Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! We have just finished up a fun Halloween night and I thought I would post a few pictures for everyone to see. It is certainly a notable Halloween...not because we are in Shanghai but because this is the first year in 5 years that I do not have a single princess trick or treating! Amazing really!

Leah was Tigress from Kung Fu Panda. Fang actually put all the decorations on Leah's shirt. I showed her a picture of Tigress and gave her a solid red tank top and she brought back this amazing shirt for Leah to wear. Have I mentioned how blessed we are here!
Lauren was an Egyptian Princess - she made the head dress and cape herself.

And Kate was June from the Little Einsteins (admittedly Kate's costume is a little lame as we could not find a solid purple dress anywhere so we had to settle for the closest purple dress we could find in the closet. Luckily at 2 she doesn't really care that much!)

Our complex organized it's first trick or treat ever this year and it was great fun. The management office as well as the girl arranging it expected a few houses to participate. Amazingly, there were 85 houses handing out treats and over 150 kids trick or treating. I had absolutely no idea that there were so many kids in our complex. The girls had a great time running from door to door. We made friends with a little girl down the street from us and she went with us along with the other 2 Deere families here. Kate was content to sit in the stroller most of the time. It was pretty funny because I would ask her if she would like to go up to a house and she would look over at the house and then decide - sometimes yes, most times no. I'm not sure what it was about some of the houses that enticed her enough to get out of the comfy stroller to go get treats.

Speaking of treats...now trick or treating in China brings a whole new set of treats that we have never seen before! The girls had a great time going through their bags checking out all the treats. Probably the highlights were someone gave us little tiny apples, someone gave them a handful of peanuts in the shell and LOADS of hard candies. Very little chocolate!

One more of the whole crew...

From Trick or Treat

Hope you all have a great time trick or treating and that you get more treats than tricks!

Out and about

Here we are...quite a site riding around the streets of Shanghai. Leah and Lauren have gotten really great at navigating around all the bikes, scooters, cars and motorcycles. We had a fun day today and I'm so proud of how great the girls are doing.

Hangzhou - Shanghai's Garden...

Well, it is Saturday night and we just got back from another short weekend trip. This time we went to Hangzhou - a two hour drive South of Shanghai. It is a beautiful and famous city in China and the place that all the Shanghainese people go for weekend trips. Hence the name, Shanghai's Garden. In the midst of Hangzhou is West Lake which is Hangzhou's main attraction.

So Leo picked us up on Friday and we started our trip. Fortunately for us, the highway traffic was MUCH better for this trip and we were in Hangzhou in a little less than 2 hours. After getting checked into the hotel, we found a really authentic Chinese place to eat...Papa John's! After pizza, we were off to explore West Lake. It is this beautiful lake that has lots of old bridges, pagodas, walking paths, etc. all around it. We walked one of the causeways that cuts across the lake and enjoyed just being outside in the fresh air. John had Kate in a backpack on him and boy, did he get lots of stares! I mean, we get lots of stares and gawking anyway but put a Chinese baby in a cool looking backpack on the back of a big, strong American man and you have the makings of a small side show. Leo said that you would think we were Superstars the way people stop and look at us. We like to do little experiments. For example, f Leo walks ahead of us holding the hand of Lauren and Leah no one even notices them. If they come back and hold our hand and walk with us...instant show! It can be kind of funny or mildly annoying depending on what mood we are in! :)

Someone gawking so much so that he is video taping us - so John decided to return the favor and photograph him! And as I now think about it...we have really "one upped him" by putting him on the world wide web! :)

After taking in all the beauty of West Lake, it was back to the hotel to freshen up and then a quick 5 minute walk to dinner. We ordered a host of delicious things and enjoyed a great dinner. There was a night market another 5 minute walk from the hotel that we walked to. It was great. It's a regular street during the day but at night it transforms into a closed off pedestrian street filled with every kind of anything you could want. It is definitely for the locals as I'm pretty sure we were the only "foreigners" there. "Foreigners" is what we are so lovingly referred to as by Leo and most of the Chinese! It was lots of fun and even Lauren got into the spirit and bargained in Chinese (with Dad's help) to get a hair pretty that she wanted. The vendor got a kick out of Lauren telling him "tai gui le" which means too expensive!

This morning we woke up and went to a Buddhist temple in Hangzhou. The best part about the temple is that it was up on the mountains that surround West Lake and a really beautiful drive to get to it. The grounds were very beautiful as well with tons of trees and bamboo growing everywhere. In the midst of the grounds is a mountain that has tons of cave-type areas that have been carved with all kinds of pictures. The earliest carvings date back to 951 AD so it was very cool to look at them. The girls loved climbing around the rocks and caves and Kate was happy to be carried in the backpack. We didn't actually go into the Temple because there was another admission price to get into it. We had already paid $20 to get into the grounds so I didn't want to pay more just to get inside the temple...besides that, it actually makes me sad to see the people bowing, praying, etc. to this statue that really can't do anything for them. So we opted to just enjoy the grounds and then head out.

Leo hanging with the big girls on the temple grounds!

The hillsides filled with tea bushes.

Leo then took us to a typical Hangzhou Farmers lunch at an outdoor restaurant near the temple. The whole area around West Lake and Hangzhou is famous for their tea-Long Jing tea (or something like that). It's a green tea and very delicious. All along the road going from the temple to where the restaurant was the hillsides was full of tea bushes. It was really amazing. So, as you know by now, I'm squeamish when it comes to eating at random places but Leo assured me once again that this place we were going to was good so we sat down to have the specialty, Beggars Chicken, and a ton of other things, including Lauren's favorite - shrimp. The chicken came out in a big bowl simmering in yummy broth. It was really delicious but interesting at first because when I say the chicken came out - I mean the WHOLE chicken...neck, head, feet, everything!

