China - Part 11 - Boy Day / Mama does paperwork & shopping

This will be another relatively short post since it was a relaxation day for the most part so the families could spend the bulk of the day with their new kiddos.

Momma was going to go do the paperwork for the day as only one parent was required to attend those sessions. The three women in our group went to do paperwork and Echo also took them shopping to a local market as the wares are cheaper there.

The boys wrestled (Caleb didn't like this much then and certainly doesn't now), played video games, watched Veggie Tales, took a walk up and down the hallways, looked out the window and other low-key stuff around the room.

That night, we didn't even go out for supper. It was room service night although we did go on a family walk to find out more about the pesky swimming hats. 

So, lets get on with the pics and let them tell the story.

One of the great past times of being in the hotels in China, looking out the windows.  Daddy did it as much or more than the boys. I'm not sure what the boys were looking at but I would always watch the traffic.

I'm guessing that the boys were looking for the video games at this point and only stopped long enough to be polite and pose for a picture for dear ol' Dad.

Here's Caleb actually playing with the toy truck and cars that we bought him at the Changchun Wally Mart.  He didn't roll the cars around much but he did sit there and figure out how to take the wheels off as well as peel all of the stickers off of them.

Caleb would take the first picture and then ask you to take a second while he gave the 'Victory' sign. Nowadays when he wants you to take his picture, he holds his hand up by his face like he would be if he were actually holding a real camera and makes a clicking sound.  . 

Ahhhh... back with the video games at long last.

Caleb and another favorite past time of his; eating!  That boy would scarf down a banana by himself. In fact, he'd get upset if you tried to share it with him.  After the 'nana, he'd want a sweet bread, and then he'd wash that down with a little container of this nasty smelling sweet milk.  That would be an hour before lunch, which of course, he would eat like a champ too.

This is the boys dancing to a video on youtube of his daddies band, Jericho Down playing the Lincoln Brewster song, Everybody Praise The Lord (yes, that is a shameless plug!) at a gig we did at Haines Park in Altoona, IA.  We were watching videos of Chinese nursery rhymes when I got the idea to show Caleb that video to see if he'd recognize his new daddy. He did.  I smiled. We danced.

This was one of the wicked wrestling matches that broke out between the boys.  We had a half acre bed to wrestle on so we had to take advantage of such an animal.  Oddly enough, at some point, of which I believe to be in Guangzhou, we found out that wrestling in Chinese hotels is against the law.  Who would've guessed?  I suppose it's probably a more recent law since the unruly rock n' roll bands have started to play there in recent years. Regardless, we had fun and nobody got sent up the river.

This is a pic from Momma's shopping trip down to the local market.  It's one of at least a thousand shots we could have taken of the new apartment buildings going up in either Beijing or Changchun.  They have so many people who are moving to the city now that they have no where to house them. There are tower cranes and similar sized buildings going up in many places in both of those cities. We didn't see quite as much of this when we went South to Guangzhou.

Another shot of the apartments being constructed along with a few in the distance that were recently built.

Here's a shot of how the 'markets' are set up.  It seemed like tight, cramped little shops were everywhere on the ground level of buildings.  Two other things worthy of pointing out in this picture; 1. notice all of the two wheeled dolly's leaning up against the light post.  This was not uncommon and you would see a guy go grab one, use it quickly and take it back. 2. Those two brown things at the bottom/middle of the photo (by the back wheel of the red car) are these huge gloves that people would duct tape onto the handle bars of their bikes.  They would ride to the market, or to work and then hop off of their bike with the gloves staying behind.  The women that I noticed doing this would often be wearing tight fitting gloves underneath these monstrosities.

Another shot of the market.  I did not go so I did not just take a picture of the two Chinese women!

What can you find at the local markets?  You can find shoes like these that Momma bought for Caleb. They're a knock-off combination of Nikes and K-Swiss.  Did you pick up on the double logos?

This is shot on one of the walks we took.  I don't think it's from the same day because both boys have on different clothes than in the other photos that I really am sure about, but it was in this very hallway that the boys would have some of their big bonding moments, so I wanted it documented. Go figure that just simply walking to the elevator would provide enough of a "family feeling" that they would hold hands or, as they're doing above, walking together with Caleb hugging Robby's arm.  That's good stuff.

Here we are down in the Health Club finally purchasing our swim caps.  Robby was about to explode with excitement that we were getting swim caps which of course daddy knew that he would HAVE to go swimming shortly there after.

Another shot of the caps purchase.  Caleb wore his coat down because he refused to take it off once he put it on up in the room.  It was not a battle worth fighting.  You can sort of see the swimming pool in the background of this picture behind the big glass wall.

I think this was on the blog before but just seeing Caleb picking at the hat and not being sure of what was going to happen to him next is worthy of putting it on here again.

We had room service that night for supper as I mentioned above.  Here was the dessert. It was cheesecake with a blueberry sauce obviously containing some real berries.  Take a look at those white berries.  They tasted like extra sweet blueberries.  It was delightful!

That is all for now.


I believe that the Puppet Palace is up next.


Until then, thanks again for reading/viewing. I'm having a lot of fun going back through the photos and stirring up memories.


Take care.