The Wadley Family in China

Hard Good-byes

2009-08-24T04:53:00.007+08:00

It has been a couple of months since we arrived in Utah. We have now bought a house, and will be here to stay. We are so excited to be here with family, and we miss China terribly. It's definitely bitter-sweet. Before we left, I asked each of the family to write down what they would miss about China. I thought it would be interesting to see the different points of view we each had. Here is what they wrote...

Eli: I will miss the McDonald's across from the school. I will miss my friends. I will miss Dong Jiao (our housing compound), and the playground at school. I will miss the bamboo forest behind my house. I liked going to Beijing, the Xi'an warriors, and Yellow Mountain with my family. My favorite was the Great Wall of China. I will miss Nanjing International School. I will miss Jiang, our driver.

Jay: I will miss the language and being pretty much the biggest family in Nanjing. I will miss the International School. I will miss my friends at school. I will also miss the forest behind my house. I will miss Chinese food, and writing Chinese characters.

Caitlin: The things I will miss most about China are:

*My life style. The way people treat me. How they ask if they can take pictures, and how they tell my Mom how pretty her kids are.

*My school-Nanjing International School. I am going to miss the way my school is the size of 460 people from pre-school to grade 12. I'm also gonna miss the people in my school. The people in my school are great, how they are from so many different countries how they have so many different life styles different from me. And how close we are to pretty much everyone at my school.

* I am going to miss my home~ how I live in a compound and feel pretty safe with all of the security cameras and all of the army men marching and shouting at 6:00am every morning. I am gonna miss how the cleaners come and change our towels and sheets every other day.

* I am gonna miss Ayi Wan and Jiang, too. Because they really brought a different experience to our China experience and how we could get around places as fast as a crazy roller coaster. And having all our laundry clean and dry and folded before I get home from school.

* Last of all I will miss the people of China. Even though they push, spit, and burp unexpectedly, they are great people. I love how they walk around in their pj's, how they always smile at you when you walk past. They are great and I love them with all of my heart!

I will miss China, and miss my life. I think I might call this my real home. I love China always and forever!!! :-)

Nicole:

Dear China

I love everything from your exotic landscapes and lands
to the Chinese locals building with their hands.

Your loving people who are strong-willed and loving,
though sometimes in lines and small places there is much pushing and shoving.

From your ancient history to your city lights,
to the pirated dvd's which is wrong but feels so right.

To the busy ally streets with the little old ladies,
and the bargaining that turns no into maybes.

I will always love your adventures you've brought,
and the things I have learned, that will help me a lot.

Four years already. Wow. There is so much to say. It has been an adventure from the moment I stepped foot in China. I looked out the window of our car and the first thing I saw was a truck-load of pigs. China has been an exciting experience, and I'll miss everything from the people, to the city, to my friends, to the adventurous vacations we took, and even the smells (well, some of them). To say the least, China has helped me develop into what I am today. It helped me have a more international outlook on things, and now I have a home outside of home. I love China and I feel extremely blessed to have grown in so many ways here. Four years have really flown by, and I will remember and cherish these years forever. I will miss Sneaky Sneaky (Jiang, our driver), my friends, the city, Ayi Wan, vacations in tropical places, the Chinese language, and all the love the Chinese people have shown us. I know it is time for us to end this little adventure, but have no fear. I am coming back to visit my China soon enough, of that I am sure.

Love, Coli

Rachel:

China! I am so glad I was able to live there. When I found out I was moving there, I thought for sure it would be just like the movie Mulan. When I got there, I was surprised that it wasn't, it was much different. But over the course of four years living there, I learned to love the country. I love the people, I love the food, I love the language, the culture. I learned to love our school and everyone involved, being part of an international community has opened up a love of traveling, and I wonder if I will ever be the same. I loved the experience of getting to know the country and opening my mind to the world around me. If I could take anything away from what I learned while in China the would be:
-The church is true everywhere. The spirit is the same in a little branch with 30 people as it is in a ward with over 200.
-The language. I will always try to keep my knowledge of it, and practice it, its such a unique, amazing thing to have in my life.
- The love for the country. The people, and the culture have become a huge part of my life, and i will never forget it.
-The closeness I gained with my family. We got to know each other really well being isolated like that and we were always there for each other and made China our home.
I would go back any day if i could and am so happy I was given the opportunity. As we move away, it is really sad and will take some getting used to, but I will always remember my experience as a good one and I will never forget it!

Mike: Things I won't miss:

*A good weather day defined by being able to see one's shadow.
*Hacking, spitting, chewing, etc. in all places, and all times.
*Being wary of anyone carrying a little child with a split pair of pants- in sidewalks, subways, grocery stores, shopping malls, etc. (watch out, you may get hit!)
*The chaos of the streets.
*Being stared at wherever I go.

Things I will miss:

*The natural beauty of the land, and the ability of the Chinese to flow their gardens into it.
*The sincere kindness and care shown by the same people who hack, spit, etc.
*Watching the attentiveness and pure joy on the faces of parents and grandparents when they are with those dangerous, but cute little children who wear split pants.
*The chaos of the streets.
*Feeling likes, even as I'm being stared at, that this is right here, right now, my home and that I belong here. I will miss that most of all.

Since it's always hard to find individual photos of Mike and I, I put one of us together.

Lonnie:

One evening a couple of weeks ago, while Mike was still in Michigan working, I was feeling so homesick for China. It hurt so bad. I sat down at a computer and sent him an email with all of my feelings... It was very therapeutic. Here is what I wrote.

OK, I'm getting ready for bed now, but I was just looking at the address to send the money to, and I saw Han Kou Lu, and I just started to cry. I miss China. What if we can never go back? And it won't be our home. It's such a part of me, but it will just go away. I loved the streets and the people and the villages, and my mountain, and speaking and listening, and the parks and the old men and the old ladies,and my heart babies. And Wan and Jiang, and our little branch and our adventures and my lake. I miss the crazy signs and the people swimming in the winter and running in dress shoes and playing their instruments and singing at the top of their lungs. I miss our hikes and our bike rides. I miss Zen and even bad chinese food, and the trains and the stinky taxis. I miss the funny ways they fix things, the women hiking around purple mountain in high heals and riding their bikes in dresses and high heels sometimes even in formal wear. I miss the curious people amazed by our five children, sometimes sneaking photos but mostly not sneaking. I miss how everything took longer, and never worked out the simple way. I miss bamboo trees and Chinese gardens. I miss Chinese doors. I miss motor scooters carrying families and tvs and furniture. I miss bicycles carrying families and TV's and furniture. I miss streets where you can buy pet chipmunks, and grocery stores where you can eat pets. I miss how everyone is involved in every one's business. I miss massages!!! I miss bottled water and hard beds and my wok. I miss decent rice (imported from Thailand,of course). I miss good Indian, Thai, Japanese and Vietnamese food,and French food all for cheap. I miss exploring Asia. I miss going to 4 different banks to pay the bills. I miss my children feeling comfortable going ANYWHERE in China. Really, anywhere in Asia. I miss the children getting to know other cultures and embracing the world, loving people because of their differences. I miss my children seeing what poverty really is. I miss my girls having opportunities to really serve there sisters and brothers at orphanages. I miss having to stand alone in our beliefs. I miss our together time. I miss those beautiful brown faces, and big smiles. I miss their ingenuity, their hope, their "cleverness". I miss them always thinking they knew what it was we wanted. I miss them talking so loud you always think they are angry. I miss them arguing,and then smiling and laughing the next minute. I miss tailors. I miss the children being huge fish in the small NIS pond. I miss them playing every sport and being involved in Student Council, and being leads in the school plays. I miss driving on sidewalks and on the off-ramp, and off the on-ramp and around everyone. I miss honking at police cars, buses, cars, pedestrians, cyclists,and everyone else. I miss how excited and proud everyone was for the Olympics. How excited and proud they were to beat the US. I miss the breathtaking scenery and incredible man-made heritage things. I miss the "hua to fa" (flower hair- the name Jiang and I came up with for the fancy male hair-cuts). I miss Chinese New Year, and the Moon Festival, and Sweeping Day. I miss the Dragon Boat festival. I miss that beautiful hazy Nanjing Blue sky. I love China.

So, I guess it's impossible to put everything into words. China changed me. I'm scared to lose the things that are so special to me. I don't want it to be just a distant memory. I pray that the things I learned in China will stay with me.

China has been a huge growing experience for our family. We will miss our little branch and the friends we made there so much. We will also miss all of the other friends we made both Chinese and from all over the world. We are so grateful for the growth we have had, and pray that we will use the lessons we have learned to live better lives.

Misha's visit and our trip to Lijiang and Shaxi

2009-06-21T19:28:00.010+08:00

It was sad to have Mom and Dad leave. Luckily, a couple of days later, Misha came to visit! It was so much fun to have her here. My children love her, and of course, it's great fun for me. She had such a long trip over... I think we decided it was a total of 36 hours with the lay overs etc. She must have been exhausted. We enjoyed Saturday with the family, and then Misha and I left for Lijiang and Shaxi. Wow, what a trip! I will try to share some of our experiences. Lijiang's old town is on the World Culture Heritage list. It is the largest city left that is all in the ancient Chinese style, from what I understand. The town is lovely, and very touristy, full of little hostels and hotels. Mostly set up for Chinese tourists, though there were some foreign tourists as well. The weather was very pleasant, as it is in Yunnan, very close to Tibet. The sky was amazingly blue. The area is full of minority tribes, the prominent ones being Naxi and Bai in that area.

There were signs like this all over the "ancient civilization town". They were all very funny, and I won't put all of them in my blog, but Misha and I found them very entertaining!

These are the roof tops of Lijiang, the ancient city.

On our bike ride, we saw people harvesting their wheat. They would put it in the middle of the road for cars and trucks to drive over, and then use fans to blow the chaff away. Very ingenious.

We spent the first couple of days in Lijiang. We walked all around the town, and one day we rented bikes and went for a ride, where we met some new Chinese friends and British friends. Many people were dressed in their native dress, and it was really fun. We had some interesting food. On Tuesday afternoon, we drove the three hours to Shaxi, where we stayed with Yunxin and his wife Jingpian in their village community center. What an amazing drive. We saw so many people out planting their rice fields. Misha and I took a million blurry photos as we rushed by these amazing farms. That evening, Jingpian made us a really nice meal.

This is me, Yunxin, and a guy that was staying with him to arrange for some students to come for a stay in the summer. Yunxin shared very interesting information.

Here are some of the beautiful scenes we saw. The rice fields were beautiful. Many people were dressed in their native costumes, just as part of their normal every day lives.

The next morning we woke up and had a big breakfast, and then started on our 4 1/2 hour hike. It was really steep and a lot of work! But so beautiful. We loved every minute of it. We were hiking to a small village on the top of the mountain. This little village was started 400 years ago by two families. There was a salt mine on the other side of the mountain, that merchants would travel to, to get salt to sell to the valley below. The local government wanted to collect a toll for going through the pass, and asked these two families to go and start a village. There is still no way in or out of the village other than by foot or horse. Now there are about 36 families. Only a couple of them have electricity from a generator. When we arrived, I believe we were greeted with about 1.6 billion flies. I have never seen so many in my life. We were to stay with the chief and his wife in their home. They were very welcoming, and she had noodles waiting for us when we got there.

It was an amazing experience. I don't feel like I can give it justice on my blog, it would be WAY too long of a blog! There were no bathrooms. They did have a tap in the kitchen for water. The kitchen was indoor and outdoor. The stools we sat on were shorter than 1 foot. There was a cute little grandma there who chain-smoked. After lunch several neighbors came over to talk, smoke (and I'm sure check out the strange foreigners). They were polite, though, and offered Misha and I a cigarette... We had hot water instead, which was really strange for them, considering they always drink tea. I think the tea would have covered up the charcoal tasting water a little, though. These were definately people of the earth. They farm on the steep mountain-side. They raise goats. They just work continually trying to scrape by. They were very generous with us. Da jie (meaning big sister, which wwas what we were told to call the chief's wife) worked very hard on her wood-burning wok to make meals for us. She even gave us the first mushrooms of the season, a very special and rare treat. The chief came home at dark with all of his goats, very tired from a long day at work. They made a little fire in the middle of the big cement room that was their kitchen/family room and we sat on little benches. Their two grandsons came for a visit. What darling little boys! They were very cute with Misha and I. They even brought us flowers and sang a song for us when we asked.

Neighbors out front for a smoke.

Sweet little boys!

Misha and I had a little trouble falling asleep that night. We were afraid we might get fleas or lice from the blankets they gave us. Also, we were just sure there would be critters after we turned out the lights. It took me a while to blow out the candle.

The next morning, we went to the little one-room school. It was actually a holiday, but all of the children came anyway. We taught them 4 english words. Mountain, sun, moon and cat. Mountian was near impossible. They were eager students, and afterward Misha passed out the books, pencils and coloring crayons to them. You would have thought it was Christmas. They were so excited and loved their new treasures.

Afterward, we were invited to the community center/theater/temple where there were ladies preparing an offering to their gods. That holiday was for good health. They believed if they found herbs that day, the herbs would be much more strong than normal and work much better. These ladies were so sweet and fun. It reminded Misha and I of enrichment. Some were praying, some were making a meal to share, and some were making paper flowers and clothing to offer to their gods. Misha said," They are doing what ladies do all over the world... Make food and make things beautiful." I agree!

After our visit with the ladies, it was time to start our trek back to Shaxi. We hiked down the other side of the mountain for 4 1/2 more hours and into the valley of Misha. Of course we had to go to Misha! It was beautiful. There was a car there to pick us up and we drove back. I have to say that was the best shower I've had in a long time!!!

We had such an amazing time. I will never forget the time we spent with the Bai people. It truly changed my view on life. We flew back the next day, and met the family at a Chinese Wedding for one of Mike's buyer's, Jessie. That was quite the experience as well. There was some interesting food there! Our family were the only foreigners. The food was extremely chinese, with bird-heads, fish-heads and all. There was also something that reminded me of what might be a beef flan. We don't really want to know what it was. Jay and Rachel went up and sang twinkle twinkle little star. We all toasted our orange-juice and pop with the bride and groom. They were very proud that they had a bilingual marraige, as they did it in Chinese, and had an English translation.

Just a few more glimpses of the wonderful people we saw...

What a great time we all had with Misha. Thanks for everything, Meesh.

Great Visit From Mom and Dad Russon

2009-06-21T07:55:00.008+08:00

Wow, it's been so long since I have written. I have wanted to write for such a long time,but the government has put a block on blogs. I had to wait until I could get a connection through Mike's line. This is the first time they have put a block on writing on blogs. Usually they just block being able to read them.

So many things have been happening in our lives. We are now on our way back home. We actually leave this Thursday. I can't believe that our four years is coming to an end. What a truly fantastic four years it has been for us. It is hard to leave China. We have learned so many things, and shared so many wonderful experiences. What a huge blessing for us. Well, I will go back and report some things that have been going on this last month and a 1/2.

Mom and Dad came on May 4th. We were all so excited! We all had such a great time together. The children didn't have a school break, so they had to just see Grandma and Grandpa when they got home from school. But on Friday, I let them out of school so that we could have fun together. We went to Qixia mountain, to the monastery. It was really beautiful. We of course took them to Zen, our favorite Chinese restaurant here in town. It's Cantonese food, a chain from Hong Kong, and it has the best dim sum in the world. We once asked our friend from Hong Kong where we could find the best dim sum while we were there, and she said, "Zen". Well, I guess we are lucky to have a chain here in Nanjing. YUMMY! I think Mom and Dad enjoyed it, too.

For Mother's Day, Mom and I went to a spa and had a facial. It was SO nice. And fun, too. The big event for the weekend, was when the girls, and Mom and I went to the hot springs resort. The girls had been planning this surprise for Mom. What she didn't know was that in amongst the hot springs, there was a special pool...the exfoliation pool. This pool was full of hundreds of little fish that eat dead skin. A great way to get smooth feet... Grandma didn't love that and gave the awaited for face-scrunch and little screams. Nicole and Caitlin weren't keen on going in either. But Rachel and I had a nice time and had very soft feet when we got out :-)

Mom and Dad and Mike and I went on a Yangtze River Cruise. We had a great time!!! On Tuesday Chong Qing where we went to the Anna Victoria Cruise Ship. I hate to say it, but I think Mom and Dad were a little nervous as we balanced along the pontoon plank way to the ship that was at least two football fields away. They are used to the fancy cruise entrances. Well, they were very good sports! Luckily, the boat itself was very nice, and our rooms were nice, as well. We had a fabulous time!!! We relaxed, and were able to see some really amazing scenery. The first day we went to see a special Ghost Town... There is a temple there, where the god of the underground lives. He's the one who judges you after you die, to decide if you go to heaven, or if you spend the rest of your days being tortured. And believe me,some of those tortures aren't very nice!

On the second day, we went up a small tributary river in a smaller boat. We then got in an even smaller boat. The dam is huge, and luckily, we could see it quite well because the clouds cleared up for us.

We had a really great time with Mom and Dad. The trip was wonderful, but it was especially nice having one on one time with the two of them and Michael. The children were very happy to have their grandparents back, and we all treasured the last couple of days with Mom and Dad before they had to go home. It means so much to us that they were able to come and see the places we love right before we are leaving. We celebrated Dad's birthday the night before they left.

Here we are at the Monastery on Qixia mountain. Unfortunately Mike had to work...

Julie went for a walk with us one day. We went to a very strange little museum that told us more about the dimensions of the buildings than what they were for. But, it was interesting... Here is a strange sign we found in the stairwell.

They wouldn't let us take our camera in to the hot springs to get a photo of the dead skin-eating fish, but we did get this lovely photo in our matching "lounge outfits" afterward.

Mike and I in the main lobby of our river-cruise.

Mom and Dad going up the chairlift to the temple.

The temple in the Ghost-town was different than I've ever seen before. The colors were blue and white. Here is a dragon guarding the entrance to the god of the underworld.

The god of the underworld who judges if you will have torture or not...

The beautiful river...

Happy Birthday Nicole!

2009-05-02T13:43:00.004+08:00

Nicole's birthday was this week. She was very excited. On her birthday, several friends made cakes and gave her gifts. Also, Caitlin and some of their friends threw a surprise birthday party for her. She was very excited. It isn't Nicole's turn to have a party this year (my children get a party every other year), but the party was somehow at our house and we bought the pizza... I shouldn't be confused, should I? We will have her family birthday tomorrow. She wants pavlova and chicken pockets for her special dinner. Nicole is a great fifteen year old, and we love her so much. Happy Birthday Nicole!

Here is the group right after they surprised her. The surprise was funny. Her friend Simone told her that Simone's mother wanted Nicole to come and get all of Nicole's clothes that were at Simone's house that Simone had borrowed. The day before, she came over to get more of Nicole's clothes. When Nicole was over getting the clothes from Simone, she was extremely confused because she had seen those clothes in her own room just the day before! Very tricky, huh? Simone, Rachel and Caitlin didn't make it into this photo.

NIcole's friend Levi made this cake for her.

My calling is in nursery right now. I LOVE it! We have had three little children, two little girls, and a little boy. Clara went back to the US a couple of weeks ago, so I wanted to take some photos (with their parents permission to be on my blog, of course!). Isaiah was out of town, so I didn't get any of him yet. I'll have to add that later.

Clara

Charlene

Too cute!

Hong Kong 2009

2009-04-20T17:08:00.008+08:00

We recently had spring break. We decided to go to Hong Kong, for a nice break from everything. Trying something new, we flew from Nanjing to Guanzhou, where we heard you could catch a train to Hong Kong, about a 2 hour ride. I had seen some really good prices for the flights to Guanzhou, so we jumped on them. It all turned out great. The train ended up one subway stop from our hotel in Hong Kong, so it was perfect! Hong Kong has a fantastic transportation system. You can easily ride the subways and busses, and ferries, anywhere in the city. We stay on the Kalwoon side at the YMCA. It has a great location, and a harber-view. Plus, they have a family room for the boys and Mike and I, and the girls share a room. We are one block from the ferry, and close to the subway and lots of great food and shopping.

