different than the docs in MI. But he treated Michael with electroshock therapy, stretches and traction. Michael seemed better. We thought then that Michael was "not cured, but improved." The doc that maybe the relief would last for months! One week after the treatments he was in pain again, this time worse even. We didn't even think that was possible! Poor Michael!! Since returning to Shanghai, the pain has become so intense at times I think Michael will pass out from the pain. Seriously! It is now in his butt and leg as well. At the suggestion of a friend, Michael got an appointment with a doctors group here in town. For the last 2 weeks Michael has been seeing a new chiropractor and receiving treatments that consist of adjustments, at home stretches and Chinese massage. This new doc says he has been misdiagnosed by all the other docs along the way. How frustrating!!! As tired as I am of all of this, I cannot even imagine how sick of it Michael is. Thus far, he has gotten little to no relief from the new regimen of treatment. I cannot speak for Michael, but I am so very, very frustrated!! Even in his sleep he cries out and moans when he moves because of the pain. He has not yet tried accupunture. I think that is coming though. Michael would try just about anything at this point. Except popping pills. He is not a fan of taking lots of meds, unless it is absolutely necessary. I know that was a lot of confusing babble. I guess I am venting my feeling there. I am worried about my husband!

Gabe: Gabe is happy to be back at school after the long holiday break. He had a good Christmas and New Years but said, "My teachers and friends miss me. So I need to go back." I thought that was self centered cute in a 4 year old kind of way. Speaking of things Gabe says that I think are funny...Maddox got up from a nap recently and was doing his usual sleepy mutterings and said, "I want God to make me a small, just for me, that i drive, little, special truck." With a huge sighs and his 4 year old wisdom Gabe said, "Maddox, *sigh* Gooooooddd does not make trucks! *sigh* Engineers do!!!!"

Maddox: This week Madd-dog started going to "his school" on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 2 1/2 hours. It's a fine arts learning school that he went to some last fall. He absolutely loves it!! They do Musical Movement, Strory Smart, Arts & Crafts and Beginner Phonics classes. There are 9 kids, all around his age, in his class and 3 teachers. It's located in the ground floor of one of buildings in our apartment complex so it's very convenient. I am glad he likes it as much as he does. Within hours of Gabe being back at school this week, Maddox said, "I am boring. I need my school and kids Mom." Needless to say he was super excited on Tuesday morning when I said it was a school day for him. I hope he keeps loving it.

Me: Well, mostly I feel wrapped up in worry about Michael's back. That seems to be where most of my thoughts are recently. But I am also still plugging away at my Mandarin lessons. Which are not getting any easier. Just when I think I am starting to wrap my head around it all, I realize I am saying all of the stuff I thought was correct....wrong. I think I had some grand visions of mastering the language in the shortest period of time ever! Not happening!!!! I am getting better. At least that is what my teacher tells me. Maybe she is just saying that because weare paying her and she knows what to say to keep me happy. Haha! Actually, I know I am improving. I got in a taxi the other night and managed to have a somewhat coherent conversation with the driver. We talked about his and my names, where we are from, basketball (mostly about Yao Ming) and the cost/prices of food these days. There were moments of frustration when he seemed certain, based on the other things I understood, that I would understand everything he said. But I didn't. I am no where near fluent!!!! Overall though, it was one of my better conversations with a local. As silly as it sounds, it's those moments (a conversation with a random taxi driver) that keep me going when I get so frustrated I want to call it quits.

I will try to post a pic or two. Doubt it will work......Yea! It did!!!

The boys playing "Sequence for Kids" that was sent to them from our friends the DeKruyters in Michigan. Thanks DK's! The boys love the game.

I've been tagged..

2009-01-02T10:07:00.004+08:00

I have been tagged by my friend Amanda to make a list of 6 things you might not know about me. Normally I don't do these things, but I will be a good friend this time. So here I go...

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you. (Done, above.)
2. Post the rules on your blog. (You're reading them!)
3. Write six random things about yourself. (Look below)
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them. (Look even farther below.)
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Random Things:

1. I hate food buffets, like at restaurants. Hate them!
2. If someone had told me 15 years ago that I would be married, have 2 kids and live in China at this point in my life I would have laughed them off the planet. I guess God has me where He wants me....
3. Assuming I liked it, I could eat the same foods over and over again for months at a time without getting tired of it. Three meals a day even.
4. I am addicted to Coke & Dr. Pepper. Can't live without 'em! But it's mostly coke I consume. Dr. P is really hard to find over here. And if you find it, it costs like $4 a can! :-(
5. I hate (again the strong word, but true) e-mail and messages where I type. I would always rather talk to someone one the phone or in person. So if I don't respond to your e-mails that's why. I hate typing.
6. I secretly wish I could live outside the States in lots of different counties forever. I would miss my family and friends lots, but oh the adventures I would experience and the the stories I could tell!

I am not going to tag 6 people. But here is who I will tag...

Brooke
Mandy
Liz
Christy

Where are we?

2008-12-15T14:26:00.002+08:00

Where are we? Why no new posts? Well....

Blogger is not letting me post any pictures. And this is the first text to successfully load after many, many attempts! I am beyond frustrated!

I keep my photos updated on Facebook. So if it's photos you are after check me out on Facebook.

I am sorry to those of you that like to see blog posts often. I just don't know what else to do!

What's New?

2008-11-11T14:16:00.018+08:00

What's New? Not so much really. Time has been passing here with no major excitement. Just good days for the most part. Which, on reflection, is probably a blessing!

We have been spending time with friends here, old and new. Recently, we met a couple with a son Maddox's age that lived 10 minutes from us in Kalamazoo, MI. They both went to Western and we know some of the same people though we never knew each other before now. Such a small world sometimes! We really looking forward to spending more time with Chris, Becky & Carter. They love to play games as much as we do so it will be nice to have some "game buddies."

We also spend time (almost) weekly with our Dutch friends Pieter & Michele. They have 2 kiddos. Their son, Jesse (pronounced Yes-Uh) who is Gabes age and a little girl Eve (pronounced Eh-V) who is a bit younger than Maddox. They are probably Gabe and Maddox's best play buddies. They live only two apartment buildings away so we meet them often out on the playground for some fun! We always love getting together with them.

The afore mentioned buddies. Gabe, Jesse, Eve & Maddox. Getting clean after BBQ with friends.

The Boys: Gabe is still loving school and making lots of friends. He is very tired when he comes home each day and on the verge of a melt-down. But mostly the melt-downs don't materialize. And we really feel the benefits of him being there far out weigh the frustrations of a tired kid. We are glad he is so happy! And Maddox is adjusting well to being an "only" child during the days. It was tough for him initially. We enrolled him in a Fine Arts learning academy. He only goes a couple times a week but he has been having the best time in his Story Smart class and Arts and Crafts class! It is a very hands on program for the little ones. He has made some really creative large pieces of art work which he loves showing off to anyone who will look. Overall the boys are both doing fantastic!

As for me: I have been getting together weekly with my closest friend here, Amy for some prayer time. It has been such a blessing! I am amazed, though I truly shouldn't be because I know how good God is, the difference this weekly prayer time with a sister has made in my life!!! It is wonderful to have someone to regularly share my frustrations, feelings, and triumphs with that can relate as a christian woman and then pray with me. I think everyone needs that kind of person in their lives. Both men and women. I love knowing that I can share things with Michael and he will pray for me as well. But recently I have been truly feeling the blessings of Him providing a fellow sister for me to pray with. Thank you Amy!!!! In other news, I have been having a steady stream of stomach issues for the past three weeks or so. Those of you who know me well know that stomach issues are common place for me. Unfortunately, the recent problems are way, way worse than usual. So I am really praying that I will have little or even NO problems on the long flight tomorrow. That would be awful! :-(

And as for Michael: He is working harder than ever! Things are crazy around here almost always, so he is used to that. But as I am sure many of you could say about your jobs, it seems like as soon as he gets one "fire" put out another flares up. He is also having major back problems! It is really, really bad. And long periods of sitting down are absolute torture for him. I am very worried for him. Especially about the flight tomorrow. He saw several physicians in Michigan before we moved and the diagnosis was that he has a serious condition but not serious for surgery...yet. Medication gives him little relief. Though he is amazing, he never complains! But I know he is suffering. We are just not sure what to do now. Anyone have any suggestions?

Many have asked what was this presidential campaign like for us. Being out of the country and all. My answer...a blessing! Not having to deal with it as much as those of you back in the States we nice. Don't get me wrong, it got plenty of coverage here. Just on a much smaller scale. And I can say what we did get was very biased!! (Just like I hear it was in the States as well.) So, like the rest of you, we will watch, wait and pray for our new leader. And be comforted by the fact that a higher power is truly in control! I have been very comforted by this passage recently..."Praise the name of God forever and ever, for He has all the wisdom and power. He controls the course of world events; He removes kings and sets up other kings." -Daniel 2:20 & 21

Finally, we leave tomorrow for our trip back to the States. My little sister is getting married in a week and a half so we are going to be there for that. Then stay trough Thanksgiving. I am looking forward to seeing everyone but NOT the 14 hour flight! So please pray if you can for all of our sanity! And perhaps for the people sitting around us as well. :-)

Hong Kong 2

2008-10-15T09:43:00.023+08:00

If you are confused, read the entry below this one.

City street.

A meat stall along one city street.

Chicken before.

Chicken after.

Pigs...or what is left of them anyway. Lying of the bare floor of the restaurant just waiting to become someone's lunch.

Not sure if they were selling fans or just really worried about getting too hot.

For dinner on Sunday night my doctor recommended that we take a boat ride (about 45 minutes) to one of the small islands. Once we got there he said to just pick a direction, right or left, and walk until we found a restaurant that suited our fancy. He also said we would have some of the best seafood of our lives at whichever, quite literally, hole in the wall place we decided to eat. So, we did. It was storming really bad when we went and so the boat ride was, well, let's just say the people around us were losing their lunch. Thankfully, Michael and I don't get sea sick. So we thought the 10 foot waves slapping into the side of the boat and the boat flying up into the air and crashing down was GREAT! When we got to the island we decided to walk left. Walking slowly because of the rain, we passed many places to eat. How and why we ended up picking the one we did I don't know. Though, Michael says the fact that they were throwing out some English words, tying to tempt us in to their place, was what decided it for him. Those words consisted in their entirety of, "eat....you....here." Slightly concerned as to if they wanted to eat us or wanted us to eat there we braved it anyway. We ended eating along the docks (if you could call them that) sitting under a leaky tin roof with tarps for walls in what felt like 20 mile per hour winds and rain eating the best seafood of our lives! This from a girl who does not like seafood!!! As you can see from the picture below they had done a good job of making up for the bad weather with lots of lights and bright colors. Honestly, even in pain, this was some of the best fun and food I have ever had. I was having a hard time eating my deep fried spicy crabs, because of my tooth and because I have never eaten crab before. So after a few minutes of the entire wait staff of women laughing at me one of them took pity on me and came over to our table and spent the next 20 minutes getting my meat out of the shells for me...while the rest of them just stood there and laughed at me. Michael ate some scallops which he also said were the best he has ever had. This kind of thing, totally unknown adventures, is what we LOVE about living in a different culture! You never know what is going to happen.

A view of "Hong Kong Island" at night from our much less exciting boat ride back. The major storms had passed by then. :-(

Random tree. Michel and I just thought the root system was interesting. We saw several of these growing. A few were even growing on the sides of hills with the massive root system cascading down. Wish I had been able to get a pic of that.

Close up.

Hong Kong

2008-10-14T09:10:00.016+08:00

I had been having wisdom tooth issues for a couple of months when it finally got to an "emergent" state and I was shipped off to Hong Kong where there were Oral Surgeons who could fix me. I had seen 3 different doctors all here who said that nothing could be done in Shanghai. It is not at all uncommon when a complex medical situation arises here (Shanghai) for a foreigner to have to go to Hong Kong where better treatment is available. But for us, they (a company called SOS that specializes in helping foreigners in emergencies) decided that because of my problem that I needed to go to Hong Kong immediately. Like the same day! (Thursday) What could have turned into a logistical nightmare, like deciding what to do with the boys, we ended up being SOOOOO blessed!

We did not want to take the boys with us because we were not sure what to expect once we got to Hong Kong. And we were not sure how long we were going to be there. SOS told me it could just be overnight or up to 4 days depending on what the doctor said. But, it is such a blessing that our friends Bill & Judi Bates live close by and were able to come literally last minute and spend a few days watching the boys for us. We know Bill & Judi from Alabama. They used to live and attend church where we did. They are such great family friends and the boys feel comfortable with them. We ended up being in Hong Kong one day longer than we had hoped so another close friend, Amy Canfield (who happens to be Bill & Judi's daughter) came with her kiddos and stayed with the boys the last night. All I can say is that we owe all of them HUGE THANKS!!!! It was wonderful to know the boys were in good hands while we were away. It made the whole thing much less stressful. Thanks Bill, Judi, Amy!

Because I had a some pain and anesthesia issues my doc recommended we fly back on Monday. (We left here Thursday afternoon and got back Monday late afternoon.) Dr. Carter took out my lower left wisdom tooth on Friday, which was nasty infected and impacted into my jaw. Then Michael and I spent the next 2 1/2 day cooped up in the hotel room. I hate to admit it but I was totally pathetic! It was awful and I felt horrible! But truthfully, I think Michael had it the worst. Dealing with me! Bringing me soup, water, drugs, etc... Poor thing!! He deserves to be husband of the year in my book!

On Sunday afternoon I decided I had had enough of the hotel room and I was going out sightseeing even if it killed me. So I took my pain pills and my chipmunk face out to see the sights. We were only out for an afternoon and early evening and unfortunately it was raining for almost all of that time! But, I have to say what we did see was absolutely amazing!!!!!! We loved Hong Kong! I hope to be able to go for a proper visit soon. I took tons of pictures. I was determined to get the most out of my few hours. Below are some of the better ones.

But first, so you won't just think I was making the whole tooth thing up when you see all of my tourist photos....
ME

MY TOOTH

A view of the city from "Victoria Peak." Hong Kong is made up of one larger island "Hong Kong Island", some land attached to the mainland China, and a smattering of tiny islands. We were on "Hong Kong Island" for most of our trip and when we took most of these photos. Hong Kong is very, very hilly. Some might even say mountainous. And the roads are all very narrow and take sharp turns. It is kind of like what I envision parts of San Francisco to be like. That is what we were told to compare it to anyway. Again, it was an amazing and beautiful place. Our pictures do not even come close to doing it justice.

Another view from "Victoria Peak."

A view of "Hong Kong Island" from a boat in the Bay.

Ok!! I have had enough! I have been trying all day to load more pictures. To no avail. So that is it for now. I am tired of trying. I have a few more really great pictures. I will try again soon to get them up.

Big And Small, God Made Them All

2008-09-23T08:38:00.013+08:00

I know this happened a decent while ago but I was looking through my photos and remembered that I wanted to post some from our trip to the St. Louis Zoo. When we were on our way back to Alabama from visiting family in Missouri (this past July) I convinced Michael that we needed to make a family trip to the zoo. He was unsure at first because it just extended our travel time. But in the long run we both ended up being really glad that we decided to make the trip. The St. Louis Zoo is absolutely fantastic! It has some of the best exhibits I have ever seen. We had such a great time with the boys seeing all of animals God made. The big and the small.

