Old man walking in a square

Over the years I have been amazed by this old man who walks around this one patch of concrete every morning. I have seen him for the past four years, only in the morning though. He goes out around 6am and walks for one hour around this square patch of concrete. Usually one to two cars are parked in this spot. He will walk the longest route around the cars. If the cars are too close for him to get around he will just walk back and forth. This morning it reminded me of a movie where a man is in his jail cell and the only exercise he can get is to walk his 6x6 foot cell. Makes me wonder if this guy was in jail for a long time. I say this because he could walk in a circle around the driveway or even a larger circle around the complex we live.

Crazy dog and olympic fever

Check out the picture of this dog and the olympic beijing put into its back. It was a big poodle and the olympic stuff was raised off her back. I told the owner how cute. Sonya said take a picture if they always want to take pictures of my kids we can take a picture of the silly dog.

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Olympic Fun!

08-08-08! The Beijing Olympics are here. We had some friends over last night to watch the opening ceremony. It was really fun and festive! Madison has been bragging all day that she stayed up until 12 midnight last night...I guess she should be...it was the first time for that. She was insistent on seeing the Torch (since we hyped it up and she didn't get to see it when it came through here) so we let her stay up. A friend and I made an Olympic ring cake. I was inspired to make it because my good friend Ginger had an Olympic ring cake for her 8th birthday. I'm sure it doesn't compare to Ms. Marci's cake (Ginger's mom), but we gave it the good ole' college try.

No Torch for us!

We tried! We got up and out the door really early (for us), and off to see the Torch. From the minute we left our complex you could tell there was something special going on. People were in a bit of a festive mood wearing their "I Love China" T-shirts and waving their Olympic flags. I guess we all had the same idea. Once we got to the area where we thought the torch was to be, we started seeing police everywhere! They were literally everywhere! They had all the roads blocked to cars, bike, and pedestrians all around the area. I got out of the car twice with Madison to see if we could charm a cop...he just said, "There are too many people there. It's not safe for her. You should go home and watch it on TV." That is basically what the other officers said too. I don't think we ever got anywhere near the Torch....we were at least 2-3 miles from it at our closest. The security was unreal and only the people that were invited to attend were there. I guess if we had stayed home, we would have at least seen the Torch while it was in our city. Oh, well!

Olympic Torch is coming!

The Olympic Torch is making it's last stop before going to Beijing in our city! It's not because we live right next to Beijing. It is because the Chinese government wants to show their support to the earthquake region. Anyway, I've been doing my research on where is it going to be and when. They are trying to keep the details of the torch's whereabouts on the down low, but I'm intent on getting the scoop. We know it is going to come through her tomorrow, but just don't know exactly where and when. I'm planning to dress my kids in their "I Love China" shirts with Olympic flags in hand, and hope the guards will let the cute little foreign kids in to see the Olympic Torch. (For those of you who live here or have visited, you know that 1 little foreign kid is hard for anyone to resist...so 3 in "I Love China" T-shirts will be simply irresistible...or at least I hope so.)

Police at every bus stop.

Last week two bombs exploded at a bus stop. In a city about n hour flight from us. This week at every bus stop there are guards with electric bikes to watch over the stops. Put that into perspective of how many bus stops that is in a city of 10 million. My office is 3/4 of a mile from the house and there are 5 stops between them. That is a lot of new people to hire and mobilize. China is never at a loss for workers.

Cheap way to make calls

I found a cool service recently for calling around the world. The cost is a little over 2 cents a minute with the service then I have to call Beijing or SH which is long distance for me but only costs 4 cents a minute using 17951 in front of the number. Also it gives me a number in other countries. So right now I have a special number to call my mom and my sisters. I also have a special number for them to call me on. it rings directly to my cellphone so it is easy. I also have it setup with my friend Erik in Singapore, so he has a Singaporean number to call locally and it rings me in china. I have a china number I call and it rings him in Singapore. Pretty cool. I called my mom and she said it was clearer than Skype (costs a little more) if you want to sign up you can click this link and it gives me some credit. There is also a way to make it so that it is free but it sounded too complicated for me to try unless you had a really really long phone conversation going on.