The first thing everyone wanted to do was eat. The one thing that didn't turn out too well going to Guanzhou and taking the train was the eating. We ordered some noodles, that had some weird stuff in them, and I had to have dumplings because there wasn't enough noodles. Mike could hardly stand to be near me for 24 hours because the garlic was SO strong! Anyway, one thing the children love about Hong Kong, is they have lots of "American" restaurants. We immediately went to California Pizza Kitchen. Yummy!!! And then, we went to Escape to Witch Mountain at the movie theater. The children were so thrilled to be able to go to a movie theater!

On Wednesday, we went to Lantao Island. There is a HUGE Budda there. You can ride a cable-car up to the top and see it, and then we chose to walk down the 2 and 1/2 hour trail. I should say, Mike and I decided we would. The girls were not happy about that. But it was beautiful, very "rain-forest" type terrain. We finally made our way down to the village and found the subway. It was great. I took the girls to the Ladies Night Market that night. One thing I have learned is that hills are really hard on my hip. Going down-hill really works the stabilizing - muscles. I was very achy after that day.

Thursday we rode the crazy double decker bus to Stanley Market. We did some shopping, and eating (of course) and enjoyed the ocean. Later, we rode the out-door escalator up the mountain on Hong Kong island. It is very long, and then we walked over and through the zoological gardens. I think the children were about to kill us after all of that walking, but were pleasantly surprised to see all of the monkeys and other animals they had there. It was in such a beautiful park. That evening, Mike and I went back to Soho to an Italian restaraunt we found a different time we came. It was really good, and nice to have one evening out together.

Friday, was temple day. It was so great to go to the temple. It's amazing how much you miss going when it isn't possible. It really feels like coming home. That afternoon, we went to Hong Kong Island and rode the OLD cable cars across the island. It was so interesting to see the older parts of Hong Kong. They set up their streets (at least in the old part) the same way they do here in China, with whole streets of the same things. For example, the electronic street, or the car part street. There was one whole block that sold dried fish, and it smelled so strongly of fish everywhere. I didn't think it would be so nice to live in one of the thousands of aparments that were living above the dried fish street. That evening we went to the movie Monsters verses Aliens. The children had a blast. I think that was one of the highlights of their trip! It was fun for them to see it in 3-D as well.

We had a really wonderful trip together. Life is back to it's busy self. The girls are ready for the big school soccer tournament this week. Nicole turns 15 next week, a fact that she will not let us forget. She has a menu plan that will keep me cooking and baking all day :-) Next weekend Rachel and Nicole will travel to Shanghai for a short youth conference, which will be fun. My Mom and Dad come on the 5th! We are so excited to see them. Our driver, Jiang is coming back to work tomorrow. We have missed him dreadfully, not knowing how much we should have appreciated him all along. We've had some difficult experiences with some of the substitute drivers we have had. The one that is driving for us now is good in every way, except he is as slow as a turtle. For those who have visited us, they know that we are used to Jiang, who thinks the Transit is a sports-car! He is returning to work after almost 5 months after breaking his leg. This last weekend the girls and I instituted a weekly "girls night out". We are pretty excited about this, and the girls have lots of ideas on how to spend these weekend evenings, most of which include some sort of massage or manicure :-)

Here are some photos from the day we went to Lantau:

The girls weren't too thrilled we walked down, but it was beautiful! And, they won't admit it, but we had a great time...

We took the special "Crystal" cable-car, so we could see out the bottom!

Here is the big budda

Fun at Stanley Beach. It wasn't quite warm enough for swimming, but we enjoyed the rocks and the view.

Here are some of the girls' favorite shots:

Here we are at TGIF...yummy!

April 4, Mike's 40th Birthday

2009-04-20T16:40:00.006+08:00

Michael just turned 40!!! We are so relieved he made it. Don't worry, Honey, you don't look a day over 39. I bet his mother wondered if he would make it to this ripe old age, with all of the stories we've heard about his childhood. Anyway, we had a great "birthday" weekend, roasting him as much as possible. His Mom sent a bunch of great "Over the hill" birthday stuff. I sent some of it to work on Friday with some cookies to share. I thought it only right for his co-workers to share in the mourning. That night we went out to dinner with some friends. It was lots of fun. I have some nice photos, of that, but I'm having a hard time getting the photos off of my memory card. I will have to add them later if I can fix it. All of my photos from today are from the girls' camera.

At the dinner, our friends Julie and Warren gave Mike a lovely aging kit, and they even gave him some special black hair color, so that his hair can be permanently black like all of the older Chinese people. They gave him several funny things, including some reading glasses that he actually wears now as normal glasses. They were meant to be a joke! I took the blow-up portable toilet that Mike's family sent. We had lots of fun making fun of him.

On Saturday, I spent 10 US dollars, and got some English muffins. I had to swallow really hard with that purchase! I made him Eggs Benedict, which he enjoyed so much he wanted them again for lunch. I sent him to a really nice place for a massage that afternoon, so that we could decorate the house with all of the rest of the decorations his Mom sent. The kids had a great time with that! Both his family and my family sent a cd with everyone wishing him a happy birthday, and lots of them making fun of him. It was great! He loved it. The kids and I joined in and taped a "meeting" about what we would do when he passed away, because he was surely to go any time now that he is forty! It was funny, with the girls fighting over who got his Ipod and his National Geographic Magazines...all million of them. Then they talked about his obituary, and practiced a song (and they were terrible! We just are. That wasn't an act) Anyway, it was all really fun. We acted like it was "accidentally" on the cd, and that he wasn't supposed to see it. The kids did really well and didn't even laugh during our production. For a while, he thought it was real and asked, " Did you know it was being filmed?" The highlight was the dvd Diane sent of Mike's photos growing up. We all really enjoyed looking at all of them, and Mike loved it. We had a great evening.

Mike is such a great husband and father. Everyone who knows him can't help but love him. We are so blessed to have him. I love you Mike! Here are a few photos of your great day...

Diane sent some silly string, and the boys loved getting Mike with that!!!

And here he is, testing out his porta-potty. I think he almost popped it!

Coli is trying on the special glasses grandma sent along with several other "gag gifts".

Rachel's gift was his favorite birthday cake! Home-made chocolate.

Yes, he looks pretty scared. I think he's nervous he can't blow out all of those candles. And we didn't even really have 40 on that cake...

Here is a special Chinese Candle that my friend Melissa found for me. Wow, it was something special!

Full of Gratitude

2009-03-25T16:58:00.007+08:00

I believe I have written before about the charity that I have been so blessed to work with. We are a very small charity, around 10 women, who work together to raise money to provide heart surgeries for children whose families don't have the miens, or to orphan children in the Jiangsu area.

This is how the group got started over 6 years ago after a couple of Expat women found a baby on the side of a road, in her own words:

"As incredible as this seems, the heartbreaking fact is that in China it is not uncommon practice to place unwanted children in the hands of fate. This little baby boy was only eight days old. Who would care for him and allow him to grow up? Once housed at the orphanage in Nanjing , medical examinations showed his heart was not functioning properly. Born ‘not perfect' made him an outcast in society.

We remember how he fought for his life, until his heart gave up two months later. But his short life had a deeper meaning, because of him we wanted to make a difference.

During the more frequent visits to the orphanage the caretakers told us that there were ten more kids like him suffering from heart malfunctions living in the same orphanage. Heart conditions are not visible and if they hadn't told us we would have never found out. There is quite a lot of medical help for orphans with visible medical conditions, however there is no support for orphans with heart problems. Even though the People's Republic of China has constantly improved support and healthcare for abandoned children over the past few years, these children awaited medical treatment that went beyond the orphanage's budget."-Hopeful Hearts web page

These ladies started Hopeful Hearts to help these ten orphan children. They worked hard to raise money for these ten children, and continued on, to help more children as the need arose. I have been able to work with this wonderful group for almost 3 years. Now, we help orphan children, but have been focusing on poor farmer families who have children with heart conditions. We want to help families stay together, as it is so much better for a child to have a Mother and Father who love them. Some of these farmers make less than 100.00 US per year, which is unbelievably poor even for Chinese standards. A heart surgery averages 3-5,000.00 US. Just this last week we celebrated the 100th surgery! This was such a huge event for us. This has been a wonderful year so far, but we have had many applications, and have had to turn away children. With the economic situation, it is becoming more difficult to raise money.

Yesterday, we had our Spring Hopeful Hearts luncheon. A local 5 star hotel, The Sofitel, works so well with us to put on a very nice buffet luncheon for the Expat women in Nanjing. We had a fashion show, put on by some of the expat women, directed by us Hopeful Hearts women. The ladies really love watching it. We make a little over half of an average surgery from the sale of the tickets, which is wonderful, but it is difficult to raise money. So, we told these ladies here in Nanjing about a couple of cases, about how these parents love their children just as much as you or I do. And then we asked them to give more if they could. To give up an afternoon of shopping, or a dinner at a western restaurant. And if they did this, then maybe we could raise enough to save a life from this luncheon. Do you know what these wonderful ladies did? They passed around our donation box and filled it... to just over the cost of a surgery! I am so overwhelmed and happy to be a part of that wonderful day, and a wonderful group of women.

If there are any children in the hospital, I try to go with Claudia to visit them. Today, we went to see three children who are in the hospital, and took these photos. They are beautiful. One boy is actually a young adult. Our policy is that we will still help someone who is over 18, if they have a congenital heart disease (they were born with it). It is a miracle Li Ping is still living at this age, having these complications for so long. He is from the Sichuan area. His mother has raised him alone, never having enough money to pay for his surgery. They heard about Hopeful Hearts when Amity (our "mother" charity group) was down helping with the earthquake disaster. Li-ping didn't even have the money to travel to Nanjing for his surgery. He was not able to have the surgery in his area because the expertise wasn't available. We found a hospital that could help cover the cost of his travel to Nanjing. Li Ping is a very polite young man and wanted a photo with Claudia and I. He now has a hope for the future!

Ding Fu-Kang is the son of a couple who are both deaf and dumb. They farm, and struggle to make ends meet. They have come up with as much as they can to pay for their son's surgery, but can't cover the cost. Hopeful Hearts will help them cover the rest of the cost

Li Ruichen's parents are farmers in a small village. He is the cutest little boy with really pinch-able cheeks!

I am so grateful to be a part of this. These children have changed my life. I am also so grateful for Heavenly Father, who listens when a couple of women in Nanjing, China pray for help to raise the funds for these sweet little children, and listen when we pray to steady the surgeons hands. Sometimes help has come through some of you. Thank you.

This is why I was able to move to China

2009-02-05T19:59:00.005+08:00

Since I married this man (Michael, in case you didn't know), I have been in boot camp for going the craziest, most unconventional route. I should have seen it coming, as we drove to the temple on the morning of our wedding through the back roads (to be fair, it was horribly icy) form Bountiful to Salt Lake. Mike has spent the last 18 years stretching my way of thinking. Taking the "scenic road". This was demonstrated when we went to Zion's National Park about three months after our marriage. We drove up a side road, and the car was backed into 8 inches of sand, making for a very interesting trip, and a new transmission for the car we borrowed from Tricia. Mike has always been one to help us look for the adventurous way. I could go on and on with stories to show this. While at times this can be uncomfortable, and, well, crazy, it's developed a love for adventure in me that I never knew I had. Thank you, sweetheart, for all of the fun.

So, here is a perfect example the type of experiences that prepared me for China. Mike has wanted to walk on the ancient city wall for a long time. I know of a place to get on the wall, but you can't walk very far. I was ready to prove this to Mike. Well...As you can see, this didn't stop us. We just needed to get creative. Turns out we had a very good walk on the wall, although we figured out that we were in a military area! Luckily, they are mostly home for Chinese New Year. Phew! I'm getting used to that stomach in your throat feeling. I was pretty sure my Chinese isn't good enough to get us out of this one. Luckily, nobody saw us, we had a great walk, and well, another adventure. I love you Mike!

Most people would say, there's a wall, I guess this is the end of our road...

Huangshan

2009-01-30T15:38:00.009+08:00

We have always wanted to go to Yellow Mountain. But we have never found a good weekend to go. It's an over-night train away, or a 4 hour drive. Well, this last week, we decided it was now or never. We have the car for the week while the driver is off for Chinese New Year. We looked up everything we could on the Internet in the way of maps, and decided to go for it. I reserved a hostel online, and we just hoped we could find it. We weren't able to find anything in English, but we did find a map that showed a road that would take us to Huangshan (yellow mountain), the 205. We had a great day!!! We just followed this road, which was the slow road, it turned out. It twisted and turned in every direction and we went through a whole bunch of little towns. Some of the things we had to watch out for: cows, three-wheeled trucks, people doing fireworks, people walking across the highway, people selling sugar cane, TERRIBLE drivers, huge pots in the road. It was exciting. We listened to our music, we read the book Holes, and we enjoyed the scenery. It did take us 7 1/2 hours to get there, though. By the time we arrived, Nicole was NOT feeling well. She climbed straight into bed, and was throwing-up. Poor thing. Our heater didn't work, so the first 2 hours that was a little miserable, but they moved us, and it was nice after that. Luckily, the town had one KFC in it that we could walk to. Nicole ended up sleeping in our bed with us. Mike, me, and then Coli. I was snug as a bug :-)

Nicole woke up feeling at least well enough not to want to stay behind. We ate really cold eggs at 6:15 and then rode the bus to the mountain. It was beautiful, and totally worth it. I think we all had a good time, and ended up doing 10k in stairs. It was a good work-out! We planned on doing 7k more down the mountain, but between Nicole, and my hip, we decided to ride the cable-car down. Eli was a trooper! I bought these lovely medals that we saw some of the kids wearing and gave the children awards on the way home. Rachel got the guide and helper award-she was always helping with Eli, and asking different guides to tell us where we were on the map. Nicole got the trooper award, for not feeling good at all. Caitlin got the sneaky photographer award, she took some great shots. Jay got the off the beaten trail, and when can we watch a movie award. Eli was the trail blazer, always up front and a really good hiker! We had a great time. The girls took some awesome photos with their Christmas cameras. It was a great adventure. Here are some photos of our trip:

One of our many "potty breaks".

You may not take the following items with you while hiking Yellow Mountain:

First they congratulate you on the growth of your child, then they charge you more. How polite is that!

You could pay to have men carry you up the mountain. Each section is 100rmb, and there are 6 sections. Crazy!!! I have to tell you that there were parts I would have been scared to death having someone carry me! Let alone, well, just the thought of having people carry me!

There are a couple of hotels on the top of Yellow Mountain. Men carry everything up the mountain that the hotel needs. Believe me, it's hard enough to just get yourself up there!

We were a little worried about this chilly little bum! It was REALLY cold up there on the mountain!

The Nanjing Mascot

2009-01-23T19:20:00.007+08:00

The Chinese New Year is here. The whole city is busy gathering the supplies to celebrate by cooking millions of special new year's dishes, and stock-piling fireworks to set-off every 6:00am and 12:00am for the next 2 weeks. Many shops will shut down, and every type of transportation will be taken advantage of, to over-flowing. Everyone must get home. 1.3 billion people moving at once. China is welcoming in the year of the ox, who from what I can tell looks like daisy, the Disney cow. The finest Chinese traditional clothes will be worn, and red envelopes are being stuffed for the big event. And in the middle of all of this, stands this little fella, oblivious to it all...

I've decided he is the animal that represents everything I love about Nanjing. First of all, you can't deny the special style, one unique and, well honestly, not in the mainstream of dog fashion. Then there is the quiet proud attitude of this little furry friend. Last but not least, he's no stupid dog. He knows what kind of stuff is on the sidewalks here in town, and he frankly doesn't want his paws to come in contact with that! So, why not do that with style? And so what if he lost one of his shoes, he can improvise. Now, look at our city, here on the Yangtze River. It has a style all it's own. Everyone in town is proud, but friendly, just trying to find a way to make it in this new expanded world they know. I love the ingenuity of our Chinese friends. They think so differently from us, but they are very clever! All that now said, I name this dog the Mascot of Nanjing! (Well, I haven't ever seen a Nanjing Lion roaming around, so I'm appointing my own)

On the seventh of January, I turned 37. Yes, that's getting up there, but Mike is still older :-) I had a wonderful birthday with lots of friends. They all donated to my favorite charity, yes, Hopeful Hearts. Julie, my good friend hosted a nice morning get-together. Then Mike surprised me and took the day off! What a great birthday. It snowed on my birthday, so the walk we took was beautiful. The family made a nice meal for me, and gave me really nice gifts. I guess I'm OK with turning older if I get to have fun days like that!

Life is busy, and good. We are excited because the children and Mike get the next week off for the New Year holiday. It will be nice to hang out together. We are thinking of taking a road-trip to Yellow Mountain. Should be exciting!

The birthday walk:

My Man:

Another hike with the whole crew:

Christmas

2008-12-30T18:50:00.004+08:00

This year was very different without the girls. But the boys and Mike and I had a really nice one. On Sunday the 21st we had the branch over at our house for Sacrament Meeting and a Christmas dinner. There were 41 people in this small space! We had a really nice time. We had our annual white-elephant game, and I have photos of the most unique gift. We were lucky enough to have Jay as the recipient...Yes, I'm being sarcastic :-)

Jay read a card about an orphan... It turned out to be a soft-shelled turtle!

Here he is swimming in the new home someone helped Jay find for him. Next time I saw him, he was on my counter. Not very attractive creatures.

I would say this was the second prize for the game. Duck heads and chicken feet.

Well, Mike and I looked up what it takes to take care of a turtle, even though we already knew this turtle was best for eating (to some) and not for a pet. It was pretty complicated to take care of him, so we told Jay we should take him to the pond.

We hope he is hibernating and having a nice winter, or that someone ate him quickly and painlessly.

On Christmas Eve, we made cookies for Santa, and then had a rare treat of tortellini (and Mac and Cheese for the boys) for our Christmas Eve Dinner. We opened our love-gifts, a special tradition we have with our family back home. The gifts were so special. My sister Lori's gift to me was to raise money for Hopeful Hearts, the charity I work with. It was so special, and amazing. Then we watched the Nativity and the boys told their version to Mike and I on the movie camera.

Santa came and we had lots of fun on Christmas morning. The boys had us up at 5:00am, and we were so tired, that around 7:00am Mike and I took a small nap while the boys played with their toys! Grandparents and cousins also sent fun gifts. It was a fun Christmas. We are excited to have the girls come home so we can hear more about their day. Our good friends Julie and Warren Baker came over for Christmas lunch. It was lots of fun. We even got some Perrier (sparkling water) and juice to make fancy drinks! Julie made us a "figgy pudding". Yummy. Afterward we taught them how to play guitar hero, and had some really great Nerf gun fights.

It is really hard to be away from family this time of year. We are especially glad that the girls were able to spend some time with everyone. We are so grateful for our Savior and for his birth. And for wonderful family and friends. Merry Christmas!

To Tokyo...

2008-12-22T15:52:00.010+08:00

This year is a strange one for our family. Rachel, Nicole and Caitlin have gone to spend the holiday with our family in Utah. They have been so excited for several months. Mike and I, Jay and Eli weren't able to go, and went on a trip to Japan. We had a wonderful time. We can't wait to hear all about the girls' trip. So far from what I gather from our phone conversations, they are having the time of their life!

OUR TRIP:

Important notice at the Shanghai airport (???!!!):

Our first glimpse of Tokyo:

On Sunday morning, we were able to attend one of the English wards for Church. We were lucky to have the Christmas program that Sunday, and the boys really enjoyed primary with lots of other kids. It was a pretty good size ward. Well, compared to what we are used to. That afternoon we went to the Imperial Palace Gardens and walked around. The Japanese really know how to do a beautiful garden!

