Kate's adoption video...

In honor of Kate's birthday, I decided to make a video of her adoption story.  I used a song from Third Day called Merry Christmas.  It is a song I have loved for years and completely tells Kate's story.  It fits her story specifically because she was born in December and we waited a couple of Christmas' for her to come home but it also fits the life of every orphan while they wait to find their forever family.  Within the video, I have shared some photos you have probably seen before if you follow this blog but also some private pictures of orphanages and cities that we visited on adoption trips.  Most of the pictures are of Kate but I threw in some of Lauren's referral and orphanage pictures as well.

I wanted to share this video so that this Christmas as you enjoy being surrounded by your family, you might take a minute to pray for all the children that are still living in orphanages.  So many long to have a home with a family to love them.  Consider in 2012 what you can do to impact the lives of children living without families all over the world - there are so many great organizations out there that help them.

Blessings to you this Christmas season!  I know as I look in the eyes of my three beautiful daughters that we are truly blessed - all five of us!

If you are receiving this blog post via email, click here to go to YouTube to see it.

Happy Birthday, Kate!

Today, Kate turned a big 6 years old!  I am a bit amazed that our youngest is now six years old - although what is it about the youngest that makes them always seem so little?  I keep blaming it on Kate's stature as she is still wearing a size 4 pants but we are almost in a size 5 now so maybe things will change! :) Despite being the youngest and the smallest, she can hold her own!  We have seen joy continue to unfold in her and are just thankful everyday that we hear her laugh and see her smile!

We had a very fun day filled with friends playing, rainbow birthday cake (she loves all things rainbow), a lunch date with Dad, and topped off with special ride around town at bedtime in her jammies looking at Christmas lights, eating caramel corn and drinking hot chocolate!  She thoroughly enjoyed her day today and was actually worn out by the time we got home!

At dinner we did a question and answer time with Kate and some of her answers were quite funny - and let you in on all things "Kate!"

1. What is your favorite food? Cake

2. What is your favorite thing to play with? My sisters (they both quickly responded, "we're not things.")

3. What do you want to be when you grow up? A spy (she's serious - for the last several years she has wanted to be a Russian spy-no idea why, just saying- but we seemed to cross over now into just wanting to be a spy - Maybe before long, we'll get an American spy!)

4. What is your favorite place in the whole world? Vietnam (the beach there was beautiful!)

5. Where is your favorite place in the house? Mom's bed

6. What do you miss about Shanghai? Indoor play places and having 3 floors and an elevator in our house (yes, we did - it was obnoxious and a whole other story!)

7. What are the things you are most thankful to God for? Having friends, having a mom and dad and having a house.

And last but not least...What will you do now that you are 6?

"Still keep my blanket and sniff on it!!!!"  And just so you know she's serious - this is her, in the car tonight on our way home from the lights.  Ever since she was a little baby she has had either a lovey or this blanket and each night as she goes to sleep (or when she needs comfort) she holds this soft blanket right up to her lip and nose!  Not sure how much longer it will last but we know that she's committed to it at least through her 6th year! :)

On another very exciting Kate moment, she finally has her first loose tooth!  She is beyond excited to finally be among the ranks of the tooth-losing, but was not thrilled with the prospect of Dad pulling out this first one!
Here are a few more pictures of her very fun, very rainbow, birthday-day!

Kate helping to make her rainbow cake.

The finished product...very cute, I might add!

 And by the way, I am aware that it is winter and in her birthday picture above she is wearing a very summer dress, but it was her choice today and...well, there's not much else I can say about that except it was her choice.

So, Happy, Happy Birthday Kate!  You are the most beautiful six year old I know and we are blessed to have you in our family!

Do HOT air!

This was Kate's reaction to our very first, very cold night. We were eating pizza out, finished and ran out to the car. As we are all piling in Kate yells, "close the door - DO HOT AIR!!". John and I just cracked up because the poor child doesn't even know the word heater.

And for the record it was only about 30 outside. Heaven help us when January gets here! Here she is all bundled up! Do you like her very colorful outfit? It's all Kate...let's see how many colors and patterns we can get and call it a "rainbow outfit". I love that it's always bright and happy! :)

Heaven help us!

Yes, this is what we woke up to this morning!  Actually, Lauren woke me up early to let me know that it was snowing!  Oh, yeah!!  I cannot believe that it is November 9th and I woke up to snow!

