Blue is a moody color

I cried yesterday when I went outside. THE SKY WAS BLUE! That deep ultramarine blue that makes you want to dive into it like it is an ocean. Oh. I couldn't remember the last time I had seen so much beautiful blue sky. Not a cloud or a particle (okay that is a lie) of pollution... I am sure there was at least some... but I COULDN'T SEE IT! Oh.

Blue skies make me want to go home. Everytime one hits us, I want to call Ashley and go have a picnic in the park or go swimming with our kids. But here, it means another day. We do things as we do and try our best to find a way to spend as much time as possible (or as we can stand) outside.

Outside is stressful in China. Everyone wants to touch my kids, and coo at them. The other children are not always nice to Mitch. They are very different from him and often the ones we are around are older. He often comes away from being with "friends" more upset... or I do.

Blending in, being in the background, unnoticed never exists here. Our home is our piece of heaven. It is our peaceful place. We are not something to be gawked at, laughed at, photographed, or even just talked to constantly by really nice, well-meaning people.

When we leave China and live in America again, I hope I never take for granted the blue sky and clean air that are often so abundant and beautiful. I hope I never take for granted the wonderful family and amazing big sister who always plays with us... even if Mitch tries to destroy cute little Crew... every time he sees him. And I hope I can always make my home feel like a little piece of heaven, the way my mother did. A place of refuge from the world.

Chinable life, chinable food, chinable friends :)

We had a neat missionary event this week. Two of Dallin's coworkers flew out to Utah this week for some training/syncing up on managing and Sid was able to take them to temple square and the Christus. Oh, made me wanna cry seeing the pictures he posted of these two women at the Christus and his description of finally for the first time being able to talk to them about our beliefs. It gave me an excitement about the coming forth of the gospel to the wonderful people that we meet here! One of the families we have met here in our building complex are basically golden investigators. They are the most incredible family! I wish so much I could share what I believe with them. Maybe someday, if/when they come to America to visit! Dal and I are convinced it is no coincidence we met them. She already feels like a big sister/friend. 

So for this week:

Sunday 5/26: We taught 6 rather than our 2 in primary class. It was a blast. I love being in Primary! We also had an amazing dinner, Ginger chicken sliders with cilantro slaw (except Dal grabbed mini celery that looked... kinda... like cilantro so we threw that in instead.) It was AMAZing. It was also my breakthrough for buying meat at our fresh market. Not sick yet. :) I think it is actually safer than buying it at the store...maybe. I don't know. Pray, eat, and don't think to hard about it right.

The dinner that made my husband love me again (other than his birthday dinner with Alex's out-this-world-potatoes :) I think those still win). Dallin ate 5 of these little sliders for dinner! That is a lot for my cute husband!

Cutest boys

My baby girl is 8 months!

Saturday 5/25:We went wild. We went to the morning market, dropped off the groceries. Went to Uniqlo for some Dallin birthday shopping! One of the shirts he got is featured in the picture with toad on sunday. Love it. Then we went to the Flower market and figured out how to walk to our fav. dumpling house from there (trying to prep for when ash is here so we don't have to get lost/wander). Then we stopped at the grocery store on the way home. After getting ourselves some rest we headed down stairs to make/eat dumplings with our fav. Chinese family! It was a tasty dinner. I love Chinese style of eating. it is so healthy. They basically follow the word of wisdom to the T... except the tea of course...and a few other unhealthy habits.

Friday 5/24: While Dal was at work Mitch did his potty work and was washing his hands when suddenly he had been washing them for a while. This happens sometimes, he will decide to stick his head in the sink and make handsome hair. But this time he had really been there for a while. Next I hear some 'Oh no's' coming from the bathroom and I look up and he is trailing blood through the house. Someone had decided he needed to shave. (That is what I get for buying the foaming soap.) Mitch thinks it is shaving cream, and when Dal left out his razor that morning he got a oh-so-brillant idea. He had cut his finger pretty good. And has been loving his Macqueen 'stickers' on his finger ever since! Oh we also went to snack street that night so that I could find it when ash is here. That is where they sell the scorpions and other yucky treats on sticks.:) PIC- me standing with Jules in front of it.

