"Just a little bit longer..." :China life, 6 months down... 18 left?

BiG News... 

Looks like we will be living in China until the end of 2014. So if your were thinking about coming to visit us... now you have a little longer to save, plan, and do. :) The weather has been so beautiful and the sky so clear I am almost convinced I love it here! But then the smog creeps back in and reminds me why Utah is such a glorious place to live. Oh and I'm sure winter will be a good kick in the shins too.

So here is our week.

Monday: We had a wild day. The kids and I go crazy if we don't leave the house early enough in the day... and I was being lazy and enjoying talking to the fam. So by the time we left all three of us were a little frazzled already. Mitch is such a great runner. We put on our running shoes(he throws a bit of a fit when I want to wear flip flops instead running shoes) and went over to the park across the street and ran kicking his ball for a good 10-15 minutes before we began wandering, chasing butterflies and dancing. we also found "Moe's work" on our way over. Picture included. I don't know why he thinks this is your work, but I love it! It is either where they smash the trash or the recycling. It smells terrible so I think it is the trash smasher. :)

JuleZ loves to play peek-a-boo all day!

We also enjoyed visiting the park again after dinner for a run with Dallin and a little dancing with the Chinese ladies. And a "bearded lady" for dessert (cream puff with ice cream in it.)

 Sunday: We went on a picnic with our Chinese friends shao yan, Allen and their daughter yoyo. Flying kites, playing football, eating snacks (mitch stole all their yoghurt), catching butterflies and fish, and they brought a scooter that Mitch would not get off of. They are a very sweet family. We really like them.

Picture of Jules with a little bearded lady on her face.

Saturday: We took the kids back to the giant splash pad that they love and some little Chinese boy that looked like a tank went a little wild. He stripped down naked and was sticking his toosh over the holes blowing out a lot more water than would be comfortable in part of your body. He got quite the crowd. We promptly removed Mitch before he followed suit. (And he was trying to!) Mitch also helped out with our last minute late night shopping trip on the way home.

Friday:I did some painting with Mitch. I'll have to take some pics and send you what we have been working on!

Thursday: Was a sad day as we said goodbye to the fam again.

Wednesday: We did a lot of shopping with mom and dad and had a great time at the splash pad with the kids!

Tuesday: Last wild day of the trip! Poor Anna was such a trooper. We went to the temple of heaven. Mitch made a friend there and we had a hard time getting very far since he just wanted to play!
Unfortunately my phone was almost dead so I couldn't get any pictures.

It was a good thing mom, dad, and Anna came back with us, or I don't think Dal could have drug the kids and I back. We were having a wonderful time in Utah playing with cousins, grandparents, friends, and breathing the clean fresh mountain air. The swimming and splash pads everyday were pretty amazing too! We had so much fun with them here and it was such a blessing to have them in China to point out all the beauty and wonder of the ancient culture and fascinating places we are surrounded by. So now we are trying to get in a mindset that will sustain us through another year and a half of China life.

BJ lovin' ?