Besides the animals we had a bit of excitement on our zoo visit. About halfway through the day Gabe wiped out on some loose gravel and banged up one of his knees and the palms of his hands. While the injuries were not too serious, they did need some kind of cleaning and a band-aid. And of corse, I had neither. So we consulted our map and decided to make a quick detour to the first aid station. As (bad) luck would have it we were near the entrance of the zoo and the first aid station was all the way at the back. We took a crying and screaming Gabe (see previous posts about bravery) through the zoo as quickly as possible. (By the time we got there we were all super hot and really sweaty. We looked like we all needed medical attention I am sure.) Going by the map I entered the building I thought was the first aid station only to find it was the break room for the off duty train drivers. Seeing a red faced, sweaty woman walk into their room surprised them but when I asked for a band-aid they all jumped to their feet. Half of them charged out of the building looking for a major injury and the other half got on the walkie-talkie system shouting for medial backup. I kept saying, "Where is the first aid office? I just need a band-aid." Within seconds three golf carts carrying medial personnel and all kinds of medical equipment screeched to a stop right in front of us. All the men charged off the carts and began looking for the medial catastrophe. Boy were they going to be disappointed!!! Confusion on their faces, they turned to us asking if we knew where the emergency was. Michael and I just sighed and pointed to the puny Gabe. As comprehension spread amongst the group, all but one of the carts pulled away. Then a couple of medics and the manager of safety for the entire zoo were left to deal with a scraped up knee and hands. As it turns out, the first aid station WAS by the entrance to the zoo. (Very near where we were when the "injury" occurred.) But the map had it at the back of the zoo because the first aid station was due to be relocated there next week! Despite the trauma Gabe felt he had suffered, which we were sympathetic to, the entire thing was so very, very funny! Here is a picture of the banged up Gabe and the men who, as he said, "Saved my life!"

Everybody Was Kung Fu Partying

2008-09-14T19:03:00.016+08:00

It was the Big 3 for Maddox this past week so we celebrated in style......Kung Fu style! We had about 25 friends over to celebrate and it was a blast. The children and the grown-ups both really had a good time. As you have probably figured out by now, the theme was "Kung Fu Panda." We had the movie playing on the big screen, Kung Fu Panda inspired activities, lunch, and the ultimate Kung Fu Panda party finale, a legion of Panda cupcakes. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Table centerpiece. I made all of the little take out boxes myself. They were each filled with little prizes and candy for Maddox's friends to take as party favors.

"The Tang Warriors" Tang means sugar in Chinese. That is what my legion of pandas was nicknamed.

A close up.

Blow!

Friends!

Even more friends!

Opening the gifts with the "help" of many friends. He didn't mind the "help" at all. He is so sweet like that!

Getting more "help."

Checking out a new toy. I have to say, this one was the hit of the party. It's an electronic spider that hangs on the wall. The spider drops from its web on a string and then begins to climb back up the string to the web. And you have to shoot it with a little laser gun enough times to "kill" it before it gets to the web. I was a little unsure of what to think initially. But then I remembered, I hate spiders. So why not kill it!?! Actually, it sounds a lot worse than it is. It's really quite fun! And the kids loved it!!!

Maddox post party. I think he had finally come off the sugar high.

DAY 1

2008-09-02T09:46:00.010+08:00

Today was the day! Gabe's first day of "big boy school" as he calls it. He will be going Monday-Friday all day. Let me just say he was SUPER excited!!! So much so that he didn't even look back or say goodbye to me when I dropped him off! I had to make him come and give me hug and kiss goodbye. I guess that is a good thing though. Better to have me sad then him.

Eating breakfast. Pancakes and yoghurt.

Getting ready to ride with Mom on her bike. Maybe next week he can ride his own. (Supervised of course!) School is only 4 blocks away!

DAY 1

Gabe's cubby with his sleeping bag, pillow, back pack/lunchbox, and extra clothes. This picture was Gabe's idea. He said Nonnie would want to know where he keeps his stuff at school. So Nonnie, there you are!

Finding his name tag with the help of a new friend.

Gabe and his teachers. Left to right....Mrs. Chin, Gabe & Mrs. Bickel.

We say a sad ZÀIJIÀN to Mr. Kyle & Mrs. Melissa

2008-08-26T11:15:00.006+08:00

This past week our upstairs neighbors, Kyle & Melissa moved back to the States. So we had to say zàijiàn (goodbye) to them. We all were very sad to see them go! We decided not to tell the boys until the last minute exactly what was going on. Gabe knew they were leaving, but he thought it was for a vacation or something. When we explained that it was for good both Gabe and Maddox were really, really sad. The boys made a sign for them that we put up during their last night here so they would see it when they opened their door in the morning.

Kyle & Melissa have a dog Pudge that the boys love! We dog sat for them once a few months back. The boys loved that!

While we are really sad to see them go we are also really excited for them. They found an awesome house right on the Gulf in Texas. And I know they are really happy to be back closer to their families. But...WE WILL MISS THEM!

Being Brave

2008-08-20T17:12:00.016+08:00

Being brave is not exactly a strong suit of my eldest son. Gabe excels in many areas. For example: talking, reading, talking, writing and well, talking are all things he is good at. For the life of me I don't know where he gets the talking skills from. Ha! Anyway, while I happily say that Gabe is great at many things, he is just not very courageous. In a situation that is unfamiliar, potentially scary or new to him he will choose to sit back and see how things pan out. Or perhaps observe how other kids are handling the situation, or really just do nothing at all to involve himself in any way. Caution on the whole is not a bad thing. I have a feeling we will never have to worry about Gabe being the one amongst the group of teenage friends to suggest a 100 mile an hour drag race in the middle of the night. And that is a blessing! But at his current age, there are moments when he is missing out on safe and fun things because he is too scared to even try something. Maddox on the other hand is the one we have to restrain. He will always go headfirst into smething without even looking back! Now him, we will have to worry about drag racing!

While we were in Alabama, we visited a water park in Auburn, a neighboring town. Twice actually. It is not a very big one, but it is more than sufficient for a four & two year olds day of fun. They have a really cute children's area with a large shallow pool, water gun things, a giant floating crocodile, water fall and a slide. The first time we were there, Maddox ran to the slide first thing and went down with no reservations. And he loved it.

My sister and I tried all kinds of coaxing to get Gabe to go down. I even resorted to bribery! But nothing doing. A few weeks later we went again, this time my nephew Jordan came along. Gabe wants to do anything and everything Jordan does. I thought that maybe since Jordan would go down Gabe would also. But again, Gabe steered clear of the slide. I asked him why he didn't want it to go down, to which he replied, "It will hurt me." After being there for a few hours, I did what (in my opinion) any good parent would do. I made my screaming, kicking and yelling kid go down the slide. I pushed from the top and my sister caught him at the bottom. I got to the bottom and relieved my sister of the screaming Gabe and calmed him down. I asked him if it hurt him to go down. He replied, "Well no." I told him I was proud of him for going down even though he didn't want to. That I wanted to show him how the slide would not hurt him, that it could be fun. I hugged him and loved on him. Once he was tired of the loving he shoved off me and proceeded to go down the slide for the next four hours...non stop!

Soakin' up the Sun!

Continuing with the theme of bravery...the Fourth of July! Fireworks, loud noises and bright lights. Not Gabe's strong area...again. But it actually went better than expected. Michael told Gabe ahead of time that he had to watch at least one loud firework from my parents front porch (we were shooting them of in the front yard) and try one sparkler. Then if he still didn't like it he could go inside the house. He surprised us and himself by liking the loud fireworks. Just as long as he didn't have to get too close. And after much coaxing to try a sparkler he decided he liked those too!
Maddox, my Mom, Gabe and my Grandmother watching the fireworks. This was before Gabe decided he liked the loud fireworks.

Maddox and the giant sparkler.

Gabe and Nonnie cautiously doing the sparkler.

And because I was so proud....my Fourth of July dessert, a fruit pizza. Very patriotic colors. And very yummy!

Swing Set, Rolla & Boonville

2008-08-15T19:41:00.021+08:00

SWING SET:
While we were in Alabama visiting my family I convinced my parents that they needed to let me put a swing set in their yard. Every kid wants a swing set of their own to play on anytime they want. And since that is not an option here in Shanghai, Poppie's yard became the place. It might sound a little bit silly. I mean, putting a swing set in a place they don't live. Not even in the same country! But, I knew we would be there for several weeks this past visit and we will be there for an extended visit again soon. So once I played the "You will be the greatest grandparents in the world for doing this" card, it was just a matter of finding the swing set. **As a side note, I did have to agree to help mow around the set as long as I am in town.** Anywho, I didn't want to spend much $ on a set that wasn't going to get a lot of action for months at a time. Nor did I want to buy a plastic one, I wanted a wood one. After doing extensive in store and online research and seeing almost nothing wood for less than $1000, I found one I wanted that was $100 more than I had budgeted. Not wanting to spend the extra $ but for lack of finding anything better I decided just to go for it and buy the thing. I showed my Dad the one I was going to get, which came in like 400 pieces and according to the package took 2 whole days to assemble, and he just forced smile and said "Anything for my grandkids." But alas, after calling all of the stores in like a 40 mile radius, none of them had the set I wanted in stock. So it was back to square one, finding an inexpensive set. Then my mom had a great idea to check a weekly catalog that people can post all kinds of items in for sale/lease/trade/etc. There was an advertisement for a FREE swing set/clubhouse! Could we be that lucky? After a few phone calls to the owner who wanted to get rid of the set ASAP and another lucky break because the person who had called before us could not pick it up for a few days, the set was ours!!! So within 12 hours of the first phone call we had a set in my parents yard.

Initially when I saw the set in the yard of the previous owner I was apprehensive. Free is great! But when the thing is leaning at a 20 degree angle almost and seems to shudder and be on the verge of collapse with every breeze, I had to remind myself that you get what you pay for. We relocated the set and began work on it right away.

Here is a picture taken as we finished setting it up. The boys would not wait to swing! Though, we watched cautiously as it still needed some extra supports at the time this picture was taken. (The set is 9 years old.)

Within a few days my Dad and I added additional supports, removed the shredded climbing rope, cleaned (de-molded) the canopy, stained and weather treated the wood, added one slide, one disk swing, a telescope, and two steering wheels. Here is the after picture. That is my nephew Jordan with the boys.

I have to say I was really pleased with the finished product! Overall the cost was about $200 for all of the additions and updates. Which was way less than I thought I would have to spend to get something nice. And the boys couldn't have been happier! Well actually, they could have. The temp while we were there never went below 95 during the day. So they didn't get as much play time as they would have liked. The good news...it will be there waiting for them when we go back in a few months!

ROLLA:
After Michael returned to the States at the end of June we made a trip to Missouri to see family. (Michael mentioned this in the blog entry below.) First up on our itinerary was a trip to Rolla, the city of my birth. My Mom's sister, her two daughters, their husbands, and their children all live there. In the past we have always gone to Rolla for Easter. This past Easter was kinda sad for us (especially Gabe) not being there. So Gabe was really looking forward to seeing his cousins again! We were only there for a day and a half or so but we had a great time! My cousins, Michelle (her husband is Sherman) and Gina (her husband is Larry) all have boys. Michelle has Nathan. Or as Gabe & Maddox call him, "Cousin Nate." Gina has two boys, Carter and Cole. This visit Gabe had the huge honor of being taken to a movie in the theater with all of the "big boy cousins." It was a big moment for him to be invited. My Mom's sister Carol (Carter, Cole & Nate call her Nana) took them all as a treat. He talks about that time with the big boys often. So thank you Nana!

Here are all the cousins. No girls in this side of the family! Left to right...Cole, Nathan, Carter, Gabe & Maddox.

Here is Gabe with Aunt Gina.

And Maddox with Uncle Sherm.

While in Rolla we made our usual trip to Denny Ford, Lincoln, Mercury. Michael's Mom, Susan, is engaged to Denny, the owner of the car dealership. The boys love going there. They are in automobile heaven!!! Denny always lets them wander around checking stuff out, even into the repair shop. Where there they get into all the workers way I am sure. They pepper Mr. Denny with millions of questions of, "Mr. Denny, how does that work?" "What does that do?" "Mr. Denny, what kind of tool is that?" "Can I push that button?" It is a hoot to watch them there! This visit Denny gave the boys a promotional video that Ford uses to compare their truck line to the competitors. It shows the inside of the engine, frame, etc. I have to say that the video is kind of cheesy...but the boys LOVE watching it! We live in the land of DVD's here in China. The boys have access to every kid friendly movie out there and since we have come back from our trip to Rolla, the most requested DVD by far is the "Ford Truck Video!" No kidding!

Gabe & Maddox "driving" a Ford Shelby Cobra Mustang. Apparently that is a unique automobile. I know nothing of these things.

Here is a picture of Grandma Susan, Mr. Denny and the boys.

Michael, his Mom, and the boys.

BOONVILLE:
Following our fun and adventures in Rolla, we went to the city of Michael's birth, Boonville. There Michael's grandfather, Charlie, resides. The boys love Great Grandpa Charlie's house. He has a basement full of toys! All of Michael and his brother Kevin's childhood toys are there. And for Gabe and Maddox it's like Christmas! Obviously Charlie, being a great-grandfather has a few years on him. But, you would never know it! He's as sharp as he was the day I met him years ago! We all enjoy our time with him so much and it is always hard to pull out of his driveway after a great visit. Our time with him is very special!

Gabe and Great Grandpa Charlie.

Maddox and Great Grandpa Charlie.

Three generations of men. And our favorite Molly dog.

RANDOM STUFF...

2008-08-10T21:47:00.018+08:00

As we are out and about at different places and see things that are just random or different or humorous, I usually try and grab a picture to throw up on the blog. Most of the time, it never really happens as I never find the time. However, I was just going through pictures on my phone and figured that I had some time...so I would put a few out there.

After I got back to the States to be with Jessica and the boys before we can back to China, we took a trip from Alabama up to Missouri to visit family. One of our stops was in Rolla where we met up with my mom.

We have a bunch of other pictures with other family too, but this one just happened to be on my phone. We can post some more with other family later.

Speaking of coming back to China, here is what the boys end up looking like at the end of an almost 14 hour flight. Luckily, we all had open seats around us so we were able to spread out.

There is this toy store in one of the entrances to the subway stations here in Shanghai. From all of the stuff that you see in the window, it looks like they have a lot of some pretty neat toys in there. A couple of weeks ago I took a day off and Jessica and I were walking through the station and decided to stop in and look around. Obviously, we wanted to see if there was anything neat for the boys because we want to try and make sure that they are having a fun childhood. Thankfully, we didn't have to look far as we found a toy that guaranteed it right on the box.

Speaking of random things happening. A little over a week ago, we were out running around Shanghai. We were on the Puxi side of the river, so we decided to go to a restaurant that we liked and was on that side of the river. The restaurant happened to be in this large complex where a Ritz Carlton is located here in Shanghai. When we arrived and got out of the taxi, we saw that there were people everywhere...and mostly Chinese. This is not exactly normal for this particular place in the city. Jessica and I knew that the US basketball team was in Shanghai hosting a tournament before going up to Beijing, so we just assumed that this is where they were staying. Sure enough, we turned around and saw some buses that had just pulled up with USA Basketball logo on the side.

Anyway, there were police officers that were surrounding the area going into the hotel, but Jessica and the boys and I just walked up to the area that was right by the door. The guard/police office that saw us believed that we were guests and just let us walk though, We turned around right on the other side of the covered exit and after a couple of minutes I saw Jason Kidd walking out of the entrance to the hotel. We were literally less that 10 feet away from the whole team when they were walking out. Jessica picked Gabe up and took him over to the bus and he managed to get several waves and a few hellos. Stupid me...I was so awe struck by getting to see Coach K that I was standing there holding my phone in my hand and didn't get any pictures. Just to prove that we were there though I went back after we left and grabbed a shot of the buses. Not really all that great a shot, but it was pretty neat none the less. I think that the only reason that we got any response at all from any of the players is that we were the only 'foreigners' that were out there.