Scorpions and star fish sold on a stick... nom nom

Thursday 5/23: Baby group was supposed to be at our house but ended up being just me and Julia... or really just Julia and her son while I took care of my cute needy kids :). Oh and Mitch tried to attack her son. He was so excited when I told him friends were coming over and when Dylan got here, he tried to play with him. Dylan is 1 and Mitch is a little too physical to play with kids that young... you know. it was a disappointing day for him. I had to send him to the other room to watch Muppets so that Dylan could survive the play date. Luckily that night we went out to play with Mitch's ball and we found two American boys that are here living with their grandparents for the summer! Yeah! They are so cute with Mitch! We found them again on Friday and played with them at the park for a few min. It is obvious Mitch feels much more comfortable with these boys. It was a tender mercy.

Wednesday 5/22: I scored these awesome dishes at the morning market! All of these for $8 USD! Mitch helped give Jules a bath, he loves being my helper! And Jules got to eat a banana by herself out of her little munchkin toy thing. She is getting really hard to feed. She is little miss Independent, I wanna do it myself. After a bite or two she throws a bit of a fit if I don't A. give her something on her tray that she can pick up herself or B. let her hold the spoon with me as I feed her. (Mitch loves us to feed him, especially now that he is potty trained. I think it is where he tries to make up for the attention he used to get when we changed his diaper.) She is also getting into the crawling position! Oh she is growing up too fast!

Such a lounge eater :)

Tuesday 5/21: We went to eat with our friends and then over to listen to Elder Anderson... YEAH Elder Anderson of the 12 apostles randomly says he is stopping by and will address us. OKay! So we went. I went expecting to hear a conference prep kinda talk. What we got were a lot of stories about living abroad. It was very interesting, but not what we had expected. The kids were a little on the squirmy side that night too. Made it a little hard to be as concentrated as we would have liked to have been. Pretty awesome anyway. 

Dinner before elder Anderson's talk with some of our fav. little friends. Reece and her mom Jessica on the right. Jules in the middle. Dylan and his mom Julia on the Left. We love these guys and are so sad to see the Carters (Jess, Reece, and Rod) heading home for good this week.

Monday 5/20: I think this is the day I gave Mitch another haircut. Now he keeps asking for haircuts bc he knows it means he gets TV time. :) His hair looks a little better than the last cut (which dal informed me looked like dumb and dumber). 

I know the lord lives and he loves us. I have been writing down tender mercies this week. One for each day... well trying. And when you are looking it is hard not to find them everywhere. One of my tender mercies this week has been realizing how peaceful and at home I feel here. In China? Where I don't speak the language, I hardly see a white person on a daily basis that is not part of my own family, and everything is so different? I keep thinking, this is wrong. But I know that it is heavenly father helping me to feel so peaceful, because this is where I am supposed to be right now. I am so grateful for the knowledge of the gospel and being here in China continues to strengthen that knowledge and treasure the freedom I have to have this gospel. 

Fish, Food, and Flowers

Sunday 5/19: Was Dallin's pretend birthday! (He was gone on his real birthday). So he had Mango and sticky rice for breakfast, a lion candy bar as a snack, and dinner included bacon, eggs, fruit (that was my addition to his requests), and an amazing sausage potato recipe I got from Alex! He also got a happy birthday sign with some weird ballons that kept popping while I tried to blow them up. His "knock you naked" brownies will be featured later this week along with his shopping trip for some fun summer clothes and a stop at our fav. Korean BBQ restaurant! He and Mitch also tried to build a boat, (Mitch quickly lost interest), at the park. -The Nephi building a boat story sunk in a little too literally this week. (We taught it in Primary and acted it out at home for scripture reading). He also got a haircut, which he modeling quite nicely in the picture with his birthday BFD (breakfast for dinner).

Saturday 5/18: Dal was gone on his business trip. The kids and I had planned to attend a district women's conference. But all the stars were out of line for us. So instead we stayed at home and went crazy. :)

Friday 5/17: Dallin's Birthday! He left at 6am for his business trip. Boo. Mitch had an ear infection, so we went on a hunt for the nearest clinic... we got a little lost. But once we found it we had a great appt. and afterward sat down in Starbucks to eat our lunch. I realized once again the different views Americans and Chinese have on personal space, since the majority of people there were from the American embassy (the embassy and its housing are part of the building and next to we were in.) We were hardly even noticed and no one came over to inspect or coo at my children. (Even grown men coo at Jules, everywhere we go. She loves it!) Downstairs we found a little piece of home, in a store full of American imports. You will be happy to hear they had Lucky Charms! They were $15 a box! :)

Thursday 5/16: Dal got off work early and we hit up the zoo/aquarium! The aquarium was so well kept up we almost thought we were in America!  Mitch loved the deer, probably because they are so exotic. Moe, they have unicorn fish! Here's the pic. Oh and as a pre-birthday we had Mango popsicles for dessert. They taste just like a frozen mango and look like the seed of a mango. You need to eat one of these sometime! You will love them! Here are the boys eating them...Jules may have had a taste too.