Here is a small temple we happened upon when we were out exploring. We walked all over down town Tokyo.

We ate at Hard Rock Cafe in Tokyo. Yummy. But all of the food and everything else was expensive! We were pretty creative with our eating.

Early one morning, at 4:30am, we got up and went to the fisherman's wharf, where all of the fish comes in from the sea and then gets packed and sold, and sent out to different places to eat. We saw the Tuna Auction. They used to let people in to the middle of it to see it, but they are working, and it's actually fairly dangerous to get in their way. So, now we had to stay back and look from a distance. There is a man in the middle of all of these huge tunas, and he is the auctioneer. It was crazy! I think this is the first day they didn't let visitors in, because there was a news film crew there. We were interviewed about our feelings on not getting to go into the auction, and were on the News! Unfortunately, we didn't get to see it.

There were rows and rows of these stalls for buyers to come and get. There were also these small propane-tank trucks that would whiz about picking up and delivering fish. We had to work really hard to stay out of their way!

The thing I was most looking forward to: The freshest Sushi you can get in Japan! We were able to watch him make it. Mike and I shared it and it was delicious!!! ( who would have ever thought I could crave raw fish and seaweed!) It was 30.00 for these few pieces of sushi, but worth every penny for the experience.

We went on a river-cruise through downtown. The boys really enjoyed it. The sky was SO blue, and beautiful. We aren't used to such clear weather.

This is the largest temple in Tokyo, and I wish I could remember the name of it. Hmmm. It was so interesting to compare Japan and China. In some ways they are similar, and in others, they are miles and miles apart in their ways.

Then, on our way to the Wonderful World of Disney! We stayed at the Disney Ambassador Hotel. It is really a great atmosphere and so much fun. We went to Disneyland for one day, Disney Sea for the second day, and split the third day between the two. Boy was I Disneyed out by the third evening. We had a fantastic time. The boys were in Heaven!!!

We went to the Diamond Horse-shoe Saloon for their lunch show. The boys and I got roped into being in the show, and Mike enjoyed sitting there taking photos :-)

Poor Mike, he was too big for the kiddy roller-coaster.

It was all decorated so beautifully for Christmas. A lot of the rides were redone for Christmas as well. It was so fun. We enjoyed several shows and a couple of Christmas shows as well.

The boys humored me and went on It's a small world. They loved all of the "mountain" rides like Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Space Mountain. They also loved The Tower of Terror, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and the Indiana Jones Ride. Eli kept us on track with a map in his pocket and pulled it out constantly to tell us what direction to go.

Some interesting things: The Japanese know how to stand in a line!!! They are so polite. This is opposite of our friends here, who push and cut in and everything else. Most of the people at Disneyland were adults. A lot of younger couples and all in silly Disney hats. In fact, they didn't have much to buy at all at Disney. All of the stores had the same things in them. Cheesy hats in all shapes and sizes and some stuffed animals. They were all very fashionable, and lots of the girls were wearing short-shorts, or short-skirts with tights or nothing on their legs. I was in 4 layers. And they wore high heels at Disneyland! I felt so frumpy in my jeans and gym-shoes. The hot food-item of the day was curry popcorn. There was always a line at least 30 minutes long for this in Disneyland. We didn't try it. I felt like I did when I first came to China, as I only knew 3 words..Hello, Thank you, and good-bye.

These are oragami. Amazing.

December 2008

2008-12-21T17:47:00.010+08:00

Here is our Gingerbread house... It's the first one we've ever actually made out of Gingerbread. It was lots of fun, and more difficult than one would think! We made it from the Hopeful Hearts baking mixes that we made to sell for the winter bazaar.

Mike and I went to the International Club Winter Ball on Dec. 6Th. If you remember, this is the one time a year I can get Mike to go dancing with me. I had such a great time. I'm pretty sure he even had fun. He started out dancing pretty stiffly, but as the night wore on, he loosened up and was pretty good! He danced with me as long as I wanted and we got home at 1:00am. Not bad for old people, huh?

Here is Jay's commercial for a Sony cell phone. Apparently, his rock band was really good when they had it, and really bad when they didn't. He sang "We will Rock you". So, if you want to have a rock band, get a Sony. His unit in school was obviously on the persuasion of marketing.

Maybe these photos get old, but after living here over three years, I still get excited about seeing people doing their thing. Here is a walk through Nanjing. It's so intriguing to me...

Julie and I knocking at this lovely door.

"Please don't let me be next!"

Here are some of the lovely holiday displays out in front of the department stores. This first one is a cow riding in a carriage being pulled by flying horses with an Angel watching over them. Next year is the year of the Cow.

I'll have a blue Christmas tree without you!

And finally, the flying tree.

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Birthday Caitlin!

2008-12-05T17:31:00.007+08:00

I can't believe we already had Thanksgiving! We had a really nice day. Unfortunately, we don't get the holiday. But, we wanted to celebrate, so we had some families over and had a good turkey dinner that evening. I ordered a turkey shipped in from the U.S. and it was yummy. We can get them here, but honestly, they aren't that good. Unfortunately, I put my camera in the kitchen to take photos, and it got lost under all of the food until it got cleaned up! So, no photos of our fun thanksgiving. I chaperoned a dance on that Friday night over at the school. Nicole and Caitlin were both there, and I think they had a good time. It was fun to see them dancing and having fun. We also helped do a Thanksgiving dinner for all of the BYU students and the rest of our branch on Saturday. I did pie for everyone and baked 2 turkeys. It turned out really fun. I think everyone really enjoyed the dinner. But, it was lots of work, and as you will see in the photos, I was very tired by Sunday evening when we celebrated Caitlin's 13th birthday. She is so much fun. Caitlin is really happy to be 13. She chose to go to a Korean restaraunt with Mike and I. We had a great time. She is always full of energy, and taking care of everyone. We are blessed to have her in our family. On Sunday evening, for Caitlin's birthday we decorated the Christmas tree. That seems to be the most popular thing to do on Caitlin's birthday. We have a big, tall fake tree, and we just put on every single ornament we have. It helps cover up how unattractive this tree is. But, it is fun, and we really feel like it's Christmas now, at least in our livingroom. There are some fairly interesting Christmas displays at the department stores. Maybe I'll get out and take a few photos before it's over so you can see.

Caitlin had BIG hair for crazy hair day this year!

Happy Birthday Cait!!!! One thing on the list for the girls to get in the U.S. is birthday candles!

Yes, I am wearing fleece pajamas... It was really cold! At least I'm not wearing them to the grocery store. We had fun decorating the tree!

Happy Birthday Rachel! Big 16!

2008-11-13T17:04:00.009+08:00

Wow, can you believe I have a 16 year old? I sure can't. Rachel is excited to be 16. She doesn't have her driver's license, and there isn't really a lot of chances to date, here, but at least it's not a big NO! Right? Saturday night, Mike and I took her to dinner to celebrate. She chose a little French resaurant in town called The Five Senses. We had a good time. She had just returned home from Yangshou the night before, where she had trip-week with all of the other grade 10 kids. She had a good time. She got phone calls from her Grandmothers on her birthday which meant a lot. She got notes and calls all day long. We sent some muffins and fruit and hot chocolate to seminary on her birthday morning. The Priestley's gave her 2.5rmb for every week she has been alive. That was exciting. She had chosen very specific food for the day. She wanted guacamole and tortilla chips (very hard to get) which we all enjoyed. Of course, Rachel had her own bowl. For dinner, she wanted chicken pillows, and asparagus. For the dessert, I made a black-forest cake, but had Strawberry pie filling instead of the cherry I thought I had. Well, she seemed to enjoy it. Her friend J.J. came over to wish her a happy birthday and stayed for cake that evening. I think she had a great day. On Monday, her friends made a cake for her. This Friday night, she will share a birthday dinner of pizza with her friend Pao from Germany, who also has a birthday. They will all have pizza with their friends.

Rachel has matured a lot this year. School is getting quite involved, and she is picking things up very well. She is a wonderful part of our family. We love you Rach!

Today we all went and had our shots. Yep, we've been here long enough to need boosters on just about everything. The children were all very brave :-)

Caitlin is off to Shanghai this weekend to play in a Soccer Tournament for middle school. She really enjoys sports, and is doing quite well (for coming from my genes-well, I know my brothers and dad are great with sports, but games like soccer and basketball, or baseball and I have never really been compatable).

Here are a couple of photos from Rachel's birthday. Also, I put a couple of photos Rachel and Nicole took on their trip-weeks. They are pretty good photographers...

Rachel will make a scrapbook of her trip to Yangshuo as an assignment for school. Here are some of her photos:

Nicole's class did a photo contest. Here are some of her best photos:

Caitlin wanted to take photos on her camping trip to Wuxi, but she had the old camera. Unfortunately it didn't work. She had a good time, and learned to use GPS and lash a bamboo raft.

Happy Birthday Eli

2008-11-02T16:54:00.009+08:00

This is our month of birthdays...Starting with Eli. Yesterday, on November 1st Eli turned 7 years old. He was so excited for his birthday. He wanted legos and, well, just about anything he saw at the newer Toys-R-Us store we have in Nanjing. He was very pleased with his gifts! He suffered through some family photos (this was the only weekend we could do it) and then chose to go to Papa John's Pizza for lunch. He really enjoyed that. He asked for alphabet soup that I make for his birthday dinner, then we played a couple of fun games. He has been busy ever since working on his legos, etc.

Happy Birthday Eli!

We played the game where you have to put on gloves, a scarf, and ear-muffs while people roll the dice. Then, as they keep rolling, you try with a knife and fork to open the package, and cut one small square at a time to eat, before the next person rolls a six and continues on where you left off. Very funny!

Next, we played a game my Australian friends told me about called Fluffy Bunny. You see how many marshmellows you can stuff in your mouth and still be able to say, "fluffy bunnies". Well, all I can say, is that those who have Mike's genes did very well in this game! I felt a little sorry for my Australian friends...they only know how to play fluffy bunny and don't know what S'mores are. I think we got the better part of the deal... Well, the game was pretty funny, too.

Other exciting things that have gone on in the last couple of weeks, are a trip to Tianjin, by Rachel and Nicole for the high school volleyball tournament. They didn't win many matches, but they had a lot of fun. Nicole received a bite from what the doctor thinks was a spider. That was pretty exciting. The poison spread to about 5 inches in diameter, which was a little scary, but a little cool, too. I think she may be disappointed it is shrinking. She said, " If they have to cut of my leg, can I hold it?" That's our Nicole.
The dots on her leg are permanent marker that the doctor put on so that we could track if it grew...it did.

We went to the Halloween party at the school the other night. Jay and Eli dressed up and a vampire and Ninja. Nicole was "retro" of course, and she played 3 songs with her band. She is the drummer, and is getting pretty good! Especially for never really playing before. Caitlin dressed up, but I don't really know what to call her. Was in all orange and black. I wore all black and wore a really long dark brown wig. Nicole and I danced (there was sort of a dance going on) and it was really funny, because all of the kids kept coming up to me and staring, trying to figure out who I was. I thought it was really brave of Nicole to keep dancing with me when they found out it was her Mom!

Rachel, Nicole and Caitlin will all head out for their trip-week. Rachel goes to Yangshuo tomorrow, Caitlin will camp with Outward Bound in Wuxi, and Nicole will leave on the night-train tonight to JingdeZhen. They should all have a good week.

Well, the next birthday of the Month is Rachel, who will be 16! My baby is 7 and my oldest is 16. It's so hard to believe.

Our Road Trip

2008-10-21T17:39:00.016+08:00

Imagine more than 4 times the population of the United States traveling at one time! If you do this, you will understand why it was impossible for us to get train tickets on the last day of the holiday. Everyone goes back to the city on Sunday afternoon, so they can go back to work the next morning. We had planned to go and see a family that is in our branch. We wanted to see where they are, see the tombs there, but especially have church with them on Sunday in their little group (just the five of them). They live in Xuzhou, not to be confused with Suzhou (the town which you probably visited with us if you have come to China). Xuzhou is a small industrial town of around 7 million about four hours north of Nanjing. Well, Mike DOES have his Chinese driver's license, though he really hates to use it. Not many things frighten my 6 foot 5 inch husband. But, driving in China makes him a little skiddish. We decided to drive the car there ourselves. We didn't want to make Jiang have to work this holiday. He deserved time off.

Mike printed off a very non-detailed map from the internet. The girls had come home from Xi'an the night before, so we all piled into the van. It was my job to navigate us through all of the craziness they call road signs. Most of the road was a nice toll-road, and fairly straight-forward. Not too many cars. But, the signs are very confusing, and all I can figure, is that they think differently than we do out west. Once we actually got onto the right road, we did very well. There were beautiful farms all along the way. They don't have the big tractors like you see in the U.S. It's more the old style.

Road Trip!

I thought this was worthy of inclusion because we've never gotten gas by ourselves before! Well, here in China.

This sign was on the outside of the bathrooms at the rest stop. We totally agree that you have to have a sense of humor to use them, especially if you recently had hip surgery and aren't as flexible as you used to be!

We have never felt so welcome at a rest stop!

We arrived safely in about four hours. The Priestley's were very gracious, and we had lunch, and then went to the Han tombs. These are small warriors, also made of terracota. It was very interesting, the most interesting part being the actual tombs that we were able to walk into. They were made of huge, hand-cut stones. They were so smooth and straight! It was a neat thing to see. The next day, we went to do some rock-climbing. It was lots of fun, and everyone, except me because of my hip, tried it. I was really proud of the children and how brave they were. The girls have rock-climbed before in a gym, but this was the first time on real rocks! It was so great of the Priestleys to take us. What a great activity.

Here is Emporer King Chu Liu Zhu (who reigned between 128 BC-116 BC) The tomb was made for him and his wife in the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-24 AD)
This is a jade burial armor that was made for the king.

Pottery found in the tombs

We got a cart to take us around the huge park because of me.

If you can't read this, it says "Keep silence"

These gentlemen asked to have photos with the girls.

That little red dot is Jay. Way to climb!

Caitlin is ready!

Here is Eli, repelling down after his climb.

Coli-way to climb

See how close Rach is to the top?

Here we are with Tammy, Ron, Derek, Emily and Danni Priestley.

The next day was fast Sunday, so we had fast and testimony meeting with them. It was a really sweet experience with them in their living-room, just the two families, sharing our testimonies. We had a wonderful time with all of them and really appreciate their hospitality. We did well getting home, except as we got close to Nanjing, they had some crazy signs again, and we ended up going the very long way around. It took over an hour extra to get home. We were just glad to arrive back. At one point, we had no more ping-ying (Chinese written in the western alphabet) signs, and just had Chinese charactors. We knew we were out of our league with this! We immediately back-tracked.

We had a great time, and I was quite impressed with Mike as he was able to swerve around people, carts and animals suddenly showing up out of the bushes on the sides of the freeway. Unfortunately for Rachel, this made it impossible for her to practice her driving skills and get several hours in. It was a great road trip.

Rachel, Nicole, and Caitlin in Xi'an

2008-10-15T09:19:00.007+08:00

This National Day holiday, Rachel, Nicole and Caitlin were able to go and visit the Starfish Foster-home in Xi'an. We met Amanda, the founder, a couple of years ago when she brought a couple of sweet little kids to Nanjing for cleft-palate surgery. She has devoted all of her time and energy to taking care of children who need medical attention. She works hard to get them the medical care they need and get things in order for adoption. When Amanda was here, she invited Rachel and Nicole to come and help at the foster home when they could. I felt that this year, the girls were old enough to go on their own. Amanda had close to 20(yes in one apartment) children there while the girls were there. They stayed for one week and worked close to 12 hours a day...holding babies, and helping change and feed them. They each came home wanting us to adopt them all! What a fantastic chance for them to fall in love with these children. Here is what they had to say about their experience:

My Orphanage experience:

Coli:

When we, that is Rachel, Caitlin and I, arrived in Xian to help those little orphans I was surprised by how excited I was! We arrived in the normal sized apartment and were greeted with cries, chaos and the smell of milk and poopy diapers everywhere. It was very overwhelming, but at the same time as weird as it may sound, comforting ( I think it is the result of my “motherly instincts” us ladies were born with or something, because I cant come up with any other reason for why a poopy diaper would make me happy). The babies were more than adorable! For instance there is Sean who loves the word "banana" and gets ecstatic when the wiggles is turned on ( even though they watch it about 100 times a day!) and then there is Katelyn who won't look at you, but when you hold her, she stops squirming and glances at you from time to time when you aren’t looking. The nannies did most of the dirty work, like feeding, clothing, and changing the diapers of the babies,( we did do a fair amount though) but we had what I think was the most important job, to show love to them. After living in the big city orphanage where it is one nanny to 27 babies, where there is over 600 of them, you wouldn't expect them to be shown too much love. My heart was full of love and service the whole time! The love I had for those babies was overwhelming me almost to the point of tears. My respect for all the things parents do for us expanded greatly. I don’t think I could have come up with a better way to spend my vacation then serving those cute little orphans! *I am still working on getting my parents to adopt at least one! (if not all 19 :-P but that will take a little more convincing!)*

Caitlin:

Going to Amanda’s Orphanage made me think more about how much God loves Each of us and how much he cares about us and those adorable orphans. This has been a great experience because we grew a lot of love for them in the short week we were there. And we were very sad when we had to leave. I also gained more appreciation for the mothers who have children and need to take care of them. Even though I’m not a mother and I won't be one for a while. Haha. I figured out that it is a lot of hard work (especially when all of them want to have attention and want to be held all the time) But it is worth it!! At the end of each day my sisters and I would be so tired, but every night I wasn’t upset. I was happy because I knew that it was to help. And it was Fun!!!
I LOVE those little kids! And i am so happy that I had the chance to go and help out at the Orphanage in Xi’an.

Rachel:

Xi'an was the most amazing experience ever! I had so much fun! Getting to know the kids was the coolest thing. I grew to love them all like my own kids. They all have the sweetest spirits and they all have such personality. I learned a lot about mothering and about how hard it is sometimes. We were really exhausted most of the time. But it was way worth it. I miss them all already. Now I just have to convince Mom and Dad we need 20 new family members!

September 17, 2008

2008-09-17T11:33:00.007+08:00

We are busy into the school year. The BYU groups have come, and we have a decent-size branch! The girls are happy to look at the cute BYU boys:-) Life is good. A few things that have been going on lately:

Nicole is in a girl-band. She is the drummer. They have 2 guitarists, a singer, and her. They entered the school talent show (which is hard to get into) and made it. Nicole's friend Simone wrote the song. It seemed like a piano recital evening. There were also some painful vocal solos, and a couple of group dances. So, after sitting through to the 2nd to last act, they came on...Nicole cool in her silver jacket. Unfortunately, they had problems with the amplifier, so we couldn't hear the music too well. But, we could here the singer, and Nicole. She played that cymbal and the drums well...especially for only having 6 months of lessons in 6th grade! They may play some songs at the Halloween party so that the school can actually hear the music with the amps working. I wanted to put some video on but I can't figure it out. Maybe next time.

At the beginning of the school year, the kids each picked an activity that they would like to do with the family. So, we schedule in times, maybe a Saturday, or a holiday to do the activity. Caitlin was in charge of our first activity (keep in mind, that the activities can't be too physical yet...they have this Mother who can't do much). Caitlin chose to have "American Day"...this included going to the new Papa John's Pizza. After that, we went to the Dairy Queen (not new, it's been here since we came) for a blizzard. Is that what they have at Dairy Queen? Anyway, it was a thick ice-cream shake. Yummy!

Eli is thinking about the special "Peking Duck" pizza that is being offered today. Hmmmm No thanks!

