We are off to Shanghai

We have everything all packed again, which was no small feat, and ready to load into the van. The question of the day is how do you get 6 people and 10 big bags all into a minivan? We figured the puzzle out when we came from the Beijing airport so I'm sure we will figure it out again. It does look a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies, though.

We have our house orientation tomorrow so that should be fun. The girls are looking forward to seeing the house as are John & I. John and I have seen a similar house/similar floor plan but we have not seen our actual house so it will be fun to see!

I'll post more when we are settled. Hope you all are doing well!

One Week Later

Well, we have had a good week. I can't remember what all we did to keep busy but we've certainly had some fun. We went on a taxi ride to see the Bird's Nest stadium and Aquatics center for the Olympics. They are very cool looking and HUGE! I guess all Olympic stadiums are but this is the first one I have ever seen. It was a little lost on the girls since they have no clue what the Olympics are. We tried to explain it to them but I think until they actually see it on TV they won't understand it. Beijing is definitely gearing up for the festivities. They have started their air pollution control policies and only allow odd licensed number cars drive on certain days and even on other days. They have done it all week and I don't really notice a difference but I guess it is helping. They aren't allowing any big trucks to drive on the road either. It is hot and humid here so lots of days you can't see the sky it's just a thick haze but I'm not sure if that is pollution or just thick humidity. I guess a combination of the two.




We felt very successful today. Lauren lost one of her eye pad pieces on her glasses yesterday. I know I brought extras but for the life of me I cannot find them anywhere so I called the eye doctor in Dubuque and they are sending some replacements to us via my friend, Cathy. But this morning we woke up and decided we would walk about 20 minutes from the hotel where we had seen a big glasses shop. Once we got there we showed them and "told" them what we needed. They were able to switch out the eye pad pieces with no problem. I was a little worried at first as they were just snapping things off the glasses and all I kept thinking was, "oh, please don't break them." They, of course, did not break them and fixed them wonderfully-all for free and with a cup of tea for John and I to boot...and not a word of English! :)

I think the girls are finally beginning to acclimate to the heat and the walking as today we walked the whole distance without one complaint of "I'm hot" or "how much more walking". Lauren did ask once we were done with the glasses, "can't we just grab one of those cabs?" It made me laugh. Two weeks ago I'm not even sure she knew what a cab was and now she's an expert at "grabbing" them! :) We did reward their good behaviour with ice cream cones from McDonalds on our way home. You've got to love getting 3 ice cream cones for less than a dollar!

Here are a couple of pictures from our walk today:
Now this one is really funny to us and not at all unusual here in China! John and I just crack up at the naked babies that are out and about. The other day when we were at the park here at our apartment there was a Grandma with her grandson that was probably 15 months old. He had on socks, shoes and a very small tank top like the one below on. The amazing thing though was that he was just going every where in the park - sliding down the slide, swinging, playing on the teeter-totter all bare bottomed.

The Dirt Market

This morning we took a taxi to the Dirt Market here in Beijing. It is this very cool, very huge flea market that is held every Saturday and Sunday. This is a very authentic Chinese place and a little off the tourist path so there were very few other non-Chinese there. It was teeming with people and stalls and stalls of stuff. Everything from beautiful artwork to bags to porcelain stuff to Chairman Mao red books. We had a great time going through all the little rows looking at stuff and, of course, we found at least a few treasures we couldn't live without. Leah had a great time looking at everything because she is my shopper. Lauren did great for most of it but got hot at the end so was quick to inform us that she was hot...several times! Kate was content to stroll through it all in her stroller just taking it all in. We had several people stop to "talk" to us about our "san ge nu er" (our three daughters). I point the Chinese portion out because that is all John and I could understand of the conversation but they were happy to talk with us for a couple of minutes about something regarding them! :)

Here are a few pictures of our adventure today:



Leah and Lauren each got this handmade wrap around skirt thing. I'm not sure what is significant about them but the girls were drawn to the bright colors on the skirts and they really did look cute on them.

Ice cream

Today was another good day. Finally all the girls slept until about 7:30am this morning so I think we are officially over the jet lag hump. Praise the Lord for that! It is a surreal feeling though knowing that we are just getting our body clocks set to our "new" life. All the times before in China, I always thought after the first week, "great, our clocks are adjusted and in another week we'll just have to adjust back." What a weird feeling it is to know that isn't so.