Jessica and I had been talking about getting tickets for a couple of weeks before all of this happened, but we just never did because we didn't know what my travel and conference call schedule was going to be. After this happened though, we decided to go ahead and get the tickets. We got tickets for the last game of the tournament which was against Australia. It ended up being a lot of fun. It was hilarious to watch them try and bring some of the things that you see in American sports here to China. They brought this Chinese guy out during a half time to teach everyone how to do the wave. People around us were getting so excited it was comical. On the first time around the stadium, the girl that was sitting next to me (no, not Jessica) missed her seat when she went to sit back down again after the wave passed. She literally fell straight to the floor.

Now, we are trying to see if we can get some tickets to one of the soccer matches that are being held here in Shanghai.

In keeping with the Olympics, most places around China now have all kinds of signs, ads, monuments, etc. related to the Olympics. Last week, as we were driving around Shanghai we saw this bush thing. Gabe told us that it was a guy exercising and someone holding a lollipop. We got a kick out of that.

The next day after we saw this sculptured bush thing, Gabe and I went in for a haircut. Getting a haircut over here is really quite an experience. After you get past the realization that you have no idea whether or not the person that will cut your hair understands what you want they take you off and wash your hair. This isn't just a normal hair wash though. They literally stand there behind you and message your head as they wash it. Then you get taken over to a rinse station where they rinse out the shampoo and then cover your face and the back of your neck with warm towels as they rub the back of your neck. Then, you get taken back to the chair that you get your haircut in where they again massage the top of your head, your shoulders and neck and your arms and hands. After this, they clean out your ears and will then rub your shoulders again until the 'stylist' is free and can give you a haircut. Well, this last time Jessica was over with Gabe helping him get his haircut and poor Maddox was just bouncing back and forth between the two of us. He climbed up in my lap and saw this Chinese girl hitting me on my shoulders and asked what was going on. I explained that I was getting a massage and he wanted to know what that was so I showed him.

Another one of the girls walked by and saw this and picked Maddox up and gave him a massage in the chair right behind mine. He quickly got this glazed over look on his eyes and you could tell that he was quite relaxed. He actually almost fell asleep while this girl was holding him.

So, the last random thing that I have is a picture from lunch last week. I had an iced tea that was brought to my desk and I accidentally spilled some on the floor right next to it. As soon as it happened I got up and walked over to try and find some paper towels. I bumped into one of the janitorial staff and brought her over to show what happened. She ran off and a few seconds later came back with a mop. She mopped out my whole desk area. I got a little concerned though when I looked down and noticed that the tea apparently stained the floor like it was bleach or something. Needless to say...I didn't drink any more of the tea.

The Smiths (+ Jen) Take Beijing

2008-08-08T16:24:00.013+08:00

While our friend Jen Gilbert from MI was visiting us this past April we decided that it would be a good time to take a family trip to Beijing. Overall it was a great trip! There were a few low points. Like the fact that it rained the entire 4 days we were there! But even with the rain and cold weather we still had a great time!

The trip got off to a rough start when we were headed to the airport in Shanghai to catch the flight to Beijing. Because we know there is always a probability of traffic, we left for the airport several hours ahead of time. But the extra hours were pointless. We were stuck in so much traffic for so long that we only arrived at the airport 20 minutes before our flight. And this isn’t any little Montgomery, Alabama or Kalamazoo, Michigan airport. This place is huge….and a madhouse. To make a long story short, I cornered a airline worker, explained the situation, (I say explained. It was more like waving my arms and grunting until he got the idea.) He rushed us through the check-in process and we made it on the plane with only seconds to go. They shut the doors right, and I mean right behind us as we took our seats at the very back of the plane. Right when we should have begun to taxi they made an announcement. Being that the announcement was all in Chinese we had no idea what was being said. We assumed it was the usual pre-takeoff spiel. But at the conclusion of the babble, all of the passengers, minus us, groaned. That couldn’t be good. Ends up, we had to park it on the runway for an hour! But we eventually made it to Beijing.

After finally arriving and a couple, actually many, problems at the hotel we ended up having a great rest of the trip. Except for the darn rain!

This is us being tourists again. We are so good at getting around Shanghai now despite the language barrier we were not expecting to have problems in Beijing. I mean, we speak some Chinese. Enough to let taxi drivers know where we want to go. Or enough to ask a local for directions. But the Shanghai version of Mandarin is nothing like the Beijing version of Mandarin. The dialect difference is nothing compared to what we have in the States. Anyway....we were lost!!

We toured a Jade factory while in Beijing where they make Jade...well everythings! This is the boys and a ship carved out of ONE piece of stone. Really amazing!

There are some things I have seen in my life that I thought would be really impressive or amazing, but ended up not being so. But, I can honestly say that the Great Wall is just as amazing or even more so than I ever thought it could be. Even in the cold rain!

After we left the Great Wall, we went to see the Bird's Nest and Water Cube. The two main Olympic buildings. I won't post any pictures of those. As it was raining thus my pictures we not that good and you can google it and see great pictures anytime. :-) Even in the cold rain those two buildings were very impressive! We were glad to lay our eyes on them.

We also visited the Forbidden City. It was SO huge. Way bigger than I thought it would be. And pretty amazing! It is a, 720,000 square meter or 7,750,015 square feet, rectangle. We spent half of the day walking through it and probably only saw about 1/3 of the City. In the rain!

Just for your information, the Forbidden City was the imperial home of 24 emperors of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

This is Tiananmen Square. Seeing it like this, with people just milling around, it is hard to imagine the sadness that took place here. On several occasions protests and riots have taken place here with the most famous one being 1989 when between 2000-3000 people were killed.

I did NOT need to see that!

2008-07-16T13:11:00.003+08:00

Our local grocery store, Carrefour, is having a a major sale. Major! On all of their clothing and stuff. They have placed these huge bins of all kinds of cloths right inside the entrance to the store. Dozens of 6 x 6 bins right as you walk in the door. Over the past week as I have gone to do some shopping I have entered to see at least a hundred people pushing, yanking, pulling shoving, etc to get to the clothes. It is also usual to see people of all genders and ages pulling on shirts, pants, shorts, underwear, and even bras over the cloths they are already wearing. It really is a riot. To see people "dressing and undressing." Wearing two pairs of shorts, a coat, with a bra on top. I have gotten several good laughs this past week with all of the activity. But this morning what I saw, well it was WAY TOO MUCH.

I enter the store, grab my cart, and head towards my first purchase. Before I make it 5 feet I am blind-sided by something I never want or need to see again! An aging Chinese man, well, let me say he came dressed to shop! Standing there, all five feet of him. Stooped over, rummaging through the clothes......in his too small, dingy white boxers and a dingy white undershirt. The "boxers" more like pieces of rags we barely hanging on. And not at all sufficiently covering his, well, southern regions. Each time he reached, leaned, or stretched anyone and everyone got a wide angle view of the aging mans...you get the idea. Y'all it was horrible. And almost as bad was that no one seemed bothered by the exposure. Except me! My parting thought as I went on my way was that I hope he found himself some good bargains. Lots of bargains!!

I know you are all so upset but no pictures were made of this event. Sorry to disappoint.

Home Again

2008-07-10T09:09:00.003+08:00

We made it! We arrived safe and sound back in Shanghai around 1:30pm on Wednesday. (Shanghai time) I have lots to say. Just not yet. I'll update the blog in a few days when I have time. We need a few days to settle back in. I'm sure you all understand. :-)

Bummin' around the neighborhood...

2008-06-21T23:43:00.004+08:00

OK, so from our trip back to the US (or at least my trip as Jessica and the boys are still there), I think that there were two common themes that came up every day no matter who we got to see that day or which city and state we were in. They were: (1) the price of gasoline and (2) the infrequent nature that we actually posted something on our blog. Obviously I can’t help you all that much with the first item, but I can try and help out with the second. In reality though, I started writing this almost four weeks ago so I am not entirely sure how much help I will be on getting new information flowing into the Blog site anyway.

Right, so about our neighborhood…the first Saturday that I was back in China I woke up around 7:00 or so, cleaned up a little bit of stuff around the apartment, checked my mail, did some other random stuff and by 9:00 was pretty much bouncing off the walls going stir crazy. I talked to Jessica for a little while and then decided to pack up some stuff and go out for a bike ride. At first, I was just going to stay around the neighborhood but ended up just going and going until the major street that we lived on ended. Then I hung a right and went until that street ended. That lead me to a pretty much major industrial district, so I just decided to come back home. I did see a couple of interesting things though of interest. Before I get into that though, let me take a step back and familiarize you all with a brief introduction to the city of Shanghai…since there were so many of you that forgot to visit last year.

Don’t fear though as my company has decided that “current business needs” have led to us staying here “for a period of an additional 9 to 12 months”. I have no idea how they arrived at that window of time, but regardless it gives everyone more time to visit.

OK, so anyway when you all make your travel arrangements to fly in you will land at Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG).

PVG currently has two terminals, as shown in that picture. All of that stuff in the middle is basically parking, as well as the Maglev station. The Maglev is a pretty cool experience. It is a train that basically connects the airport to an area of the city that has more options when it comes to public transportation. Normally, it takes 45 minutes by car to get from the airport to the other Maglev station, but the Maglev train makes the trip in about seven minutes. You travel at a max speed of 431 km/h (268 mph).

There is another airport in Shanghai that is primarily a domestic airport. It is on the west side of the city in an area called Hongqiao (Hong-Chow). It is an older airport that is getting ready to have a fairly substantial renovation done to it. When it gets completed, it will look like the pictures shown below.

OK, so here is a model of the city of Shanghai. All of the stuff on the left of the picture is called Puxi (Poo-Shee) which literally means ‘west of the river; and all of the stuff of the right side of the picture is called Pudong (Poo-Dong) which means, you guessed it, ‘east of the river.’

Here is a view of the city if you were looking at it from the west side looking towards the downtown area.

Here is a picture looking into the city center from the south side of the city.

And here are some pictures of the waterfront area of the city.

For me, the waterfront area is my favorite part of the city. The Puxi side has a historic area known as the Bund and the Pudong side has an area known as Lujiazui. You can see the Pearl Tower in the pictures which is close to the water front. Then, two blocks back you can see a group of tall buildings. The one closest to the Pearl Tower is called the Jim Mao tower which I believe is currently the third tallest building in the world. In the block right next to it, literally right across the street, the Shanghai World Financial Center is being built. When completed, it will be the first or second tallest building in the world. There is a museum in Shanghai called the urban planning museum, which is where I got all of these pictures. It is actually a pretty neat museum.

So anyway, if you were to go to the general area that is pointed out in the picture below, you would come to a part of the city known as Jinqiao (Jean-Chow), which is where our apartment is.

This is the entrance to our apartment complex. The first floor of each one of the buildings that face the street are all actually commercial buildings. That store there on the right is actually an iStore that opened up with we were back in the States.

Right next to our apartment complex is one of the international schools that are in our area. This is Dulwich College, which is actually a British school. This building is the elementary and middle school.

The large yard area in front is a sports field. They play soccer/football, cricket, softball, rugby and all other kinds of sports in this area. They have adult and kid leagues that play all year round. Right across the street is another large sports field where they have the same and then lined along it is a Starbucks and various other international restaurants.

If you go down a couple of blocks and hang a left, then you can get to our doctors office (Parkway Health)…

…or if you hang a right you can get to the church that we go to (Abundant Grace International Fellowship).

If you go around the corner from the church, then you can get to the school that Gabe will start going to this fall. Here is a picture of the elementary wing (I think).

Actually, it was hard to get a good picture of the front of the school because it is along a tree lined street that blocks out most of the views, plus it is a pretty large campus which means you have to be kind of far away to get a decent shot of it. If you are really interested in it, then you can just check out their website. They have a whole portion of their website where you can download videos and pictures (http://www.ciss.com.cn/Media_Gallery).

Alright, so if you get back on the main street that we live off of and keep going, then you will eventually run into a few manufacturing sites. One of the ones that I came across was an SC Johnson facility. It is a family company. I have no idea what they make there…maybe bug spray or something.

So a couple of blocks later, it just pretty much dead ends. You can hang a right now and it pretty much just takes you into an industrial area. However, at the end of that road, there is a pretty neat little site. If you could say that China is pretty much the North Pole when it comes to Christmas, then I found the area where they keep Santa’s sleigh. At the end of the second street was a huge sea container manufacturing and holding area. It was another one of those sites where it was so large that you just couldn’t get a good picture to contain it all.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much larger that area was as compared to what you see in the pictures. I took both of them about a half block away. From the gate looking into the holding yard, all that you could see were rows and rows and rows of these containers stacked this high.

This brings me to another interesting part of Shanghai…the Shanghai Seaport. The port is actually not in Shanghai, but rather on an island quite a bit away from the city. The lighting was bad at the museum so it was hard to get a good picture, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like at least.

That road that you see running into the island is basically how all of the freight is transported into the shipyard. It is a bridge that is over 32 km long (just over 20 miles). I got to go there a little over a year ago when we were bringing some inspection equipment over to our plant here from America. It was impressive to say the least. Almost all of the product that is produced at the facility that I work at in China is shipped out of this port. The products that I work on here get shipped to India, Germany, Brazil, America, Mexico, Korea and Italy. The rest of it, though a small portion stays here in China.

So anyway, that is probably more than you wanted to know about Shanghai and where we live. It gives you an idea about the city though. It truly is an amazing place.

Coming to America

2008-06-05T05:45:00.009+08:00

It's been a long time. Actually, a long, long time! Sorry for the lack of posts. I do not have a good excuse. So I won't even try.

Michael, the boys and I arrived back in the States after only 19 hours of travel on May 8th. I say only 19 because of the new and wonderful direct flight from Shanghai to Atlanta. Then it was just a quick hop from Atlanta to Montgomery. It used to be that we would fly from Shanghai to Tokyo, Tokyo to Detroit, Detroit to Memphis, Memphis to Montgomery. And that route took no less than 24 hours. So 19 was A LOT better than 24! The flight was almost half empty and that was such a blessing. We had two whole rows to ourselves. Both of the boys slept very little of the long flight. Maddox for 4 hours and Gabe for only 2. Michael dozed off and on for about 2 and I slept none. But everyone, the boys especially, did great on the flight!

We arrived in Montgomery on Thursday and spent the next three days trying to get the boys sleep schedules adjusted to a new time zone. They did surprisingly well with that as well. A few bouts of sleepy crying for the first 2 nights was about the worst it got. Michael and I on the other hand did not adjust so well.

On the following Monday at 5 am, Michael and I left for Kalamazoo, MI. It is a 14 hour drive and we wanted to get there as early as possible. We made good time and arrived after a LONG day of driving just in time to have dinner with some of Michael's co-workers. Then it was off to some of our good friends Jason & Sarah Stiger's to crash for the night. It was so good to see them. We settled right in and watched the season finale of The Bachelor. About that...we decided that we are not missing much by being in China. That show is crazy! Proposing to someone and calling them Monkey!!!?? Anyway, back to the important stuff. On Tuesday Michael went into the Dana office (Working on vacation? Yup, Michael does) and spent some of the day there.

Basically, we spent the next 4 days packing, cleaning, sorting, and getting our house hold goods into storage. (We have put the house on the market "For Sale or Lease") Michael still had conference calls every morning at 7am that lasted a minimum of 2 hours. So that made getting some stuff done at the house challenging. But, thanks to the help of many amazing friends, we managed to get everything done (and done well I might add) on time.