So here is a quicky on our week. First of all Dallin's new boss Jack... might have a "man crush on Dal". He loves everything Dallin does and cannot stop complimenting him on it! I love Jack and I haven't even met him! Jack is also a fabulous manager, the last manager was a sweetheart but not organized or efficient. Jack is really making Dallin's work more effective and focused. Jack + the amazing September weather (lots of beautiful sunny, not so hot days, and not a lot of pollution) and really making me fall in love with Beijing (AKA BJ).  Monday 9/10: We tried to do a little house shopping without going in. We are thinking about moving closer to Dal's work to our fav. play areas. I also painted today, with freshly squeezed paint, the kids could not resist. Three scrub-downs and a call to poison control. :) Jules has also gone wild with walking this whole week! Oh and I let toad do play dough....bad idea? I told Dallin not to put things like headphones around his neck, because babies are always watching. Evidence that I am right... I guess it doesn't help that I've been wearing necklaces more often the last few weeks... Sunday 9/8:  We had our friends Ryan and Julia and son Dylan over for dinner. Ryan's Dad and grandma are in town and also joined us. The grandma, from Idaho, was thrilled about the mashed potatoes! Oh and church, our two kids in sunbeam now are Eddie (She is darling, easily distracted, energetic and fun) and Un Un ( he is a little boy from Taiwan who only speaks a little English- he does not answer questions, he goes off on long weird tangents. ). Needless to say, sunbeams is interesting these days and soon Mitch will be added to the mix. Bad news bear.  Sunday afternoon watching Baby Einstein #notjustforbabies Saturday 9/7: I got this maxi dress behind the fresh morning market! I love it! I might be wearing it at this very moment... When I put it on Mitch looks at me and says "Oh, that's Ashley's dress?" I went to a "Thriving in BJ" meeting for RS and really enjoyed it along with a party later for some people who are moving. The RS speakers had some pretty funny stories about their lives here.  By the way we are pretty much committed until the end of 2014. They gave Dal and offer he couldn't refuse. So we will be in BJ or Shanghai.= you have to come visit me sometime after September! Oh and I WILL be there when you come home! Jules fav. spot in the house. She is usually either standing in, playing with, or sitting in it! It is a Chinese crockpot that doesn't really work. Except for as a toy! :) Add caption Friday 9/6: The kids and I exhausted ourselves shopping at the morning market and the grocery store. I can tell I am getting a little more stubborn and less timid the longer I am here. I just ignore some of their rules that make me crazy, like unloading the groceries in bottom of my stroller so that I can go buy my milk and yoghurt. I just don't have the energy so after refusing to take my I don't speak chinese for an answer they just assigned me a buddy to walk through the store with. He didn't mind he just smiled and cooed at my kids. Which was kinda cute and annoying at the same time. :) Chinese people can be so funny! Someone thinks she is big! She has been determined to feed herself with a spoon lately. When she found my snack on the table I decided to let her have it and she had a lot of fun eating the "mommy food" (aka bananas and yoghurt). By afternoon I was worried that Jules was still fevering for the 3rd day in a row so we headed to the hospital (code for clinic/pharmacy/ER/hospital) you go to the same facility for all of these. It was a painful process, although it was fun to spend the day with just my girl. Dal was a sweetheart and came home to take care of Mitch for me. My patience was running thin and the trip with Mitch would have been horrific. Especially since we left for the hospital at four and did not return until nine pm. We had really sweet taxi drivers both ways though. (Hard to find in BJ, especially toward a white person who does not speak Chinese.) Jules is the charmer. They all love her. And we had him help me learn a few fruits in Chinese as we went. That is what I call getting my moneys worth. Chinese lesson and a ride! Jules found herself a "spot" that she was very sad to leave in the doctors office. We also went across the street to our fav. Italian food Annie's while we waited for a few things at the hospital. Dinner was yummy... until it was quickly ended by the sound of diarrhea coming from my cute sleeping baby. Grilled eggplant layered with ricotta cheese. It is amazing but tastes even better in the land of missing cheese. :) Thursday 9/5 : The kids and I went to the park and met a lady that is Chinese is married to a guy from London. Which means we can talk gospel with them! Needless to say we got her number and are excited to get together with her and her husband and two kids! Wednesday 9/4: We went swimming for play group with the other ward at our friends the Wilson's. Mitch loved getting to play with friends his size! Best invention ever! My kids can eat yoghurt now without destroying the house! Tuesday 9/3: The kids and I went to Metro (a costco-like store. Without all the wonderfulness of costco and some of the bulk foodness). I was desperate to find cheese. Well they have 5kg blocks of cheddar from NZ and that is it. So we took the plunge and bought it. Oh and I was wearing my purple dress, Mitch is weird about us wearing the same kind of shoes these days though. Since he was wearing his running shoes I had to wear mine. I didn't want to argue but I looked like a goof. I figured I never see anyone I know. Boo. We get into the store and there are two cutely dressed women and their kids. I automatically assumed they were mormon without thinking. Well come to find out the next day at play group they were Mormon! So cool! Oh so I spent the rest of the afternoon shredding, cubing and slicing the giant beautiful cheese block! And to finish it off, the we love China picture. I have been getting lazy about these.  This and kite flying are the occupations of retired/non-working elderly men in China. The game of Chess quickly gathers onlookers, such as my vt driver who was picking up the kids and I for our vt/playdate. When I called to ask her where to find him, she knew exactly what he was doing! Love it.