Unicorn Fish!!!

Spider crab... creepy

Sea turtles.. hiding in the water

dolphin whales? Whatever they were it was pretty amazing!

Eaten by a giant dead shark

Amazing mango popsicles!

Wednesday 5/15: Was our wash/clean the house/ go shopping day. Mitch was an excellent helper. He is getting so big. He really loves chores (when he is in the mood), and loves doing it himself! He takes his "big boy-ness" very seriously. He and I are loving it!

Tuesday 5/14: We went to the botanical gardens! It was beautiful. Although the tulips had just died and the roses were still in their buds. Once again we were quite the attraction. Three white women nursing their babies was a perfect  target for a group of about thirty. With people trickling in and out of the  crowd one of our friends was stuck there for a good 30 min. Like I said before and will say again, Chinese have a whole different view on not only personal space, but most social norms. Mitch loved playing with his Chinese  friend Isabella from our branch!

Monday 5/13: We went to the Silk market with our friend Whitney.

And Jules always seems a little left out when it comes to these insta-mails so here is a pic of her from our Sunday walk. And one of Dal and Mitch on Pride rock.

I will post last weeks letter... when I finish writing it. Due to a weird week, it never got written. But it will have some great pics and stories, so it has to be written. I made a great friend... and might have gotten into a slapping match with a Chinese mom....

Funny things in/about China

Since Dal is gone on business this weekend I have more than enough time to blog once the kids are asleep. So  I thought it would be fun to record/share some of our fav. funny things about/in China.

-The sidewalk always has feces on it. The street we take from the subway to our house we have named "long poop street," "poop rock" is also located on this street and is always adorned with a fresh bit of potpourri.
-One of the phrases I have memorized here is "Oh look there are two!" And they giggle and laugh. Two children in China, especially Beijing is rare. People often ask if they are twins... (My thought process is always, seriously, how close did you look?) But here in China one of the only ways to get around the one child policy is to have twins. Our stroller also surprises people, since one of the kids are assumed to not exist until they make a noise and all of the sudden people realize there is another behind the child they can see.
- Couples love to wear matching shirts when they go in public. The zoo, parks, site seeing areas are more often than not partially populated by couples without children in matching outfits, or the same shirt. :)
-If you (as in a white person, or a white person with kids) hold still for more than a moment, expect to become surrounded. At the park the other day a few of us were sitting down nursing our babies. A swarm of Chinese people came around us and as some would trickle off, more would fill in there place.  We become the entertainment wherever we go.
-You can get almost anything delivered to your door. (One of Dallin's fav. things!)
-I found Lucky Charms at an import store today for $15! Whew, you can get anything if you are willing to pay a bag of gold nuggets and your left shoe.
-When Chinese people become uncomfortable they will often laugh. For example, Mitch begins throwing a fit in public, old people will stare at me and then laugh. (Doesn't help my frustration, but ya gotta love it). The funny thing is I have noticed Mitch will react the same way when he knows he has done something naughty and he isn't sure how to respond, or how I will respond. It may be a result of underdeveloped social skills. Since so many other areas of learning are pressed here it seems possible that social skills can become underdeveloped. (This is an assumption of course).
-The markets are incredible! I love the produce here, you almost can't go wrong.
-The Chinese are like backseat parents. It is so wonderful in so many ways. Mitch will get to close to the pond and two chinese women will be there holding onto him. Sounds like an exaggeration but it is pretty close to the truth. When it is cold all you hear is that your baby is too cold, shouldn't be outside, ect. Older Chinese women are especially opinionated, and why shouldn't they be, they are the ones raising the children.
-It is normal and honorable to live with multiple generations. As the grandparents retire they care for the housekeeping and grandchildren while the parents go to work. Hence the reason I end up chillin with the grandmas. They are wonderful.
-It is a dog eat dog world. Push a little here, shove a little there, if you don't work your way to the front of the line carefully you may never make it. Leave a little room and you'll have a new friend or two in front of you. :)

Heavenly Father knows and loves the people here. We have met some incredible people already who feel so ready for the message of the gospel. I hope one day they get to hear it.  It is sad to know that the majority of these people have no knowledge of Christ. I start to cry at the thought of living my life without the blessings of the gospel and my savior.

side note: if you want a book to read to learn more about China's history and culture "Wild Swans" is a fabulous narrative about three generations of women in China. It is fascinating and eye opening.