We had quite the adventure tonight. John and I saw this very nice, upscale/modern looking shopping center a little ways from our hotel when we were out in a taxi one day. John had walked by it several times back in June on his way to work. So tonight we thought we would just all walk there for dinner. We all got our walking shoes on and Kate got her strolling shoes on and we started out. We decided to take a "short" cut through the park which turned out not to be a short cut at all but at least it was a scenic cut and helped keep the kids minds off of all the walking. As a side note: Lauren said to me last night, "Mom, why do we have to walk everywhere in China?" And when I told the girls we were going to walk to the grocery store the other day, Leah and Lauren in unison said, "WALK?" Life is definitely different here! :)

Anyway, back to the story, we finally got through the park and were getting to the shopping center (after about 45 minutes of walking) and we went in. Right away we noticed that not all of the stores were open yet but it was nice to take a look around. We found a map and decided on where we would go to eat dinner only to find out that none of the restaurants were really open yet - or at least not the ones we would want to visit with 3 kids in tow. So the option we are faced with is: drag 3 starving kids back to who knows where to find something to eat or eat dinner at the only place that was open...Cold Stone Creamery!! When I announced to the girls that we were going to have ice cream for dinner you would have thought that they had just won the lotto. Cute Lauren kept saying, "for true life, Mom...we are going to have ice cream for dinner...for true life?" (this always cracks us up because it is her take on the "for real, mom".) So John and I won parents of the year tonight in the eyes of our 3 girls! They walked the 45 minutes back to the hotel with very little complaint. I have to say that God has certainly blessed us with 3 pretty flexible girls - they really are able to go with flow almost all the time. I am so thankful for that!

Here are some photos of our very happy girls!

One other side note - we really are quite the spectacle here in China. It is funny to see so many people just stare and stare at us. I'm not sure which part is so worthy of the stares - Americans with Chinese daughters or the fact that we have THREE daughters! One little boy in the park today after looking at us kept yelling to his parents - they are Chinese, Chinese! I think he must of thought that we had abducted these 3 Chinese children from someone. :) We do wonder what the Chinese think when they see us. We have heard from some that it makes them sad that they are only allowed one child. John and I think it must feel like an unfair system that allows us to adopt 3 Chinese children yet if we were Chinese we would only be allowed to have 1. I don't know what the answer is but I'm so thankful God has blessed us with these 3 amazing girls.

A couple of fun days!

We spent most of the last two days just enjoying time together as a family. The last two months have been filled with so much busyness and hecticness that it is nice to just hang out together.

Two days ago we went to Chaoyuan Park which is just across the street from the hotel we are staying at here in Beijing. The park is really lovely and will be the site of the Olympic Beach Volleyball games. After entering the gates and walking a short distance we came to the kids “amusement park” area and it was a hoot to see. It’s things you would only see in China, I think.

For one, our girls got their chance to fish for the first time ever. I know, I know they are 5 & 6 years old and have never been fishing – we’re bad parents I guess. But the funniest thing of all is their first time ever fishing was fishing for goldfish! No kidding! Here are pictures to prove it. Leah and Lauren each caught 2. The gentleman was nice enough to even let us keep them but we passed on that option.

Now the 2nd really funny thing we saw was the equivalent of a hamster in the workout ball. There were these big bubbles out on the lake filled with air. Young children (mostly boys) would get in them and try to roll all around the lake. Now keep in mind that it was about 95 degrees outside when we were there and I’m sure inside those bubbles had to be like being inside of a furnace but despite it all the boys looked like they were having fun. Lauren, of course, thought it would be fun to try but we convinced her otherwise. Something about a lack of oxygen comes to mind. And yes, Lynette & Jennifer, if I hadn't witnessed it with my own two eyes I wouldn't have believed John either!



Yesterday we went to an indoor play area much to Leah’s delight. She is really not a huge complainer but I think I have heard her say, “I’m hot, Mom” more times in the last 3 days than in her whole life! The play area was on the top floor of a shopping center and really was fun. They had all kinds of blow up jumpy, bouncy things the kids could play on. The most fun area was this upstairs loft area that was filled with balloons and fans to blow them around. You can’t imagine the squeals of delight that came from that area. I’ll just post some pictures because they really do tell the story better.

And lastly, this photo is just a funny one and something you see often in China. It is amazing how much one person can haul on one bike. I'm just hoping this isn't the way our goods show up from the container! :)

Sorry for all the weird formatting - I'm having trouble with blogger!

The Move Out Week

Last week was a whirlwind of activity. I told John that if this whole process since March has been a marathon last week was certainly the sprint to the finish line! The packers showed up on Monday and started packing everything that I had marked storage. Basically I had to go through the whole house and mark with sticky notes what was going to go to storage. Here Lauren is supervising the packing process.


On Tuesday they took all the boxes and stuff marked storage and moved it out of the house to give them more room to wrap the overseas shipment stuff and finished packing up everything else that was to go to China.

