Crazy Day

Jenna's class had a "crazy day" today and they were supposed to wear their pajamas and do their hair all "crazy". Needless to say it didn't take her very long to get ready this morning.  She opted for a nightgown with pajama pants underneath and a warm and cozy robe.

Take a look at her crazy hair:

She loved it, but I must say that as she walked out the door I thought to myself, "I really hope we didn't get the dates mixed up on this one."  To add to the craziness of the day, this is what it looked like when she and Britton left for the bus stop.

I was very relieved when I arrived in her classroom about an hour later to help with reading groups to find all of the other children in pajamas with crazy hair, too.  Jenna's teacher was very happy because the entire class had done extremely well on the end of year tests they had taken the day before.  She pulled me aside before I left and showed me that Jenna had scored the highest in the entire class on the test. By the end of the year the state wants the kids to be at a 40 WPM in their reading and the school district wants them to be at a 60 WPM. Jenna came in at a 148. Way to go Jenna! I'm a proud Mama Bear. (Ok, I'm done bragging now. Sorry about that but I just couldn't help myself.)

This afternoon I was back at the school in Britton's class giving a presentation on China.  His teacher has been asking me to come in and tell them about my recent experiences in China.  The kids were really interested in everything I prepared so it ended up being a lot of fun.  I showed my pictures of the weird food in Beijing and they went crazy. At the end I gave them all a pair of chopsticks that I brought back from China and they were pretty happy. I'd say a good time was had by all.

Tonight I went to a stake leadership training meeting.  I was the first from my presidency to arrive and I sat down and waited for the meeting to begin.  When my first counselor walked in I saw that she was wearing a red sweater and a black skirt and since I was also wearing a red sweater and a black skirt I thought to myself, "Ah, I see that she got the memo".  A few minutes later my second counselor walked in and I just started to laugh (on the inside, of course).  Not only was she also wearing a red sweater and a black skirt, but she was wearing the exact same red sweater as my other counselor.  What a unified Primary Presidency we are!  That old saying must be true-- great minds really do think alike like me. Ha!

We were the only people wearing red and black in the entire room.  Really, what are the chances of that?  

Pretty crazy. 

The Derby

We have officially entered in a new phase of life.

It's the Pinewood Derby, baby.  Britton participated in his first derby last night.  Adam not only helped him with his car--

but put on the whole event.  He is the Cubmaster for the second time and definitely knows how to put on a good derby.

We didn't have the benefit of lazer sensors at the finish line, but we did have instant replay.  Here are 2 Bishopric members looking at an instant replay of a close race. (Gotta love the iphone)

It was a fun, but hectic night.  Adam is relieved to have it over for another year. Between the derby, coaching 2 soccer teams, and being in charge of our ward's food storage order this month he has been a busy man.

I went to pick Korinne up from preschool and found a few aliens.

I love seeing the results of a good preschool project. It was very creative and as you can see Korinne loved it.

The Brain

We had a few deep talks with Korinne today about her brain.  She let us know that he (yes, her brain is a "he") coughs when she coughs and talks when she talks.  Now when your 4 year old daughter starts talking about her brain in the third person you can't help but start asking questions.  This is what we discovered about Korinne's brain:

• His name is "nobody" and he likes having that name. Oh, and he doesn't want to be called "Nobe" for short. If you call him Nobe he will make a mad face. (Korinne demonstrated his "mad face" for us)
• He has a bed in her head, and a TV, but he only watches the news.
• He works all day long, and does the same kind of work that Dad does in his office.
• When he is tired he goes outside and starts "shutting down"

I asked her if her brain tells her what to do all day long. 
"No"
Well, then who tells you what to do all day??
"My Mom."

Ha! So true, Korinne, so true.

Spring has Sprung (knock on wood)

My Grandpa turned 96 this past week. 96! I don't know of very many men who have lived to age 96. Not only that but he still lives at home. Adam's Grammie turns 95 next week and has enjoyed relatively good health and still lives on her own. I'd say my kids have a great genetic shot at making it to a very old age.