Jason & Sarah Stiger were a huge help. Not just for letting us stay with them, though that was great. But they also helped pack boxes, paintings, and furniture. They brought lots of yummy food, ran errands for us, and made us laugh!

Another friend, Christy Bollier was amazing! She, and her 2 1/2 children came over and helped pack up the kitchen. (2 1/2 because she is expecting their 3rd.) Luke and Hailey, her kids, were so well behaved! I was impressed. They entertained themselves for hours while she helped us. And the only favor we could do for them was share with Luke some of the Fish and Onion chips from China. He really loved them!

My neighbors, Ted & Carrie Green have been an indescribable amount of help. Not only were they a huge help over this past year, they really helped us out again over the past few weeks. They held a garage sale and allowed me to dump my junk in their yard and then took care of donating the rest for me. Ted has taken over the maintenance of or yard. Carrie has taken out our trash, cleaned my floors, and so much more! I cannot even begin to list everything they have done for us!

And our friend Jen Gilbert, well, she is simply awesome. When I got to our house for the first time on Tuesday, I walked in to see brownies, our favorite good ole' American potato chips, the coolest water bottles, Coke, Dr. Pepper, and a special beverage that we thought we could only get in China. She did some good researching to find some for us! She came over each day after she got off work to help us box, clean and pack stuff up. She is awesome!!! I also owe a big thank you to Jen's parents who let us crash at their beautiful home on Saturday night.

So, on Friday we finished packing and getting everything into storage. Late Friday night we went over to stay with some more of our friends Michael and Mandy Fernihough. It was so good to get to spend time with them! ***I also want to mention that one of Michael's younger sisters was killed in a car accident last week. Katie was only 22 years old. Please keep Michael, Mandy and his entire family in your prayers. It is such an awful thing.***

On Saturday, we returned to the house to do some final organizing and cleaning. We left the house for the final time at noon. It had been a LONG 4 1/2 days, but we had gotten everything done that we needed to. Again, we could not have done it without the help of all our amazing friends! Thank you all SO VERY MUCH!!!! Hopefully we will get the chance to repay you all sometime in the future.

Here I want to thank my parents. They willingly kept the boys with them in Alabama for the entire week we were gone. There is no way we could have been productive with the boys running around under our feet. We owe them big time!!! Thanks!

On Saturday afternoon, we headed over to our friends John & Melanie DeKruyter's house. We spent a great afternoon and evening with them. They have spent the last 1 1/2 years or so in Israel. It's always nice to share stories with people who know what it's like to live in a foreign country. To talk about all of the oddities it involves.

Sunday morning we went to church. It was strange, yet good to be there. I didn't realize how much I missed the feeling of family and fellowship! After a quick lunch we hit the road and made it to Louisville. We spent the night there and on Monday morning I took Michael to the airport. He was on his way back to Shanghai. :-( We both knew it was coming and we were dreading it... his going back to China. Even though Michael works crazy hours and travels some in China, we see each other much more than we did for the year prior to moving there. We have gotten used to being together more. And now, he will not be back in the States until the end of June.

While the boys and I are sad to be apart from Michael, they are having a great time in Alabama. Getting spoiled by their Poppie and Nonnie. Poppie takes them on tractor and 4 wheeler rides almost daily. Nonnie has an endless supply of ice cream, pudding, cookies and other treats Mom and Dad don't usually let them have. They are loving it! All of it!

Overall, it has been great Coming to America. I speak for Michael and I when I say we were surprised when driving into Kalamazoo we looked at each other and said, "This does not feel like home anymore." We did not expect to feel that way. We had no sense of loss or sadness driving away from our house in MI on Saturday. But the loss we didn't feel about the house went to leaving our friends. We have been blessed beyond words by our friendships in Michigan. It was SOOO hard leaving those friends this time. Even though I want to be in China, I want my friends too. I remind myself that while I may not see my friends, our friendships will remain! All of you MI friends take note....We will be back! At least to the States. And we are looking forward to spending time with you all once again!

I should go for now. It has been an eventful few days here. Maddox and Gabe have been "trading" sickness all week. Madd-Dog vomited all over me and Mimi's (Emily) recliner yesterday. That made for an exciting 10 minutes! Haha. Gabe has been running a fever all day today. No recliner vomiting so far from Gabe thank goodness! It's hard when the kiddos are sick. I feel so helpless as a mother. Hopefully everyone will recover soon.

Have a good rest of the week family and friends!

Maddox and Poppie riding the tractor/mower.

Poppie (my dad), my nephew Jordan, Maddox & Gabe. Playing some golf.

Great Nonnie (my mom's mom), Gabe & Maddox.

Nonnie (my mom) and Gabe doing some painting.

For Your Reading Pleasure...

2008-04-22T21:55:00.007+08:00

This is a sign located at each of the checkouts in our local grocery store. Published on our site for your reading pleasure.

And in case you can't read it, here it is....

"Awording to the bank's pwescription , for the secuwity of yourbandcard plesse sign the same nameas the obilgate signature in the back of the card For any query,you can contact the bank.Thank your for your coopration."

Translation...they want you to sign the signature line of your credit card. And if you have a problem with it, contact the bank. One would think that a huge grocery store chain would be able to locate a person capable of proof reading things before they post them. That must be asking too much. After all, this IS China.

Hangzhou Family Vacation Pictures

2008-04-02T23:03:00.021+08:00

I started this post in the next entry down. (A First Time For Everything) So...scroll down, read the next post, and then come back to this one. Otherwise this entry won't make as much sense. Sorry, I can't figure out how to change the order of the entries.

Some of the pavilions on one of the islands in Xihu (West Lake.)

We spent our second day hiking these mountains. Hiking in the rain all day, we started at the arrow on the right and went to the arrow on the left. I have no idea how far it was (as in miles) but it wasn't just trails/paths it was lots and lots of stairs. At least more than 1000 we did. But what's really amazing is not that we (Michael and I) did that. But that Gabe did every single one of those steps by himself. That's a lot for those little legs. We were so proud of him becuase he wanted to do it!

A view of the lake and the "Melting Snow On Broken Bridge" from the mountain. Seriously, that's the name of the bridge.

Baochu Pagoda. In the distance on the top of the mountain. First built in AD 963. Amazingly the original did not contain an internal staircase. A engineering feat for something that tall. Less than halfway through our hike. A look back at the ground we had covered so far. A great view.

Chuyang Platform is just visible in the distance on the mountain hillside.

Here we are inside a park containing "Huanglong Dong" or Yellow Dragon Cave. This place is famous for its never-ending stream of water spurting from the head of a yellow dragon several meters down into a pool below.

If you look at the first picture in the "A First Time For Everything" entry you will see the nice first class waiting room at the Shanghai train station. This picture of the waiting room at the Hangzhou train station. It's not first class, it's everyone else. This room was chaos!

Well that's it for now. I have been trying for over an hour now to get more pictures into this entry but it isn't happening. And it's late, I am tired. So I am heading off to bed soon. Hope you enjoy what I was able to get posted. But before I go, there are two things I wanted to mention.

First, there is a family that we have connected with and been praying for over the last year. They live in the States. They recently lost their 3 year old daughter, Anna, to cancer. I won't take the time to go into all of the details. But please, please keep this family in your thoughts and prayers. Their faith in our Father has never wavered. In fact it has been stronger than most people I know, even over the last 14 months as they fought an awful fight. Thanks for your prayers!

Secondly, there is no official word still on if we are staying or going. I am getting more anxious and less patient by the hour. I feel like I keep saying this but, hopefully we will know something soon! Goodnight.

A First Time For Everything

2008-04-02T22:06:00.014+08:00

This past weekend we went on our first family of four vacation. We visited the city of Hangzhou, which is south of Shanghai. Here is a little information on Hangzhou. The city’s history can be traced to around 8,000 years ago. The city was developed around a lake called Xihu. Which, translated into English means West Lake. The lake is 1,606 acres. For you MI people that is around 2/3 the size of Gull Lake. And for AL folks it's roughly 1/27 the size of Lake Martin. (Ha! Not much of a reference point.) For you MO folks, sorry to say I have no good comparison. Anyway, the lake is located at the city's center. Numerous small canals run off the lake and the city was built with its buildings on the edge of those canals. Back then, the canals were used as roads. All the buildings faced the water so the passers by could visit, see each other, and shop. Unfortunately, most of those buildings are long gone, but you are still able to get the general idea.

We had a great time on our vacation even though it was raining off and on most of the weekend. Hopefully we will be able to go back for another visit when it won't be raining. We took over 120 pictures while there for 2 days. I can't put them all on this sight. But I will put up a few of the best. For those of you with Facebook, I put them all on my page. Check them out if you want. Here are a few...

First Class waiting area at the train station. Open, clean, quiet, overall very nice.

Michael and Maddox on the boat ride to the islands in the lake.

Jessica and Gabe waiting on the boat.

Gabe said he wanted his picture taken with his leg up on the rock because, "I look good." Then he said Maddox needed to be in the picture, "So he can look good to." This picture was taken on one of the islands in the lake. The islands name is "Chong Er" which means Endless Romance Here.

A view from the island. In the background is "Leifeng Xizhao" or Evening Sunlight at Thunder Peak Pagoda. Rebuilt in 2002 after the origional collapsed in 1924. The foundation dates back to AD 976.

Now you can scroll back up and finish reading the previous post. (Hangzhou Family Vacation Pictures) Sorry for the confusion. I am technology challenged.

The Middle or The End?

2008-03-21T18:36:00.002+08:00

I know it has been a long, long time since the last post. It is not that things aren't happening here. It's just a matter of finding the time and words to describe them. Michael and I often say that so much of what we see and experience here is hard/impossible to describe for those back in the States. I wish I was more gifted in the area of creative writing. I'm sure my posts then would be more frequent and fun filled. Sorry to you all!

The Middle or The End? Is April 2008 going to be the middle point of a two year adventure here or the end of our one year stay? We do not know. Some of you may be saying, "What? How could you not know? April is next month! Don't you need to know soon to make your plans for the future?" My response is this.....We are more than ready to know! April will be here before we know it. So we are attempting to make future plans for whatever happens. We are really hoping to know something definite soon!!! In the event we are not staying, we will pack up and fly back to the States for good at the end of April. We will leave here with a boat load of amazing memories, adventures, and friends. In the event we do stay, we will come back to the States for a period of a few weeks at the end of April/beginning of May. We would plan on spending some time in Alabama, Michigan, and Missouri seeing friends, family, and tying up loose ends that come about from spending another year here. Then return here for another year.

Another big question we are being asked, "What do you want to do? Go or stay?" Honestly, it depends on the day. Most of the time we truly love it here! As I have said so many times, this is an AMAZING culture, place, and people. We have a great life. We have made so many international friends. Our "world" has been made so much larger by the things we are exposed to and can reflect on. The boys are getting to have a life that not many kids get. We really feel that they are getting to see and experience things that will help them live their lives to the fullest when they are older. This is a once in a life time opportunity for us, we don't want to miss out on all the things it has to offer. But, on the flip side of the coin, we really miss a lot of things. Our family, friends, church, Krispy Kreme, family, no situations made crazy by everyone not speaking the same language, Qdoba, driving, friends, not having to pay $5 for a box of Kraft mac & cheese, our dogs, not being able to "be right there" for people in times of need, family and friends. You get the idea I'm sure. And while our experiences here are great, at times the longing and sadness I feel for the things of "home" gets pretty huge. Especially on Sundays. Which have always been a day for church, family and friends. The bottom line? Whatever God wants to happen will. We know that. And we have confidence and feel good about that. But what do we want? Overall we want to stay here. Being here is temporary. We will end up back in the States at some point. And for now, if it's His will, we want to stay here and continue to experience, enjoy, and grow from our adventures. For us and the boys.

We will try to keep anyone interested in what our plans are "in the loop." I'm assuming some of our readers are actually interested. (I think that is a safe assumption. I hope it is.) Pray for us if you will. That the answer will be from Him and come swiftly. We are ready to know!

Happy New Year!!!

2008-02-08T20:59:00.001+08:00

Nope, I am not crazy. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Nor am I running 5 weeks behind. Thursday, February 7th was the start of the Chinese New Year. We have now entered the Year of the Mouse. We spent New Years Eve with a English friend of ours and his Chinese girlfriend. It was great learning from her about the new year's customs. One of those is eating dumplings right after midnight. The Chinese believe that eating the dumplings, which are in a shape that represents money, will bring financial prosperity in the new year. I think we must have eaten dozens of dumplings. I'll let you know in about a year how that worked out for us. One of the most exciting things about the night was the fireworks. Being that I live in the land of fireworks, I shouldn't have been surprised. But folks, it is indescribable. Since two days prior, fireworks were going off every night. But on the eve, they started around 5 pm and didn't end until after 3 am. And I don't mean just here and there, I mean EVERYWHERE! As we stood out on our friends balcony we could not even hear each other talk over the noise. Everywhere we could see, all over the city, were fireworks. It is almost impossible to explain. It was like nothing Michael and I have ever seen. Nothing! It was amazing!

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Gabe's fourth birthday by having a great party with friends. Each person got to ice and decorate their own cake. It was tons of fun for everyone! That night when we were putting Gabe to bed he said, "Mom, I am so excited! I can't wait until I turn five and have another happy birthday party!" I think it was a success.

Here are a few pictures from the past month.

Everyone waiting so patiently for their cakes to decorate.

Gabe and Maddox do some decorating.

The birthday boy.

The kiddos.

Fireman Gabe wearing his gift from Dad and Mom.

Two Chinese Snow Shovels. All you need.....a bamboo pole, two leftover pieces of wood flooring and a couple of rusty nails. Why buy when you can make your own?

Clearing the interstate. Yup, those are workers with shovels. Though here, they are using yard/garden shovels instead of wood flooring.

This is a vending machine in one of the many subway stations here in Shanghai. These are well stocked with anything one might need while out and about. Water, chocolate milk, juice, cookies, candy bars, chips, and oh yes......condoms.

A close up, just in case you don't believe me.

Onion Soup Mix...

2007-12-27T15:58:00.000+08:00

Apparently, our lives here in Shanghai revolve around something called “onion soup mix.” More importantly, the Smith family must have created a shortage of the aforementioned product since we have shown up in China and have been purchasing it from the international grocery stores. Apparently, the mix in this little miracle bag is the key ingredient to several Smith family favorite meals: Chicken in a cranberry red sauce, chicken and wild rice casserole, beef roast and various other meals frequently crossing our table each evening. Normally, it hasn’t been a problem getting our hands on this key ingredient, but we apparently have been the only ones purchasing it as we have not been able to find it now for several weeks here in Shanghai.

Before moving on and talking about other little bits of food, I thought that I would just add a quick note to Jessica’s last post. I love college football. One problem that I have always had though is that I am from Missouri, which doesn’t really ring out as a football power house. The college that I went to, being an engineering school, hadn’t won a football game in the two years before I arrived and did not win a game the whole time that I was there. I have a Google page and an MSN page that I log into to get key news and sports information that I am interested in. I have always had the University of Missouri listed as one of the teams to follow. You could usually find me on Saturday or Sunday looking over my shoulder to make sure that no one was looking while I logged on to see how the Tigers had done that weekend.

This season was of course different though. You don’t ever really have to know anything about college football to know that Missouri came within one game of reaching the national championship. Who knows if it will happen again, or how well they will do next year. I may have to go back to always looking over my shoulder when I check scores and articles. But in the mean time, here is a sight that I really never thought that I would see in my lifetime…just too bad it didn’t last.

So anyway, back to food...