As you all know, I am NO fan of winter or snow!  I don't see the beauty of it, I don't get the snuggly winter feeling, I don't even really see the fun in it - you know, going outside and freezing until your lips are blue...I just don't love it!  The only saving consolation to the snowfall today was the girls were so excited about it that they zoomed through their school work, ever so diligently, so they could get outside and play in it.  I know it's always fun for kids when it snows - but talk to them in APRIL when it's still snowing and then we'll see!

Now, before anyone criticizes my negative attitude, please remember that I can say all this without abandon because I have told y'all my theory already - you can only complain about one season or else you are just complaining all the time!  So I choose winter - every year, without fail!  You will not hear me complain in the summer - even in Shanghai when it was like a billion degrees outside and as humid as is possible - no complaints from me.

Having said all that, I do want to go on the record as saying I haven't always hated winter.  There was a time when I was young, and living in southern New Mexico and we would get a snowfall.  We would go outside, frolic in it, play to our hearts content and then the next day, we would wake up and for the most part it would be GONE!  That is my kind of snow!  We would go on about our happy lives in winter until the next freak snowstorm occurred.  Here in the Midwest, once the snow covers the ground, rarely do we see the ground again until the springtime thaw.  Now since this storm does seem a bit freakishly early, I'm praying that it will go away and we will have a few more weeks of non-snow covered ground.  I can always hope.

I hope that wherever you are today it is balmy and warm and oh, so lovely out!  If so, go outside and enjoy it a little extra just for me!

Happy Halloween...late!

How many posts have I started on this blog with, "Man, I'm behind on posting?"  Well, chock this one up to it one more time!

The girls had a great time trick or treating and were THRILLED with all the chocolate they received.  They were blown away with all the little mini-candy bars and kept saying, "look, Mom, there aren't any hard candies!"  They were used to all the hard candy from Shanghai and didn't have any real memory of what trick-or-treating in America was like.  Needless to say, they were impressed with their bounty.  They went trick-or-treating with some of our good friends and so that just added so much more to the fun!  Even Kate got into it and was running from house to house - it must be something good if it gets Kate to run! :)

Here they are in all their beautiful Halloween glory - the big girls decided to re-wear costumes from two years back since "no one here has seen them."  Can we just say that was music to my ears! Kate was a butterfly which was easy enough to accomplish with a borrowed body suit and a wings kit from Walmart!  What can I say - I just love America and the ease in which we can get stuff here!

They are standing in our front yard so you can see that we actually had time to get our grass planted before the cold starts and it looks just beautiful, if I do say so myself! :)  It's so nice to have a big expanse of green space to run and play in - Kate says we have our own park!

I'll update more soon.  I have lots more impressions of moving back to the US that maybe one day I will get around to posting...maybe in January! :)

Impressions of America...

by Kate Steed

We are back in the US and have actually been here for almost a month and I am just now getting around to updating the blog.  I thought I would give you a little perspective on America from Kate...since this is her first time living in the US where she can remember it.

As we were driving from Chicago over to our small town, she asked me, "Mom, what's all that green stuff?"  I said, "that is corn, Kate."  She said, "wow, that's a lot of corn."  I told her, "we're still in Illinois, honey, you just wait until we hit Iowa.  We drive by corn fields right in town where we live."  Then about every 20 minutes or so, she would look out the window and say, "still more corn, mom."  She was fascinated to see SO much green space - so many hills and trees and such.  She asked once, "is that a park?" referring to just the beautiful green hills rolling in the distance during our drive.  We are all loving that beautiful blue sky and gorgeous green that is everywhere!

Another funny perspective...I told Kate we were going to go to downtown to go to the library.  So she was very excited to see downtown.  Once we drove the 10 minutes from our hotel that it took to get there, I said, "here's downtown, Kate."  And she said, "where?  Where are all the tall buildings, Mom? You said we were going to downtown - there are no tall buildings down here."  I showed her one of the tallest ones we have and said that was probably the tallest.  She quickly said, "that can't be the tallest building in downtown."  In her little brain, downtown means we go down to downtown Pudong or Puxi in Shanghai where the skyscrapers are everywhere.  We always loved going down there and walking among the tall towers.  For a special treat on one of our last nights in Shanghai, we took them to the top of the World Financial Center and had dinner.  We were on the 91st floor and looking down at the Jin Mao tower and all of the other tall buildings in Shanghai.  The girls loved it!  So for Kate, downtown means skyscrapers and tall buildings - not 10 story buildings!  Even when we were in Chicago, she wasn't impressed with downtown.  I guess when you have grown up a bit in one of the world's largest cities everything else pales in comparison when it comes to tall buildings!