Visit http://www.rebtel.com/?inviteid=%friend.inviteid%&utm_source=tell-friend-web&utm_medium=email

Great trip home

We had a great trip back from Thailand. We sat in the airport with about 50 friends and the girls just ran around having fun. It was nice leaving at 2pm since it gave us the morning to pack up and say bye to friends. The planes worked out well. We were a little late leaving Thailand but we had a three hour layover in Kunming so it worked out well. We only had to wait for an hour in Kunming. Wai Wong, a friend, came and picked us up in our van from the airport and then help us carry our 220lbs of luggage up the 4 flights of stairs. The girls played with their toys and we ate Peter's Tex mex at 10:30 at night as a family. Sonya and I stayed up until 2am playing on the computer and getting things organized after a month away. This morning it was great to drink coffee from my coffee pot and also to take a nice shower.

 

 

Closing of a fun summer

This was us dressed up last night as we went to a dinner. Last night we finished up our School of Leadership in Thailand. We went to a nice hotel and had a great dinner. Sonya stayed with the main group and they had some singing, prayed and some people sharing about the summer. I took around 20 kids into a kids room and played with them (I mainly watched the movie Cars and yelled at kids to put that chair down or put that table down). We are sad for our time to be up here. It was a fun summer of watching our kids play with other kids and being able to just hang out and talk with so many people.

The Third Child

Since Sydney was born I've tried to be very intentional about taking her picture, writing in her baby book, etc. I always think it is really funny that the 1^st child has so many pictures and with each child the photos decrease exponentially. Well, I must admit we have about half as many pictures of Sydney as we do Madison, but I thought I'd share a few with you. She is 11 months old today…I can hardly believe it! She started out as a pretty high maintenance baby (and stayed that way for months), but over the past 4-6 weeks she has turned a big corner…she is so fun! She laughs all the time, and gets so excited if she hasn't seen us for awhile (like after a nap or when Travis gets home from work). So here are a few pictures of her.

We may be lacking in Sydney pictures…but, trust me, she is not lacking in love or attention from her big sissies!

Sick Kids

Since we have been in Thailand all 3 of our girls have been sick at some point. You hate for your kids to be sick, but they can be so sweet and cuddly when they are. I didn't take any pictures of Hailey when she was sick, but here are the other girls.

Fancy Girls

We took the girls out one Sunday afternoon for a fancy lunch at a local hotel here in Chiang Mai and then let them get their nails done at the mall. Here are our girls with their friend, Emma, who lives in Beijing.

The lady also painted little flowers on their nails...they thought they were so big!

Tiger Kingdom in Chiangmai

Our family went to a Tiger park and played with some baby tigers and some big tigers. It was fun playing with them. Madison and Hailey had fun with the tigers but I think they enjoyed feeling the fish more.

I'm trying!

I really want to be good at this blogging thing. I'm trying...I promise! We are in a small town in northern Thailand right now. Travis is the administrator of a leadership training we are having for our local leaders. We are enjoying being with friends who live in other places in Asia. The girls are having a blast swimming everyday. Hailey has started swimming, Madison has become an amazing swimmer, and Sydney is enjoying floating around the pool. The pool is the easiest form of enterntainment for the girls...so I love it too. I also get to hang with the other moms who are there. I'll try to post some pictures of them swimming...it would help if I actually took some pictures, or, better yet, took the camera with me.

Sydney will be a big sister?

Ok...No, I'm not pregnant and No, we aren't getting ready to adopt. But, today Madison informed me that Sydney would be a big sister one day. Since she was predicting the future, I thought I'd find out if she would be a big sister to a baby boy or girl. Madison said it would be a baby boy. I went on to tell her that I didn't know if we knew how to take care of boys...what would we do?! She said that we would let him play with Hailey because she plays rough...so there you have it....we will have a baby boy in the future and we will let Hailey take care of him.

We're Back!

Travis tried to get me into this about 2 years ago and I so wasn't interested...well, here I am now. We will see how this goes the 2nd time around. We've added another princess to our family since then. Sweet Sydney Ruth joined our family 9 months ago on August 23rd. She is such a blessing to our family, but the jump from 2 to 3 really rocked our world.