The grocery store that we normally go to is right across the street from our apartment. It has always amazed us at some of the advertisements that you see that are in English that you just chuckle at, or sometimes even better the products that they actually are selling over here (see the flavors for potato chips in the last post). However, the one that always trips us up though is the meat area of the grocery store here.

The delivery and selling of meat products is pretty interesting over here. It doesn’t matter if it is a big chain store like the Carrefour or Pines that we go to, or one of the local Chinese markets or even side street markets: The meat is basically just dropped off and put into large piles for people to pick through. In the smaller city that I work in, it is hilarious to see some of the Chinese people actually start to fight over the meat when it gets dropped off.

Anyway, at the Carrefour where we normally shop, it is more like you would find in the States. That being said though, there are still some pretty big differences. For instance, the fresh fish area is a little more open and not as sanitary. In the pictures below you can see the open fish meats, the tanks that you can get live turtles out of, another counter of fresh fish, the fish heads (for soup).

All around this area, there are also fish and crab tanks that the boys like to spend time looking at. It is interesting to explain to them how people will buy the fish and take them home to cook them and eat them. Just seeing the looks on their faces makes for a fun time.

Then, there are the meat counters. Most of the pictures that I took didn’t turn out too well, so I will go back and get some more at another time. Again, it is similar to the States: You just pick out the meat that you want, take it to the butcher type of person, and they wrap it up for you. One big difference though is that you pretty much just pick through it all by hand (your own) and then take it to be packaged. We on the other hand are not as adventurous as this. We pretty much only buy the pre-packaged meats. We pay a little more for them, but at the same time we don’t have to go through the theatrics of getting the meat like this…

In other food news, Jessica has mentioned before that Maddox has taken a real liking to Chinese food. At first, we thought that he just liked the idea of eating from chopsticks. However, it really doesn’t matter if it is chopsticks or not, the kid just likes Chinese food (suits me though, as I do too). The big favorite though is rice. Doesn’t matter if it is fried rice, rice noodles, of just plain steamed rice; Maddox likes them all.

A few days ago, we decided to go ahead and let Maddox try and eat the rice by himself. I am not sure how much rice he actually was able to eat, as you can see in the pictures below he was at least as much on the floor as he was eating. Afterwards he came into the kitchen asking for a ‘towel’, as he wanted to help clean up the mess that he made. As you can see though, things just got spread out more.

The big news to share though as it relates to food is a recent discovery that we have made in Shanghai. A couple of weekends ago, we were walking around an area on the other side of Shanghai from where we live called Hongqiao (Hong-Chow). We knew that there was a large international grocery store there called City Shoppe, so we were looking for it when all of a sudden we stumbled across a Cold Stone Creamery. It was like experiencing a little piece of heaven right here in Shanghai. Even better was that the following weekend, we found another one in the People’s Square area of the city. They have waffle cones, waffle bowls, our favorite ice creams, our favorite toppings, everything. Unfortunately though, it has become a recent addiction.

I know that there is so much more that is more interesting that you could see when it comes to food. For instance, on nights when I am staying in Wuxi and walking around the downtown area, you can see people along side the streets that have small grills hanging off of the back of their bikes that are cooking small animals that are tied to skewers. I could tell you about some of the ‘snack’ shops on the sides of the busy streets that have things like duck tongue and chicken feet for sale. I could even spell out the meals that I have had to endure during the countless supplier visits over here. I guess that I will try and get some pictures of those and get them loaded as well. In the mean time, this stuff will just have to do...

Just plain 'ol potato chips...

2007-12-27T15:08:00.000+08:00

OK, so Jessica isn’t really keeping up on this. So, I guess that you guys will just have to put up with me for a little while. I actually typed this up a few weeks ago, I just haven’t had the time to post it yet. I actually have a bunch of stuff to put on here, so sorry for the overload…

Since Jessica returned from visiting her family early in the year, I have gotten a lot of requests to just provide some thoughts in general. Plus, I have gotten several requests to show people around the world the stuff that I have to do day in and day out. In typical fashion, I plan on just keeping this as sarcastic as possible. You certainly won’t be getting any deep thoughts or anything like that out of me here. Most likely I will just focus on the random and absolutely pointless. I will probably spend most of my time focusing on the things that just make us laugh over here instead of the real cultural stuff that Jessica puts up on the other blog. For all of you Facebook people, I will load a lot more pictures into there that I will on the blog as we can actually get access to Facebook anywhere in China…but alas not Blogger. There is no telling what type of mayhem would occur if the government here would open up Blogger. Weird country sometimes, but I will get into that I am sure in subsequent posts.

I hardly know where to begin. Today alone was filled with exposing our boys to gambling and cricket fighting, squirrels with obvious mental issues, fish heads being pushed around the floor of the local grocery store and various other adventures. I think that I will focus instead of snacks. Yep, that is right. After a couple of weeks of having company stay with us and a week off from work where we did something almost every day, Jessica and I chose to just have a night in at the apartment and not really do anything. We ordered dinner from a restaurant that has become one of our favorites over here. Later on though, I decided that I just wanted junk food. Pretzels, chips, cookies…whatever. A quick survey of the cabinets yielded nothing, so I headed across the street to the local equivalent of Wal-Mart. I head off to the aisle where the potato chips are located in search for my favorite chips over here…Lay’s Stax. Basically, they are just like Pringles…except for the flavors. Oh yes my friends, today I discovered that the land of salt and vinegar, BBQ, sour cream and onion are all long behind us. Tonight, my options were “tomato,” “crispy prawn”, “green cucumber,” “black pepper rib eyed steak,” and “finger licking braised pork.” I can hardly imagine a better selection of flavors. One problem though was that I could not find “authentic original flavor”. Yep, just plain old potato chips. Finally, after searching high and low, I found this island in the middle of nowhere that had two or three cans of them set up in some pointless display. Of course realizing that the display was pointless, I just reached up and took it apart to the point that I could get the chips that I wanted and walked away with my container of chips.

There was another customer there that also thought that the display was rather ridiculous as they walked away from their cart and came over to me waving a finger at me and talking in a very excited tone. I didn’t understand a word that they were saying, but obviously they were very happy with me because they followed me all of the way back to the international foods area where I was going to pick up a bag of pretzels. The person was also nice enough to grab some of the employees at the store that were close by and explain to them how the display didn’t make sense. They even went so far as to grab the chips out of my hand and act out all of the work that I had to go through just to get the chips in the first place. Though I certainly appreciate this persons excitement, it was wearing off quickly now because they had just taken the potato chips that I had to work so hard to get right out of my hands. Tiring of the celebrity status that I had now attained given that a crowd was starting to gather, I just politely said ‘excuse me’, grabbed my chips and headed on my way to the check-out counter. The things that you have to go through just to get junk food. It’s easier just eating all of the healthy stuff that we have back home.

Oh well, the chips were great. I enjoyed every one of them. In case you are wondering about the random nature of the display, they were nestled in neatly with Maxwell House coffee and Lipton green tea, which has stacks of Oreo and some Chinese brand cookies on top of them. The only flavor of chips that were in the display were original and green cucumber, and they were in the clothing area. This was of course the first place that I would have ever thought of to look at for snack food.

Pretty much, that is an absolutely pointless story, and you just wasted 7 minutes of your life reading it. I will have to see if I can dig up the pictures that we took of introducing the boys to cricket fighting and will get those up.

War Eagle! Mizzou-Rah!

2007-11-29T09:30:00.000+08:00

Last weekend was great! We had friends over for Thanksgiving on Saturday and on Sunday (y'alls Saturday) we were able to follow online the wonderful wins of two of our favorite teams! It was a great weekned.

Besides the football, (War Eagle....Mizzou-Rah) we really enjoyed having our friends over for a traditional Thanksgiving. *Well as traditional as you can considering you are in China.* :-) But I think we did a pretty good job. I mean the spread on the table (or counter in our case) could have passed for for any spread back in the States. We had the turkey and gravy (cooked by yours truly), stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potatos (canned but still sweet potatos), rolls, corn (an awesome dish done by a single guy no less...he crushed my idea that a single guy can't cook), mashed potatos, ahhh yes, the wonderful cranberry sauce you just slide out of the can and slice (yes folks, they have that here in China!), pecan, apple, and pumpkin pie and so much more!!! It was wonderful. Almost felt like I was back in the States....almost. Like I said, we really enjoyed having everyone over and I hope they had a good time as well.

I guess that's it. I have been trying to load the same picture onto the blog for over 30 minutes and it hasn't happened yet. So I think I'm just going to call it quits on the whole picture thing for now. I'll try to figure out what's going on.....let's just blame it on China....and get some pictures up another time. Hope y'all have a great rest of the week!!!

WAR EAGLE!!!

MIZZOU-RAH!!!

Happy Thanksgiving From Around the World!!!

2007-11-22T14:59:00.000+08:00

Wow. I know it has been awhile, a-long-while actually since the last post. I have no good excuse for not posting sooner, other than to just blame it on life. Life has been good just busy for us all. I will do my best to catch y'all up on what's been going on with all of us. But first, I would like to provide a disclaimer. Michael is funnier than me. I have known that for years. So while his previous two posts were probably more enjoyable than any post of mine, you are stuck with me anyway. Sorry. Now, moving on.

I took a cue from my friend Mandy and will update y'all by going person by person.

MICHAEL: Is working terribly hard. In all of the years I have known him I have never NOT seen him work hard on a job, no matter what kind. But, these past few weeks have been different. Things with the suppliers he is in charge of keep getting worse and worse. Let me explain. He has been sent here on behalf of his company to "manage/assist" the smaller Chinese companies that provide parts to his company. And his company in turn provides parts to another company. So I am sure you all understand that if the little Chinese company is having problems, then Michael's company is having problems, and then the company they supply to is having problems. Basically you end up with a boatload of ticked off people....at every level. The reason I say his job is to "manage/assist" is because while he is not an employee of the Chinese companies, he still tells them what to do to an extent. But it is all done in the spirit of assistance. And currently to two main suppliers of parts for Michael's company are having major problems. The end result, Michael is having major problems. Or rather, dealing with some major problems. And it seems (I will say at least to me anyway) that the higher ups in Michael's company just want the problem fixed, no matter what the cost or how unreasonable they are being. Everyone wants the problem fixed, it just doesn't happen overnight. Unfortunately, it's Michael's job to keep reminding them of that. And sometimes it ain't pretty. I cannot even begin to imagine how stressed out this past month is making him because amazingly....I don’t' see it. He is working some crazy long hours but when he comes home, he's home. He plays "rough" (that's what they call wrestling) with the boys, listens to me gripe about my day (which honestly is nothing compared to his), and somehow manages to be in good spirits with us. I DON'T KNOW HOW HE DOES IT!!!!! I wish I had better words to say but, I am SO VERY blessed that he was willing to spend the rest of his life with me. He is truly a wonderful father, friend, and husband.

ME: My trip back to the States to spend time with my family was good. The flights were almost unbearably long. I have a huge amount of new found respect for Michael who flew those flights several times a month for almost a year. Though spending time with my family made the suffering worthwhile for sure. It was a quick trip, just a week. But to be with my family after the passing of my grandfather was so comforting. In other news, I am currently, as in right now, cooking a turkey for about 20-25 friends for Thanksgiving. Some of you may be surprised to know that this is my first time to roast a bird. In the past I have helped my mom a little but never really contributed much. I guess I am growing up. WAIT, I should be honest. I have called my mom 3 times. Just to make sure I was doing stuff right!! I knew what I was doing....really! Anyway, we will see in about 30 minutes how good, please be good, of a job I did. HAPPY THANKSGIVING Y'ALL!!!!

GABE:Ahh, Gabe is Gabe. Which I suppose is a good thing. Actually I know it is. He is ornery as ever. Yet, he has many wonderful moments. I know all parents think that their children are smart, so I won't act like he is a genius or anything. But, he never ceases to amaze Michael and I with his memory. He has the memory of an elephant! He is always remembering things that happened in months past, even events that happened almost two years ago. (When he was just a little over 1 year old.) Though I do believe that he will one day put this ability to good use, for now it is sometimes frustrating and hilarious. His Chinese vocabulary is growing by the day. I know that children pick up languages better than adults but, I do think his memory serves him well here also. He is by no means bi-lingual, he just knows lots of Chinese words. For example, he can tell a taxi driver, in Chinese, "Please take me to the Shanghai Science and Technology Center subway station." And since he has the route memorized, if he thinks they are veering off course, he will tell them to "go straight, turn right, or turn left" all in Chinese. Also, as he learns new things, his definition of what a grown-up is changes. Sometimes that definition seems very profound (to us proud parents anyway) or times just funny. He told me the other day that he would know he was a grown-up when, "I have black scratchers on my face just like Michael." Can't say that one was profound, just funny to us.

MADDOX:"I do it!" That right there describes Madd-Dog perfectly. That phrase is his trademark these days. He has turned into Mr. Independent. He is no longer content to play in the shadow of his older brother. He wants to make his own. He is a climber, jumper, runner, faller, crasher, an all around tough guy! There are very few things he is afraid to try.....activities or food. He loves the local food, especially rice. And if you give him anything with chopsticks he will eat it for sure. He likes "using" chopsticks. Though much less of a talker than Gabe was/is ( Maddox does not take after the Loudermilk side of the family here for sure ) he still communicates well. He loves telling the locals hello, thank you, bye bye, and a few other words in Chinese. Funny thing though, if you ask him to count 1 to 10, 1-4 are in English and 5-10 are in Chinese. He'll get it eventually!

Well that pretty much covers the finer points. A few weekends ago we went with Michael to a town called Wuxi. Which is actually where his is primary office is located. (He works out of Shanghai some.) It is 2 1/2 hours away by car. We had a driver take us there but we rode the train back. It was the boys first real train ride and they loved it!!! The train ride only lasts about 45 minutes and that was not near long enough for them. They didn't want to get off!! While in Wuxi, they had a great time in the hotel pool, at the zoo, and at a local park. It was a fun weekend away. Here are a few pictures.

At the pool.

Does anything strike you as odd in this picture? Look closely. :-)
Lunch time! This guy had just finished the juice box and was moving on to his banana.

This was a fun slide. It was made out of a giant piece of stone.
The boys played on it for a long time. I went down it myself a couple of times!
This was crazy. At the park in Wuxi there were these animals that kids could ride/drive for 5 minutes for about 70 cents. The boys thought it was awesome!
What's crazy about it was the crowd watching and taking pictures of the little foreign kids. It's like that everywhere we go. Everyone wants pictures of themselves or their kids with the boys. We seem to always draw quite a crowd. Everywhere!
And just because I know that y'all were so anxious to see how it turned out.........There she is, or should I say, he is!?!

Made it!

2007-10-20T20:58:00.000+08:00

Yep, this one is all about makin' it. I just put the boys down for the night, came back into the living room here where I set up command central throughout the end of the week to work from and also maximize my ability to monitor the kids, only to find the following on my screen...

So the good news is that Jessica made it back 'home'! As for me, I managed to make it through the week with no major catastrophes past Saturday. There was that little blip with Maddox escaping the perimeter that I had set up here to break into our bathroom and spread the soap around the floor. However, I managed to get that one taken care of and that was pretty much it. The floors are clean, the bathrooms are clean, the sheets are all washed, the clothes are all washed...all thanks to Chen. But hey, I'm the one payin' for it! I only managed to lose two fish out of the boys fish tanks...with no signs of any remains I might add. Plus, I managed to solve a pretty major issue at work that had one of our assembly lines completely stopped, so I pretty much think that the week was a success.

