Happy Halloween!

China does not celebrate Halloween, but we have many friends that live in a very large villa. There community is almost all foreigners and so it is the place to go to traditional American holidays. Some of our friends here organized trick-or-treating on Saturday night and then we had a party afterward. (Because Halloween in on Sunday) It was fun! Kenya was this gorgeous ladybug! She had fun and even said "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" to most of the people. We brought our friend Pascal with us too! It was his first Halloween. We made him bob for apples. Really, what is Halloween without bobbing for apples? Enjoy the pictures and videos
We have our school Halloween party tonight. I will post picture of those sometime later.


There were at least 3 lady bugs at this party! I think there were actually 2 more.


This is the golf cart at the villa where the party was. AWESOME!

Sorry about the video quality, it is the low light that made it so bad! My girl is so cute!

UPDATES: Yaohua School "You've Got Talent"

This was a talent show that the international section put on. They invited Robert to dance just 2 days before the show. Here are some of the performances that we think were a little more traditional that we would like to share.

UPDATES: Random

This was the second time that we went to sushi. We brought Amy with us. This is at Dairy Queen afterward.
These are pictures of Robert, Amy and myself eating a small red octopus. It was cold and chewy.

I could not resist putting Kenya in her Halloween clothes starting on October 1st. This is he dress I bought last year.


We had some of the senior students over for dinner and a movie on Oct 1st. It is China's National Day. We watched National Treasure, the students picked. We thought it was quite funny to watch a movie about American history on China's National Day! It was a lot of fun. The Senior students do not have any teachers. They actually have 2 semesters dedicated to apply for colleges in the US. We were really shocked. All of these students are fluent in English and so they help us out quite a bit! It was a lot of fun. I cooked tacos for them. Thanks mom for the seasoning.

These next pictures are of a park that is just a ways down the street from us. It is a huge park! It was great. We actually went here the same say we had the seniors over. We had quite the busy day that day. The park was packed with people because it was a national holiday, but we still enjoyed it.

Here is Amy and Kenya!
This is normal when we go out. People take Kenya's picture all the time. They ofter shove their kids into the picture too. This day was especially bad. It really was like 10 minutes of people taking her picture. Really people, what are they going to do with the pictures? Hang them on their walls like family photos? "Look at this cute baby we saw once." We are puzzled as to why they want to pictures.
These were people just outside our complex gates exercising in the morning. They are doing Ti Chi.

This last picture is one Robert took right out on our balcony. Really, I guess the city does have its own beauty. I still miss the trees and nature more. I don't think I am cut out to be a city girl for long periods of time.

UPDATES: Kenya knows Chinese

Here is a video of Kenya. This was on September 24. Since then she has learned how to identify several more things and has begun to use them in her speech. It was about 2 weeks ago that she started to talk to Robert and I using Chinese words. For example: I walked in after going shopping and when I came in the door Kenya say "Ni How, Mommy!" That is hello, she uses the word for careful and any of the fruits and animals regularly.

UPDATE: Children's Palace

During our days off for the Moon Festival we went to a place called "The Children's Palace." It was a little science center for the children to explore and discover. And it is completely FREE! We had fun. Afterward we ate sushi. It was really yummy! We have actually been back to the same sushi place and plan on going back often! We were so excited to get some decent sushi after 5 years.

Above: This was a sugar cane that this man put through a grinder and out came a drink. The drink is in my hand. It was sure sweet. Interesting to try. His drink stand was just a machine on his bike.




This video is Kenya in a slanted room. I wish we could have gotten the first time that she tried to walk in there.


Guess what this next video is... you guessed it! Kenya dancing!

One Down!

That is that I have potty trained my first child. She still has accidents, but Amy was able to get us so underwear for Kenya and so we just bought our last box of diapers. We will use them at night time until she can control that a little bit better, but no more diapers during the day. I think she can do it. So, I am considering that potty trained! Okay, I know that she is still going to have accidents, but most kids do or a little while after they make the change from diapers to underwear. We were mostly waiting for her to choose to use the toilet for poops and for the last couple days she has. We are praying that it will stick, because cleaning up poopy underwear is not fun, I have done it. GREAT JOB KENYA! Once again your are amazing!

Shenzhen Safari Park/Zoo

We went to the zoo last week during our holiday. Kenya loved it so much! I think her favorite was the monkeys. She kept asking "more monkeys." And we still hear about the monkeys at home almost everyday. On the way to the zoo we told her that we were going to see the animals and so now she knows that word and asks to go see the animals. She is getting quite big and learning quickly. What a wonderful blessing she is in our lives! At the zoo we had lots of fun. We took our nanny Amy with us. We saw a great seal and dolphins show. It was great! We also saw a circus at the end of the day. I had been wanting to see a good circus for years. This circus was short, about 25-30 minutes, but it was great! We all had fun and it was something we could share with Kenya during our vacation.