Leah thought it was a hoot that the chicken head was just sitting right there on a plate, which is funny because Leah is the most squeamish of all the girls. Here she is giving it a drink of her apple juice.

After finishing most of the chicken they took the bones out of the broth, added rice to it and cooked it some more. The rice cooked in that broth was absolutely delicious! Lauren sat happily peeling and eating her little baby shrimps and wasn't even bothered by the fact that she had to pull the heads off first before peeling and eating. Have I mentioned what troopers we have for daughters! After a long lunch, we got back in the car and headed back home for Shanghai.

It was such a fun quick trip and neat to see one of China's famous cities. If you want to see more photos of the trip you can click on the album below.

10-2008

Our terracotta warrior

Jamie and Micah - here is the picture of John's new terracotta warrior you wanted to see. He is about 12" tall. John actually wants the life size version of it...no, I'm not kidding, so this is a slight compromise. I say slight because I'm pretty sure we will end up with the life size version before we leave China because John is very determined to bring one home. He thinks it would be good for scaring off potential suitors when the girls are older (you know, like 25!) This is the archer but there are tons of different ones. John likes this one best because he says that the warrior is actually kneeling before the King of Kings.

Lots to tell..

Well, I, of course, meant to post many times in the last week but am just now getting it done. To start with, my beloved, John, celebrated his 40th birthday last week. Can you believe it? I certainly couldn't and we had loads of fun teasing him about his gray hair and his "old age". Of course, I couldn't tease him too much since I'm not too terribly far off!For his birthday, Fang was very sweet and made a very traditional birthday lunch. She made noodle soup with very long noodles to wish him a long life and several other really yummy things. Leo explained to us that the Chinese really don't do much for birthdays each year but the "10's" are the big ones so 10, 20, 30, etc. John was showered with gifts - a Terracotta warrior statue that he had been wanting from me, a painting of the "Lauren" tower from the girls (this is actually the Oriental Pearl Tower but because Lauren loves it so much our family calls it the Lauren tower), a beautiful tea tray from Leo (we had the tea set from John's travels but didn't have the tea tray which is needed to serve tea the traditional Chinese way...which we now know:)! ) and a beautiful drawing of Chinese birds from Fang. So all in all it was a great day!
This week is a national holiday week in China - the equivalent of our 4th of July except that they take a whole week off. So on Monday, we had Leo take us to Suzhou, a beautiful city about an hour and a half from Shanghai. Well, it would be an hour and a half, if it wasn't the first day of the holiday with what seemed like all 20 million Shanghai people trying to leave the city...yeah, we didn't really take that into consideration when we planned our day! So it took us about 3 hours with all the traffic to get there but fortunately the girls were entertained with Kung Fu Panda (already on DVD here - amazing, huh! Ha!) and a variety of other movies. John was great because he didn't have to drive and I was happy to just be "going somewhere" for the day. Once we got to Suzhou, we had lunch at a dumpling restaurant that I have to say, if Leo hadn't been with us, I'm sure I would not have eaten there. But since he said it looked fine and I'm trying to be adventurous, we went in and ate. To my surprise, Kate and I had wonton soup and it was actually very good! The girls, John and Leo had noodles which they all said were good. The place was less than clean but I just tried to block it all out and when I prayed over my lunch, I literally prayed, "Lord, please keep us from getting deathly ill!" :) And too my surprise, no one got sick and everyone enjoyed their lunch...shows what I know!
From there we went to see the Leaning Tower of China. Well, I don't remember what the real name of it is but it's literally a leaning tower in the midst of a beautiful park. We hiked all around it and thoroughly enjoyed our day. Leo went with us through the park and he was so amazed at ALL the stares we get and all the comments. I'm starting not to notice it as much which is good. The ones that really crack us up though are the older people that literally stop in their tracks and stare at us the entire time we walk by even turning around to continue looking at us! I don't know if the girls notice much or not - they haven't said if they do. We do on a very rare occasion get scowling looks from some so we try to shield the girls from those as much as possible. After the park, we shopped through some little alleyway stores and had a great time. I got a very cool duvet that is filled with silk (instead of say, goose down) for our king size bed for $35! You gotta love that! Another guy later down the way, tried to sell us a "better" quality one but all we were thinking was, "hey - it fits, it's warm, it seems like it will do what we want it to do so we're good!" After driving around Suzhou to see a bit more of it, we headed home. It was a fun day and it felt great to just go somewhere different even if the traffic was terrible!
Last night, we got to see a huge fireworks display for the holiday right from the balcony off of my and John's room. Century Park (very close to where we live) was having a big celebration and it was fun to get to watch them. I will say that it is by far the best and longest fireworks show I have ever seen. It lasted for almost an hour and was amazing. John said, "I bet if it's on TV it's even more amazing!" Ha! The big girls watched for a while but then headed off to play Wii with Dad so Kate and I sat and watched the rest of it by ourselves and loved it!

I have a lot of pictures from this past week so I will upload some to this blog but for those of you who want to see more (OK, we realize it's probably only our parents and that's OK!), I'm uploading a bunch more to our Picasa album that you can view by clicking here, Our online album

or clicking on the album below:

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9-2008