Happy Sick week :)

So here is us for the week:

We had 4 visits to the hospital... couldn't let you have all the fun this week! Although our trips were incredibly mild comparatively! Two trip were to pick up diabetic supplies/get blood drawn for my A1C and the other two were ER visits. 

Monday 6/24: I made Dal bring home Chinese food since I didn't feel good enough to cook. Mitch pictured eating his food with chopsticks! He refused any other utensils and he did great!

Tuesday 6/25:So Jules spent several days fevering last week, we are finally getting her over that and trying to get back to a normal sleep schedule and I get a sinus infection that wants to kill me. I was hurting so much I couldn't sleep and Tylenol and Ibuprofen were not doing a thing (except Jules Ibuprofen, I ran out of the adult to I took the child, the grape kind, LOVED IT! And it worked.) But since I couldn't just drink her Ibuprofen all day/night we decided to head to the ER... at 1am. So we taxied over (no traffic... weird in BJ), the air was super crappy, the kids were both more than happy to be awake again, and the ER is expensive here since insurance doesn't exist for most people in China and no one is supported by the state the same way we are in America so the ER was a breeze. (Phew, longest sentence ever... don't tell dal). Walk in, they take care of you almost immediately, get a prescription, head home! It was the best ER experience I will ever have in my life... pretty sure. 

Wednesday 6/26: Dal stayed home and took care of me. :)

Thursday 6/27: (PIC) Jules stood up in her bed for the first time, anger does good things for a baby girls motivation!

Friday 6/28; So a few days pass, starting feel better. I am putting Mitch down for a nap, all of the sudden he runs for his bed, lays down, cries and wants me to kiss his arm better. Great, done. So I leave him to cry himself to sleep, not uncommon, he hates being left in his bed. After he wakes up, he won't move. So I pick him up and he cries while I move him to my bed.(PIC) All he wants to do is watch a show, doesn't want to move AT ALL. Not move, so not toad. So after Dal comes home checks him out thoroughly we decide we'll give it a night and see if he is using more and more, since now he will move just protects his arm. We head to the docs the next day (Sat.) and he has nursemaids elbow, so the doc twists his arm and WHAlA! Ten minutes later he is playing at the park like nothing happened! Quickest fix ever! We were sure he had at least broken his finger.  

Sat. 6/29: ER visit picture.

Sun. 6/30

We had our polish friends Ola and Mihao over with their two kids Yashow and Sasha. It was so fun! Yashow and Mitch are the same age and temperament, so needless to say it was wild! We had a wonderful dinner of pot roast, mashed potatoes/gravy, apples, jello, and crescent rolls in honor of Juliett's birthday. And Ola brought some homemade sauerkraut to go with it! We all loved how much it tasted like home (apparently meat, potatoes and sauerkraut makes a very polish dish :)). It was amazing to see how much Mihao and Dallin ate! We also had  asian cheesecake for dessert. It is more like a spongecake made with cream cheese. 

In other news, Jules climbed today! She was holding onto our window railing standing up and decided to step up on the ledge! She loves her new mobility! She walks from one thing to the next all day (furniture/mom surfing)! She loves to be standing up! She has also figured out her sippy cup and loves it. And she loves to feed herself! She is such a determined, smart little girl!

The pollution also got to 477!!!
(300 is hazardous! 477 was the highest we have seen since we got here!)
This is a picture outside our window!

I can't believe my baby is 9 months already!

The kids ready for our daily outing of walking around the community, fishing, playing soccer and of course Mitch trying to steal a sucker... or chocolate from the dongxi store.