Enjoying the "looking down" view of Shanghai!

Enjoying the walk along the River one last time in Shanghai!

John and I are so thrilled to be driving again.  It sounds glamorous and wonderful to have a driver and it had a few perks (like being dropped off at the door every time) but for the most part it is so freeing to be able to drive ourselves wherever and whenever you want to go.  The hardest part in China was always having to figure out what time to have the driver come because you always had to know exactly where and what you wanted to do the next day.  For Kate, though, not having a driver here is quite problematic...it means she always has to go into the stores with me!  She was spoiled by being able to stay in the car with Leo - not to mention he usually gave her gum or some kind of sweet snack to pacify her while I was gone.  I am not exaggerating when I say that at every single stop for the first two weeks we were here, the first words out of Kate's mouth were "can I stay in the car?"  After several times of saying no and explaining why she has to go in with me, she finally said, with disdain "so this is how it is in America, huh?" I know full well she was thinking - I don't know why everyone thinks this place is so great!   For her, losing the driver has meant more shopping with mom and she isn't really digging that!

Oh, one other comment from Kate about the no driver situation, "Mom's our driver now and the car is always hot!"  Clearly, I should be going out ahead of time and cooling the car down for Princess Kate like Leo always did! :)

There have been loads of other fun things to watch Kate get to experience for the first time.  A funny one was when all 3 girls and I went to Super Walmart for the first time and were on the grocery side.  You would have thought the girls had been living in a hut in the back hills of Indonesia the way they were oohing and aaahing over stuff!  Some of the comments, "Mom, can you believe how many different kinds of cookies there are?" "Have you ever seen so many different kinds of ketchup?" "I had no idea there were this many kinds of cereal."  And the famous, "can we get this and this and this and this and this....?"  I have to admit that even I was a bit overwhelmed by it all.  We were just so used to having two kinds of cake mixes to choose from - chocolate or white - that seeing the endless selection had my head spinning!

I'm sure in the months ahead we will miss Shanghai but right now it is so nice to be back amongst all that is familiar and American.  Even Kate noted, "Mom, I can understand everything that everyone says!" (And her understanding of Chinese was probably the best of all of ours!) That about sums it up!

On a side note, our house is coming right along!  Three weeks from tonight we should be sleeping at our new place!  Now that's exciting!  I really love it and feel so blessed that we will have such a lovely place to call home!  It reminds us of our house in Texas that we loved so much.   It will be our little piece of Texas (with Chinese flair) right here in the Midwest ! :)

Who is ready to eat?

Because I have some delicious and kid-friendly treats for your viewing pleasure...

First up on the menu is the ever-popular appetizer - octopus balls.  Ready to cook so they are very easy.

Then we will have a main course of Squidy Nuggets because, mmmm - what sounds more delicious than cuttlefish nuggets!!

 Then we will wash it all down with an "Old Speckled Hen" beer...not the children, of course!

A difference in cultures

As you can imagine living here in China we have seen MANY differences between our American culture and the Chinese culture.  Some are only slightly different and some vastly different.  It is often hard for us to remember that our culture isn't necessarily better just different than theirs.  It's especially hard to remember that when it comes to things that really in our American way of doing things seem to be just plain rude if done differently.

Well, one of the most obvious differences we see between cultures is in what is viewed as masculine and what is viewed (or not viewed) as feminine. I mean, in the US, everyone knows what looks manly and what doesn't.  Now I know that  you can't make a gross generalization about all Americans in the same way that you can't make gross generalizations about all Chinese but by and large Americans abide by a certain norm that says what color we put our little girls and little boys in, what color of umbrellas men carry, what color bikes men ride on, etc.  Well, here in China you can just throw all those ways of thinking out the door.  John and I are constantly cracking up when we see something like this - pictured below.