By the way (and though I readily admit that my domestication abilities are somewhat limited), I just wanted to offer up that even in the face of having to deal with an oven that is somewhat complicated and confusing; that if you put good directions on the box that you can get a pretty good meal. For instance, breakfast on Friday...

That is right folks. Notice the nice golden brown color on the tops of those babies. The nice clean and non-burned edges. And just to offer up some proof that the demanding little pain in the neck critics that I had to put up with on Saturday at McDonald's found these completely appealing...

Yep, I'm shameless. I even made them beg me for more. Couldn't help myself really. Don't have a picture of it, but I figured out the chicken nugget things too. That's right, Friday night was me, the boys, and 12 crispy, golden brown dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets, some Chinese BBQ sauce, applesauce and chocolate pudding. Food Network doesn't have anything on me...as long as it comes out of a bag or box that has decent instructions on them.

Anyway, this is all pretty much pointless rambling and nothing more than an attempt for me to kill some time and try and dull out the excitement and anticipation of just waiting for Jessica to get home from the airport; while at the same time try and redeem myself from one of my lower point days as a parent. I guess that I should take some time to thank all of those of you that made it possible. To Bill and Judy, thanks for watching the boys for me on Monday and Tuesday while I was slaving away at work. Chen of course is an invaluable member of our family over here...whether we pay her or not. I got to see first hand this week that she genuinely cares about the boys more than I understand. Jen G. for making fun of me as a parent and inspiring me to do better. Buster and Amy for checkin' in on me throughout the week and inviting us for an afternoon out at one of the bust burger joints in town. And I guess Jessica...though she sets the bar pretty high...

All in all, it was a lot of fun! But man am I lookin' forward to going back to man-to-man defense against the boys!

And folks...that was just Saturday...

2007-10-18T22:56:00.002+08:00

I realize that pictures speak thousands of words and all of that, but in all of the excitement this past Saturday, capturing these fun moments on film (or file so to speak) were hardly on my mind at the time.

Saturday was the day that Jessica went back to Alabama to be with her family since her grandfather has passed away. Luckily, the boys woke up in time to say goodbye before James came to pick her up and take her to the airport. The boys and I had some breakfast...basically just picking from the stuff that Jessica made for us. Waffles were the meal of choice. After that, and a little bit of time just playin' around the apartment and all was fine. Pretty much was appearing to be a pretty easy day with the low point being Jessica leaving. Then came the shower...

After doing the normal trip to the bathroom for Gabe and changing Maddox's diaper, I figured then was as good a time as any to dump the boys in a shower. Just after I got them both into the shower, the phone rang so I ran into the bedroom to answer it. Jessica was just calling to let me know that she got checked in and was at the gate. She also needed me to get her some stuff that she forgot to write down before she left. The call couldn't have been any more than five minutes. When we got done, I walked back into the bathroom to check on the boys. As I walked through the door, all that I could hear other than the running water was constant giggling. One thing that the boys like to do is to wait until I wash my hair or rinse off soap and run their cars through the 'bubbles' that make it to the floor. Apparently, they didn't think that I would make it to the shower, so they got the body wash down and managed to get it open. Maddox was standing with one foot on top of the bottle trying to get some of the soap out while Gabe was flinging the soap that had already come out all over the shower floor and walls. Not all that big a deal though really. I mean, we had soap everywhere in the shower, and there were certainly a lot of bubbles, but it was all contained in the shower.

So I hop in the shower, get the boys clean and let them play in the bubbles for a little while longer. Gabe decided that it would be fun to play with the drain cover, which is not secured into place with anything other than gravity. Maddox subsequently assumed that it would be fun to drive one of his toy cars down into the drain pipes. Luckily, I was pretty much done with the shower so I got the boys out, dried them off, and then took them to our bedroom and sat them on the bed. I turned on the Chinese cartoon network as I knew that it would keep them entertained while I went back into the shower with a wire coat hanger to dig the car out of the drain pipe. Thanks to an annoying bend in the pipe, it took longer than expected, but alas I was able to get the car out of the drain...only to hear Maddox whimpering back in our bedroom.

I walk in the bedroom to see Maddox standing there with a shocked look on his face and standing in a puddle of...just imagine having two cups of milk for breakfast, having just gotten out of the shower and still being damp, and standing in a room right under the air conditioning vent with the air conditioner still on. Luckily though, he had at least climbed out of our bed before performing that act. All that I could think of to do to console the poor kid was to hand him the same car that he had dumped down the drain. Then I picked him up, took him back in the bathroom and cleaned him off. Luckily, the rest of the morning was pretty low key. We went over to the fitness complex that we live close to which has a pretty big play area for kids. There was a birthday party going on there for a girl and all of her friends. They were a little bit older than Gabe, but both he and Maddox certainly enjoyed the attention. Anyway, about an hour there, a short trek back to the apartment and 20 or so minutes to cook some chicken nuggets for the boys and we should be good to go.

There is a weird thing about our oven though. Instead of specifying an actual temperature on the knob, it just gives numbers: 1 through 8. Luckily though, Jessica left me a guide on how to correlate the numbers to a temperature. Next problem though, the only instructions on the side of the bag that showed how to cook the chicken were instructions on how to fry them in a wok. A lot of good that did. I figured that it would be easy to figure out though. I will just pick a medium temperature...say 5, and put the chicken in there and see what we get. After about 10 minutes, all that we had were pretty much just soggy pieces of chicken. I figure that I'll just flip them over and bump the temp up to number 6. Still no problem. 10 minutes later and we still have some soggy pieces of chicken sitting there...and no sign of that wonderful golden brown color that we are supposed to get on these little modern marvels. I figure that I will just bump up the temperature even more and give then a few more minutes. After about 30 minutes of sitting in the oven, we still didn't manage to obtain that golden color, and it was about the most rubbery creation I had ever eaten. Luckily, the boys didn't seem to have such picky pallets as I. So now off to take a nap...only almost an hour late.

So then comes the afternoon. Neither one of them really slept all that well. Normally, they wake up around 4:30 or so. By 3:30, I had given up fighting with them. Gabe just shot up out of bed and ran into the living room asking to watch a movie or some TV. After I got him settled, I went back in to get Maddox. Now recently, when coming home in the afternoon, I noticed that Maddox was always wearing a pair of underwear over his diaper. I had just assumed that he wanted to be like Gabe or something and Jessica was just helping the kid out. Yeah, it dawns on me that maybe the move to put the underwear over the diaper was more out of necessity than anything else. As I walked into the room, there was Maddox standing in his bed, bare bottomed, pointing to the floor where he had thrown his diaper that he had taken off. The diaper was as dry as a bone...but not the bed. Perfect...here we go again! As least this time, it didn't appear that Maddox needed to go back to the bath.

So anyway, I strip down the sheets and blankets and head off to the utility room, where we have this really nice eco-friendly washing machine and dryer set. Easy enough I figure as I load all the sheets and blanket into the washing machine and grab the bag of laundry detergent. Next, I open the little drawer thing that you are supposed to put the detergent in for the washing machine and low and behold there are four different compartments in the stinkin' thing. After a minute of looking at the thing, I noticed that there was a little trap door type of thing in the back and a water line that runs into one of the compartments. It almost looks like you just load this one compartment up with soap, that water runs through the one next to it and they mix on the compartment with the trap door to ultimately dump into the washing machine. So, I just load up the middle container and go on my happy way. Next problem...the whole stinkin' setting knob is in Chinese. Just thinking back to how easy things are back home, I remembered that on our washing machine that the simple wash cycle had the least number of characters. Assuming that the logic was the same in China (silly me) I just picked the cycle that had the least number of Chinese characters. When that narrowed it down to three selections, I just picked the least complicated selection from those three. Some lights and numbers started flashing on the thing, so I started to feel much better about myself. Luckily, the On-Off symbol of the interupted circle with a line is an international symbol so we are good to go.

Anyway, can't figure out what else there is to do and the weather was pretty nice so I just dressed the boys and got them ready to head out to the playground in the apartment complex. Stroke of luck happens again and one of the boys that Gabe and Maddox apparently know pretty well is having a birthday party and they are just wrapping up and heading to the playground themselves. That was a piece of cake (no pun intended). The kids practically baby sat themselves. Really, the only bad thing about it was that it was all moms sitting out there, so I looked a little out of place. This is where the person that invented the Sudoku puzzles deserves a big thank you. Yep, I just drag out my Sudoku book that I do on the train and car rides around China and start working a few puzzles.

After about an hour there, we come back inside fully expecting the laundry to be done so that I can throw it in the dryer (which is also a Whirlpool appliance just like the washing machine, but is all in English) before the boys have to go to bed. Not sure where I went wrong on this one, but I either picked the wrong setting, or picked the wrong bin for the soap, but the washing machine was still going strong, one hour later, and all that you could see in the washing machine was a tub full of bubbles with some of them 'escaping' around the door seam on the front of the washing machine.

At this point I was pretty much just ready to give in and give up. I looked at the boys, asked them what they wanted for dinner, and just got two blank stares. So, being the perfectly good dad that I am, I just say "how about a surprise for dinner?" This just seemed to be the trick as looks of shear excitement dawned both of their faces. It was simply enough...all that I did was throw their shoes back on, head down to the street in front of our apartment grab a taxi and proudly proclaim: Ja-Le-Foo, Fang Dian Loo (don't get too caught up in this), it just gets us to a Carrefour (like a Wal-Mart) that is about six our eight blocks away from our apartment. Handy little thing about this Carrefour though is that it has a McDonald's in it. Two kids meals, a Big Mac meal and $6 later, I was well back on track.

It was now well past the boys bed time. But hey, I was a hero. We walked in the door to the apartment, only to hear the washing machine still running (now over three hours in its cycle). Needless to say, Maddox wasn't sleeping on his normal sheets that night. I just pulled the comforter up, grabbed a couple of extra top sheets and he was good to go. And folks...that was just Saturday...

NOTES: You can pretty much accept this as my public affirmation for all that Jessica does for us. Secondly, Maddox didn't stop there with the soap. On Wednesday, my first day back alone with the boys (we had some help on Monday and Tuesday...thanks Bill and Judy!) I noticed that I hadn't heard from Maddox in several minutes. When I called his name, he came running out into the hallway from our bedroom with that just been caught look on his face. I went into the bathroom to find that he had gotten into the shower and grabbed the soap and was spreading it out on the bathroom floor...looking for more bubbles. It has taken me three days to get it clean and I still haven't gotten it all. The sheets, yeah they were in the washing machine for just over four hours. I have no idea what I did there. The the suds kept spewing out of the thing too. Made it down to the floor. Managed to get that one cleaned up right away though and nobody will ever know...except the billions of people that have access to this blog. And finally, after all that I went through on Saturday, and spoiling the boys by taking them to McDonald's, Gabe has the audacity to tell me that McDonald's McNuggets are better than the chicken that I made. What a little punk! Oh well, I still wouldn't trade this experience. I have had a lot of laughs this week!

Happy Birthday Maddox!

2007-09-28T09:49:00.000+08:00

September 10th brought Maddox's second birthday. We didn't do a lot of partying but he was really excited to play with the things Grandma Susan sent him. So thanks Grandma. And we want to thank Great-Grandpa Charlie who sent the movie for Maddox's special day!

"Reading" the birthday card from Grandma Susan surrounded by his gifts from her.

Grandma Susan was sweet enough to think of Gabe. She sent him a present too.

The boys playing with their new stuff from Grandma Susan.

This group is standing in front of a salon that is on the ground floor of our apartment building. We are not sure what to call this. Most business do this "lineup" kind of thing daily. Don't know if it's a pep talk or more of a yell at you all until you get it right thing. Either way, we get a kick out of imagining what they are saying...."Work hard and love your communist country!"

Maddox had literally fallen asleep sitting up. We usually spend our Saturdays exploring and sightseeing. And often we don't get home until after the start of nap time. As you can see, that was no problem for Maddox. He seems to have a "I'll make do with whatever/where ever" attitude.

Interesting Things

2007-09-04T10:26:00.000+08:00

This is a fun picture. I've seen people take naps in some interesting positions / places. But never like this. Just thought it was kind of funny.....and clever.

I have shown pictures of the Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center before. The Jin Mao, on the right, is 88 stories tall. And the building on the left (S.W.F.C.) will be 101 stories when completed. This picture kinda gives you an idea how tall the buildings are. It's almost hard to grasp their height, even standing right next to them. In this case, they are in the clouds. This photo was taken near the base of the buildings.

We enjoyed a nice family dinner out the other night at a local restaurant. As you can see, on the right was Gabe's dinner. Chicken nuggets from McDonalds. And on the upper left, Maddox's cheesburger. :-) Actually the remainder of the cheesburger went uneaten. Maddox really likes the local food. Especially the noodles!

We are not really sure what this statue is all about. We just think it is interesting...to say the least. I'll let y'all decide for yourselves what it represents. Your guess is as good as mine!

Catching Up On Our Lives

2007-08-22T20:56:00.000+08:00

Hello all! I'll try to catch y'all up on some of our latest happenings. Hope things are going great for all you family and friends. Things are moving along well here. Michael is working hard, as always! But his hours have gotten much better. We have been having such great family time together recently. He took last Friday off and that was a real treat! He and I (the boys stayed home with Chen Ayi) went out for a few hours. Shanghai has 2 huge fabric markets. Basically you can go and buy fabric. Or they have a bunch of sample clothes at each stall. Suits, shirts, skirts, dresses, blouses, pants, etc. So you show them a garment you like, you then pick out the fabric you like from their selection of hundreds, they measure you and voila! In 5 days you have a custom made garment. Michael had a pair of dress slacks made for $20 and I had a pair of linen pants made for $13. Michaels pants turned out great. Mine on the other hand....not so good. When I washed them they shrunk like 2 inches. It ended up being ok though. Chen Ayi is quite a seamstress herself so she is turning them into a pair of crop pants for me. Problem solved!

While we were out on Friday we had the driver take us to the bird and flower market. We wanted to pick up a couple of house plants to liven up our apartment. That place was a blast! It was on an older street close to the Old City. There were stalls along the street but the real action was down off the little side streets. It was a maze of alleys with all kinds of stuff for sale. We saw plants, birds, dogs, and cats. Along with some more interesting stuff like tarantulas, crickets, fish, turtles, lizards, chipmunks, worms, rats, mice, and SO MANY more unknown animals and bugs. I wish I knew what they all were so I could tell y'all. Some of the turtles we saw were the size of coffee tables while others we less than 2 inches. And all of this stuff was for sale....for the right price of course. Here are a few pictures from that adventure.

One of the small side street/alleys. Notice on the left side of the alley the animal/insect containers. On the right side of the alley up top are bird cages.

Another view of a side street/alley.

This was some kind of squirrel thing. As you can see it was taking a nap on it's back in it's food bowl. Nothing amazing about this. It was just funny to see.

It seemed like everywhere we looked there were tables full of these. They are little boxes with a cricket inside. We asked our driver what they were for and he told us "cheap hot blanket." During the winter the locals buy boxes and boxes of these and stuff them in their shirt, pant, and coat pockets to keep warm. Don't think I'll be wearing any crickets this winter. I'll just wear more clothes.

This is me with the owner of the stall we bought some of out plants from. One of my FAVORITE things about being here is the bargening! I love it. Michael hates it. And I hate to brag on myself but....I am really good at it! Our Chinese friends tell us that the local sellers know that the foreigners will pay 3 times as much as locals. So when our Chinese friends ask us how much we paid for something they are always suprised to find out how good of a deal we got. Our driver says that I get a better price on things than he does sometimes. Anyway, I know that I am bragging, sorry. I just love the thrill of a good bargening process.

