We can hardly believe the number of days that have already passed and are counting down the days till blastoff to the good old U-S-A. We laughed many times today at the state of our adjoining hotel rooms. The kids have taken over and to say we have lived in chaos for over a week is an understatement. We thought of our friends, The Biggs Family, who have lived in more cramped quarters than these- and still love each other- so we live in hope.
Each day we continue to see progress with our Ainsley. She is more affectionate with Richard and will now sit in a stroller when we have long walks to take. That is very exciting for us. Ainsley loves her brother and sisters and tries to share her dry cereal snack with them. She also does this with Richard, Stacy and Nana Carole and expects to get a kiss when she gives them each the food. She is our little cuddle bug- just like the Ethan, Olivia and Sophia. We are so grateful for the gift of having Ainsley as our daughter and (most of the time) so are Ethan, Olivia and Sophia.
We had an opportunity to take a tour of The Summer Palace in Beijing where the Emperor would spend his summers. It was beautiful and we all liked it better than The Forbidden City. The amount of intricately detailed pictures was incredible. There was over 1000 pictures in one of the long, covered walkways depicting battles and life in China's history. The craftsmanship of the buildings were also so amazing and intricate. The highlight of visiting the palace was taking a ride on The Dragon Boat.
This boat was beautifully painted and shaped like a floating dragon. We felt like royalty riding in such a gorgeous boat. However, the kids reminded us adults that we were not. Ha!
Nana Carole and Stacy went to order McDonald's lunch for the crew and Stacy was quite confident based on past experience that she could order accurately. We laughed at the language barrier, as one "value meal"
turned into four! We were just glad to leave with food to feed our hungry bunch. The English language never sounded so good as it does now to us.
The kids are enjoying watching a cartoon, all in Chinese, of course, where even though we don't know the words, we know SpongeBob puts it to shame.
Tomorrow we should receive Ainsley's passport- we keep praying-and travel to Guangzhou after dinner. We hope to meet up with the other families and meet their precious children. |