Now this is a young man in his 20's walking to work by himself...his girlfriend/wife isn't with him and just not in the picture...he's walking by himself and carrying a very lovely pink umbrella with a little girl and boy standing under a tree kissing!  John and I happened to be walking behind him on Nanjing Road (the major shopping street in Shanghai - think 5th Avenue in NY) and could not help but crack up about his choice of umbrella and how it didn't bother him in the slightest.  As we were walking, another man, probably our age, rides by on a pink bicycle.  And then another man rides by on a lavender scooter.

Another time, I was at Decathlon, a sporting goods store that sells a whole host of things, when a young family walked to the coats beside me.  It was a mom, dad and a little boy.  They were looking at all the coats for little ones and which one do you think they picked up for that little 5 year old boy - a bright, shiny, sparkly, purple one (I'm not kidding) when there was a very handsome brown one right beside it!  They had him try it on and then just raved about how great he looked in.  They proceeded to the checkout and bought it.  All the while, my brain is screaming inside, "that is a girls coat...I mean, seriously, a girls coat - there is no mistake about it.  I know because I have 3 girls and really only 2 of my "girliest" ones would wear that sparkly coat."  But, alas, things are just viewed differently here.  This last example is the one that really solidified the observation for me.

And, I'm not even going to touch the subject of the "man-purse" that these Chinese men carry...you'll have to wait to here John's rendition of that story!

One minor wedding correction...

Ok, I have to update my story about Leo's wedding because John just corrected me after reading it.  He said, "that wasn't some kind of beef soup, that was shark fin soup.  It's what they always serve at weddings." So it shows what I know.  And if anyone ever asks you what shark fin soup tastes like you can tell them it looks like some kind of congealed something or another and tastes like beef broth.  Lauren and John loved it. Lauren had several servings of it.  Kate and I ate it and enjoyed one bowl. Leah took one tiny sip and promptly said, "no, thank you." At least she has good manners! :)  I didn't get a picture of the soup but here it is sitting in front of Leah while she tries to eat some broccoli - notice all the boxes of chocolates stacked in front of her.  None of the girls knew at the time that they were tasting shark fin soup - it's a good thing, I'm sure.

The funniest thing about us eating the shark fin soup was that last year our homeschool group took a field trip to the Shanghai Aquarium. At that time they had a special shark exhibit going on and a whole wall was dedicated to how awful it was to have shark fin soup at your wedding because the fishermen just go out, catch a shark, chop off it's top fin to sell for the Chinese wedding market then just throw out the rest of the shark body.  Now evidently the shark lovers of China (not sure who really makes up this group?) are trying to change the culture by telling the young kids how awful it is.  

The most interesting part of the aquarium day visit though came when they showed our group a video at the shark exhibit.  It was a lovely video for a while and then all of the sudden they showed this beautiful bride and groom walking around the wedding tables when the servers came out.  They took the lid off of what should be the soup but it was just this awful, bloody carcass of a shark.  They flop it down on the table and the blood sprayed all over the bride and it goes on and on at each table. By the end the bride's dress is blood red, literally.  Well, all of us Moms standing there are just gasping at the horror being played out and most of the kids are squealing, "oh gross."  None of us knew quite what to do but thankfully, it finally finished.  Needless to say after that horrific video, Leah, Lauren and Kate will not be having shark fin soup at their wedding - they'll opt for beef broth, I'm sure.  Well done, Shark Lovers of China...both of them!  

Leo's wedding

Our great driver, Leo, got married this past weekend and it was so wonderful to be invited and able to attend the festivities.  Getting married here is quite different than in the US but does have some similarities.  For instance, Leo and Eva actually were officially married last year on 10.10.10 since that is a "lucky" day.  They went to the office where you get married, filled out the paperwork, showed their ID and they walked out married.  I would guess it's similar to going to the courthouse to get married in the States but there was no ceremony at all, it's literally a government office that you walk into single and walk out with a piece of paper showing you are married.  They don't begin living together at that point they wait until the wedding but they are "officially" married.

Then you begin to save and plan for the actual wedding - that took place on June 11th.  The whole day is filled with traditional customs of things that the bride does and things the groom does and the day ends with a dinner party at a hotel or banquet hall.  Leo's was at a lovely hotel.  The room was decorated very similar to how we would decorate for a wedding.  There was a covered canopy that when the whole evening began Eva's father walked her out to it.  Leo then walked down the middle aisle to take her from her dad, and then they walked up the aisle with a flower girl throwing petals on them the whole way.  Leo then said lots of nice words to Eva (I assume they were nice - it was obviously all in Chinese and I could understand about every 5th word!)  John then got to give a speech/a toast to them.  As Leo's boss, we were honored guests at sat at the very head table next to the groom's table.  It was very neat.