On Wednesday and Thursday they literally wrapped up every piece of furniture and misc. item that would not fit in boxes with paper, corrugated cardboard, shrink wrap and tape. This is the funniest one of all - we have a HUGE bean bag (actually it's called a Lovesac) in our basement. They had to wrap it in paper and then shrink wrap it leaving it looking like the stone that chased after Indiana Jones.

Then on Friday they moved it all onto the 40 foot container. The container went straight from Dubuque to Chicago then got on a train bound for LA. It is scheduled to leave LA's port next week.

It is really wild to see all this stuff go into the container knowing that somehow it is going to get to us half-aworld away! At least, I have faith that it is going to show up! :) Here are a few other shots from the move week.

The girls decided they would rather ride on the airplane instead of in the cargo container.


Here's Dad trying to hold the truck back.

And lastly, here it is leaving our block.

It was really amazing how attached one can get to a house over the course of 7 years. It was certainly a little sad to leave this home that first saw our babies come home from China. There are a lot of memories of first steps, first words, first big girl beds, first swinging on the swingset without mom's help, first lost tooth, etc. I guess that is the beauty of memories though - no matter where we live the memories still go with us.

We have arrived!

Hello all! I just wanted to let everyone know that we arrived safely in Beijing. I'll post more about our move out week tomorrow when I'm not so tired. The flight was a little bumpy in the beginning as we ended up sitting at the gate for 2 hours while they fixed the air conditioning. Needless to say, it was hot on the plane and really not the way you want to start the beginning of a 13 hour flight but we survived it. The big girls did great on the airplane and were very content to do all the stuff we had brought along. Kate did pretty good considering she is 2 1/2! :) She was actually great until it got into those late hours when she just wanted to go to sleep but was having a hard time getting comfy. She finally did sleep for a couple of hours at the end.

Here are a few photos of our journey.



I'll post more soon.

The Final Lap

So, what does it look like to move your family half way around the world? Well, for our family it looks at least a little like this...STOCK UP on the things you love! On Friday friends watched the girls for John and I and we headed out to Walmart and Sam's to do the "big shop". The packers come on Monday and it was one of the last things on the endless list of things to do. Needless to say, the basket at Walmart was full to the brim and our flatbed at Sams was full as well. Here are some of our essentials: pull-ups for Kate, Ranch dressing for Leah, tomato soup for Lauren, Honey Bunches of Oats for me, and for John...well, he'll eat almost anything so really at the end of the day, we weren't worried about him starving! :)


After spending close to four hours shopping, John encouraged me with, "Honey, this is the final lap - we are going to make it." And finally tonight, the end of Saturday, I can see a tiny little finish line WAY out in the distance, but at least I can see the finish line now. And I'm sure he is right - we are going to make it! As much as we hate to leave all of our friends and family here, I am certainly ready to be done with all this "stuff" and plop myself down at a nice big pool in Beijing and just enjoy the girls!

In fact, as I am typing this, Lauren came into me and said "I'm going out on the deck to chase fire flies" and I being the "responsible" mom said, "Honey, it's 9pm you need to go to bed." As the disappointment washed over her face I remembered - we only have 7 more nights to chase after fire flies before we are onto something new and really at the end of the day, it will probably be a blink of my eye and she won't even care about going out to chase fire flies anymore. So with that thought, I said, "put on your shoes, get out there and catch those bugs!" The delight on her face was really beautiful! And within one swift motion she was out the door running around our backyard in her nightgown enjoying every ounce of this moment. I think I'll go join her!

We are back in the house and I thought I would share some pictures of the girls out chasing fire flies.

Happy Birthday Lauren!

Our sweet, sweet Lauren turned 5 today! We had a grand celebration! Lauren chose to have a chef party since she loves to cook. The girls had a great time decorating their cakes. My girls had even more fun eating them tonight after dinner! :)

Happy, Happy Birthday Lauren! We are so glad you were born and so glad God placed you in our family!

1 More Week!

Well, I can't believe it but we are 1 week away from the packing! The packers are supposed to show up at our house next Monday morning to begin the process. I am frantically going around putting sticky notes on everything that is going into storage. There are tons of details we still have to do and the lists are getting longer instead of shorter but my ever faithful, optimistic husband just keeps saying, "it will all get done". He then usually follows that sentence with "now sit down and breathe into this brown paper sack for a minute!" :)

Last week was spent doing Vacation Bible School at our church. A dear friend of mine and I agreed to co-coordinate everything last fall - long before I knew that we would be moving half way around the world 2 weeks after VBS finished! :) But fortunately we had done a lot of the work ahead of time and had a SUPER, FANTASTIC team that helped us pull it all off. This particular VBS was Galilee-by-the-Sea and we turned our church into a Bible times village complete with well, marketplace, costumes for the kids, etc. The kids had a great time! Here are a few pictures from the week. We even got John into the act one day as the town tax collector!