The Forbidden City or the Forever City?

Today, after passing briefly through Tiananmen Square (the world’s largest public square), we arrived at the Forbidden City. Constructed largely of material (logs and marble) that came from South China one to two thousand miles away, the logistics alone of building this massive place (about 2,000’ by 6,000’) is highly impressive.  When you’re tired from having climbed the Great Wall the day before, it seems rather daunting. As the only one other than the guide who had been there before, I was asked on several occasions, as we passed through another building into another courtyard before yet another building, if that building was the end yet.  I think I deflated them when I told them I thought we hadn’t yet gone a mile & it was more than that. Amazing places, but not something that can be well described by me or justified by any pictures, but here’s a small piece anyhow.

After that we went on a tour of a Hutong, a traditional but disappearing style of housing in Beijing.

 A honeymoon suite

In a more modern rickshaw, propelled by someone pedaling, not running

By the way most of these pictures were taken by Daniel & Gabriel.

Then a lunch with the group, some rest time and then dinner at KFC, oooh!, and an attempt at bed.

No good t-shirt sayings today, but I did like the name of one dish at KFC – Refreshing Funguses.

(Editor's note...Gotcha pictures are coming!! This is a slow process as James uploads the photos to me via e-mail and can attach only a few at a time.  I then upload it onto the blog once I go through the  4-5 e-mails to get a post.)

can...not...help...myself...must...blog

Can you see why I kept the blog while we were in China last time? You can see which one of us has to divulge all things at any given time!

I don't know when James will get to blogging about getting L.B., so I thought I'd give a quick update.  The hand-off was complete yesterday! L.B. is with his dad and older brothers!!!! He is happy and playful and has a mind of his own!  I envision some serious alpha child battles going on in this home. When I saw him, he had discovered the phone and was trying to make some calls (probably trying to order a pizza or call a taxi to take him away from those weird people).  He was getting into everything, which reminded me of certain other children around here....(did I already ask you to pray for us?).

The adoption becomes finalized today (their Tuesday, which should make certain members of my community group happy), so he will be legally ours!  I think I've used enough exclamation points, I think you can gauge my excitement, I'll reign it in and sign off, for now, hee hee.

Waiting (impatiently) on the home front, narrowly missing You Tube fame

Since I don't plan on venturing too far from this computer anytime soon (except to get WTs to bed), I figured I'd burn off some nervous energy (which is in abundant supply) by talking about  our wedding weekend.

The girls were slated to be flower girls in their cousin's wedding which took place last night.  As a quick aside, it is interesting to note that the last time our family was in China, C was a flower girl in our friends' wedding.   So if someone would like to ask her to be a flower girl in about six months, we would be happy as that would signal another trip to China!

Now, this wedding was a source of no small anxiety for me.  As you may have noticed, I did use the plural for girl.  That means the veteran, C, and the wildcard, K.  Let me add that the wedding was outdoors on property that had a phenomenal view and...dirt, lots of dirt.  And the girls would be wearing white dresses.  Can you envision why this might promote a sense of dread?

The rehearsal went really well, so I was hopeful that K might do okay.  She did give me a good reminder, however, when she broke loose during the final run-through, running down the small hill to the site of the ceremony where I was waiting for her, shouting at the top of her lungs, "I have to go shi-shi!!!!!" (which is the equivalent of going "number 1").  Mental post-it note reminder: make sure she goes to the bathroom before the wedding.

For whatever reason, she had a really bad night/early morning, waking up on and off from 2am until she finally got up at 6am.  Which of course meant that mom had a bad night/early morning.  Add to this that I was sharing a bed with C who kept kicking me during the night.  When I asked about that the next day, she said she had a dream she was sharing a bed with one of her aunts (Jewell or Joy or another one of her 5 "J" aunts) and she was kicking her leg for fun.  Uh huh, real fun.

Flash forward to about 10 minutes before the wedding is due to start.  I tell K that I will meet her down the hill just like we practiced.  As I turned to go with M in tow (who, by the way, offered to be the "handsome boy" in the wedding), K let out a huge wail and yelled "I want to stay with MOMMMMMYYYYYY!"  Trying not to melt into the dirt and create a mud puddle, I tried to calm her down and reason with her.  Nothing seemed to work.  The mother of the bride, my sister-in-law, tried to reassure me that if it didn't work out, it would be totally fine.  I also know that the bride will be totally understanding because she is the opposite of a bridezilla, which I have no word for right now, but she's really really sweet and understanding.

I really want K to do this, for my niece, but also for K.  I want her to overcome this and buck up like a trooper.  I decide to pray with her, thinking that might work.  She calms down and I ask her if she's ready to stay with her sister.  She responds with, "Nooooo, I want to stay with MOMMMMMMY!" At this point I am pleading in my mind to God, ready to make all kinds of promises He will laugh at because He knows me. 

An idea enters into my head (thank you God) to wait at the bottom of the hill to the side with K.  When the wedding party walks by, she can then join her sister for the short walk down the aisle.  I talk her through this and she seems like she might be okay with the idea.  I know it's a long shot, but it's worth a try.  As we are sitting waiting for the nine bridesmaids to file past, (I had a long time to think)  I suddenly had visions of K going down the aisle and doing something that will end up on You Tube.  I could just see the video going viral, titled "Meltdown after the maids" or "Flower girl faceplant," or "Agony in the aisle," or something like that.

