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.