Well that's enough for now I guess. Again, we hope you all are doing well!

Just Some Photos

2007-08-13T14:22:00.000+08:00

So I realize I am not doing a great job of posting stuff on the blog often. Life just goes by so fast. Most days before I even know it, the day is over and I am way to tired to do anything. But here are a few fun pictures.

They love to do this! I don't understand why...the floor is not the most comfortable place to lay. Oh to be a kid again.

Gabe riding the subway. This is one of his favorite things to do. He likes to do it like a "big boy." He holds on to the pole and stands up for the whole ride....no matter how long.

Maddox "riding" the subway. Don't worry Nonnie, we don't let go of him. (Not for too long anyway!) ;-)

Chen Ayi

2007-07-22T20:34:00.000+08:00

As some of you know, we have an Ayi, pronounced I-E, (that's Chinese for Aunt) who the boys really like. An Ayi is a kind of nanny/helper/housekeeper. And Chen (that's her first name) Ayi is really great. I'm really getting spoiled here! But it is good for the boys to have someone else here who cares about them like our family/friends back in Michigan and Alabama do. She plays with them a lot and gives them lots of attention. She's in her late 50's and has a 30-year-old son of her own. She is kind of like a "grandmother" figure to them. Don't worry Nonnie or Grandma Susan, you have not been replaced. :-) In other words she spoils them. Initially we were most worried about Gabe liking/feeling comfortable with her. But, Gabe took to her right away. Maddox, on the other hand, has been going through one of those "I need to be attached to my Mom's leg" stages. But he has come around. He always lets go of my leg though when it comes to mealtimes. As you can see from the picture below, Chen Ayi is always more than willing to share her lunch with him. And he loves it!!! I have no earthly idea what he is eating each lunch, but I feel good knowing he's broadening his horizons. Those of you who know Gabe well won't be surprised when I say that Gabe won't even consider doing any of the lunch sharing.

As great as Chen Ayi is, there is one downside. We don't speak each other’s language. As I am sure you can imagine, that sometimes makes things a little complicated. We actually do amazingly well when she is here. It's unbelievable how much two people can communicate through hand gestures, grunts, and acting out things. For example, when I am going to take a shower and I need her to keep an eye on the boys, I just mimic....well.....taking a shower. Ok, that didn't sound as amazing as it seems to be to me on this end. My point is, while I was really worried about the communication barrier at first, it has been working out much better than I thought it might. One other thing that really helps is my Mac Book. It has this neat little widget that is a language translator. So I just type in what I want to say, it gets translated into Chinese, and then she reads it. I just have to be very careful of the wording I use. Often there is not a literal translation for a word so the computer just picks what it thinks fits best...which is not always best. So I use as few words as possible, no slang, no contractions, etc. When I am careful, this process works really well. All in all, we do ok. A friend back in MI asked if it was weird having someone around all day that you didn't really talk to. It is in some ways. There are so many, many, many things I would like to ask her about. I know she would be able to answer many of my questions about China. But, until my Chinese improves or her English, we are stuck. But, the upside to she and I not speaking the same language is that we are both working really hard to learn. Every time she hands me something, say a shirt to put away, she says that word in Chinese. I repeat it until I get it correct. I do the same for her. So we are both learning. She also does the same for Gabe and Maddox. It's really amazing how much better they are picking up on things than me sometimes. Every time she hands them a toy or a snack she repeats the word over and over. Gabe knows what is going on so he repeats it back. Maddox just mumbles until she gives in (which is usually within 5 seconds) and gives him the object. I think he has her figured out. Anyway, we are all learning. Which is great!

We feel very blessed to have her working for us. She has had a very tough life and I know from what she has told our Chinese-speaking friends who translated for us that she is very happy to be working for us. I already know she is going to be missed. And not just because she helps me (though I won't deny that having help is wonderful) but because she is a good person who truly cares about all of us.

View From Above

2007-07-08T14:14:00.000+08:00

What's going on y'all? I hope things are good. We have had a good week here. As mentioned in previous posts, Gabe started swimming lessons this week. They have been interesting to say the least. The class is with all older kids and one teacher. So Gabe kind of feels out numbered. The teacher is a Chinese guy who's motto is "Throw them in and they'll figure it out." He may not actually throw them in but, that's his mind set about learning to swim. Don't get me wrong, he's really nice. I think it's partly a culture thing. They don't really baby the kids over here. If a kid is scared and crying about swimming....they just drag them on in. Kicking and screaming. And if a kid can swim above water and they are wanting them to learn to swim underwater, they just push them under and hold them down 'til they start swimming. Forced learning I guess you would say. While I always thought it was kind of a cruel thing to do, I'm thinking there must be something to it. Over the past week, the improvment the Chinese kids have made is amazing! Each of them are much more advanced than they were at the begenning of the week. The ones who "sorta swam" are truly swimming. Correctly and everything. The ones who couldn't swim at all are "sorta swimming." By that I just mean they don't have great technique but they are doing it. And the two who were totally terrified are perfectly happy and attempting to swim. Really, maybe there is something to this "suck it up and do it" mentality. Gabe isn't swimming yet, but he has gotten braver. He doesn't really enjoy the classes, too much commotion. But he has learned to kick his feet. I don't know if we will be going next week or not. I think we may just on our own....when there are less people in the pool.

Last weekend we took a family outing to Shanghai's famous Pearl Tower. The Oriental Pearl Tower stands by the bank of the Huangpu River. The tower is 468 meters high. It is the highest TV Tower in Asia and is the third highest one in the world. In the tower, there is a double-decker elevator which can hold fifty people at a time and two high-speed elevators which run at a speed of 7 meters per second. The sight-seeing floor in the upper sphere is 263 meters (about 862 feet) high and 45 meters in diameter. It's one of the best places to get a bird's-eye view of Shanghai. The view was totally amazing. It was not the clearest day when we were there but it was still great. Here are a couple of pictures.

The last picture shows the Jin Mao Tower and the building being built next to it. The Jin Mao tower is 88 stories tall and is currently the fifth tallest building in the world. The building being biult next to it is the Shanghai World Financial Center. When completed, it will be the tallest building in the world with 101 stories. Hopefully we will go up into the Jin Mao tower soon. I'm sure it will provide another great view of this amazing city.

Hope y'all have a great week!

"I'm a big boy!"

2007-06-28T15:23:00.000+08:00

Hey all! I hope your week has been great so far! We have had a pretty good week. It's been kinda warm here. Most days it's in the 90's with 100% humidity. So with the heat index it's been over 100. I know it's been even hotter for the folks in Alabama! But we are surviving. I bet you Michigan folks are melting just thinking about it!!! ;-)

I took the boys swimming at the athletic club on Tuesday evening. That was quite an event. I thought since Gabe was starting swimming lessons next week it would be a good idea to have him in the pool at least once before lessons start. Especially since he usually won't leave the steps. The lessons will take place in the kids pool which is about 2 1/2 feet deep. It took almost an hour of coaxing but, Gabe finally left the edge to discover he could stand up and keep his head above the water. "I'm a big boy, I'm a big boy!!!" He yelled as he began to jump around. Only to jump so much that he lost his footing and slipped under the water. So, a half hour later, after sitting on the edge wimpering, he finally ventured out again. "I'm a big boy again Mom," he whispered as he stood totally still, lest he slip under again. Though it was slow going, the event was really a milestone for Gabe. He is very excited about his "swimming school" (as he calls it) starting. Hopefully he'll still feel that way next week.

Several of you commented on our white furniture via blog posts and e-mail. For some reason, we were able to pick all of the furniture for the apartment except that so, white is what they gave us. By that first night, it had a chocolate pudding stain the size of a cantelope, some cheese ground in, and a smear of strawberry jelly on it. And it's not like I was letting the boys use the furniture as plates or anything. It just got there somehow. Needless to say, I knew white wasn't going to work. Our Ayi (pronounced I-E) Chen, had one of her friends, a seamstress, come over and measure the furniture. I ordered the fabric online with the help of my friend Wei, and before I knew it....slipcovers! Would you believe the labor cost to make one large sofa slipcover and two oversized chair slipcovers was only $30!?! It may not be a big deal to those of you that don't know much about that kind of thing but, let me just say that I was in disbelief when they told me it was only $30 for three custom made slipcovers. Here are a few pictures of the new look.

They have allready proved to be a great purchase. Maddox threw-up yougrt all over a chair this morning. All I had to do was pull it off and throw it in the wash. It was AWESOME! Not the throw-up, just how easy it was to clean up. :-)

Thumb sucking, a smelly man & and a sarcastic husband

2007-06-25T10:42:00.000+08:00

I hope y'all are all doing well. I know it's been awhile since I have posted anything. Time really seems to be going by so quickly here. I think that's a good sign...right? I keep meaning to go online and post, I just get busy I guess.

Anyway, I don't really have anything amazing to say. We have not had any out of this world experiences lately. We have just been "normal". Which I KNOW is a good thing. The boys have totally settled in. They have a routine. They have made friends. They feel comfortable here. Gabe is even starting to naturally substitute Chinese words in place of English words when he can. For that matter, so is Maddox. Gabe will start swimming lessons next week. It will be interesting to see how that goes. He likes the water lots; he just always likes it from the steps. The class is for 4 year olds and up so he's going to be the youngest one there. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully by the tenth (and final) class he will have at least ventured off the steps!!!

The whole language barrier is really frustrating sometimes. It can also be, well, let me just tell y'all what happened. We were taking the subway (one of the boys favorite things to do) to Best Buy yesterday when the incident occurred. When were in the middle of the herd of people trying to crush themselves onto the subway car, a local man saw Gabe sucking his thumb so he reached up and pulled it out. While this happens to Gabe a lot, I don't think it's something he'll ever get used to or like. (I wouldn't either.) Anyway, his reaction yesterday was to move quickly away from this man as he said, "NO...NO...NO. Don't touch me......PLEASE!!!!" He was obviously upset. I was trying to tell Gabe everything was ok when the Chinese man tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to Gabe and said, "He....um...is...ah....offensive." OFFENSIVE!?! At this point my incredibly sarcastic husband turned to the man and exclaimed, "Well nobody's making you look at him, are they?" While I was bouncing between anger at the Chinese man and frustration at Michael for thinking that sarcasm was the way to handle this situation, the man then said, "He.....um....is.....ah......very aggressive." AGGRESSIVE!?! The kid was just reacting to you, a strange smelling man he doesn't know, invading his personal space by grabbing his hand and pulling his thumb out of his mouth! I am his mother for goodness sake. If I didn't want his thumb in his mouth I would take care of it myself. So Michael is standing there glaring at the man, Gabe is finally starting to calm down, and I am wondering how to handle the situation when the guy smiles huge and says, "I...um...little speak English. You...um...from...um....U.S.?" WHAT!?! Someone should really tell this guy not to talk, at least not in a language he doesn't understand! Michael was looking like he was about to throw down with this guy so I, the calm, cool, and collective person that I am said, "Let's assume that he doesn't know what he's saying ok? Just forget it." My point is that the whole language thing makes for lots of interesting experiences. Some funny, some frustrating, some kinda upsetting. If anything though, it makes we want to learn Chinese faster.

Well, I'm gonna run for now. We are going to the playground. The curly slide is my favorite...

Apartment 401, Block 13

2007-06-14T19:03:00.000+08:00

Here are some pictures of our new dwelling place. I know pictures don't always do things justice, but hopefully this will give you an idea of where we are living. Have a great weekend y'all!

KITCHEN

DINING/LIVING ROOM

GABE'S ROOM

MADDOX'S BEDROOM

GABE & MADDOX BATH

GUEST BEDROOM

MASTER BEDROOM

MASTER BATH

This is the play area located in the middle of the 6 buildings that make up our "complex." This picture was taken from the balcony off Gabe's room.

This picture was taken from the balcony off the guest room. On left (the building with the 4 colored banners) is the grocery store called Carrefour. On the right (the building with the green & red letters on top) is a shopping center & fitness club. In the shopping center is the western grocery store, Starbucks, sporting goods store, and many great restaurants. We spend a good deal of time over there.

Hope this works!

2007-06-14T13:18:00.000+08:00

Hey all! I know it's been a really, really long time. We have not been able to get our internet working at the apartment until today. But it finally is so....

I know I have a lot of catching up to do. And hopefully I will soon. But there is another problem. China has decided to block me from full access to my blogging site. So I can't really do much. I cannot post pictures anything. But as soon as I can I will.

I just wanted you all to know that we are doing well. Work is really crazy for Michael right now but he's happy. The boys and I are making friends here in the area and that had been such a blessing! I hope all of y'all are doing good! Bye for now.....

FINALLY

2007-05-31T20:07:00.000+08:00

THE BIG DAY HAS FINALLY ARRIVED!!! I cannot even begin to express to y'all how excited I am!!! Tomorrow is moving day. We will offically leave our current home of one month at 9 a.m. on Friday. We get the keys to the apartment at 9:45 a.m. and I plan on being in my new home by 9:46 a.m. In fact, I am so eccited that I have drug my husband to the IKEA store several times this week to make purchases that "we just HAD to have, even before moving in." (I'm quoting myself there.) So now are are moving four rather large IKEA bags along with our other 12 pieces of.....well......stuff. We seem to have aquired a large amount of stuff in the month of being here. So in total we are moving 16 pieces of "important things". A far cry from the 6 pieces we arrived here with.

As soon as we are in I'll get some pictures of the new place and post them. Just in case any of you are interested on seeing our home for the next 11 months. Also, that way y'all will know what the place looks like before you come and visit. HINT! HINT! Hope y'all have a great weekend. I know I will!

Electric Power

2007-05-29T18:26:00.000+08:00

Michael and I have discussed it several times. In the event of a medical emergency, we would like to be brought to this hospital. Perhaps something was lost in the translation of this place's name? Or perhaps they just want us to think they have something the competition doesn't. Either way, the thought of having electric power is reassuring!

Golden Tree & Pearl Tower

2007-05-23T16:46:00.000+08:00

This is was very beautiful to see. Hanging off this tree were hundreds of red ribbons. The locals would purchase a ribbon and throw it up into the tree. It woud bring them good luck. This is a culture that puts so much stock into luck. It seems to me that most things here have some kind of bad or good luck attached to them. This beautiful tree was certainly of the good nature. By the way, that's me and the boys in the center of the picture. They are in their new, fancy stroller. Another bribe from Michael. :-)

This is China's Pearl Tower on the left. It is a television tower. People can go up into it, though we haven't yet. It's on our to do list. I'll take some pictures when we're up and post them.

Home Sweet Home...Almost

2007-05-21T15:04:00.000+08:00

Several of you have asked with apartment we picked. So, drum roll please..............Option #3! Ok, so maybe which apartment we picked is not a very exciting topic for you but, it is for us. After 3 weeks of hotel life we are MORE than ready to be in our own place. Only 10 days, 8 hours, and 51 minutes to go. Believe me, I am literally counting down the minutes. We move in on June 1st. Yeah!

I just want to say that I love my husband. He may have moved me to China but, he bought me this nice computer I am currently using so that I could keep up with you family and friends. Since we have been here, I have been able to Video Chat with my family back in Alabama and that has been such an awesome blessing! Gabe loves to talk to his Nonnie, Poppie, Mimi, and Uncle Chris on the "new con-pewter" as he calls it. And this morning I was able to Video Chat with my friend Judy back in Kalamazoo. It was so great to talk to and see her. So, if anyone else out there has a Mac with video, let me know so we can video chat. I can also talk to anyone who has an AIM account and a microphone. Just let me know.

I love you Michael, you buy the best bribes!