Jellyfish

Then Eva left to change into another dress.  We all began eating a host of Chinese delicacies...and by we I mainly mean John, Lauren, Kate and I - Leah ate a lot of chocolates that were on the table! :)  To be fair, John and Lauren really feasted on things like lobster and crab and jelly fish and some kind of beef soup and a host of other things.  Kate and I ate chicken, some lobster and broccoli with bites of everything else tried.  Leah ate chocolates and some chicken and then a lot of watermelon!

Eva then came out in a new dress and took Leo to the stage and then said all kinds of nice things to him.  After that Leo brought Eva's parents to our table to toast us and say thank you for coming.  Later he brought his parents.  It was really fun to get to see their families and what their celebration looked like!  Eva and Leo and both sets of parents then went on stage.  Eva's father made a speech and then Leo and Eva went in front of her parents and bowed 3 times, then in front of his parents and bowed 3 times all while the MC was saying a vow of sorts.

Eva then went and changed again.  At this point, she finally got to eat some food.  They cut the cake and then went from table to table toasting and saying thank you to each table.  At that point, it was 9 o'clock and Kate was beginning to melt so we headed out.  It was a very fun and so fabulous to get to see a Chinese wedding!

The countdown has begun

Well, all things come to an end at some point, don't they?  We are now around 3 weeks away from moving back to the US from Shanghai.  They are many things that we will miss and many things we will not! :)  I think the saddest part for me about leaving is that it has been such a fabulous adventure filled with so many new things and I just love adventure...when it comes to travel (you'll not ever catch me bungee jumping off a bridge or something like that but I love seeing amazing and new places and the adventures that come with that!)

We have finished so many things in these last weeks and said goodbyes to so many amazing people that we have met from all over the world.  Kate finished up her last day of preschool this week, which was a very teary end because she has loved her teacher there so much!  She just keeps saying with sadness, "mom, am I never going to see her again."  And for Kate, Shanghai is home, not America.  So the thought of moving back to America doesn't bring the jubilation from her that it does from the other girls. This is the only home she has remembered and known so for my sweet Kate, who doesn't do well with change anyway, this move "home" is bit unsettling for her.  It did help her when she finally understood that the change from school was coming no matter what - she is ending preschool and will be in Kindergarten so no matter the location, she was not going to have her sweet Mrs. Leary for a teacher any more.  After that realization, I think she is more OK to move on.  For John and I, it's the end of an era...no more preschoolers - we are on to elementary for everyone now!  We will still homeschool them next year but it does strike us how quickly things change and how time just marches on.

Kate saying goodbye to her teacher

Here's a good example for you, the other night John was measuring Leah on our "board" that gets marked with heights and in the last month she has grown an inch and a half!  She can wear my shoes now - this is how much her whole body has grown!  But anyway, after measuring her, John looked back to the time when we just had moved here and noticed that in 3 years Leah had grown 9 inches, Lauren 7 inches and Kate 8 inches.  Those just seemed like inches at first but then I began to reminisce about what all those grown inches stood for: learning to ride a 2 wheel bike, loosing teeth, growing out of temper tantrums (mostly), learning to read and write, seeing amazing places, no more diapers, sippy cups or strollers, making friends with kids from around the world, and the list goes on...

The movers come on Monday to begin packing up everything we have acquired over the 3 years...let's just say, it's going to be a tight squeeze getting it back into the 40' container!  The girls have been going through their stuff as I try desperately to purge some of their stuffed animals - seriously, where do we get all of these?  But it doesn't take long for me to remember back to when I was a girl and my whole bay window seat was filled with stuffed animals - so I try to give them some grace on that.  Because there is quite a bit of furniture in our house that is the landlords we will be able to stay in the house even after they pack out all of our goods, making it nice that we don't have to stay in a hotel here except for a couple of nights once we do the house checkout.