So our week:

The kids are getting so big. Toad does all but wipe his own bum to go potty and he loves it. He also puts his own shoes on and off, helps with laundry, dishes and takes the trash out himself! Jules has decided to walk before she crawls. (Sort of, I feel like she is learning to walk while learning to crawl.) In the past week she has been very insistent about always standing up holding onto something. And when she does fall or when I set her down and she wants me (every time I set her down... always) she cries and improves her crawl-scoot as she comes to where ever I am (in the 10-15ft at the most, that I am away from her). Time sure flies.

6/24: Mitch sang happy birthday to g-ma nece on the phone. He loves singing that song! Jules ate her first REAL meal. She has basically refused me feeding her today so finally at dinner I gave her bits of watermelon, carrot, and corn on her tray and feed her ground chicken in between. She was in heaven. She is very opinionated, determined, and has a love hate relationship with Mitchell's attention. We also had peach pie for our FHE dessert. It was a huge success. Toad could not get enough!

6/23 Sunday: We walked to church trying to get the babies to sleep since dal and I were giving talks... that didnt work. So as the youth speaker begins Jules realizes she is desperately hungry... awkward. So we were already sitting in the very back, I hurry and feed her. The girl finishes her talk, Dal has taken mitch potty, I am scrambling to rearrange my clothes, gather my talk, calm Jules, it created good 3-4 min pause between talks. Luckily one of my friends came and took Jules while I gave my talk. Dal did great and then it was off to class. We could hear exhausted Mitch screaming in nursery while we tried to keep the attention of our now 1 sunbeam, then Mitch joined us and we had two wild children. We sang some songs and gave up on the rest of the lesson. :) 

6/22 Saturday: We spent some good time outside enjoying the beautiful blue sky. We went to our fav. movie store and in passing the newly opened hollister store we heard whooping and saw people running. Dal thought it was a fight... nope, it was white guys with their shirts off as part of the hollister opening event. Really. It was little ridiculous out outrageously excited everyone  (all the Chinese) were about it. 

6/21 Friday: I spent the whole day thinking it was Thursday and was overjoyed when Dal came home and corrected me! I had spent the day saving Jules from the clutches of the evil overlord Mitchell (ps he totally quotes Mulan and Megamind now! I love it! I brought him breakfast the other day and he says "happy to see me". And he often talks about "his honor". I think he loves that it actually relates to him and where he is right now! So fun! Oh and when in Shanghai I put on my black swim suit, he told me it was my "Black Mamba"! Love it!) Oh and Mitch got to have a tent that day. It entertains him for about 2 min. but we love it anyway. 

6/20 Thursday: Jules and I enjoyed watching Mitch "fish" for leaves in the nasty water  downstairs. He loves it! It is so sad all the other 3 year olds are in school already. Some kids here start school at 1.5 years old. (Crazy if you ask me.) 

 Toad also enjoys making his toy chest his bed :)

She is loving her new forms of mobility. Scoot crawling and furniture/mommy cruising.

To be honest i can't remember much of what we did the other days. Jules has been sick. She fevered for three days, so we spent a lot of time indoors, trying to get her to sleep as much as possible and keep cool. She is finally over it, but now she is throwing up. (I think it is cuz I tried watermelon her and it just doesn't seem to agree with her system.)

The other Pics are of :

-Jules practicing her toes skills in the high chair. I was trying to get more fluids down her and she turned it into a toe exercise. :) 

- Mitch trying to be like Dal while he was fixing something. He loves to do or eat anything dal does, so cute.

-And our we love China picture was special in honor of g-ma nece birthday. Garlic vines! This is at our market. Chinese people LOVE their garlic. They will put like 3 whole things of garlic in one dish! Crazy. But most of their food is delish so I can't say it is an awful thing. 

A week with ASH!

Well it was a wild week. We had so much fun dragging Ash to our fav places and historical sites! Two days after Ash left we took off on a train for Shanghai for a business and family stay-cation. And in the midst of recoup from all our fun I am finally blogging.


Our first two days of fun:

Morning market

On the subway. Jules was pole dancing she was so excited to be with her auntie AND out of the stroller!

At UniQlo and YaShow market.

Our fav. dumpling house!

Temple of Heaven

Pearl Market

Brown Door, eating spaghetti french fries

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.