Things are going well here. Well, almost anyway. I got ripped off by a taxi driver today. He purposly drove the long way to the store so it would be a higher fare. Boy was I mad. And being that I only speak 5 Chinese words, I couldn't even argue with him about it! The usual fare from our hotel to the place we went is 15 RMB. Our fare today was 22 RMB!!!! I wrote down his taxi ID number and the taxi complaint hotline number, thinking I would call and complain. The only problem was I DON'T SPEAK CHINESE AND THEY DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH!!!!!!! Can you tell I'm still more than a little mad about it? I guess I should get over it. And the truth is, the amount of money I'm complaining about is less than 1 U.S. dollar. It's just the principal of the matter! Anyway......

Here is my new favorite picture of the boys. Hope y'all enjoy it as much as we do! We love all you friends and family lots and lots! When are y'all coming to visit? :-)

Steering Wheel

2007-05-19T17:26:00.000+08:00

Here are a couple pictures of us riding the "steering wheel" (as Gabe says) at one of the Zoo's here in Shanghai. It was a pretty old, poorly maintained looking farris wheel. I was more than a little scared to ride it. Who knows about China's saftey codes on those kinds of things! But it must have been ok because we survived to tell the tale.

Shopping

2007-05-16T14:16:00.000+08:00

This is my Mom shopping for my sister Emily a shirt. Lots of shopping like this everywhere. It is great fun bargening with the people. They act so upset about the price when you offer less but, as soon as they see the cash it suddenly becomes all good! Can't wait to shop to furnish our our apartment with lots of fun things!

This was a shopping stall in a part of the old city. My Mom is in the center back part of the picture holding Maddox. It was a very colorful stall as you can see.

PICTURES!!!

2007-05-14T22:33:00.000+08:00

MADDOX AND THE GIANT CRAB. WE WENT TO THE AQUARIUM HERE IN SHANGHAI. DESPITE MADDOX'S FACE IN THE PICTURE HE REALLY ENJOYED THE DAY THERE!

GABE LOVED THE BOATS HERE ON THE HUANGPU RIVER. HE SAYS HE'S READY TO GO SAILING!

A VIEW OF THE HUANGPU RIVER AT NIGHT.

THIS IS A SMALL PART OF THE "OLD CITY." IT WAS VERY CROWDED THE DAY WE WERE THERE. IT'S BEEN MODERNIZED THOUGH, WE ATE LUNCH A MCDONALD'S JUST AROUND THE CORNER.

Gotta love English!

2007-05-14T21:36:00.000+08:00

Finally!!! By chance just a few minutes ago I was able to change the language setting for my blog website to English. I would like to claim some kind of "amazing personal power" made the discovery possible but, truth be told I just stumbled across it by accident. But the point is...now I know what I am actually doing. Well, kinda anyway. ;-)

By the way, look at the previous blog then vote. Read on and you will understand! Have a great week!

2007-05-14T14:37:00.001+08:00

HGTV’s HOUSE HUNTERS, SHANGHAI

Welcome to House Hunters, Shanghai! Below you will see our top three choices for housing. After reading the descriptions of each, cast your vote, via a post, for the accommodation that you think we should pick. They all have their good and bad points. Since y’all are our valued family and friends your opinion matters to us! Vote soon. I know pictures would help but I still can’t get the site in English. But I will say they are all very fancy and new! I guess you will have to use your imagination. I gave the best descriptions I could without writing 4 pages on each. ☺

OPTION #1 (Century Residency)
Location: West Downtown Shanghai. 15 minute ride to grocery shopping. “Western” style grocery shopping is a 20 minute ride away.
Michael’s Commute: 2 hours (one way) via personal driver. Crazy driving here in downtown Shanghai. Would be lots of stop and go through downtown.
Apartment Specifics: Approx. 2,152 square feet. Located on the 18th floor of a 30 story building. Awesome view of downtown Shanghai. Fully furnished with stuff they pick. 3 bedrooms, 2 ½ baths, combined living/dining room, kitchen, maid room/laundry room. Washer/dryer and typical kitchen appliances. Two large HD/plasma/flat screen TV’s.
Apartment Description: You enter this one into a small entry way. To your right is the entrance to the kitchen and laundry room. To your left (from the entry way) is the dining/living room. Off the living/dining room is the hallway with all of the bedrooms and bathrooms. The master bath is attached to the master bedroom. The other two rooms share a bath off the hallway. The living room is not visible from the kitchen since the kitchen is off by it’s self. This apartment has one balcony off the living room.
Apartment Complex Amenities: Twice a week housekeeping. Indoor swimming pool located in basement, gym, tennis court, indoor and outdoor children’s play equipment. The indoor children’s playroom makes McDonald’s best playroom look like nothing. It is literally the size of 4 McD’s play sets. It’s huge! The clubhouse where all of this is located is across a busy street.

OPTION #2 (Shimao Riveria Garden)
Location: East edge of Downtown Shanghai. On the east side of the Huangpu River. 10 minute ride to grocery shopping. “Western” style grocery shopping is a 35 minute ride away.
Michael’s Commute: 10 minute ride to subway station, 10-15 minute subway ride, then a 2 hour drive via personal driver. Approx. a (one way) 2 hours and 20-25 minute commute total.
Apartment Specifics: Approx. 3,300 square feet. Located on the 41st floor of a 50 story building. Amazing view of the river, Pearl Tower and the Jinmao Tower (all major sites of Shanghai). Fully furnished with stuff they pick. 4 bedrooms, 3 ½ baths, combined living/dining room, kitchen, maid/laundry room. Washer/dryer and typical kitchen appliances. Two large HD/plasma/flat screen TV’s, plus smaller one in master bath. Has private elevator.
Apartment Description: This one has a mother-in-law floor plan. You enter this one into a small entry way. To your left are the living/dining room and the master suite. To your right is the entry to the kitchen and laundry room, also the hallway with the other bedrooms and baths. One of the guest bedrooms has a bathroom attached. The other two share a bathroom off the hall. The living is only partially visible from the kitchen since the kitchen is in the opposite direction. The apartment has no balcony.
Apartment Complex Amenities: Daily or weekly housekeeping. Indoor and outdoor swimming pool, gym, sauna, indoor and outdoor children’s play equipment, restaurant, mini golf, mini beach, squash. The outdoor pool is unbelievable! It’s actually a large wave pool with a 20 x 50 yard sand beach running along side. The clubhouse where all of this is, is at the base of the building where this apartment is located.

OPTION #3 (Green Court)
Location: Far East Shanghai. Actually in an area called Pu Dong. This area is a huge Ex-Pat area. It’s much less busy and there are actual grassy areas. Our friends that live in Shanghai live in this area. There is a huge community center close by that offers play groups, activities, cooking lessons, etc. Grocery shopping is literally across the street. Also a specialty store that sells “western” style groceries is across the street.
Michael’s Commute: In the AM it would be a 30 minute ride to a train station via personal driver. Then a 45-50 minute train ride. Then a 30 minute ride to work via personal driver. Approx a 1 hour and 50 minutes commute. In the PM traffic would be worse for the ride back to the apartment from the train station. So he would possibly ride the subway. The PM commute would be approx 2- to 2 ½ hours depending on traffic.
Apartment Specifics: Approx 2,841 square feet. Located on the 4th floor of a 6 story building. No amazing views here because Pu Dong (where this one is) is comparable to a suburb. Fully furnished with things we choose. 4 bedrooms, 2 ½ baths, combined living/dining room, kitchen with bar counter, separate laundry room. Washer/dryer and typical kitchen appliances. Two large HD/plasma/flat screen TV’s.
Apartment Description: You enter this one into a foyer area. Off to the left is the living/dining room and the ½ bath. Straight ahead off the foyer is the kitchen. Off the foyers right side is a long hallway. At the end of the hallway is the master suite and all along the hall are the other 3 bedrooms, bathroom, and laundry room. This apartment has three balconies. One off of the master suite and two of the three other rooms have one each.
Apartment Complex Amenities: Weekly housekeeping. Indoor swimming pool, gym, indoor and outdoor children’s play equipment, aerobics room. The clubhouse where all of this is located at is across the street and around the corner. So an optional membership to an outside health club is offered. A shuttle bus would take us there.

That’s it. If you have any questions post it and I’ll answer it. So family and friends…vote away!

I don't read Chinese

2007-05-05T15:16:00.000+08:00

So if you are wondering why there are no pictures up and not very many new entries, here is why. I don't read Chinese. And when I open up the website for blogger it comes up in Chinese. So, it was a miracle I even figured out how to post anything. I have looked at Apple's website (since my computer is a Mac Book) but I can't seem to find the answer to my question there. Anyone have any pointers? I'm also having trouble finding a phone number for Apple support or I would just ask them. I would really like to be able to show y'all some of the AMAZING stuff we have seen and experienced. I just can't figure it out. HELP!

We have been spending our days wondering around some of the better-known areas. This week is a major Chinese holiday (their Labor Day) so everything has been even more crowded than usual. And with 20 million or so people living in such a small area you might be able to picture just how crazy it is around here right now. Gabe and Maddox always attract a TON of attention. I know you might think the Mom in me is bragging but I'm truly not! Every time we stop pushing the stroller around within 20 seconds there are no less than 15 locals around jabbering away at us. Yesterday my Mom counted almost 50 people crowding around. Pointing, laughing, touching (Gabe HATES that), and wanting to take our picture. We try to be polite as they are just curious. But these people have no sense of personal space. Those of you who know Gabe well know how he is about being touched sometimes. He seems to be dealing with it as well as he can though. Maddox just smiles at everyone. I think he kind of likes all of the attention. Yesterday while we were eating lunch at McDonalds (yes McD's. It's about the only thing Gabe will eat so far. Except the $8 box of Pop Tarts we found) two little boys came up to us and were wanting to talk to Gabe. It was so funny watching them with Gabe. No one knew what the other was saying but they were all smiling and laughing. Each of the boys had a whistle made out of a seashell around their necks that they took off and wanted to give to Gabe and Maddox. So we gave them two "matchbox" trucks that we had. The little Chinese boys could not have been more excited!!! And so were Gabe and Maddox. They have been blowing, as Gabe says "the Chinese shell whistle the Chinese boy gave me" nonstop since then.

Michael left for 4 1/2 days in Italy this morning. So it's just mom, the boys, and me. I think we will all do fine though. It's really not that hard to get around right now. When we want to go somewhere we just get a hotel employee, who speaks some English, to tell the taxi driver where we want to go. When we are ready to come back to the hotel we show a taxi driver the hotel business card. That works ok until you get a taxi driver who can't read. Then things get a little complicated. But thank goodness that's only happened once so far!

Tomorrow we will be going to meet up with Amy (and her husband & son) whose parents we went to church with in Montgomery. It will be great to see some "normal" people. They have already been so helpful with the move via e-mail. So it will be great to finally meet them in person. They will also be able to show us around the Ex-Pat area near with they live. Ex-Pat (I'm not sure if that's the correct spelling) refers to someone who lives in country that's not their home country. There are two major areas in Shanghai where Ex-Pats live. We will be living in one of them. In those areas are community centers, other Ex-Pats, and English speaking people. The community centers organize activities like basketball leagues, cooking lessons, play groups, etc. It will be great to have those connections to help us feel more at home and make friends.

Well, enough rambling on for now. Hopefully I can figure this blog site out soon and give y'all a visual on the things here. If you have any suggestions on how to get English on the blogging site let me know! Love y'all!

New Time Zone....What New Time Zone?

2007-05-03T04:23:00.000+08:00

Michael and I awake to the sound of two children saying "Mommy..Daddy...time to get up. All done sleeping." Oh, how sweet. The only problem is it's 2:30 a.m. I'm thinking the boys have not adjusted to time zone yet. So, here we are, two hours later. All of us playing at 4:30 in the morning. I feel sorry for the people sleeping in the rooms next to us. Hopefully they are deep sleepers.

Things went ok yesterday. We experienced a couple of Shanghai taxi rides. Let's just say my Mom's knuckles were very white the entire ride. And her hands a little stiff when we arrived. The boys just thought it was a kind of amusement park ride. They loved it!

We went to a "CarreFour" store. That's their kind of grocery store. My Mom and I wanted a curling iron. It was quite an ordeal. Trying to ask the store employees where those were was a riot. We each had no idea what the other was saying. We were making motions that look like using one and the girls working there had no idea. We did notice that most of the women here have straight hair. We did fine a curling eventually. We just happened to stumble across them. They were with the vaccum cleaners. Of course, with the vaccum cleaners! I should have known that.

Well, I hope to get some pictures up soon. Keep checking. Miss y'all!

24 Travel Hours

2007-05-02T07:12:00.002+08:00

24 travel hours later and we made it! We got into the hotel last night around 10:30 pm. I could fill up pages and pages about the flights and the travel but I won't. Like I said while in Tokyo, the boys did as well as they possibly could have. They were champs!

First Impressions:
*It was dark when we got here so not many.
*They drive like maniacs. Mom, Maddox, and myself almost died. I'm not kidding!
*The Regent Hotel where were are currently staying is really swank. But, it's a hotel. And the idea of finding an apartment soon sounds better and better.

Well, I need to get my stuff together. Two kids to take care of and all that. I'll post again when I have actually seen some stuff and I have "good" things to report. Love y'all!!

We've made it...to Tokyo anyway.

2007-05-01T16:15:00.000+08:00

Ok. So we are sitting in the airport in Tokyo. It's 5:17 p.m. here (Tuesday, May 1st), which means it's 4:17 a.m. in Kalamazoo, and 3:17 a.m. in Montgomery. I envy those of you lying in your comfortable beds at home....sleeping so peacefully. My body is acting like it's asleep. But alas, a time to sleep will come. I hope so anyway!

We will begin boarding our plane for Shanghai here soon. So I don't have much more time. But I would like to say...praise God! He truly is good. Though the flight from Detroit to here was a LONG 13 hours, the boys could not have handeled it better! While I know God was taking care of their spitits and their bodies, I would just like to say that having Nonnie along to help out was also a huge blessing!

So the bottom line is this. Only 5 more travel hours to go.

P.S.- Much love and thanks to Mandy, Drew, Noah, Jason, Sarah (& baby), and Tyler for sending us off. We already miss y'all!

My first attempt...hopefully not my last!

2007-04-19T06:09:00.000+08:00

Ok...so here I go. This is my first attempt at this "blogging " thing. Those of you who know me best know that this is a stretch for me. Especially since I'm lucky to know how to turn a computer on sometimes. But that aside, I'm going to do the best I can.

I hope this blog will serve as a way for y'all (our family and friends) to keep up with us as we experience our adventures in Shanghai, China. I will attempt to update the blog regularly with pictures and entries. That is assuming I have good stuff to tell y'all about. I guess if no good stuff comes up, I'll just start making stuff up. That might be more fun anyway!

So for those of you who don't know the schedule here it is. Our flight leaves from Kalamazoo, Michigan on Monday, April 30th around noon. We fly to Detroit and then leave from Detroit for a 13 hour flight to Tokyo. We have a 2 hour layover in Tokyo then we leave there and fly to Shanghai. We will arrive in Shanghai on Tuesday, May 1st around 9:30pm. That's the plan.

So now for the really awesome news. My Mom has decided to come with us! Not for the entire year, though that would be great! But she will be flying over with us initially and staying for about 10 days. Is my Mom not awesome or what!?! It will be such a blessing having her there to help us. Hopefully it will also help her feel better about us being over there, seeing everything with her own eyes.

Well, as you can imagine we have just a "little" bit of work to do here. Getting ready to leave the country for a year and all. So I'm signing off for now. 再见-That's goodbye in Chinese!