For those who might not know, we are in the process of building a house back in the States.  It won't be ready until mid-August so we will have to stay in a hotel for a little over a month once we are back.  I'm sure by the time that month is over we will ALL be more than happy to finally be in our house!  We have often thought that we must be crazy to try to build a house from half way around the world but so far things are going smoothly.  Our builder is fantastic and our new neighbors are friends already and have been awesome to send pictures and help trouble shoot when we need it.  The funniest part of the house building was that John and I went back for about 6 days in April and in that time we had to literally choose EVERY single thing for that house...despite the jet lag.  We would leave the hotel at 7 in the morning and not get back until 10 at night between all the meetings and running to Lowes and Sears, etc.  It was a whirlwind but we were able to get it all selected - the great thing is that when we move back, if there is something that looks just awful - I'm going to blame it on the jet lag! :)

The house...our funny neighbor photoshopped in the A&M - but John really likes it!

 I'm off to go try to purge some more stuff!  Enjoy your weekend!

The time is coming..

when we will be leaving our life here in Shanghai and heading back to the US.  John's assignment was a 2-3 year deal and this summer will be 3 years for us.  As much as we have loved living here, we are so ready to be back!  The main reason for this great desire to move home is so that we can actually see John again on a regular basis.  Most of you might not know but for the past 2.5 years, John has spent most of his time each week working at the factory where the joint venture is.  Unfortunately for our family, that factory is about 6 hours from Shanghai.  So each week, John leaves on the train to go there on Monday and comes back to us late on Thursday night!  Needless, to say we are ALL very tired of this arrangement.  We didn't really know exactly what we were getting into when we moved here on that front so not having John with us more has certainly been disappointing...one of the only real disappointments we have encountered about living here in Shanghai.  The girls miss him immensely each week as do I.  And to top it off, John's work life at the factory has been VERY difficult (to put it mildly).  So almost 3 years later, and as much as we love Shanghai and all the wonderful things we have gotten to do while living here, we are more than ready to be back together on a more regular basis as a family!

So that's our big news - we are moving back to the US probably in early July and will be heading back to the small mid-western town we were living in before moving to Shanghai.

I know most of you must be falling over because I have updated the blog so many times in one week.  I'm sure I won't keep that up but I do have several other ideas in my head that I want to post about life in China so hopefully before things get too hectic with move preparations, I'll get those out!  One final note, moving back to the US is already shaping up to be so much easier than moving to China! :)

And just because an all text post is boring - here is a cute picture of the girls enjoying the beach in Vietnam.

Oh, ok, one more...

Chinese New Year

OK, this post is REALLY late but I just downloaded some pictures from my camera - from February - and forgot these were on it.  I know I have told you before about the fireworks during the Spring festival and the first year I even posted pictures of them.  Well, this year we went to Vietnam for a week during the Chinese New Year (fabulous, beautiful beach!) but came back in time for one set of the fireworks.  These fireworks are definitely something our whole family will miss!  I don't actually have a photo of the fireworks from this year just several videos that are too huge to upload here. 

But, what I really wanted to show you is this...

This is what was left sitting outside our Chinese neighbors house after he finished his fireworks.  Do you see these?  It's like what a small town in America would have for their whole 4th of July show! :)  And this was just ONE of my neighbors trash!  Imagine each of these boxes being set off maybe 50 feet from your house - in every direction!  It is truly amazing and mind boggling!  It is something we will never forget and feel so fortunate to have gotten to witness.  I'm afraid our girls are not going to be terribly impressed when we move home and go to a 4th of July fireworks show!

A Chinese pick-up truck

What do you do with an old mattress that you don't want anymore...same as America, I guess.  You put it outside and hope that someone will come by and take the old thing!

It did work a little differently here - the security guard did not like that the girls were laying on a mattress in our front yard so quickly wanted to know what it was doing there.  I told him in my best Chinese that we didn't want it anymore.  About 10 minutes later, these guys showed up and off it went!

The funniest part was that these Chinese men couldn't believe how soft this mattress was.  Most Chinese people don't even sleep on mattresses, just boards of sort on a frame.  They might have a blanket or something a bit soft on the frame but never a big soft mattress.  Who knows where they were taking it or what they were going to do with it, but I was just glad to have it out of my house and off my front lawn!

Kate's big accomplishment...

Well, the other day, Kate just decided to do it.  She was tired of watching everybody else doing it and being the odd man out.  She just picked up those chopsticks and started eating with them!