This last Monday was Autumn Moon Festival. It is the holiday where China celebrates the harvest and the coming of Autumn. It's the holiday when they all eat lots of moon cakes. Well, this time it was Eli's turn to pick. Eli wanted to go to Toys R Us, another newer store in Nanjing. Can you tell the children are excited about American stuff? Anyway, his idea was that everyone would get money and buy something for themselves. Mom and Dad had to ruin that idea, and said we would purchase something for the family to go home and do together. He was placated by us telling him he could look around for birthday ideas. Boy did he come up with some birthday ideas! Practically the whole store, of course. First we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant; Zen. We ate lots of yummy dumplings and noodles. After browsing through Toys R Us, we decided to buy a Jenga-copy and play "Jenga with a Twist". Everyone wrote something you had to do on one of the blocks, and it if you pulled out that block, you had to do it. It was really funny, and fun.

Here we are at the shopping center

I picked the "pretend to die" block and luckily I had Eli's help to kill me

Nicole picked "stand on your head for 30 seconds". She found out that isn't so easy because of a huge head-rush!

Mike picked the "balance all of the pillows on your head" block. Too bad we didn't record his rendition of "Roll'em" he had to do after I picked a lucky "you get to pick someone to do whatever you choose" block!

So, good news. I'm using my cane now...the beautiful flowered one. It's so lovely. I am doing a little better each day. I am walking without it quite a bit at home. I just use it to go out. I go to the pool and do exercises and swim. I'm sure I will continue to get stronger. I am so grateful for all of the prayers on my behalf. Especially Jay and Eli. Every prayer they give, they ask Heavenly Father to bless their Mommy's hip and that she will walk again.

September 4, 2008

2008-09-04T21:45:00.003+08:00

Time is flying by like it always does when school starts. The girls are all busy in their sports. Rachel and Nicole are doing volleyball at school now (I'm sure they are at least as good as the Olympic team!). Caitlin is doing Rugby. Eli is back in swimming, and Jay will start learning basketball on Saturdays. It's good to get them busy. Mike and Nicole have been doing great with an intense exercise program they started 3 weeks ago. I'm pretty proud of them. The do it almost every evening. I would say I'm the only one who isn't doing any great sports right now. But, I did just realize I've been going to the pool to exercise my hip and leg. Does that count? I don't know.

Not too long ago, Ajay Patha, a young man who has been in our branch for about two years, left on his mission. He was living about 2 hours away from Nanjing, and was so diligent in coming to church every week. He and his brother had joined the church when he was younger. Ajay had come to China to go to medical school, but the man who set it up wasn't really honest, and the promised medical school wasn't what it seemed. Ajay wanted to serve a mission, but his parents(back home in India) did not want him to go . After much prayer, they have come around, and are nervous, but not against it. He has been called to the New Delhi mission, which includes Nepal, and Northern India. We are so proud of Ajay. We will all miss him very much as he has been an important part in our little branch.

This last Sunday, was the District Conference in Shanghai. Nicole was asked to speak, which was very scary for her. She did a great job preparing. Her talk was on having a forgiving heart. Poor thing was petrified to find out that we had a visiting apostle, who would be there to hear her, and would also speak. We were so blessed to have Elder Christopherson at the conference. Mike was able to hear him a couple of times, as he went the day before for the priesthood and adult session. Rachel, Nicole, and Caitlin were also able to go to a morning-side and hear him speak. It was a really special day. And of course, he was very kind, and came to Nicole immediately to tell her what a good job she did.

The other good news is Mike was able to talk to someone who works for the US consulate who helped us to register to vote from Nanjing! We hope it works out. We wouldn't want to miss this very entertaining Presidential Election!

Here are some really fun photos of Ajay at the airport the morning he left on his mission.

Olympics and Happy Birthday Jay!

2008-08-19T08:53:00.003+08:00

We were very excited to get home just in time for the Olympics. It was such a great opening ceremony. We loved watching it, and stayed up so late to do it even though our bodies wanted to go to sleep at about 6:00pm from the Jet lag. We arrived home early that same morning around 1:30am. Being here in China, and seeing all of the preparations going on for this big event has been exciting to see. They are so proud of having it here, and proud of how well they are doing. My driver has put I love China Olympic stickers on our side-view mirrors. I guess he must think we are cheering for China instead of the US??? :-) We are cheering for both. He is very happy to tell me that China is first, and the US is second. It has been interesting to try to watch the events. We live at a State-run hotel compound, which means we get Chinese television (which is all government run) and a couple of cable stations like Star TV, a couple of movie channels, National Geographic, and a couple more. The channels we have been able to watch the Olympics on don't show much other than the events that China took Gold in (and they show them over and over and over and over...) We have seen a couple of events with the U.S. involved. We mostly have to keep track online. It's fun to watch, though, and we are glad to be here during this exciting time for them. We are excited they are doing so well in the events.

Jay's birthday was on the first day of school. He turned 9 years old. He was very excited. Rachel and Caitlin went shopping to the new Toys R Us we now have here in Nanjing, and spent just a FEW dollars more than we would have paid in the US to buy some fun Pirates of the Carribean legos for him. Jay wanted hot dogs for his birthday. We have found some decent Hot Dogs (most hot dogs here are strange) but no decent buns. But we make due with what we can find. Luckily there is a big German population here, so it's easy to find sour kraut, which amazingly all of the kids like. Nicole made a chocolate cake for him, and Rachel frosted it. It was a team effort, and he seemed to have a great evening. Jay is such a great guy. He is growing up so fast, and he is excited to be in the 4th grade. He loves sports, and playing ps2 and watching any movie. We are so glad he is in our family! Happy Birthday Jay! Here are a couple of photos from Jay's birthday.

What a Summer!

2008-08-18T14:27:00.007+08:00

Please forgive this long, long entry. It was a very eventful summer.

This has been quite the summer for our family. I mentioned the possibility of hip surgery on July 2nd. We arrived on June 24th, very anxious to see family! It is always so wonderful to be home and see everyone. This year was extra great because my friend Dede Dalton and her family met us for a day in Provo. We spent a fun day at BYU, and Seven Peaks water resort. It was so great to see them all after 3 years. The other days I spent trying to buy all of the children school clothes, etc. just in case I ended up having surgery. On Sunday, June 29th early in the morning, my Grandfather Gibb passed away. We all miss him so much, and are so grateful for the example he was in our lives. He was in pain and poor health for several years. He was such an example of enduring. I always felt like I was special to him, and I know each one of his grandchildren did.

Later that morning, I flew to California to stay with my brother Todd and his wife Jen, for the day. I had such a wonderful time with them. I loved getting to know Jen better. I'm so glad I was able to spend time with them. My Mom flew in that night after helping with funeral plans for my grandfather. Mike flew in to L.A. to come to the Dr. appointment with me. That day, June 30th, the doctor agreed with the other diagnosis that I needed this surgery. My scheduled surgery on July 2nd would stay as planned. We did a little bit of pre-op on the Tuesday, but then went to Disneyland with Todd, Jen and my Mom. It was so much fun! It helped take away the anxiety about the next day. I knew going into this that it is an extremely complicated surgery, and that the recovery is very long. Even more difficult than a hip replacement, which I am trying to avoid. While the recovery is more difficult, it is much better to keep my own hip, and that is worth it to me. I researched out top surgeons in the country for this operation, as it is extremely specialized and a handful are experts. Dr. Matta is one of the best, and most experienced surgeons in this field.

So many family members had prayed and fasted for me. I received some beautiful blessings from my Father, and Mike and my Brother. I am so grateful, and know that this has made such a difference for me. The surgery went well. My mother flew back right after the surgery for the viewing and funeral of Grandpa Gibb. I was so sad to miss that, but so grateful I was able to say good-bye to him. when Mom got to the LA airport, there had been a bomb threat! She was able to call her friend, who got her a flight from a different airport. She was late, but she made it. I stayed in the hospital for a week, and then flew home to Utah and stayed with my Mom and Dad. Mike was with me day and night. It wasn't easy, and I couldn't have done it without him. A couple of days after I got home, I went to the emergency room after passing out a couple of times. They found 3 blood clots in my lungs. I was in the hospital 3 more days. I continued to pass out frequently, and they finally got me on some medication to help that. Mike had to leave on July 21st. Poor guy didn't really have any vacation. He is the best. My mother waited on me and my children hand and foot. I am so indebted to her and my Dad. She and my Dad even gave me their bedroom and moved downstairs! Everyone helped out so much. Brothers and Sisters, Mikes Mom and Dad. I was able to visit with cousins that I haven't spent time with for so long! What a wonderful family we have. I am so grateful I was able to do this in the US where my family could take such good care of me and the kids, and where we had good hospitals! There was a possibility to do it in Hong Kong this fall, where there is excellent care, but the blood clots would have posed a big problem when I got back here to Nanjing!

Well, that was a long story. We're back in Nanjing now. The children have started school. It was wonderful to see Mike again. We are looking forward to this last year in China. I am recovering one day at a time. The kids and Mike take care of all of the food. Luckily, I have Wan to come in 3 times a week and do laundry and clean. What a life-saver! The chinese people have been so sweet. They are always wanting to help and smile very sweetly at me. I have had a couple of interesting experiences, of course. When I went to the Chinese hospital for an x-ray to send to Dr. Matta, I was told to drop my pants. There were about 5 people in there. Some were techs, some Dr's and some were just people waiting for their turns. There were no sheets or hospital gowns. I never thought I would wish for one of those again. Let's just say I was grateful for my "funny" underwear! Another funny situation was when I went to the restroom at a hotel. The bathroom attendant was a sweet little lady, who came into the stall with me and wanted to help! I said thank you so much, but I could do it myself. Phew!

The children had a fun-filled summer. Rachel and Nicole went to EFY in Logan. Caitlin went to girl's camp with Catherine. Jay had his first pack meeting (thanks to Lori) where he received all of his awards for the last year. Rachel finished her driver's Ed course (and alive, too!). The boys played day in and day out with cousins, their favorite thing to do. They were able to spend so much valuable time with Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. We also were able to see our friends the Millers, before heading off to Germany. It was so good to see them. Hopefully next time we can do something more fun.

I wanted to share some of the photos we took this summer. Unfortunately, I was in bed most of the summer, so most of the amazingly great things the kids did with grandparents and cousins, I don't have photos of.

Eli and Brynna hit it right off after three years. They were very best friends for Eli's whole life before China. It was so great to see them having fun together.

It was hard to say good-bye to the Dalton family. But it was so much fun to see them.

Chad was the artistic director of the float for their stake. It was in several parades and won the sweepstakes award (the highest award given) and the people's choice award at the Day's of 47 parade. It was an amazing float. He and Jennie put so much time into it. We are all proud!

Todd and Jen. Doen't Jen look cute pregnant?

Here, Mike is examining which candybar is smooshed in the diaper at our baby-shower. Boy is he concentrating. Mom and I wanted to have one for Jen, and I think it may have been Mike and Todd's first one ever. I'm sure they loved it :-)

It's a Small World even with no small people... It's hard to grow up!

No photo this time of my hip... this time it's a little too much skin. But, Mike was very proud and thought it looked like a shark bite. Here, Todd brought the night shirt that Mom gave me. He sure looks good in it. Much better than I ever did. Purple looks good on you, Ogg...

Fishing at the fishery. Lots of fun and a guaranteed catch...

Say stinky fish!

Jay's first pack meeting.

Mariah, Parker, Jay and Eli are ready to shoot the rocket

Grandpa and Jude, Kellee's cute little boy. It was fun to meet new cousins!

Last Blog Entry Before Summer

2008-06-15T18:08:00.004+08:00

This has been a very eventful year for us. The children will finish school this next Friday. Yes...a long school year. These last couple of weeks have been busy. We enjoyed Dragon Boat Festival, and the school play. We are looking forward to seeing our family, and some good friends, too. This summer is a bit up in the air, as I will possibly have hip surgery done the first of July. We are going to play it by ear, though the children have huge plans for playing with cousins. Rachel and Nicole will head to EFY and Caitlin, her first year at girl's camp. Here are just a few photos of some things from the last couple of weeks.

The traditional food of the Dragon Boat festival is a sticky-rice wrapped in Bamboo leaves. It usually has a flavor, and maybe a small piece of meat or sometimes other scary things :-) Here is Caitlin unwrapping hers. We thought we should try them out. You will notice that she has a very special treat on her plate with it...Tortilla chips. Very expensive, but sometimes available from a foreign food shop. We thought we should eat something we know is good with it. We didn't try the scary-looking shrink-wrapped eggs that came with them.

Up close.. Honestly, some of them tasted pretty good, and some of them were not good at all. We'll just say it was an experience. They were given to us by the hotel.

After I was told to stop running, Mike and I gave each other Mountain Bikes for Christmas. We have been loving going out early Saturday mornings. There are a lot of beautiful places, some nice and smooth like these, and some really rocky and tough ones. LOTS of uphill. It's a really great thing to do together. I will miss it SO much, since I won't be able to do this with him for a while.

These are some photos I took here in Nanjing this last week.

School Play

2008-06-15T17:45:00.006+08:00

The school play was this weekend. They put on Midsummer Night's Dream. The girls worked very hard and the play was really great. Rachel played Helena ( In love with Demetrius, who didn't love her back), Nicole Titania (the Fairy Queen), and Caitlin was a fairy. Here are some photos of their play.

Here is Rachel(I mean Hermia) BEGGING Demetrius to love her. Poor desperate thing!!!!

Here is the Donkey Coli (or Titania) falls in love with.

And here is the donkey asleep on her lap :-)

Helena and Hermia(played by Rachel's good friend Maria)discussing love...

Titania and Oberon, the Fairy King.

Caitlin, a cute yellow fairy.

Titania and Oberon...

The boys fighting over Rachel, I mean Helena.

Dancing fairy Caitlin...

"How could you do this to me!!!!"

More stuff...

2008-05-27T17:36:00.006+08:00

Nicole had her birthday party the other night. It was lots of fun. Some of her friends were out of town, but 4 girls came over, and I took them to a hair salon and they all had a beautiful hairstyle done, we then went to Burger king (which is a big deal, if you can imagine) and then her friends were given a small amount each to find "silly" gifts for her at Confucius temple. They were all really cute and fun. They spent the rest of the evening dressing up and playing party games. I'm sure you can imagine what a crazy night it was. Nicole never ceases to make us laugh!
The salon:

Beautiful Girls:

Dress-ups????

Sunday morning we woke up and Mike went to see what the boys had been doing (they wake up with the sun). I was called into the bathroom, where I saw Eli. Now, I had just woken up, and it took me a minute to register what I saw...Every square inch of his face was covered in red. Apparently, when Mike went in, he asked if he looked like spiderman(???)! We had to keep straight faces and desperately wanted to take a photo of him, but knew it would send the wrong message. Nicole, however, was very unhappy that he used her make-up. I don't think Eli enjoyed washing all of that lipstick off of his head.

Well, things are pretty crazy around here right now. All three of the girls are in the school play and are practicing like crazy. There are of course lots of friends leaving at the end of the year, and lots of go-away parties. Things are all wrapping up with school etc.

I went to Student-lead conferences a couple of weeks ago. This is where you spend almost an hour with each child as they show you all of the things they have worked on this year. It was fun to see how proud they were. Some of the children showed me EVERY detail. It is great one on one time. I think all of the children have had a very successful year at school.

Last week was our final fundraiser for the year with Hopeful Hearts. We try to raise money to give to the Nanjing Orphans and some poor children around the province the heart surgery they need. We were able to earn enough for a surgery with this last fundraiser. There seems to be more and more cases brought to us, so we are working hard to try to earn money for these sweet children. When I am feeling stressed out from all of the fundraising, all I have to do is see the children. My favorite part is visiting them at the hospital, though sometimes it can be so sad and hard. This last week, we visited a 15 year old boy who needs an extremely complicated surgery. I felt such an amazing spirit from both him and his mother. Beautiful smiles and eyes! I wanted so badly to hug her, but I knew she would cry, and that isn't looked upon as a good thing here. We also visited a sweet little 4 month old girl who looks newborn size. She was so beautiful! I just want to take home every one of them!

May 27, 2008

2008-05-27T17:20:00.003+08:00

This has been such a sad time here in China. It's difficult to know how to appropriately address the earthquake and all of it's destruction. On the day of the earthquake, my friend Julie and I were walking to my house. I got an email that afternoon from my friend Heidi in Jakarta asking if I had felt the earthquake. I had no idea what she was talking about and looked on my news-page and saw nothing about it. That night, I saw something about an earthquake in Chengdu that killed 4 people. I thought it was sad, but didn't dwell on it too much. The next morning, my mother called, wondering if we were OK! All of those thousands of people. It has been such a devastating blow for the Chinese people. The aftermath is even still going on. So many people without homes and still in danger. It was felt in some tall buildings in Nanjing, but no damage was done.

Exactly one week later, I was walking the same path home, and suddenly everyone stopped their cars and started honking continuously. As you can imagine, it was A LOT of honking. People on the sidewalks stopped. The sirens all over the city went off. It was such a touching experience to see them doing the only thing they could to mourn for those people lost in the earthquake. There is one bright thing that has come from all of this. I have seen Chinese people helping people in ways I have never seen before. There is such a feeling of unity and selflessness, which seems like a new thing to this nation. For a people who is so used to scraping by, and just "fending for themselves", it's a wonderful thing to see them volunteering time and money.

This morning, I went with Julie to see the Olympic torch while it was here in Nanjing. What a contrast. People were all so excited, and dressed in all sorts of Olympic paraphernalia. They were just thrilled. It was so funny. Julie and I posed in photo after photo with so many Chinese people. We bought flags and t-shirts, and everyone was so excited to see us foreigners excited with them. It was a great morning. Here are some photos of some excited people! Also, here is a little bit of trivia... The torch was made here in Nanjing. It looks like a scroll of paper, because the Chinese are proud to have invented paper.

I decided to take a photo of people taking photos of us. There were so many people that wanted photos with us, I think I know how Mickey Mouse feels??? I felt like a theme-park mascot!

May 6 2008

2008-05-05T16:59:00.006+08:00

We've had a nice May holiday. Now back to life. Here are a few photos of things we have been doing. Rachel, Nicole, and Caitlin will return home tonight from the China International District Youth Conference they have attended in Shanghai. It sounds like they had a great time. We are so glad they were able to go.

The youth were told to do a fundraiser for their youth conference. We actually have 9 youth right now, believe it or not! Rach, Coli, Cait, and the 2 Yu kids, a boy who lives in Xuzhou, and 3 kids from the Faucet family who are here for 6 weeks. So a not to shabby sized group of youth went this year. They decided to do a "pancake dinner" at our house on a Saturday evening. They did a great job. There were pancakes, eggs, bacon and a fruit salad. I think everyone went away still hungry, but it was a fundraiser, what more can you ask for?

The hotel brought over some tables and chairs and we had a nice "candle light" dinner. The youth served everyone.

I've never had so many people in my kitchen at once!

After the dinner, the girls did some hula dancing that Sister Panoke taught them. Everyone loved it.

Our Nicole turned 14 on April 28Th! Happy Birthday Nicole! It was the break, so I took the girls to lunch and a foot massage that day. Then, Nicole wanted pizza, and pavlova for her dinner. She was also able to go to the youth conference dance and is very excited to go to EFY now that she is 14!

We woke up one morning this last week to this beautiful creature in the kitchen! He is at least 2 1/2 inches long! Then, we found another one in the kitchen yesterday! Is there a colony of huge ugly beetle things in my kitchen? Or maybe the same one likes us so much he found his way back??

The boys and Mike and I did some exploring while the girls were gone to Youth conference. We went to the zoo one day. This is a tiger cage, we thought might be a good thing to try out with the boys :-)

We went to these 2 really neat caves. The boys loved them. They do crazy things like put colored fluorescent lights all around. It looks pretty psychedelic.

Apparently there have been ancient bones found in this cave, so they put this nice neanderthal man in it. It freaked Jay out when he saw it. I think he jumped 5 feet! One sad thing was that we could have bought some stalactites on our way out. They chop them off and make carvings out of them and sell them. We didn't buy any.