Fear of Backfire

I am a little late posting this. I also realized after sending the letter to Moe I forgot to explain the title. That is what I get for writing it at 11 at night while I am falling asleep. (ps 11 is not what it used to be, with kids who wake up for the day around 5:30-6.) Potty training a boy has been an interesting experience. He has done fabulous. The fear comes in when I stand him on the stool in front of the toilet and try to get him to not only aim into the toilet, but not to 'backfire' on his mother during the process...

Sunday 4/5: We had friends over for dinner. The Putnams. We adore them and their baby boy. On average we are 2-6 years younger than our friends with one more kid than they do. It makes for interesting dynamics. I am supposed to be the baby expert of the group and with my vast knowledge of two years of mothering...experience is the best teacher though right... We had a great day though. I even got to go to RS since fast sunday the Primary presidency takes care of the kiddos. PIC- Jules has begun playing cars! It is so cute. She sits or lays and runs the car back and forth over and over again! #maybeiwonthavetobuydollsafterall

Saturday 4/4: We went to the market. (The guy I buy bananas from hates how indecisive I am about choosing. After about 30sec of me inspecting them he picked up about the size I usually get, weighed them and handed them to me. Love it.) Mitch said hello to his fav. turtles. We dropped off our groceries and headed out to Ya Show, our movie shop. We stopped at the mall so that I could feed Jules and Mitch saw the golden arches and needed fries. So since we needed him to go potty anyway we took him to the bathroom there with fries as the incentive. He refused. (Even though they totally have a legit tiny toilet in there.) Well when we told him he could pee in the drain, he was more than happy to do so! I love potty training in China. PIC-Jules ready for our adventure. Mitch in front of the beautiful flowers outside our apt. building.

Friday 4/3: PIC- Mitch wearing his new H&M outfit, with his many newly acquired cars in his backpack, riding his trike. We are trying to teach him how to push both pedals... not just one. We didn't spend a lot of time outside this week, trying to keep the underwear dry. Distractions are like kryptonite for this kid.

Thursday 4/2: We had friends over for baby group! It was very fun. We also started potty training again. For real this time. I even bought 20 new hot wheels cars for each time he did something in the potty... or the shower. ( He loves peeing into the drain in the shower. And he loves that it is private. He goes in and shuts the door, does his business, comes out happy as can be about his new independence! Getting him to use the "tiny toilet " another matter entirely. Although not too bad. He is going to be pretty awesome at the squatter bathrooms here. Several times he has just squatted happily in the shower to do his number 2 business... if you know what i mean.

Wednesday 4/1: Dallin was home sick. He had eaten mystery meat again. Bad choice. So he worked from home. We had a lovely day and a nice walk in the park.

Tuesday 3/30: We took to our friends to eat at our fav. hot pot right by our house! They are known for there overwhelming attentiveness and generousity.PIC- Mitch received a car, and Jules a pony and girl. We watched a guy dance/stretch noodles for another table. Jules dumped water all over my lap. (She had such quick little hands!) Then we came home and made cheesecake brownies... :) Love my rice cooker!

Monday 3/29: PIC-We went to Behai park. It was beautiful and very Chinese. We rode a large chinese boat across the lake. saw the Behai towerish altar. It has 455 ceramic tile buddhas on it! Afterward we stopped by a book store and H&M to get Mitch some shorts for summer!

And an addition from Dal this week:

This is actually Dallin. I had to take a minute to send out a description of the scene that I just was witness to. Abby was trying to read the scriptures to Mitch and he was not paying attention. So she started having Mitch act out the story with his cars. Abby was using McQueen to play Lehi and another car to play Laman, and Mitch had a car to play Nephi's role. Mitch was really getting into it, and I was about to compliment Abby on what a great idea it was and how much it was sinking in when Lehi asked Nephi if he would go get the plates for him.

To our astonishment Nephi (played by Mitch) replied to his father/mother "No, no, no, I don't want. I just want to take a nap."

Children are so gratifying to work with every day.

(Nephi was eventually convinced that going to get the plates was a good idea.)

And the we love China pic... something random and fun

And we are back online:)

We finally got the VPN up and going on the computer, so I can blog again. I will be posting at least this  weekly update that is taken from our letters to Moe. Please forgive me for spelling and grammatical errors, writing this between taking care of/holding/feeding/... kids, can make for an interesting slightly scatterbrained version of what I am trying to convey. 