 The girls and I eat pretty much every lunch with chopsticks because we are mostly eating Chinese food for lunch (well, not Leah so much - she eats a lot of PBJ!  Any day she doesn't like what we are having then she is free to make her own lunch - which is always a PBJ sandwich!)

But Kate had yet to have the desire to want to do it so was happy with her spoon or fork.  I'm not sure what changed her mind, but she is a determined little one, and was finally able to do it at the first meal she tried.  And we were having fried rice that day, which I have to say is not one of the easiest things to eat with chopsticks.  She was very proud of herself!

Happy Birthday, Leah

Yes, I am behind - big surprise!  Leah's birthday was actually about 10 days ago but we were so busy celebrating (and then doing life) that I didn't get this posted until now.

We had a fun day to celebrate Leah's 9th birthday.  This year we decided to go to a pottery workshop for the morning of her birthday.  I thought it was one of those pick out a piece and paint it kind of places but actually the girls got to grab out a big hunk of clay first.  Then the teacher helped them decide on what to make, which they then designed and made.  Lauren made a fairy house for the tooth fairy (Sandi & Cindy you can imagine why she did this!) and Leah made a rabbit.

I was so impressed with their creations and then they got to paint it!  It was really a lot of fun and the girls loved getting to do the whole process.  They were going to be fired next and we get to pick them up this week.

After our pottery, we set out walking through the neighborhoods of Puxi to get to our lunch destination...Carl's Jr!  It was Leah's choice!  It was a beautiful day and really nice to walk the 30 minutes through a busy downtown area of Shanghai.  I really find that in America we just never walk anywhere...I mean we walk for exercise but few of us ever actually walk to a store from our house.  It is one of the experiences that we have loved about living here.

Once we had fabulous burgers at Carl's Jr, then we walked down to Baskin Robbins for ice cream, then off to the new Gap Shanghai store to do some shopping.  Keep in mind this was all Leah's idea...she is our little American girl! :)  It cracked John and I up that outside of the Chinese speaking pottery teacher and the masses of Chinese people around us, by the way our day was spent - you would have thought we were in America!  But I'm thrilled that we could so easily give Leah a day that she loved!

That night we celebrated with our tradition of the birthday girl decorating her own birthday cake in any style she wants.  We had her closest friend over for cake and ice cream...which can I just say that I paid $20 usd for a little bit bigger than a pint size of ice cream! Yikes - I about fainted when I had to pay!  Leah had said she would like to have Cold Stone Creamery ice cream for her birthday (the Chinese ice cream leaves a lot to be desired) so I said no problem...having no idea how expensive it was!  I guess it was a good thing I didn't know!  She loved it and that was worth it! 

Happy 9th birthday, Leah!

Winter in Shanghai

Well, last week it finally happened.  The girls woke up to find the whole of Shanghai blanketed with a nice thick layer of snow.  And by thick I, of course, mean about 1.5 inches.  But they were thrilled none the less.  They were begging to go outside but I said not until your schoolwork is done.  Well, let's just say that they flew through their school work in record time and by 10 o'clock were certain everything was done.  They put all their gear on and out they went.  About an hour later, they called me out to see their creation...their Chinese snowman!  Several workers and security guards in our neighborhood got quite a kick out of watching the girls working so diligently to get their snowman made.

It reminded me so much of the snows that I grew up with in Southern New Mexico - they didn't come terribly often and when they did come you had to seize the day because within a day or two the snow would be gone.  This Shanghai snow was no different - by the next day the snow on the lawn and trees were all gone and you can see by the snowman picture that the girls had to rob every last snow from our lawn and our neighbors just to be be able to build a proper snowman.  I think when we are back in the States the girls will be blown away by all the snow (remember they were still pretty little when we left and it was a huge chore to get everyone out the door to play in it...for the 5 minutes before someone had to pee or someone was cold and crying!)  I'm certain they will love it and I will be wishing for Shanghai winters!

We are actually gearing up now for a warm, beautiful beach holiday in Vietnam next week!  The weather should be marvelous and the beaches are supposed to be beautiful.  I'll be sure and let you know!  Next week is Chinese New Year so we are going to enjoy the warm weather and family time together!  

Enjoy your weather wherever you are! 

Blessings,

Cristi