We also went to the ancient stone quarry to see where 100,000 workers were commissioned to carve a huge monument out of stone by the Emperor Ju Li. They got quite into the project when they figured that they would never be able to move the stone. It was just too heavy. So, they just had to abandon the project. It's amazing because you can see the lines where they carved by hand. So much work!

OH...this first photo is one I had Mike take because we saw this beautiful tunnel of fake flowers on the way, and I always see ladies posing like this for photos...Don't worry, you too could look this special with plastic grapes and tinsel. If only you could find some!

There were 3 or 4 different parts of this big sculpture. This was supposed to be the head.

We read that just the base is over 250,000 tons.

Our time with Chad and Jen

2008-04-16T08:31:00.007+08:00

Chad and Jen at the Forbidden City. This is the huge marble carving that was so huge they had to wait until winter, spray the roads with water so it would turn to ice, and drag it to the Forbidden City.

I love the roof-lines of the Forbidden City. Unfortunately it's a fairly grey day.

Every time we came to a cannon, Chad wanted his photo taken with them.

Chad and Jay playing some basket-ball. Jay loved it!

Here we are at QiXia Mountain.

This was an interesting portable praying spot...

This is in honor of Lori, since she had her photo taken here. You make great Budas guys...

Happy Rirthday to you, Happy Rirthday to you! Even Jiang noticed the mis-spelled word and thought it was funny. Birthday is one of the few English words he knows. This is only one of the fireworks we set off. Tell me Michael doesn't look as if he were a little boy, about to play with fire!

Enjoy being in your 30's this one last year, Michael!

Caitlin did a great job with her dance at the school talent show. She practiced hard and it paid off! Notice the flowers she is holding. I stopped to get them for her, just wanting to grab some really quickly. There was an old lady who was very excited to wrap them all special. I think she may have used over 30 peices of that special felt tissue paper. It took over 30 long minutes! No doubt Caitlin felt extra special :-)

Nicole is enjoying taking photos of the beautiful spring we are enjoying. Here is another of the trees out in the back yard.

Great Wall Photos

2008-04-15T14:41:00.006+08:00

Here are some of my favorite photos of the wall at Simetai.

And here we have what I think was Chad's favorite part of the experience :-) The firmlyu (it's very fun to say). It was really called the mountain train, which we didn't think fit, so we went with firmlyu. We really hoped there wasn't a malfunction where it slid back down the mountain. Don't worry, we'd planned escape routes!

I was certain they would want to climb up the other side after completing the first side to see the unrestored section of rubble. They were a little tired. Near Jen you can see the friend we made. Her name was Janine and she is from Lebanon. I think maybe they only went cause Kellee and Jared had done it. I'm sure the rubble was the highlight of their trip!

The Rubble:

Here, Chad and Jen are flying over the lake to the bottom on the Flying Fox. Jen kept telling the lady at the top she wasn't ready, but she didn't seem to understand english and pushed her off the edge of the platform. Here you can see Jen is still screaming!

We are at the end of our "Great Wall Treck" with Janine. We decided that this rock must say," I just climbed the wall."

April 14, 2008

2008-04-14T12:21:00.003+08:00

It's been a couple of weeks! And lots going on. The children have all been involved in lots of activities. Chad and Jen left us last Thursday. We had such a great time with them. I was able to meet them in Beijing, on Sunday, March 30th. I'll never forget the look on their faces as we drove into the Hutong alleyway as we got close to the hotel. They were quite pale, thinking that our hotel would look like the rest of the area. They were ecstatic when they realized that the hotel was actually quite beautiful! We had a terrific time going to try Beijing Duck, climbing the wall at Simetai, and checking out the Forbidden City and Summer Palace. I think maybe their favorite part of the trip may have been the fake market. They seemed to be highly entertained watching me bargain for their stuff. At one point a lady was so unhappy with my price that she threw the clothes at me! I kept telling her that she didn't have to sell them to me if she was that unhappy with the price, but she still wanted to, so I guess it was OK... Chad and Jen even got into the spirit, and did fairly well on their own! At one time, in Nanjing, Jen had Jay translating for her as she bargained for a necklace. They were a great team! It was fun to get back to Nanjing where we could spend time with the family.

I guess I should pause here to insert our "brown sugar and chocolate chips" experience at the airport. Well, Chad and Jen hadn't understood what I meant when I said 40 kilos total. They thought it meant each bag, not 40 kilos total for the 2 of them. It's very confusing and easy to misunderstand. Anyway, they had lots of bags, and all full of the brown sugar and chocolate chips I had asked my Mom to donate for a big fundraiser we are doing for Hopeful Hearts. We weren't sure how we would get it all to Nanjing. We decided to put ALL 19 (4 pound) bags of brown sugar, plus around 40 cups of chocolate chips in our carry-ons. We knew we would have to act like they weren't heavy at all. Of course, Chad got the heaviest. I imagine it was more than 60 pounds! The taxi driver couldn't pick it up to put it in the car! Well, we got to the airport, and we all acted real cool with our bags. Chad acted like it was nothing! Of course, they were a little worried about all of that brown sugar. I got sent over to the security desk. The two soldiers (who Chad swears were about 16 years old each) tested it all for explosives, and I used my best smile and Chinese to explain that I can't get these items in Nanjing, and my brother brought it to me. They wanted to know what you make with it, and I don't know the word for cookies, so I said, "cake". They smiled and sent us on our way! I couldn't believe it! Well, it was our little miracle! I won't pretend it wasn't funny to watch Chad lift the bags into the overhead, and we were a little worried about all of that brown sugar falling through and onto our heads!

So, the next day, Chad and Jen were kind enough to come to my Hopeful Hearts fundraising luncheon. Yes, Chad was the only guy there. It was at a big hotel, and there was to be a fashion show. I had worked a long time on this luncheon, and couldn't get out of it. I was also in charge of a fashion show for the luncheon. I had asked Chad to be in the fashion show, and I think I may have used up any favors I may ever need from him on that day. Yes, Chad is now famous in Nanjing. I had told him that he would never see anyone again, but he kept running into ladies from the luncheon who recognized him. He's a famous runway model now! He really almost made history as he nearly tripped on the step he didn't see with his sunglasses on! Anyway, he was the star of the show. Thanks Chad!!!

Mike turned 39 on Friday, April 4Th. He actually had a day off because of a Chinese holiday, so we had a fun day with him. We took Chad and Jen to a couple of sights and to lunch. Then, for dinner, we took the whole family to the Timpanyaki Japanese restaurant that was all you can eat. Boy were we all sick! The best part of the day, were the fireworks we surprised Mike with. Jiang (our driver) helped us get some huge fireworks, and we stopped at a park to shoot them off. We are talking Meuller Park fireworks. Pretty crazy! I think it was the highlight of his birthday! Luckily a man asked us if he could have all of the used fireworks after, so we didn't have to try to dispose of all that.

I of course dragged Chad and Jen around the whole time they were here, not wanting them to miss out on anything. We had a blast. The family loved hanging out with them. We miss you both so much! Thank you so much for coming all this way to spend time with us. We will never forget it!

Happy Easter!

2008-03-20T17:17:00.004+08:00

Spring is here, and it is turning out to be a beautiful one. The leaves are starting to bud, and it is more and more green. The last week and a half has been busy. Caitlin and Nicole were both in Shanghai last weekend for a volleyball tournament. Caitlin found out this week after practicing so hard that she will get to do her dance in the School talent show. Eli made it through another swimming lesson with blue lips from being so cold! Poor guy. The Chinese hotel doesn't think it's healthy to turn up the heat. Jay is enjoying playing basketball outside. I was really happy to get Mike home last Friday afternoon after having him gone to South Africa for the week. We are looking forward to enjoying the Easter weekend, though we don't get any time off. We are so grateful for our Savior and what he has done for us. Especially for the opportunity we have to be an eternal family. I am especially grateful that I have the knowledge of his great sacrifice as I look around and realise that so many people don't. This year we get to try to make our own egg coloring, and I couldn't really find any Easter candy, but found some candy the kids will like in Shanghai. Luckily, they are pretty flexible these days...

Here is a little walk I took the other day. I just had to find out what the mellow was. As you can see by the little yellow happy face on the tree, it must be a great place!

I thought I may be getting near the "mellow" when I saw all of the trees being planted. They will plant grass and huge trees like this in just a couple of days.

Ah...this must be the "mellow"!

Here is a fruit and nut market we visited last week. In the morning it is so busy you can hardly walk anywhere. While I was here, I had short sleeves on. It was a warm day. One lady with her "sanitary gloves" on for handling the fruit, came over and felt my arm, rubbing it up and down. This gave about 4 other workers the go-ahead to come and do the same. They were asking me over and over again, " Aren't you cold?". They thought it was hilarious when I said no. They are all still in their long underwear and coats or heavy jackets!

Right off of the back of my bedroom balcony, there is a gorgeous magnolia tree that has been in bloom this last week. Nicole took some fantastic photos of it.

Happy Easter!

March 2008

2008-03-09T21:02:00.005+08:00

Wow! A busy couple of weeks! The kids are busy with sports and school. We went to Shanghai last weekend for our district conference, which is just like stake conference. The China International District has now been split into 2. The Beijing District and now the Shanghai District. It was really a special weekend to be a part of all of that. Mike and I were also able to get our temple recommends renewed, which was wonderful. We took the train early Saturday morning, and went straight to the home/church where the Pudong branch meets for interviews. We had a fun afternoon with the children, and Mike went to the Leadership session. I met him there later for the Adult session. The next morning we all went to the conference. The girls were asked to sing in the youth choir right before the conference started. They were pretty nervous since they'd never practiced, but they faked it well. This afternoon Michael took off for South Africa again. He found out he was leaving on Friday afternoon. The unfortunate thing is that we left our passports in the hotel safe last week, so he had to fly out of Shanghai instead of Nanjing so he could pick them up! Poor guy! I was glad he wad able to get them, though.

Well, I thought that this blog, I would write down a few things I've observed this week. These are honestly very typical occurrences for any day, if not the same exact things, very similar ones:

On an early-morning walk to Xixia lake, I could hear every group of people I passed talking about me like I didn't know what they were saying. They think they are so funny, and they laugh hysterically at themselves. I think I've talked about Xixia lake before. This is where they swim every day of the year, no matter what the weather. But, there seems to be a ritual you have to follow to participate. You have to yell really loudly before you jump into the water. I'm not sure why they do this, maybe they just hope the water will get warmer if they yell at it. My favorite is watching the ladies in these little shower-curtain things they put around themselves while they change. Pretty inventive! A man wearing business-clothes and a pair of converse goes jogging by. A woman is singing at the top of her lungs.

The workers came to help me hang some pictures, etc. They used their dirty fingers to put marks on the wall for drilling. Today was fairly successful. They only need to repair one wall, and even though the shelves aren't straight, the stuff won't slide off.

I went for a walk with several foreign women to the Plum Blossom Festival. Every year, my friend Julie and I have gone. At the top of the hill, there are men dressed in old style with the old Sedan-style chairs that they carry. They give rides to people and play music for a small fee. The first year, they begged us to ride, and we had a great time. The next year, they recognised us, and we hadn't planned on doing it, so didn't bring any money. They insisted we still have a ride. Then, this week, the man ran up to Julie and I and practically hugged us! I'm so surprised he recognised us. He just kept smiling and calling us his friend. Julie and I actually had a ride together in the same chair, which I think just about killed them (we were pretty heavy). We did pay this time. We then convinced all of our friends to ride as well, so I'm pretty sure he likes us even more, now.

Driving to dinner, narrowly missing hundreds of people on bikes or walking, my driver hardly takes notice of the girl who is vomiting out of the taxi-window in front of us.

The meal Rachel, Nicole, Caitlin, their friends and I ate: a vegetarian place, where they make fish and hamburger, even sausage out of tofu and who knows what else that isn't meat. It is actually pretty amazing, and entertaining, if nothing else. The man highly suggested a "special" dish...I said OK (I can only claim that I was overwhelmed with the huge amount of food on the menu, and I had no clue as to what it was). This dish was 20.00, pretty expensive to me, and extremely expensive to them. I wonder what they thought when I was the only one who would try the black fungus with flower petals...and that was only because he was standing there waiting for me to try it!

On a walk in a busy area of Plum Blossom Hill, I saw something that looked like an animal sitting next to a lady on a bench. Next thing I know, she picks it up and starts coming it with her pick. It is her wig!

Mike called me on his way home from work, to tell me he was stuck, waiting for 2 cows to cross in front of them. If you've seen where we live, it is a HUGE city. I don't know if I've ever seen a cow!

The taxi that drove through us and another car to drive onto the off-ramp of the freeway.

About one minute later, same off-ramp, a huge bus BARELY missing us, with honestly no less than 100 people stuffed in it.

As we get close to home, I see 2 little 3-wheel motor-carts with families sleeping with all of their belongings in the back. I feel so grateful I am going home to a warm house.

Here are a few random photos:

It was "Bling" day at school last Friday. I really don't think you could get away with this in the U.S., but here, it's lots of fun for the kids.

This is a photo of the plum blossoms that I took one morning. They are really beautiful.

Here is Rachel and her much improved high-school team. They won many of their games in the tournament. Rach is getting better every year!

OK, Kell, this photo is for you. You said there weren't many photos of Mike and I in our Indonesia Blog, so I put this one in. Heidi and Creed introduced us to "lime squash". Lime juice in soda water...yummy!

Our trip to Indonesia

2008-02-19T16:40:00.009+08:00

We had a fantastic time with the Millers in Jakarta! It was so fun to meet Heidi, Creed, Nash, Grant, Luke and Mallory at the beautiful hotel! We spent the first four days relaxing, and having lots of fun in Bali with all of them. The grounds of our hotel were absolutely beautiful. Bali is so green and lush. The kids loved boogie-boarding in the ocean. We really enjoyed some fantastic food. There was plenty of time for swimming in the pools, and don't worry...Heidi and I got in some great shopping. We also went to a beautiful water park with really fun slides. The landscaping was incredible. I hope you will forgive me for the length of this huge blog entry! I just had too many photos, and believe me, I narrowed it down!

On the first day we went to a beautiful Hindu temple up on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It was incredible. The hindu have reverence for monkeys, so there were monkeys roaming the entire temple grounds. Eli learned to listen to his Mom when one of them bit him! Luckily it didn't break skin, or it would have been an entirely different vacation. We watched a famous traditional hindu performance that was very interesting with men using their voices as an orchestra for the entire hour performance. This is Rachel and Mallorie with one of the performers.

A highlight of the trip was the rafting trip we went on. We were just in awe that we were actually rafting down the jungle! There were actually lots of white-water rapids only a level 2 or 3, but it made lots of excitement. Especially when Mike flew over and almost pushed me out of the raft! There were some amazing sculptures along the sides of the river, as well as some beautiful water-falls. They even let Mallorie come, though they said she wouldn't be insured. We all wondered exactly what we were all insured for...

Driving through Bali was beautiful.

The adults got to go out one evening while the older kids babysat. We went down the beach to a fish restaurant. They sat us at a table near the water, which was great until the tide started to come in. We had to move up 2 tables and were scrambling to get our flip-flops before we lost them. Don't Heidi and Creed look like they are having a romantic meal? Sorry guys, I couldn't resist adding your cute photo!

The Balinese people live in the most interesting compounds. They live in extended family dwellings with a big wall around the outside. The inner buildings are both indoors and out. Each compound has their own little temple, and they pray many times a day. They give offerings every day. Every home I saw had this same look to it. It was really beautiful.

We spent 4 1/2 wonderful days in Jakarta at the Millers home. They were so great to make us feel right at home. We have missed our Miller-Wadley thanksgivings that we used to have in Michigan, and Heidi actually did a Thanksgiving dinner with ALL the trimmings on Sunday! Wow, it was fantastic. Then we enjoyed late-night pie parties almost every night until we left! It was really fun for the girls to see the school their. We attended their branch in Jakarta, which was really nice. Rachel actually was able to attend early-morning seminary with the small group that meets from the branch. She really enjoyed that, and the four boys aparently commented more than ever before! Heidi, the girls and I went and had a wonderful facial and pedicure at the spa. We endulged in Crispy Cream Donuts, and Cold Stone Icecream. The girls found some great buys at some real outlets Heidi took us to.

We could not have a get together without the movie done by all of the kids! This year it was done in the Millers' pool with a Jaws/David Hasslehof theme!???

I couldn't resist this cute photo of Mallorie in the little Chinese outfit we brought her. She did lots of Kungfu for us, along with many other fantastic song and dances!

Heidi took us to a really fun Safari. The kids loved it. Here are some fun photos from our outing.

We thought this was so funny...the bear was trying to say something important to the ranger. The ranger would not look at him. Sorry about the reflexion from the window, we were a little too chicken to roll it down!

There were really funny signs like this all around the park. I was careful cause I sure didn't want to lose my hand to a camel! And, we wondered if all of the signs were based on actual occurances!

Of course, the highlight of the safari was when we got to hold baby animals! We knew that this was a rare opportunity.

We had quite the exciting trip back to Bali, where we were to spend our last 2 nights. After being delayed over 4 hours, we finally started our trip to Bali. About 30 minutes into the flight, we heard an announcement that said due to technical difficulties, the plane needed to turn back to Jakarta. That is not what you like to hear about your plane! I'm just glad they had the smarts to turn us around. We went back, and were put on another flight. I had booked the Novatel hotel on the internet and pre-paid. We arrived at the hotel around 1:00am. The hotel had given away our "standard" rooms. Well, they only had pool villas left, and told us they would put us there for one night and then move us to the standard rooms. Mike said that we wanted to stay wherever they put us because it's hard to move around so much. Because it was their fault, they left us in the two connecting pool villas for both nights! Talk about luxury! We were in Heaven! The kids thought they were movie-stars, I think. The bathrooms and living areas were outdoors under large straw roofs. It was amazing! The perfect way to end a trip of a lifetime!

More Snow For Nanjing

2008-02-01T16:18:00.000+08:00

This week it has snowed more in Nanjing than it has in 50 years. It has taken the city totally by surprise. The entire country has been blown into a frenzy with snow and bad weather. Trains have been shut down, electricity outs, shortages on food and gasoline in many areas. It has happened at the worst time possible with Chinese New Year starting and everyone wanting to get home to their families. That is what you do for Chinese New Year. You go home to see family. They say numbers equivilant of the population of England, Germany, and France together, travel all at once. For many migrant workers it is the ONLY chance in a year they get to go home to see their family members. Many Fathers and Mothers work in a different city and see their children once a year. Thousands of people have been stranded at train stations, in buses on freeways, etc. Here in Nanjing, thankfully, we have only been inconvenienced. The children have been home from school all week. They told employees at Mike's work to stay home Monday and Tuesday. Taxis have been impossible to get. This morning, our driver spent two hours driving around the city to try to find gasoline. He then waited in line for 2 hours to get it.

We will be heading out to Bali and Jakarta Indonesia on Monday. We are really looking forward to seeing our great friends, the Millers. We are pretty excited about the whole trip. It's snowing now, but supposed to stop tomorrow morning. We have train tickets to Shanghai where our flight originates from, in case the freeway is shut down. It will definately be an adventure.

I thought I would share a few photos of the Nanjing airport when it snowed. Give it to them for creativity! We got these off of their websight. Also, I'm adding a couple more snow photos.

This shows about how much snow we got in one 24 hour period. It's been so mild here before now, that you can see the poor blossoms got a shock.

Here are a couple of common scenes in Nanjing. The first is in the department store. Free movies in the TV section! The second photo shows the unlucky guy who got to sit in the back on a COLD day!