MOnday 4/22:

I talked to the fam today and they were eating my birthday dinner for me! Chicken cord on bleu, jello, and cinnamon rolls... yum! :) Mitch fell asleep watching Megamind... don't even have to put him down for his nap :) that never happens, and Jules is playing with her toes next to me!

Sunday 4/21: Well we try to talk to the Palmers and the fam/Ash on Sunday mornings, this week was no different. After chatting we realized it was getting off-ly close to church start time, so we raced getting the kids ready and decided getting a taxi and taking the subway were to much of a gamble... time-wise we were past those options. So since we now knew how to walk to church we made a run for it! The usual 30min walk became a 18ish min run (I told heavenly father it was not exercise... it was formal speed walking. I hope he agreed.) Well the good news is we made it for the opening song, even better, both kids were asleep in the stroller! The rest of the day was wonderfully uneventful. We successfully made Panda Express chow mein noodles, finished off my birthday cake, ate some left over cookies (a friend made), our fav. chinese street popcorn from the night before, and ice cream. It was one of our most healthy days in China...Americanish junk food tastes SO much better in another country!

Saturday 4/20: Dallin went into work for a few hours in the morning, the kids and I cleaned the house, did wash, and made my fabulous chocolate birthday cake using my own homemade applesauce to cut the fat (and how much i have to spend on butter here.) When Dal got home we took the subway and bus to get to the art district. However while we were waiting at the bus stop a friendly drunk chinese man was trying to make friends with the kids. We couldn't convince him to leave the kids alone so we walked to the next bus stop... which happened to be down the road and over a small part of a freeway-ish road. It was interesting. But  we made it. Crossing the road in China a game of chicken. Luckily I am pretty good at this game. The art district was awesome! We even happened upon Ai Wei Wei's exhibit opening! He is a big deal! He has had shows in the Guggenhiem and is a worldwide known contemporary artist! And of course the photographer there could not stop taking pictures of Jules! We found out that one of the reasons they love her so much is they only have white baby dolls, and she is the spitting image of them with her pale skin and big beautiful eyes! That night we had some friends from the ward over for cake and ice cream (which is where we acquired the delicious chocolate chip cookies :) Dal even set up a movie projector on our white wall. It was really fun! Pictured: Jules eating her first Chinese rice cracker. ( They taste like bugles).

Friday 4/19: MY BIRTHDAY. We spent a slowish morning at home as I slept in then dal made me breakfast and I talked to mom for a little bit. Once we got out the door (dal stayed home from work to play with me:) we headed to the National Museum and saw and exhibit that was visiting from the Met in NYC. They had a Van Gogh that was gorgeous. Now dal understands why he is a big deal. Ban Gogh in person is a breathtaking experience. We then ate at the Blue Frog. An american style restruant, where we ordered a pastrami and club sandwhich with mac and cheese for Mitch. He loved it! So did we. Jules slept. Afterward we went to Uniqlo and our fav. movie store, then home for the night. We watched a movie and ate a slice of cake we bought. Pictured: My birthday cake, art exhibit

Thursday 4/18: Baby Group day.

We used the subway and bus system to get to our friend Jessica's house. We went to Daylight Donuts (apparently they have some of these in Utah.. weird) the only donut shop I have heard of in Beijing. Mitch was in heaven! They even had drawings of route 66 inside! Afterward we went on a walk with another family from the ward who have daughter that is 4. Mitchell adores her! They had such a fabulous time.

Wednesday 4/17: We started running in the mornings and going to the market as part of our run! It is really fun! We spent most of the day after that inside until we met dallin at a friends house for dinner. We brought pound cake. And it was incredibly good! I made it with yogurt in my rice cooker!

pictured my tasty pound cake, and the kids... mitch was trying to be a baby

Tuesday 4/16: The kids and I tried to go to a meeting about first aid at the hospital, but I couldn't get a reasonable taxi man. And we had a following as we tried to get the taxi. People just kept following me trying to touch the kids, as I'm carrying both of them. Love Chinese people some days, they are so fabulous and their love for kids can really be so helpful, but other days.. like this day I had to swat a few. After that we spent the day inside. Did not want to deal with any more attention.

Monday 4/15: We had a family night about listening and played the game of whispering chain. Where you tell the person next to you something and they pass it to the next person... Mitch was really good at it! We tried to talk about listening to mom and dad and learning to listen to the holy ghost.

Here are some photos from the Ai Wei Wei exhibit:
This is our fav. piece since it reminds us of the ceramic made by the very talented Joan Palmer!

Each cow, such as this one had its counterpart the camel, pictured below to accompany it.

And we loved that they served MILK as the refreshments!