This is for my siblings. Now you can feel like you were at Grandpa's birthday party, too.

Soccer.
Just the word makes me sigh (and unfortunately not in a good way). Britton has always played soccer and really enjoys it. Jenna, my girly girl who has never shown any interest in soccer suddenly declared this year that she would like to play.  Adam figured that Britton and Jenna were close enough in age that they could be on the same team and he could be the coach. This was a perfect plan right up until we found out that they no longer have co-ed teams for 1st and 2nd graders. So now Adam is coaching Britton's team AND Jenna's team and we have officially entered the "Soccer Twilight Zone". When the schedules came out we found that Britton and Jenna have 3 games being played at the exact same time but in different locations and 5 games that don't have enough time in between them to get to the new location. On top of that Adam is supposed to have weekly practices with both teams in addition to the 2 games they both play each week. Pure insanity? Yes. But if anyone can do it, Adam can. Before long he had schedules out to both teams, treat sign-up lists going around, practices scheduled, and assistant coaches lined up and ready to fill in during all the gaps. He's my hero.

Britton's first game was last night. It was cold, rainy, windy, and did I mention cold?

I had a hat, gloves, blanket and umbrella and Britton did a great job!

Tonight was Jenna's first soccer game ever.  It didn't take me very long to realize that girls soccer is a bit different than boys soccer.  Sure Britton had a lot of teams with 1 or 2 girls on them but I've never witnessed 2 complete teams of girls playing soccer.  Here are a few things that I noticed:

1- Girls play like. . . well, girls.  I'm pretty sure I saw some prancing.
2- I saw at least 2 girls cry when things didn't go the way they had hoped. ("There's no crying in baseball!")
3- Some parents have an uncanny ability to track down hair bows that match the uniforms perfectly.
4- If the girls weren't actually in the game playing they had absolutely no interest in what was going on and spent their "resting" time giggling, dancing and playing. "Game? What game?"

Here is Jenna in her uniform:

I was a little bit nervous when she said she wanted to be the goalie for part of the game but I'm happy to say that the other team didn't score during the time she was goalie.  Of course, she spent a lot of time dancing around the goal area, but that is completely beside the point.

In this picture I caught her looking into the goal instead of out.  She was probably in the middle of a dance move or something.

She seemed to enjoy herself so we'll see how the rest of the season goes.  The weather couldn't have been more perfect tonight.  It was awesome.

Korinne is my special spectator friend.  Tonight we had a kissing war and we tried to give each other as many kisses as we could. It's my new favorite game.  She was laughing and giggling while trying to kiss my cheeks. It was precious.

"Spring Break"

It's "spring break" and yes, I have the quotations for a reason.  We did not make any plans for spring break this year because Adam and I knew we would be dealing with jet lag and trying to get caught up from being in China for a week. Unfortunately our plans of letting the kids play outside and enjoy their time off from school hasn't quite gone the way we envisioned.  For one thing, it's freezing outside and they can only play in snow for so long before their hands are a bright red color and they just can't take it anymore.  It also didn't help that our entire neighborhood went 5 1/2 hours south for the week in search of warmer weather.  Freezing weather + no friends = not very exciting spring break. Sorry kids.

Jenna and Britton out playing in the snow.

I love it when Jenna gets into an organizing mood.  Here she is going through all of our DVDs and putting them in order by genre.  Korinne was her little assistant.  Jenna's excellent reading skills come in handy these days.

After we finished the dishes the other night as a family Jenna closed the dishwasher and Korinne shouted, "I want to push the play button!"  I guess pushing "play" gets the dishes clean.

I took the kids to the library on Monday.  I figured if it was just us inside for the entire week we ought to have a few books to keep everyone occupied.  I let them each pick 4 books and they have read each and every one.  I guess we will be going back today for a new supply.  Jenna is the one who most enjoys sitting down and reading a book. Britton gets all of his reading done at night when he is supposed to be in his room, but hasn't fallen asleep yet.  Both have them read 4 chapter books in 3 days.  Not bad.