Grease Lightening

2008-01-27T12:04:00.001+08:00

This blog entry should start with Friday afternoon. I was supposed to go set up for the International Day at the school. Julie and I had been grocery shopping, and I was dropping her off at her house. If you've seen the driving in Nanjing, you will not be surprised to hear that as we were turning into the driveway of the apartment complex, Jiang (our driver) brushed the coat of a pedestrian. Julie had seen it happen, and said that the walker wasn't watching where he was going and walked into the car. Well...The man chased us into the apartment complex and the 2 or 3 blocks to Julie's building. He started yelling at Jiang, and I waited. He was really angry and kept showing Jiang his jacket. Next thing I knew, Jiang was pulling his hair and pushing him. I grabbed the keys that were inside the car and went inside Julie's 1st floor apartment where we watched stunned as they had a huge fight! There was kicking, hitting, chasing, and at one point Jiang was thrown over a hedge. There was a broom handle involved, and I found out later, that Jiang was bitten on the finger by this fellow, and it broke skin. The pedestrian had called the police, and Jiang had to wait for the police. I was late getting to the school, so I took a taxi. I wasn't very happy about what was happening. Later, I found out that they stayed for over an hour. Several police showed up and took lots of notes. Here is the punchline of the story....The man only wanted 10rmb to clean his coat(about 1.20 Us or the cost of a Chinese dinner)! The policemen told Jiang to pay him and then they left. Now Jiang has to have a shot every day for 5 days because of his human bite. Can you believe it???? It was the craziest thing. Jiang is getting a talking to tomorrow at work.

Saturday was International Day at the school. It snowed lots on Friday night, so there was a much lower turn-out than normal. It took our driver 2 hours longer than normal to get to our house. But we made it. Expats from different countries put together a room about their country and hand out food samples. People go all out, and the food is always amazing! The Americans did a Grease theme this year. We all dressed up in 50's style and there was a juke-box, and a little diner in one corner where we gave out mini-hamburgers and chips with sodas. They had hula-hoop contests, and the art department made us a "Grease Lightening" car. It was really cute. There is a program at the end of international day, and the Americans did a medley of "grease" songs and we danced and did lip-sinc. All of the kids and I were in it, with Nicole playing Frenchy with pink hair, and Caitlin playing the part of Sandy. Eli danced with his school teacher who is American (he just loves her) and had a ball. Here are some photos from International Day.

Here, some of the "T"Birds are getting "Grease Lightening" ready. Pretty cool Jay.

Eli and Miss Karen are dancing pretty good.

Rachel and Jay help with the hand Jive.

Here's our Beauty-school Drop-out!

Caitlin and Devon made a pretty good Sandy and Danny! She was a bit nervous about how short he was compared to her.

Mike and I thought we'd go on a quick date while we were there...

2008-01-27T11:07:00.001+08:00

Michael and I went to Harbin, a small town in northern China, to celebrate our 17Th anniversary that was in December. We had a wonderful time (despite the freezing weather!). Harbin was the town that many Russians settled in, in the early 1900s. They left when Mao stepped in. Every year, they have a huge ice-sculpture and snow-sculpture festival. It is truly amazing. I have selected a few photos. This year there was a very strong Olympic theme. At the ice-sculpture festival, there were buildings from around the world. They choose a different country every year for the snow-sculptures. This year was France.

Here I am in an ice-bar. They would sell hot chocolate, tea, and coffee. If you are really crazy you can order cold beer. It was too cold even on those fur seat covers to want to order anything!

The ice-sculpture festival was amazing. It was so cold that the camera's batteries went out SO fast! It also had a hard time focusing as the evening went on. It took a long time to warm up when we got back to the hotel (even though we each had 3 layers on under those coats). The magnitude of these sculptures are amazing. They get huge ice chunks from the river and bring them all in. There is no metal or other type of foundation for these buildings.

This is a huge snow-sculpture. People were actually worshipping there.

There is an old Russian Orthodox church in the middle of the town. They have turned it into a museum, but it was neat to look at.

Here is the snow-sculpture festival. There were hundreds of sculptures. We were amazed to watch the workers still building the largest building in the forbidden city. They even did the mystical gargoyles on the roof corners. The detail was amazing! There were some beautiful sculptures done for the international competition. There was also a gigantic sculpture that you will see. Pay attention to how small the people look in comparison with it. It was all pretty incredible.

2008-01-23T08:06:00.000+08:00

Wow! Lots of things have been going on these last couple of weeks. I've been dying to update the blog, but had lots of trouble loading my photos onto the computer. Then, as I was getting ready to try again one morning, something went crazy with the USB cord, and it fried my motherboard! I was so sad! But, believe it or not, we found a place to take the computer, and about 80.00 US and one day later, my computer is back! Hurray! And, Mike got me a new card-reader. So, now you can all see our crazy photos!

On January 7th, I turned 36. The day before was a Sunday, and the family did a great job of making a nice dinner for me, and really just letting me relax. They gave me some really fun gifts, like some "hard to find" American foods from the girls, and Mike gave me some big, beautiful Chinese season paintings. My birthday was lots of fun, because my friends blind-folded me and took me to my favorite place for lunch. I'm sure I was quite the event going through the shopping center blind-folded!

The next Sunday was very exciting, because it snowed here in Nanjing. It doesn't snow often, in fact not at all last year. It was an event for everyone. We got some interesting photos on the way to church, and we went for a walk after church. I have some fun photos from that day. The funny thing is, the snow all melted, and then this last Friday night, we got lots more snow. It's still snowing now. There are about 5 inches now! We are not having church today, because it's really hard for people to get anywhere. They aren't prepared for snow here at all...As you will see in the photos what their method of snow removal on the roads is.

There are a lot of beautiful places when it snows. I had a lot of fun taking photos in some of the parks.

So many people were having a great time making snow-men. They were everywhere!

Here is the snow removal method...

More pretty snow scenes...

Fun in the snow.

Watch out Dad!

The popular thing was to come up to Purple Mountain and make a snowman on your car! Everyone was doing it.

Bridal photos can't be delayed (I guess). This bride looked freezing in her strapless gown. I didn't think it could be too good for the dress when she was posing on the ground. I didn't get that photo as I was trying to take it from the car!

Real men don't miss a day swimming in Xixia lake!

You call this snow????

Holiday Photos

2008-01-09T12:32:00.000+08:00

First, a holiday make-over. Before...

Almost after... Rachel couldn't speak for almost 3 minutes when she saw Mike. He hasn't changed his hair in years!

At our Christmas party with our friends, Rachel models the attractive red long underwear she opened. She looked great in them, huh?

Nicole with some Santa puppets. Unfortunately she didn't get to keep those. 10 month old Claire really liked them.

The much-wanted Chicken-dance-dancing Chicken. Oh-and the guy with the chicken is our friend Paul Mullens.

We all had a great time.

Hard at work decorating our graham-cracker gingerbread houses.

The finished product. Nobody would be surprised Nicole was thinking outside the box! She made a trailer house. My church roof was too heavy and fell in.

I just had to add a photo of Mike from the nativity, since he's usually holding the camera and is conveniently left out. He was a special narrator. :-)

Here we are in deep preparation for our nativity Christmas Eve. Even though I am just looking at some songs to sing, I really should be praying we could sing them nicely!

You can see we had lots of fun on Christmas morning removing the friendly lice we seem to find lots around here...

Here is a photo of the branch Christmas party we had on Christmas afternoon.

The girls and I spent the day in Shanghai, and had to check out the Ikea. Here is there festive pose in front of the lovely Christmas tree there in the store.

One day Rachel, Jay and Eli went with me to grab some Japanese noodles, and then we had a walk downtown where they have some big displays there for Christmas/New Year. It is an Olympic Theme, Of Course. There is also a display of 2 huge rats that look like cute mice. This is the year of the rat.

The Holiday

2008-01-07T07:54:00.000+08:00

Wow. It's been a long and wonderful holiday. It started just over 3 weeks ago, on the 14Th of December. That was the last day of school for the children. This year we decided to stay at home for the Christmas break. I think it was nice most of the time, and of course, it would have been nice to go on a small trip. I have hardly had any turns on the computer! I pretty much get it when the kids aren't home. So...lots to catch up on. We had a nice, lazy, and fun week that first week of the break. We tried to get out a couple of times. We went ice-skating one day, which was a big hit. Do you think the children know it's not normal to have huge ice-warts all over the rink? Or water around the edges? I don't know. We did have fun teasing Jay that they gave him pink skates! We had fun making and decorating Christmas Cookies. The children all finished up their Christmas shopping. We were mostly waiting for Michael to finish his last day of work on the 21st, when he would have over a week at home with us! He had saved up a week for the trip we had planned to take on the break. We decided to "vacation at home." It was nice.

On Sunday evening the 23rd, we had some great friends over for dessert and a white elephant game. Julie and Warren, Ginnelle, Paul and little Clare, and Debra and Steve all came. We had a really nice evening. As you can imagine, we had some very interesting gifts we picked up here in China. One of the favorites was a toy chicken who played music, danced the chicken dance and choked and sputtered if you picked him up by the neck! The girls all fought over a cute scarf and hat, and Mike and I fought for a red pair of long underwear for Mike to wear to Harbin in a couple of weeks :-) (It's supposed to be REALLY cold there.) The fun girls from Ma'an shan came to stay with us on Sunday until Monday, and they joined us for the get-together. One little not so merry Christmas surprise was that my good dryer broke that day! It was the very expensive one I had to really fight to get in order for my sanity...the one that was imported and actually works. They weren't even sure they could fix it, but a couple of days ago, it was returned, and working!!! Hurray. Our Ayi, Wan is certain they gave us the wrong one because she thinks the door opens on the wrong side now. But I don't care. It works!

Christmas Eve was a nice day. We had our traditional Christmas Eve Nativity Pageant. I always remember the one at Grandma and Grandpa Russon's house being so serious. Well, ours never are. We had Mary (Nicole) being dragged on the stuffed lion donkey by Joseph (Jay). Rachel standing up reaching out over the stairs as the angel, and Eli really wanting to bring gifts he would like instead of the traditional gold frankincense and Mir. Caitlin was a fine Shepherd. I actually got to do the photos this year and Mike read, which is usually never allowed. I think it's because we didn't video, just took still shots. He doesn't like to be in them. Another exciting thing, is we actually sang more than one song (but didn't sound any better than normal). It ended with me having to decide not to get frustrated because this is the only part we actually "focus" on the birth of Christ and we are way too silly. But, thank heavens for the Church productions...we ended the evening watching Joy to the World, and salvaged the spirit of the whole thing! We had fun opening love gifts that we exchanged with my family back in Utah. Last of all, we made a plate of cookies for Santa, and read The Night Before Christmas. The boys, who still believe, were so excited! I don't know how much longer that will last, so I really cherished this year.

On Christmas day, we had a wonderful morning. Santa found us all the way in Nanjing. We had a wonderful time opening gifts from each other, family in Utah, and Santa. We had a leisurely morning with a nice big breakfast...until we discovered some of the kids had lice. It seems that it's very easy to get that here. I spent the morning working on that. I'm pretty much a pro now, and I had them all cleaned up and lice-free before we had the whole branch over for a dinner at 3:30 that afternoon. It was a fun, exhausting day! We spent the rest of the week just relaxing and enjoying Mike. On Friday, I took the girls to Shanghai as part of their Christmas gift, where they bought some clothes. We had a great time. Mike had some " father-son" time with the boys.

We enjoyed the New Year week, and I think the children were very ready to go back to school on Monday. Looking back, we have had an amazing 2007. We have been so blessed. We've had big adventures, small adventures, visits with family and friends, and challenges, as well as fun. We look forward to this new year, and the mysteries it has in store for us.

Crazy Fun, December 14

2007-12-14T12:14:00.000+08:00

We had the Ford Christmas party last Friday. It was hillarious! We all went to this hotel, which I thought would be sort of dodgy, but turned out nice. There were about 500 people there in this huge room and we had a Chinese set meal. Certainly not what you would get at the Mandarin, or any other American Chinese restaurant, but much better than I expected (I think I've been here WAY too long). I even ate the jelly soup, though I passed on the sea cucumber and abalone that was in it. Anyway, the great part was the entertainment! I think I've mentioned before how the Chinese LOVE variety shows! You can find one on any evening of the week on Chinese TV. They even have them on Street corners in front of Department stores, and in parks, etc. Anyway, there was a serious variety show planned. There was this Girl and Guy couple who were the "MC's" for the evening. They kept coming out in different outfits!
There would be talent acts, and in between they would have games...like call-in games ( I think they thought they were on TV). People would call in on their cell phones from around the room and win prizes. There were lucky draws. One of the acts was this group of girls from the office from the "Easy English Club" ( a club where they promote better English by having movie nights, "word of the day", and "bathroom culture {can you have a bracket inside a bracket? anyway, this means they put english jokes and stories on the bathroom stalls}. OK, so they did this song and dance. There were about 8 of them...and it was a very sultry song. They had these little identical dresses that were very modest on top, but came down BARELY below their bottoms! We were all just so nervous they would bend over a little too far! So, the idea was if the men wanted to hang out with these women, they needed to come to English club. Funny, huh? Well, they had
several other acts, including a Kung Fu act, and LOTS of singing acts ( Everyone sings here. They love to sing in front of people it seems whether they are good or not). Caitlin and her friend were asked to do a dance, and it was cute. They had these really loud smoke blasts that would shoot confetti and smoke onto the stage at unsuspecting times...Caitlin got a real startled look on her face once when she was dancing and they added some special effects! So, the last act of the evening was a fashion show! Isn't that crazy? I think each of the men and women changed 6-8 times! And they all went to classes for weeks before to prepare! It was so very strange. Can you imagine this at your work party??? Everyone in the room was standing and so excited! I felt like we had been transformed back into the 30's and 40's. Like we were at a Bob Hope show, or the Laurence welk show. As a party gift, we each got a pillow with a face on it that unzips to a
blanket. Jealous?

Here are a couple of pictures of Caitlin's dance. You can see the confetti all over the glass stage. All of the people at the tables aren't visible, but they had a fan-club of children down in front of the stage. She and her friend Maddie did a great job. And... the best part is I didn't have to have costumes made. Good job for finding matching outfits girls! And way to go for keeping your rythym with a puff of smoke straight in your face!

I'll tell you about my Pajama party, too... My friend Jackie is moving to Beijing the end of this week, and we have always talked about how we have wanted to walk around in our Pajamas like so many Chinese ladies do. So, we had a lunch for her, and we all wore our pajamas and walked around out in the streets. It was so much fun! I only have these bright red silk ones, so I had to wear layers, but that's pretty Chinese, too, right? (I had some serious static-cling going on!). Her friend came to take photos of us walking around, and he took TONS of photos. We stopped and had photos with a man on his scooter, with a lady in HER pajamas and her dog in a quilted jacket, and we all sat in the back of a man's bicycle cart. It was great! We had a couple of games before we went on our walk, and I won a face mask (they wear them all the time now that it's cold) and a scarf, so I wore those, too. Pretty fancy!

Here we are taking off on our pajama walk.

A nice man let us have a photo on his bike cart.

Helping me get all dressed up for the walk...

A pose under a beautiful statue

Christmas Trees and Birthdays

2007-12-02T13:28:00.000+08:00

We decorated our tree for family home evening. It was lots of fun. Eli was asking ALL day when it was time. Our tree is turning into an eclectic mix of country, and Chinese. We ended the evening with some hot chocolate and cookies.

This Friday was Caitlin's 12th birthday! She was so excited. She has 5 really good friends from school. She had them all over for a sleep-over. First we went to the new Burger King, which they were all thrilled about. Then we went to the Elementary school production, where Jay was quite the "ham", if anyone is surprised :-) They came back to the house for cake and presents, and stayed up way too late! We had 2 girls from the branch come and stay that night as well. They are the cute girls who watched the kids when we went to Hong Kong. That night Eli started throwing-up everywhere. I think we got up at least 8 times! It was a crazy night, but Caitlin had a great time, and we are so grateful to have her in our family! We love you Caitlin!

Thanksgiving

2007-12-02T13:13:00.000+08:00

This year, with my surgery being only one week before Thanksgiving, I wasn't sure what to do. I decided to have the three girls stay home from school, and that it would be more educational for them to fix the Thanksgiving dinner! They did such a fabulous job. They made rolls, pies, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, the turkey, of course, and we even had some dried cranberries from Hong Kong we re-constituted into cranberry sauce! They even made an appetiser jello salad, and apple cider. They did a really great job, and we very proud of themselves, as they should be. They kept commenting on how much work Thanksgiving dinner takes, and how many times they had to clean up the kitchen. I felt good about that, because I had some real empathy from all the previous years... We decided that nobody could have had a better meal than we did. Way to go, girls! Here are a few photos...

Caitlin and Nicole's Dance Class

2007-12-02T12:22:00.000+08:00

This is an article in the school bulliten about Caitlin and Nicole. They have been involved in a dance class this year, teaching younger students. They received a neat acknowledgement about their efforts...

It is with a sense of pride that I send this message to you. All students in the Middle Years Programme are required to do Community service for the betterment of our NIS community, both within and beyond the school. Students engaged in a variety of activities that demonstrate such dedication.

This year, four students at NIS have recently demonstrated an excellent example of Community and service. At the beginning of the year, Nicole Wadley, Caitlin Wadley, Maddie Thompset, and Simone Jeurissen decided to begin a ballet and hip-hop school of dance for the girls of Dong Jiao. Several girls who are students in the Primary Years Programme at NIS expressed interest and they began training for the first eight weeks of school; Not only did Maddie, Nicole, Simone, and Caitlin teach the girls the moves for ballet and hip-hop, they also arranged for the booking of a room in the Dong Jiao Guest House, met with the tailor to design and create costumes, and orchestrated a performance at Dong Jiao where parents and guests were invited to attend and were offered snacks as they entered.

The effects of their efforts resulted in the girls of Dong Jiao having the opportunity to learn a new skill and perform before an audience, both at Dong Jiao, and again at the NIS Whole-School assembly on November 21. Caitlin, Maddie, Simone, and Nicole learned a great deal, from working with a variety of ages, choreographing, time-management, and negotiations. Their efforts are resulted in a performance that they and NIS can be proud of.

What Now?... Well, this does not mean that all students should begin their own dance schools at their compounds. It does mean, however, that Middle Year Programme students should be looking at their interests and skills and identifying areas within and beyond the school for applying those skills and improving experiences for others. This could include volunteering at local schools, hospitals, or orphanages, tutoring NIS or other students, organizing or supporting a club or activity to engage students.

Arden Tyoshchin, MYP Coordinator

Here are a couple of pictures. One of the girls in Nicole's group was sick the night of the performance. The parents and neighbors at Dong Jiao (our compound name) were very happy with the performance.

Our Thoughtful Ayi

2007-11-23T11:09:00.000+08:00

I really wanted to take a minute to talk about Wan, our housekeeper, this week. I have been very touched by her actions after I came home from surgery. She has always had such a jovial countenance, and is a hard worker. This week she has taken such good care of me. She has brought me water, and when my friend brought me lunch, Wan really took the "hostess" role and was very helpful. On Wednesday, she made me dumplings...so many dumplings for lunch. She also brought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Two lilies, which are expensive, and several carnations. I was so touched by this, as I know how much she has to work to get money for the flowers. This morning, she came upstairs and asked if I had eaten breakfast. I told her I hadn't, and she wanted to bring me something. I was going to ask for a banana, but forgot the word. So I said I would just come down and get something. I had told her earlier how Rachel, Nicole, and Caitlin had made so much food yesterday for Thanksgiving. She really wanted to bring me some food, and said," I can bring you something that Rachel made." I didn't want to offend her, so I agreed, having no idea what part of Thanksgiving dinner I would get for breakfast. She came back with the pumpkin pie leftovers and a paper plate and knife. She cut it up in squares (Pie isn't something she would know how to cut)and I asked for a very small piece, of course worrying about getting in trouble with the family for eating the pie! I'm glad there is still an extra pie! Well, I was just glad she didn't bring up stuffing, or mashed potatoes!