This is Kenya already for the day. She was so cute! I put her hair in pigtails.

The Drapers in front of the zoo.


Amy and Kenya in front of Gibbon Island. This was the first thing we saw as we came into the zoo. Yep, monkeys!
Kenya got to ride on giant chickens. And she let us know they were chickens like at mama and papa's house.
We were super close to the gibbons. There was just a mote around the island, no cages!

We paid just over a $1 to feed giraffes. They sure have strong jaws, they ripped the branches right out of our hands. Kenya enjoyed this, as well as mommy and daddy!

The elephants were fun. Someone was feeding this one peanuts.

Zebras, Amy and I got to pet this one. There were several animals that you could pay to feed. Zebras were one of them. We did not pay, but I am guessing that is why this Zebra let us pet it.
Hippos. This is about all we saw of them. They did come up or a breath once or twice.
How, cute! The swans in the water fountains behind us are kissing too. This was daddy's cute idea!
Kenya, loves fish! Of coarse there were lots of gold fish to feed in the ponds.
These were the penguins. Kenya liked watching them swim. She loves the water and we were all sad when the pool at our apts closed at the end of September.
Here are some pictures of the show. There are videos at the end too!




Black panthers, Robert's favorite animals!
What a cute baby! She did great the entire day! She had a dry diaper the entire day. We had to brave using the Chinese public toilets, but it was her choice. Way to go Kenya!
Just before the circus started. I love it when these two walk around holding hands! I cannot get enough!
Yeah, he is upside down on a horse running full speed. They were quite good at their tricks! It reminded me of Toby Tyler!

This bear was being fed. He would stand there and beg, or ask nicely until someone throw him an apple.
The is a Tigon. This zoo has both tigons and ligers. To us they both looked the same.
So, I was going to post video, but it is giving me an error when I try. I will just post them later maybe.

Updates: Fireworks-Man vs Nature!

In this corner we have Man...aka Shenzhen...alias the 30th Anniversary of the birth of Shenzhen!
On September 6th we saw the best continuous, 30 minute fireworks display right from our balcony! We even saw more of the ground fireworks on the t.v. There were fireworks that made shapes of stars, smiley faces and planets! How would one even begin to figure out how to pack explosive powder into shell and have it create a complex design when launched hundreds of feet in the air?



In this corner we have Nature...aka Mother Nature...alias Electrical Storm...also known as Lightning! On the night of September 8th starting at about 7pm there were flashes of lightning in the distance. There was no thunder at that time. As the night progressed there were a lot more and brighter flashes, but still no thunder. We didn't really catch on that it was lightning until about 10pm. From that point on Mother Nature revealed her awesome power! There was continuous rumbling of thunder that lasted about 3-4 hours. This natural fireworks display lasted for hours! It was around 7am that this raging storm had finally began to fizzle out in the distance. Now keep in mind that we are on the 23rd floor of a 24 story building so we were in the storm and we could feel when our building was struck because we could feel the floor shake! Being so high up, we had great views of other buildings having their lightning rods struck!

The lightning in this first video struck the ground! It was pretty close to our complex. You can try to pause the video at 17 seconds to get a better look at the bolts.

We hope this doesn't slow down your computers too much, but it will be worth it. We put only a select few on the blog because they showed the best lightning and you can hear great samples of the booming thunder! Enjoy!






If we were the ones calling the contest between Shenzhen's fireworks and Mother Nature's we would rule in favor of Mother Nature simply because the display lasted longer and was louder and it was up close and personal. Either way they were two spectacular displays that deserve a lot of praise.

Updates: Fun in China.

This is Kenya after an exhausting day running around. She is a real trooper here in China!
These next few pictures are of Kenya playing at the little park that our complex has. She enjoys playing with other kids and she doesn't even mind the heat too much.


This is Kenya with her first date. One of the teachers here set her up with it. She did not like it much either. We all agree that she is to young to be dating anyway!

The Mid Autumn Festival was at on Sept 23. What the Chinese do on this holiday is look at the moon with their family and eat moon cakes. (I have not really found any moon cakes that were great. Don't get me wrong I liked some of them, but it is nothing I am going to miss about China.) Our boss invited us all to a wonderful dinner. It had been cloudy all day and so we did not think we were going to be able to see the moon. Then when we were going home after dinner we looked up and, sure enough, there was the moon. It was gone in less than 2 0r 3 minutes too. It was great! I wish this picture was not so blurry. It would have been a great picture to blow up.

The man on the far right is our boss, Mr Tian. He owns the school. The others are the head master and some of the principals. It was another great night and yummy traditional Chinese food!

This is Chicken served with the head on the platter.

Gotta love Kenya! She would sing, dance and sweep all day if we did not have other things to do.