The time came for C to file past.  I stood K up and asked if she wanted to go with her sister.  She nodded yes, joined her sister, and walked down the aisle like a champ.  Thank you Jesus!

The bride was beautiful, and the wedding was wonderful (kudos to my nephew for officiating like a pro!).  For my part, I have a special reminder of that day.  Remember when I was sitting to the side of where the bridal party was walking past? The day before, the bride warned me not to let the kids walk through that area.  You see, it had poison oak there.

Itchy and scratching and waiting to see my boy!!!

Stairs, lots and lots of stairs

Yup today’s big event was the Great Wall. Always impressive to look at, not always easy to climb. Although, I must admit, it was much nicer this time than last. Last time I made the mistake of deciding to run the stairs of our 26 story hotel three times the day before. It was 100,000 degrees outside last time while today it was cool with a great breeze. And last time there was Kara. She fell asleep in my arms just as we started climbing, and I had to climb with a sweaty pile of dead weight. Amazingly, I didn’t have a ton of pictures taken of me like I did last time. Gabriel seemed to really enjoy the wall. Why would I think that? The fact that he was near vibrating as we got there and then took off like a mountain goat risking the wrath of the father as he disappeared from sight, those might be clues.

Conquering the Great Wall

Great Wall Defenders

Also, went to a couple of tourist trap/history type places. They were interesting for learning about things like the making of things out of jade and a certain type of pots and other items made out of copper. We went to another Chinese restaurant for lunch and Pizza Hut for dinner. Pretty good pizza and at least some of us really like the Chinese food.

Not too much else to say about today, but here is a picture of my favorite translation for the day:

Here are some pictures from the previous day's activities:

Arriving at New Day Foster Home

Delivering goods

From the other side of the world

Wow. This is weird. Normally it is the better half that writes these blog entries. Unfortunately, that beautiful lady is at home with the three younger ones while I am here in China with the two oldest and, shortly, the soon to be youngest. I write this after our second morning here. We're all tired from time change and the added fact that the beds, well the beds… Let's see what the boys have used to describe them, G- "Why did they take so much time to put rocks in these beds?" D- "Concrete" G- "Solid steel with a sheet over it." So what has happened so far? Flight- pretty uneventful, but did meet some neat people. We met one guy on his way to North Korea to do work on water systems so as to reduce waterborne diseases. He's part of one of the few openly Christian groups allowed into the country. And he's retired from Anchorage FD so you can imagine we enjoyed talking. Yesterday, after a meeting going over all we were to do this trip and then getting rid of most of the money I carried with me, we headed off to New Day Foster Home to deliver goods we'd gathered together (thanks CG!) and enjoy a brief visit. We finally made it there at nap time, but at least got to see a few of the kids awake. It's a great thing they are doing there. Got back from there to have a few moments of rest before heading off to the acrobatic show. There I got rest once again, though I tried not to! It really is very impressive, kind of reminiscent of a Cirque du Soliel show. After that a group of us headed off to the Chinese restaurant just down from my wife's favorite place, the hypermart. I thoroughly enjoyed all of it, but some of our meat and potato friends weren't as thrilled.  As is often the case in other countries, the English translation may not always be spot on.  My favorite from yesterday, "Determined to pot all love." I saw it on a building as we drove past." I was guessing it was maybe a restaurant or a "collective", but then I remembered, I'm not in California any more.

En route

It's just me, nothing to get excited about.  Just thought I'd inform those who care that the last I checked, the guys were over Alaska, ready to fly over Russia. (Thanks Ann for the flightaware.com info. ).  They should arrive in Beijing at 1:20am.

When I dropped off the guys this morning, I wondered if the boys were disappointed that their mom was less weepy than she was rather jubilant.  I know, such a mean mom! Of course I will miss the three of them, but the sense of relief and excitement that they were on their way ruled my emotions.  It felt like all other aspects of life were put on hold (as much as they can while still caring for WTs and 3OS) until this day.  I have all kinds of things I'd like to get accomplished while they're gone...and I'm caring for the WTs...with one mini-helper...yeah, yeah, dream on momma!

Hopefully James will be the next one posting!

Brief calm amid the chaos

Okay, truth be told, it really isn't that chaotic around here even though the guys leave tomorrow for China (and are not completely packed yet).  Maybe it's because life in general is chaotic around here...

It's really hard to believe that within days that are not marked by triple digits, or even double digits, our boy, the one who will turn the Wonder Twins into Wonder Triplets (thus allowing me to keep the abbreviation "WTs," although suggestions have been given to call them "Triple Threat" or "Triple Trouble") will be with his dad and two older brothers (OSs = Older siblings).  It's been almost a year since we first saw and fell in love with him and started the process, quite a long gestational period (not as long as 5 years with K, but long enough for us).  Now that this paper pregnancy is drawing to a close, we are very eager to see the "fruit" of our labor (and this labor has been filled with its share of pain and anxiety, but no stretch marks, yessssssss! except for on our patience...).

We, of course, have been doing what we can to prep the WTs, but there's only so much a pair of three- year-olds can comprehend.  Then again, I think M is comprehending enough.  We talked about where L.B. will sit at the table, in the car, how the little boys will share a room, etc.  All was well until I said, "And you will share your toys too."  To which M replied, "I don't want to do that.  L.B. is a stranger."  You see, it's all about peace and harmony and brotherhood until it comes down to the toys.  That there is a deal breaker. 

Once in China, the blog will be highjacked by the father, though you can expect me to chime in with my two cents.  :)  Here's to the start of another great adventure...