November 20, 2007

2007-11-20T11:43:00.000+08:00

A lot of things have gone on this last couple of weeks. First, Rachel's birthday was on November 9th, a Friday. She was very busy that day, playing with friends and there was also a school Halloween Party that night. We all went to that, and then celebrated her birthday for lunch on Saturday. We had a tricky time finding a time the whole family could be there, because Mike had a lot of work things going on that week, and Rachel had important friend celebrations to attend to. Mike left Sunday morning to go to Thailand for business, so the birthday lunch was Saturday. She wanted lasagna and a home-made chocolate cake. She had a fun birthday. And, of course, I can't believe I have a 15 year old daughter!!!!

Also, on November 9th, I went to another cooking class. We learned to make Chinese dumplings. Ok, let me just say....HARD! I felt like butter fingers. Those dumpling makers have talent! After practicing a lot, I sort-of got the idea. The thing is, they make hundreds and they all look the same! Increadible. I don't think I'll really be making those at home in the near or far future. But it was a great experience learning how. I'm gaining a huge appreciation for their talent!

Here are some pictures of the Halloween party costumes,some from Rachel's birthday, and my dumpling cooking class.

Nicole and her friend Simone dressed like Barbies:

Here comes Wizard Caitlin:

Rachel's birthday lunch:

Here, you can see Jay in the corner, after his pretend guitar birthday song.

My first dumpling, and last dumpling. Notice I don't show you the demo-dumpling :-)

Working hard at dumpling-design.

Here is the special wedding meal waiting to be served at the fancy hotel that night...Want some????

Last Wednesday, Michael met me in Hong Kong to go to the Matilda Hospital for hip surgery. I was scheduled for a CT scan Wednesday afternoon, and the surgery on Thursday. I had a wonderful evening with Micheal, and then went to the hospital on Thursday. Great news, they didn't have to do everything they planned on doing. They just repaired a labrim tear, and then cleaned up some swelling and freying. The recovery is much less and I'm thrilled about that. I came back on Sunday afternoon, and I'm trying to do a couple of productive things while I'm not quite ready to get out and tackle the world, so here is the blog. Here are a couple of pictures...

Isn't it a cute hospital? It's right on Victoria peak. Very old, but nice.

How can you not have a speedy recovery with a view from your hospital room like this one?

I have a photo of the bandages, but I didn't want to shock anyone with too much leg. Nice of Mike to take those "after surgery" shots. (it's actually the next morning)

Ok, so Mike insists it isn't too much leg. Just be glad I'm not in a swimsuit :-) and I think you should know that the breakfast is for me AND Mike. I couldn't even eat it cause they beat up my throat so bad.

Rachel's trip to Jing De Zhen

2007-11-07T17:06:00.000+08:00

Hey Everyone!
This is Rachel.. My mom told me to come on here and say a few things about my trip I went on last week with all of the kids in my grade.
I went to a little village in the middle of China, called Jing De Zhen. It is a pretty random location, and you would think that it had no historical relevance, due to the lack of people, but actually it is the Pottery/Porcelain capital of the world.
We stayed at a hotel, that warmly welcomed us with a large sign that read "Warmly welcomed international teen friendly sorts". They don't get a lot of foreigners there. We were in the hotel for about 4 nights, and we stayed in rooms of 2 Each room had its own computer and TV! We spent most of our days walking around the city though, looking at various museums and historically significant places.
Mostly all of the people who live there take part of the pottery industry.
I saw a lot of cool things, mostly pottery related, like people making the pottery, the kilns they are cooked in, the carving and painting of the pieces and even a first-hand look at the selling of the pottery =]
I had a great time looking at the different pieces, as art is one of my favorite things, but i did find out the hard way that pottery spinning is not my BEST talent. ;-)
The pottery there was very cheap, i bought three beautiful hand crafted vases for my mom for about $12.00, and i payed about double than the price i should have. so it was fun shopping =]

I had a lot of fun there, and am very glad i went!

Here are some pictures from my trip:

This is the "Millenium Wall". It was created by a bunch of foreign students.

This is a picture of a baby's Split-pants. Yes, they actually wear them (:

This is a sign that was at the buffet of our hotel. I thought it was pretty dang funny.

Thats me opening a locked door. haha.

And this is me, knocking on an ancient chinese door =].

This is a house in a small village I took a picture of. I really liked it.. it shows how alot of people really live.

Happy Halloween!

2007-11-07T16:30:00.000+08:00

Last week was a busy week. I guess they all are. The girls all kept busy on their trips. Halloween was Wednesday night. It was fun. I found an ugly old pumpkin (which I thought worked extra well...being a little more scary) to carve. Mike came home and helped the boys carve their pumpkin. It was a rainy day. All of the kids met out in front of our house. With all of the older children gone on trip-week, there were less than 30 kids. The person who planned it decided that they would all go together. So our house was the first one. Then, we all went together to each house. One of the ladies had sent a note around a few days before, telling people there would be children coming to trick-or-treat, so most of the people participated. It was fun. They did get some interesting stuff. I think this was because of the available candy here, and because several Chinese homes participated. Jay and Eli received several "haw" candies. They are like crab-apples dipped in hard tack. MMMM.... Yummy! Jay was a pirate skeleton, and Eli was a skeleton. Nice and easy costumes I picked up when we were in Hong Kong.

Eli's birthday was fun. He took cupcakes to school. He came home with chocolate frosting all over him! The neighborhood usually has cake out in front of the houses on the kid's birthdays. We had a little neighborhood party right after school. Eli was very excited about his gifts. Some of his favorites were a Ratatouille game, a remote control car, and a little pretend fish tank. He was very tired by the end of the day!

On Saturday, all of the Elders' Quorum came over to play football, eat pizza, and watch the Priesthood session of General Conference. I hid out in my room with the kids, but it sounded like they had a great time. There were about 25 of them.

I have been very involved lately with the charity that I work with. We are putting together an Auction to raise money for heart surgeries. I have been extremely busy with it. If all goes well, we should make enough for 3 or 4 children to have heart surgery! That will definitely make all of this work worth it! Here is the hyper-link if anyone wants to see the sweet children who have had surgeries!

I want to try to get the girls to write about their trip weeks on the blog. I'll see. It's hard to get them when they aren't too busy!

Here are a few photos of Halloween, and Eli's birthday.

Oh- One last thing. I was invited to a Melbourne Cup luncheon yesterday. I'm told that nobody in Australia works on this day (it's a big horse race), they have parties and watch the race. We were to all dress up and wear hats, and we all watched the race on the Australian channel. My friends and I wore funny hats. I think they are trying to make me an Aussie! It was a fun afternoon. I'm loving getting to know so many different cultures.

Carving the pumpkin.

Rainy Trick-or-treat.

Jay and Eli and friends (Jay is in the pirate mask)

Candy...

Eli and his cake (it's better than it looks...that's coconut-pecan frosting)

Yeah! Presents!

Getting ready for the Melbourne Cup Luncheon.

Ginelle, Julie, Deb, and I. Don't we look lovely?

Here are the ladies watching the race...

October 30th 2007

2007-10-30T11:22:00.000+08:00

I wrote the whole thing, and put pictures on, and then...it disappeared! That's a little frustrating. But...I'm going to try again.

Last weekend was supposed to be Eli's birthday party. He chose to invite a set of twins he plays with to go to McDonald's and to a park. But, they had to cancel last minute. It turned in to a Mommy-Daddy-Eli date. We went to McDonald's and then to the school to play. We had fun. The only bad part was when Mommy threw a baseball and Eli missed. It hit his eye. What a nice Mom!!!! He still has a purple and black eye. Happy Birthday Eli! I can't believe my baby is 6 years old!

Also this weekend, we went for a walk with the boys. I keep trying to sneak in walks because I am going crazy not exercising at all. I can walk and move OK, it just makes me hurt. But, I figure I won't be able to at all for a while after the surgery coming up on the 15Th, so much to Mike's displeasure, I do try to sneak some walking in. I don't know if I've mentioned the surgery on the blog. I will be going in for hip surgery to Hong Kong. I have something called FAI Femoral Ace tubular Impingement. Anyway, I'm really grateful they found the problem, and that it can be fixed! It will be an arthroscopic surgery, and I am really glad about that.

The girls are off on their trip-week. Each grade goes to a different location in China to learn about the culture for a week. Caitlin is in Nanjing (but staying away from home), Nicole is in Xi'an, and Rachel is in JingdeZhen. Hopefully I'll get some more info about that when they get back.

Here are some pictures from this weekend:

There was a posing rock (there always seem to be lots of "posing" opportunities around), so I had Mike pose. Handsome guy!

There are always lots of girls getting photographed at the different parks. Mostly wedding photos. This girl has a fancy purple gown on. It seemed chilly!

Mike and Eli at our Birthday play-date

Eli and the black eye he is happy to tell everyone that Mom gave him. It looks much worse than you can see here. It swelled up more and turned purple and black.

Wedding photos!

Testing the water...Other people are swimming. Should I?

No Mike No! Look at the sign! (and the people swimming behind it)

Jay and Eli trying to fall in...luckily they didn't succeed.

A party?

2007-10-20T17:05:00.000+08:00

We were invited to a party today. My friend who invited us had asked us to something before, and we weren't able to go, so I really made an effort to get there this time. I thought it was her party. But, it turned out to be a grand opening of a "Horse Ranch" out in the rural area of Nanjing. I put "horse Ranch" in quotation marks, because it's certainly not what you would picture. We drove through little villages, and finally ended up there. It started at 12:00pm, and we were about 15 minutes late. There were a few foreigners we didn't know there, and we seemed to stand around in this big cement looking courtyard for what seemed like ages. There were some horses in cement stalls in back, and they put some toys in a fenced in part for some of the little kids. Across from the kids there was a fenced in part for 2 chickens, and another for a dog. Finally, after about an hour, Heike, who had invited us came. There seemed to be a lot of Chinese dishes being added to the pot-luck. At about 1:30, they brought out a few horses for the children to try riding. It was fun for the kids because they haven't ever really tried riding horses themselves. Mike is horribly allergic to horses, so he stayed away from them. The meal wasn't ever getting started, and we were ready to go quite soon after that, so we took the kids to McDonald's. Well...it was a China experience! I asked each of the kids to tell me in one sentence how their horse-riding experience was...

Rachel said," It was good."
Nicole said," It was embarrassing."
Caitlin said, "It was slow."
Jay said," It was very, very, fun!"
Eli, who didn't ride one, said," The little Chinese boy ate the chips off of my plate without asking!"

So, there you go.

Here is Mike in front of the new horse ranch. And, Grandma, right behind him. She was awesome!

Caitlin.

Jay.

Nicole.

Rachel.

Here is the little village the horse ranch was in.

This darling little girl was playing in the street. I showed her her photo on the camera, and she was really excited.

Photos and stuff

2007-10-20T15:18:00.000+08:00

So much has happened since I last wrote. I think it's best to just share some pictures will discriptions for now...

This is before school on "crazy hair day". It's hard to see, but we shaved Eli's name into his hair. It was so blond, you couldn't see it well, so we used blue marker to make it stand out. Note Nicole's crazy hair is a side pony (that was not so crazy in my day)...
>

I went to a cooking class not too long ago, and learned to make "Mandarin fish" here is a photo of the deep fried special. Yes, it started out as whole fish, and it was pretty entertaining to watch us ladies try to do the fancy cuts, and deal with the gross parts. My fish wasn't the worst looking, but definitely not as nice as the chef's fish...you should note that they usually leave the head on , and that is the best part. I think they knew who they were dealing with...wimpy western ladies.

Here, we are on our way to Hong Kong!

We had a great time in Hong Kong. The kids really enjoyed Hong Kong Disneyland. Our first day there, we were asked to be the "first family of the day". We were let in 10 minutes early for photos like this one with the staff, and then we did a count-down to the opening time. We felt pretty special, and were the first ones in the park to start the rides. The kids were in heaven!

We just had to stop on our way to the rides and have a photo...notice nobody else on main street U.S.A.?

We enjoyed some beautiful walks just outside our hotel along the ocean.

The kids thought it would be fun to go to a beach. We found one called Big Wave Bay. It was quite an adventure getting there. We took the subway, and then found a bus, where we rode it to a certain rode and walked 20 minutes. We actually found it, and used the YMCA towels to lay on. I wonder if they didn't like that. We rented some body boards, and had lots of fun. The waves were actually really high, and there were some people surfing. I spent the afternoon like a mother worrying about whether or not I could see all of my kids! Here are Jay and Eli, the one time I didn't need to worry where they were.

We had a great time in Hong Kong. It was just the break we needed, and fun to spend time together. I notice, the older the children get, the more busy they are, and the trickier it is to find "family time". These are great chances to be relaxed and just have fun (and eat food we love, and speak English, and shop for our sizes, etc. etc.)

A couple of days after we got back from Hong Kong, my sister Lori came to visit! We had such an awesome time! She is such a good sport. She tried everything I gave her to eat (and believe me, growing up, she was a picky eater!), and tried the massages (and actually enjoyed them), and never complained even though I walked her all over Nanjing. I'm not sure she ever got used to the Chinese toilets, though. I am so glad she was able to come and see where I live. It's hard to say good-bye, but so wonderful when people you love come to stay. Here are a couple of photos of her trying out some of the Chinese life...

I took her to Mochu Lake, the same lake I put up photos from the last entry. She thought she would try to stick her leg up in a tree like so many of the older people do to stretch. Good try Lori! But when they do it, their legs are almost parallel to their bodies. Keep trying!

Here is a photo Lori took of me with "Satan Mickey" as we called him. She thought it was pretty crazy how they copy everything, but many times it just doesn't look quite right...

Here is Lori and Caitlin in front of the Lake of 10,000 men. This is a lake that the emperor decided to have put in over-night, and took 10,000 men to hand-dig.

This is "Buddha Lori". We went to QiXia mountain, where there is a monastery and beautiful carvings in the mountain. There was an empty spot, so I asked Lori to pose. I think she did a great job!

Life is back to normal now, if you can call life normal. A couple of side-notes: I found out just before going to Hong Kong that I need to have hip surgery. I will be flying to Hong Kong for November 15Th. It will be arthroscopic surgery, and that makes me really happy. There will be a special training course on that day, so I will have one of the best surgeons for this problem in the world in Hong Kong to work on my hip that day. Also, not long before going to Hong Kong, I entered a competition to run in the torch relay for the 2008 Olympics. China will choose 8 foreign residents to run. I certainly didn't get the top votes, but it was a lot of fun. I got just under 700 votes, and loved reading the comments people were able to leave. I don't think I'm out quite yet, maybe I'm going on to the next round. We'll see. Either way, it's been fun.

2007-09-08T16:03:00.000+08:00

There is a new feature on blogger, I thought I'd try. Here is a video of lots of people going to work. I took it from the car, but I guess that's obvious.

These last couple of weeks have been good and busy. A couple of things I wanted to mention:

For family night, we had a "talent night". It was hilarious. Rachel and Nicole did a lip sinc. Caitlin and Eli did a mime. Jay played a guitar song he made up(he doesn't really know how to play the guitar). I played the William Tell Overture in a hand-clapping, knee slapping presentation. And for the finally, Mike burped the alphabet. What talent we all have :-) Anyway, it was a pretty funny night.

I went took Eli to the dentist the other day. He is a Chinese dentist, but the only one in town who speaks English. He's pretty much got a monopoly with the foreigners. He charges even more than the states...you can imagine how much that is in a Chinese economy. Anyway, that is off the subject. Back to the story...He said he had read a Chinese newspaper the other day, and there was an article on Expatriates living in Nanjing. They said in the paper that there is even a family with 5 children living here in Nanjing! He was very proud to know who it was. A city of over 7 million, and our family is possibly the largest one!

Mike and I got up really early the other morning and went to Mochu lake. His office is moving south of town in a couple of weeks, and he's never had a chance to see it. You have to go early or you miss the party there. This is the park where there are people doing everything. Calligraphy, jazzercise, ti chi, singing, Chinese yo-yos, ballroom dancing, walking birds in cages, cards, majang, exercising. I'll stop the list there. We had a wonderful time, and I'm excited to include some photos from our walk.

I want a bike like this!

I forgot to mention you could buy a fish and have it cleaned right there for you...

This guy was the best. He was doing this mini-half-step-jog thing, while walking his poodle and reading the paper at the same time! Unfortunately, it's tricky to get photos of people without being noticed, so I missed him with his paper out.

One of the beautiful scenes of Mochu Lake.

This boat has seen better days, but it has a certain beauty about it.

Here is a photo we took on the way back to work. Thought you'd like to see how crazy the bike-traffic can be...now imagine all that with cars, busses, and chaos!

Jay's Big Weekend

2007-08-29T14:10:00.000+08:00

Jay had his birthday party on Friday after school. He invited 14 boys his age. They all came over, and we went to the pool to swim for an hour. I just kept counting over and over to make sure they were all above water! Then we went to the bowling ally and everyone played a game of bowling. Mike showed up after that with pizza, and they all came down in front of our houses and played soccer, and ate pizza. It was quite an event! I think he had lots of fun. I'm so glad he has such a fun group of boys to be with. Here are a couple of pictures of the party...

On Sunday morning, we had Jay's baptism. It was such a special day. He was so excited about it, and I feel he was very ready. The other members from our branch who are here right now came at 9:00am to our Dongjiao pool. We had asked the hotel if we could use the pool for about 30 minutes. We went inside, and Jay and Mike changed into their white clothes. Jay wore judo pants that I had found, and a white t-shirt. We stood around the pool and had a short meeting. We sang I am a Child of God. It was so sweet to hear, and it echoed in room. I gave a short talk about baptism, and Mike helped Jay into the pool. Jay says it was really cold, but I don't think he knows how a lake might have been! It was so neat to see Michael baptise Jay. We sang hymns while we waited for them to change, and then Rachel gave a really good talk on the gift of the Holy Ghost. We then ended the meeting, and went to our house for sacrament meeting. During the meeting Mike and the other priesthood holders confirmed Jay a member of the Church. Jay is the first baptism for the Nanjing Branch. I think it will be a special memory for him. While in our little meeting, we were singing acapella because nobody can play the piano. It took us three different songs to figure out a tune we could remember well enough to sing without music! After the meeting, we had surprise visitors. One of the teacher couples from BYU came and didn't know how to get to their University. They called President Yu, and he had a taxi bring them to our house. They were a lovely Hawaiian couple, who were so much fun. They joined all of us in our brunch, and Brother Panoke played his ukulele and taught us songs and dances. It was so much fun. They will be such a fun addition to our branch, and I know the Chinese students will love them! We had a wonderful day, and I really feel that Jay will have something special to remember his entire life. We all wished so much that we could have shared this day with our family. But we are happy to share the photos and grateful for the internet!

Our branch. The single brother, Darrin, forgot until President Yu called and woke him up. It's a good thing, because we wouldn't have had two witnesses! My camera lense was all fogged up from the humidity.

Summer Fun in Utah

2007-08-29T13:06:00.000+08:00

We had such an amazingly great summer with our family in Utah! Caitlin, Jay, Eli, and I arrived on June 27th. Rachel and Nicole were still with their Tibet trip, and Mike was working. They came July 9th. We had so much fun with our family. We are so grateful to them for letting us mooch off of them for the whole summer, and making us feel so welcome. It means so much to Mike and I that our children feel so loved and accepted when they go home to family. We did so many fun things, it's hard to name them all. There were pool parties, and ice-blocking, picnics, four-wheeling, kick-ball games, movies, raging waters, Lagoon, Lake Powell, shopping, eating and more eating, and most of all...playing with cousins, sisters and brothers! We loved every minute. I'm sure I've forgotten some of the fun things we did, but there were too many to count. Here are just a few pictures of some fun times we had...

Here are the kids all making a train while ice-blocking.

After ice-blocking, all of the kids threw sponges at Grandpa Russon's face. It was a high-light of the day! Here is Karlyn giving it her best shot!

A fun trip to Hill Air force Base to see the Air Museum. The kids really enjoyed this. And the husbands were all jealous we went!

One special tradition is Grandpa Russon taking us to eat hamburgers, fries, and fry sauce at Paces' when we arrive. Here the kids enjoy their meal.

We love to go swimming at Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bill's pool. Here is Jenny-Ruth (Mike's cousin) at our family party. She loves to get everyone wet!

We spent a week in Lake Powell. It was so much fun. Here are a couple of pictures of the trip...the center one of Nicole water-skiing! She and Jay both learned how to ski this trip. Rachel and Caitlin were so close! Next year!

Rachel's Summer...

2007-08-12T15:35:00.000+08:00

This summer was way fun for me. It was also really busy...

First thing we did this summer, was me and Nicole went on out trip to Tibet for Biking. It was way fun. We spent 3 weeks in Tibet and 15 days biking. The biking days were up to 75 miles long. We went to the base camp of Mt. Everest by bike, which was awesome to see. While we were there, about a week and a half in, I got really sick. Luckily, though, i was able to get to a hospital, and three days, and 14 I.V. drips later, i was okay. We were able to have a fun time with all of the people involved and got really close to all of them. I was able to see how hard it is to do things like this that involve extreme sport. My favorite thing about the trip was going to all of the places in Nepal and Tibet to go site seeing and look at all of the monasteries and national monuments. It was fun to be in another country and see their culture. While we were doing the biking, we camped all of the way. It was hard at first, because me and Nicole weren't used to the conditions, but it ended up being fun, and I even learned how to pitch my own tent! ha ha. It was a way fun experience, and I am so glad I went on the trip.
I'm grateful we are given all of these fun opportunities!

After Tibet I went back to Utah to see all of my Family and stuff, and the first thing me and Nicole did was go to Girl's Camp. It was way fun, I always like girls camp. Since we don't have a ward, we went to Becky's (our cousin who is Nicole's age) ward.

After girls camp I went to E.F.Y at Utah state in Logan, which was WAY fun. I had sooo much fun. I met some great people and had a fun time!

Then, when we got home we went to Lake Powell for a week, which was fun because we don't get the chance to go there very often. I tried to learn how to ski, and ALMOST succeeded ( i got up on slalom but my back foot fell out) and had fun bumper tubing and knee boarding!

Then, after that it was pretty low-key getting stuff like shopping done and getting ready to go home. We went to Lagoon which was way fun and we did lots of fun things with our family.

All together my summer was awesome and I had alot of fun!!

Tibet: How Nicole saw it...

2007-08-12T14:49:00.000+08:00

Nicole and Rachel spent 3 weeks cycling through Tibet this summer. I have borrowed Nicole's journal and will copy a few things here:

Wednesday, June 21
We have been in Lhasa for 3 days now, and it is just beautiful! The train ride was a bit long, but it all come out great! Yesterday we went to 2 monasteries. It was really cool to see! The sky is unbelievably blue, and everyone has really unique features. The people have kept their heritage close to them. They have painting of history and Buddhas on every wall almost. Today we got to shop. I bout some cool jewelry, 2 shirts, and 1 skirt. Today I went to Pateka Palace. It has 1000 rooms and was built for Dahlie Llama the leader of Buddhism. It is beautiful with white and red walls. I am excited to bike tomorrow. I think it will be a challenge!

June 28th
Over 5000 kilometers from Beijing! Wow! On the third day Rachel had bad altitude sickness. I stayed up with her all night then went in the truck the next day. Then, after that truck day, I biked 100 kilometers to a town called Shigatzay. The biking wasn't hard because Katherina biked with me.

July 6th ( a compilation of different parts of her trip)

Mount Everest: Mount Everest is so beautiful! OK so we get there, right? And all of the sudden my camera runs out of battery and I can't take a picture of Everest! So, I just use Rachel's camera. At base camp there was really nothing, but it was still cool! At the top of every mountain and pass they have prayer flags. They are really cool! It's always nice to see them when you are biking up a pass on a mountain!

The Crew: OK, so we have this crew of Nepalese and Tibetan men that set up our tents. First there is the land cruiser driver. He is nuts, and isn't very nice. One time we had to wake up early, because the road would be closed from 8:00am to 9:00pm and he was too drunk to drive. He drove the support vehicle for those of us who couldn't bike and longer. Then there is "Cookie" That is the nickname for the cook. He is super short and has a gold tooth. He is a really great cook, and is hilarious! I love him! Today we lost him! He was just wandering around and finally we found him. Then there is Mila Cookie's helper. He looks like Uncle Jared, but Asian. He carries stuff and sets up tents. He is nice from what I've noticed. Then there is Shirpa. He is really nice and has good English. OK, so one night the crew was getting a gas lamp ready for the tent so that we could see, while me, Rachel, Devon, Keri, and JJ played cards. It was about 10:15pm when we saw orange everywhere outside the tent. Me and Keri go out and see tons of stuff on fire! It was crazy! We were so stupid because it could explode, so we ran. I saw Shirpa pick up the burning gas tank with flames all over it and throw it in the river. He was really brave, he is OK though. We ended up waiting like 20 minutes for the gas to run out. It was freezing outside!

All Downhill: OK, So yesterday was the best day of the whole trip! So, first we wake up at like 3:30am and start biking. The mountains are beautiful and they all look very mystical like something you would see in Lord of the Rings. It is really blue in the sky and green on the ground but no trees. Then all of the sudden we are going downhill and all you see is trees. It is like the rain forest. It was soo beautiful! They had tons of waterfalls with rainbows shining through, and little rivers every which way. The whole biking part of that day was going downhill on gravel. It had rained the night before so there were lots of puddles and it was very muddy! I was covered with dirt! It was soo fun! It was so relaxing because instead of peddling the bike did it all for you! I was so grateful for everything God has given us! I felt soo blessed! It was like walking in to one of the pages of a National Geographic magazine! It made me think how wonderful heaven must be!

Nicole wrote a really fun journal that she will always be glad she has. I just copied a few entries here. I think that the girls had such a wonderful experience, and I'm so grateful they were able to go on this trip!

Here Comes the Summer!

2007-06-20T16:17:00.000+08:00

Some great news! I somehow, accidentally, found the spot for changing everything on my blog to English! Now I can read all of the buttons, and I know what I'm doing! Just another part of the whole China experience. We daily have things happen that we just remind ourselves...We're in China. It really helps us to become more flexible, to look on the bright side of things.

Wow, it's been a big week and a half. Last week was the last week of school. It seems that the school wanted to fit everything in that last week! Between award evenings, good-bye dinners, and packing for the girls, we stayed pretty busy. Monday, we all went over to Jay's film festival. Each person in his class made their own movie on the computer using video clips and photos. They even served popcorn and gave us tickets. It was lots of fun, and Jay had a great time making his movie. Mike took the older girls to their award ceremony night, where students received certificates for participation and out-standing accomplishments. On Thursday, I went over to the school to play with Eli at his end of school party. It was supposed to be a water fun day, but it was a little too cold for getting wet. IT's been unusually cool here this June, which we are not complaining about. It's starting to warm-up now, and we hope it stays coolish for just another week! Friday, I went to see the end-of-school assembly, which was fun. Many of the teachers over at the school joke about the Wadley family taking over the school. When you have five involved children in a small school, they get seen a lot in the assemblies and activities. I am proud of the kids and their willingness to jump in and try new things. I have watched them grow and develop new talents, and I feel grateful that they have so many opportunities.

On Friday, I took Rachel to the doctor for her final check-up to be able to go to Tibet after last week's incident. She was just fine, and given the OK to head off to Tibet. Friday night we took the kids to get Pizza, and found Pirates of the Caribbean playing in English, for a celebration of the end of school. It was also the last family dinner before the family all split in different directions for the summer. We finished packing Rachel and Nicole for Tibet on Saturday, along with all of the other places they will be going after that...girls camp, EFY, and a visit with Utah family. We dropped them off to the train station on Saturday night at 9:45 for their 48 hour ride. Mom and Dad Nichols know exactly what that was like! I think they had a good time, and feel like the group is a fun one. Rachel called us Monday night right after they arrived, to tell us they were OK. She said it's amazing and beautiful there, and they sounded excited for the trip.

We actually got to spend Father's Day with Michael this year, which is a first in a few years now. It was great to be with him. He got an outdoor lounge-chair for father's day and was able to have a nice nap out on the balcony guilt-free as he put it (that makes it sound like I never let him rest! Not true, but maybe he would guilty if he sat there while I make dinner :-) Today, Michael left for Japan on business, and won't be back before we leave for Utah. We miss him already, but I'm excited that he will get to be there over a weekend and might get to actually see some things there. We will all look forward to meeting up in a couple of weeks in Utah for a couple of weeks of fun with our family.
Here is Eli with his good friend Domonik at the end-of-school party.

Rachel and her friends Katerina and Maria at the Award Night.

Nicole and friends Maggie and Isabella at the Award Night.

Caitlin graduated from the 5th grade this year and will head off to middle-school (upstairs) next year. Here she is with her friend Pauline.

I was walking down the hall, and saw this poster. I was surprised to see that Jay was the artist. I guess there are lots of frogs around the schoolyard, and some unfortunate endings for many...

Rachel and Nicole ready to head to the train station.

2007-06-11T13:45:00.000+08:00

Wow, all of the instructions for this web sight are in Chinese, so you can imagine how difficult it is to navigate my way around! Apparently, I lost my password, and couldn't read anything, so I just spent 25 minutes trying to get on here! At least I'm here now! We've had an eventful week. On Wednesday morning, Caitlin had her open-house for a big fifth-grade project, along with a great assembly in which she acted, sang, and danced about preventing pollution. She did a lot of work, and a great job. She and her team had some fun things at their booth. Here is a photo of her in the skit about a family with great recycling skills, and next she shares the craft of recycling paper into...PAPER! She was also on the design team for the cute t-shirt she is wearing.

On Thursday, and Friday, we went to see the school Production. It was called In The Zone. Rachel and Nicole were both in it, and did a terrific job! We are so proud of them. Nicole had a huge monologue to memorize, and Rachel had a big part, and two songs. It was a fun play, very colorful as you can see, and there was fun dancing and costumes. They worked so hard on it, and I think, had a great time.

On Saturday things got a little crazy. We had a bit of a scare. We met Saturday afternoon to pack up the bikes to send to Tibet. Afterward, we had lots of extra bubble-wrap, so the kids going on the trip thought it would be fun to wrap themselves up in it and sort of wrestle. Of course they had no arms, cause they were wrapped in. Well, one boy dived at Rachel, and knocked her over, and she hit her head on the ground. She was unconscious. We thought everything was OK, but then she couldn't remember anything and was FREAKING out. She couldn't remember anything several days before, and nothing of that day. The strangest thing was she had the shortest memory ever. She would ask what was wrong with her, and we would tell her, then she would proceed to ask about 20 questions about it. About 15 seconds later she would start again with all of the questions. Lots of things would make her start crying, like when she would remember that she was Pio (yes, a weird name) in the play and she would ask when is her play? We said last night, and she would start crying...I missed my play? Then we would tell her no, you did really well, etc. Pretty soon we just started telling her everything after she asked the first question. She did this for about 4 hours, until she finally went to bed. Anyway, we were at the doctor office, and hospital for a ct scan. She doesn't have any swelling or bleeding in the brain, so that is good. She had a level 3 concussion out of 3, though of course there are different levels of 3, she wasn't unconscious for a really long time. The good news is she is remembering things today, and last night and this morning she had all of her motor skills. The doctor was happy with her progress, on Sunday, and especially today. She still doesn't remember it happening, or for about 4 hours after, but she remembers most everything else. She just has a huge headache now and slept all Sunday afternoon. We are very hopeful that she can go on her trip, and he will check her on Friday to give the go-ahead. She needs to rest lots this week. On the way home from the hospital she threw-up in the car, but I think it may have been because of the Tylenol they had given her. It was pretty scary, and I was glad Michael was with me. She has recovered really well so far, and the doctor says if she takes it easy and continues to do this well, she should be OK with her trip, but HAS to wear her helmet at all times! We are really grateful that things are working out so well, and are really praying for her to be well enough for this trip she has been training so hard for. She is so mad to miss school today because it is the last week of school. Here are some photos of packing up the bikes to put on the train, and some of the "bubble-wrap sumo-wrestling" as they called it. It all seemed like such a cute, innocent game! Next time we'll insist on a bubble-wrap helmet, or maybe leave the arms free???

What a great and busy few weeks!

2007-06-04T17:09:00.000+08:00

Wow, it's been so long since I've written on the blog! We have had wonderful visitors, and moved house, along with all of the things life brings. Starting the end of April, Mike's Mother and Father visited us. They first went to Beijing, and then rode a train to Tibet. The train was 48 hours, after which they stayed in Lhasa for a day. They then flew to Xian for one day before coming to Nanjing! I think they were probably worn right out by the time they got here. But we were so happy to see them, and really enjoyed showing them around Nanjing, and just spending time with them. The kids took turns showing-off everything they've been doing, and of course, Grandma and Grandpa were appropriately impressed! We had a fun trip to Suzhou to show them the beautiful gardens and the water canals. I think that they may have been traumatized by the driving here. Dad's knuckles were pretty white. He didn't want to take a taxi, as he was just getting used to our driver. Then, we ended up needing to take a taxi to a BBQ last minute while our driver was off. It was the May holiday, which means Purple Mountain was crazy-busy with Chinese tourists. The only thing we could find was a small, beat-up, Changan van. I swear they are smaller than a Volkswagen bug! Anyway, all nine of us shoved in and spent 60 horrifying minutes getting to the BBQ. We were only 2 hours late! They were good sports about it all. We had a wonderful celebration of Nicole's 13th Birthday! She has grown-up so much this year. We had a fun day and even tried out big blow-up balls you climb into and roll around in on the water. Then we got stuck on a malfunctioning mini tidal-wave, and got really dizzy! It was a fun day, and great to have Grandma and Grandpa here for it. We loved every minute with them, and are so grateful they came. Here are a few pictures from their visit.

Here is Nicole's family party at the Japanese Tympanyaki restaurant. YUMMY!

This side-ways picture is of Mom on the over 500 long stair case that she climbed with me one morning! It's way more steep than it looks in this photo. Way to go Mom!

This is QiXia Mountain, where there is a Buddhist temple and monks.

Here we are in ZhouZhuang, the water-town.

I guess the next big thing this month was our move. Yes, we finally moved to the house we plan on STAYING in until we leave Nanjing! We moved 2 days after Mom and Dad left. It was crazy! But, I was so grateful to Mike for taking a personal day. I don't think I could have done that again on my own! Moving is just plain work! You would think we are pros by now, and maybe we are, but it just takes so long to unpack!!!! Now that we are here, we really love this house. We've actually got pictures on the walls, so we are feeling pretty settled. We have the best view in our backyard to the bamboo forest, with a small patio and a BBQ.

Here is the moving crew that moved us both times. They are called the Ant House Moving Company, and it's amazing what these little guys can do!

In the mean-time, the kids have been busy. Eli had is last swim-lesson for the year, and Jay is finishing up his Kungfu lessons. He is now working on the rope. This makes nunchucks (how do you spell that?) the bamboo staff, and now the rope. He should be ready to protect us all, or maybe just be in a kungfu movie? Caitlin gave a wonderful performance of her tap routine in the school cultural assembly, and Rachel did a great job with a modern dance. Rachel and Nicole have been training for 6 months now for their big bike-trip to Tibet in two weeks. They will stay for 22 days, cycling for 15. They will camp at the base of Mount Everest! We are so excited for them! What a great summer they have planned, with this trip, and girls camp, and then Rachel to EFY. Then, they get to hang out in Bountiful with family. What lucky girls! They are both working very hard on the School Production that will be this week.
Here is a picture of Caitlin with her friends that did the tap routine with her.

On May 19th, I had the awesome opportunity of traveling to Beijing with a group of people from Nanjing (we were from 11 different countries) to run in the Great Wall Marathon. What a fantastic experience it was! I have never run more than a 10k, so Last fall, when I decided to train for it, I wasn't sure if I would be able to do the whole thing. I've been training since January, and it's been such a good growing experience for me. With this race, the first part is on a steep portion of the Great Wall, in a beautiful location, and then it goes through small farm villages, finishing with another big wall section. It was SO HARD!!! But so much fun. At the 1/2-way point, I wondered why I had not done the 1/2 marathon, and didn't know if I could do another half! It was a terrific feeling when I called Mike, who was at home taking care of the kids, to tell him I actually finished! Some of the high-lights of the race were the view on the wall, the village people lined-up to cheer me as I ran by, the children who all wanted high-fives and gave me wild flowers, seeing goats, pack-mules, and beautiful gardens, 4 from our group who waited for me after their half-marathon so I wouldn't be alone at the end after all of that training, and the amazing support and congratulations I received from the Nanjing Group, and other friends back here in Nanjing! Not to mention great family support. I think the most special thing about the race, was the miracle of no pain in my hip. I haven't run without pain since last August, and I didn't feel any pain during the run. I know it was a blessing, and not the only one of the day! It was truly an awesome experience for me, and I'm so glad I did it. The two people who got me through all of that training, were my awesome husband, who believes I can do anything, and then encourages me to do everything...And my sister Lori, who was my e-mail coach! And now that this has turned into a note of thanks...I guess I need to thank my IPOD...who ran with me every step of the way!!!

The day after the Race, my cousin Misha met me in Beijing. It was so fun to see her! We stayed for 2 1/2 days in Beijing, and had a great time! We stayed in a really cute Hutong hotel with a nice garden, and explored the city. The day we went to the Great-Wall poured rain. It was pretty, but extremely wet! We then came back to Nanjing where I showed her around the city, and we took lots of walks around Purple Mountain seeing the historical sights, pagodas, the city wall, and some really pretty gardens. She discovered she enjoyed the back and foot massages, so we were sure to fit in some of those. We went to a relief society Chinese cooking class, which was lots of fun. We then made Chinese food at home, and got a little carried away, making enough food for days! We had lots of fun on a day-trip to Suzhou and took some great pictures of the canals, and lots of crazy signs. Misha left this morning, and I miss her already. I tried to talk her into staying longer, but she seemed to think she needs to work or something! Well, now I have to get back to real life for at least a couple of weeks, until I get to go to Utah with the kids and play for the summer!

Here, Misha is posing with one of the many people who asked for a picture with her:-)Actually, there were quite a few real people who did ask!

The Suzhou canal is so interesting, it's hard to pick photos to share.

I don't know about you, but I would personally rather retire somewhere sunny, rather than to a closet! I wonder what the age of retirement is here?

Sorry for the incredibly large entry! It's been far too long!

April 22, 2007

2007-04-22T15:03:00.000+08:00

April has been such a beautiful month. We are loving the weather, and the green we enjoy here on the mountain. Every time I drive home from downtown, I feel like I'm going to a clean, peaceful place. We have all stayed busy doing all sorts of different things. Mike has been working hard, like always. I have been running lots. Rachel and Nicole have been trining on their bikes, working on their production, and working hard in school (we hope). They went to a youth conference for church last weekend in Shanghai. They really had a great time. I can't believe all of the stuff they fit into the conference in 2 evenings and one day! Caitlin is getting ready for a tap-dance she will do for the school in a couple of weeks. She is also doing a little play-school on Saturday mornings for the kids in the neighborhood. Right up her ally! Jay and Eli are playing hard, and suffering through homework. They are also living in a starwars world right now. That is all that they think about! I've included a few pictures of some pictures I took on a walk around town, and a couple of Eli's swimming lessons. We are looking forward to having Mom and Dad Nichols come on Wednesday for a visit! We can't wait to show them around and play with them! We will be moving into our house the second week of May. We look forward to that, but are doing fine in our apartments.

Some random photos...

2007-04-10T19:32:00.000+08:00

Happy Birthday To Michael! The big 38!

Bamboo forest in our compound

Festival Dancers

Everyone was dresses up so nice for Todd's reception! It was great to play with my neices and nephew!

A few photos

2007-04-10T18:39:00.000+08:00

Technical difficulties! I'll try for more later...