We really hope that we won't have to wake up to the sound of a snowblower until next winter. . .hey, we can hope, can't we?

China

I'm back. You missed me, didn't you? (Wait, don't answer that) We got back from our trip to China on Thursday afternoon and now I'm trying to get caught up on everything. Jet lag is a very real thing and I still feel a little out of it. A big shout-out to my Mom, Aunt Kim & Uncle Ben, and Adam's Mom for taking the kids while we were gone and for Taylor and Jen for letting us come and visit. You guys are awesome.

As tempting as it is to give you a detailed travel log I will refrain. Trips are awesome to experience, but not awesome to not experience and then hear about each and every detail from a person who did experience the experience. Are you following me? I'll try to only report the most interesting things.

Observation #1- Shanghai is freakin' huge. It just goes on and on and on. I asked Taylor how many people live in the city.  He said ,"Oh 20 or 30 million, no one really knows the exact number" 

Observation #2- You must be either super crazy or the best driver EVER to navigate the streets in Shanghai.  It became obvious to me in about 2 seconds flat there are no traffic rules, merely traffic suggestions.  What, only 3 lanes painted in? No problem, they already know that 5 or 6 cars can easily fit with 2 inches to spare.  I saw driving moves that the WWF would be proud of.  At times I just had to talk about the weather to get my mind off the fact that we just narrowly escaped 6 traffic accidents over a 30 second time period.  Fortunately Taylor has a professional driver on call 24-7. Not only was his driver calm as a cucumber, but he has some serious driving skills which left me more relaxed so I could merely observe the craziness of the car/bus/bike/pedestrian situation.  If you live in the US, you've never seen anything like it.  I've even lived in South America which is crazy in its own right, but not as crazy as Shanghai. 

Here is the driver picking us up after some shopping.  Notice how he just stops in the middle of the road.  No rules, people, no rules.

On a side note, Taylor said that when some of his co-workers and clients have come to the States for business they are completely baffled by the 4 way stop, or stop signs in general.  Stopping for any reason when a car isn't coming the other way is just unthinkable. They die laughing when they see someone make a complete stop just for the sake of stopping.

Observation #3- Trips to foreign countries are super awesome when you have someone who speaks the language fluently, knows where to go and what to do, has a driver on call 24-7, and does all of your negoatiating when you want to buy something.  The Chinese are super aggressive in the markets.  As a foreigner you might as well be wearing a dollar sign on your forehead.  I was afraid to even look at anything because I knew that once I did I was toast.  Enter Taylor.  He wouldn't let them get away with anything and I could tell by their disappointment after making the sale that we really did get the best deal possible.  I will not miss hearing, "Good deal for you lady", "Best friend price for you" or "You want to buy a watch, lady?" every time I walk down the street.

We went to several different markets. This one was an antique market.

This market was a more artsy market.  It reminded us of something you would find in Park City with all of its art galleries and such. We tried to channel our inner "Jeff and Libbie" so we could fully appreciate the works of art. I'm not sure how we did, but we really did try.

Observation #4- Their food is not our food. I was game to try new foods while I was in China and I really enjoyed the food Taylor and Jen's maid/cook made for us (Yes, they even have a maid who cooks!) And since there are about 100,000 foreigners living in Shanghai it was possible to get anything American we wanted, i.e. hamburgers, pizza, even a good reuban sandwhich!  While I was totally up for try the Asian version of fast food . . .

(Ok, so I didn't eat the kimchi packet that came with my value meal, but the rice, meat and vegetables were good.)

. . .and ate a few dumplings. . .

I drew the line when it came to the weirder stuff.

Frogs for sale at the local market, and yes, they were still alive. What? You don't want to have to deal with killing them yourself, no problem.  Here are some frogs all spiced up and ready to go.

They even put them in a zip lock bag for you.  They are so thoughtful that way.  Turtle soup anyone?

The bags were moving around a bit because the turtles were still alive, of course. Lest you think that there wasn't anything too disgusting let me show you a few things we found in Beijing.

Grasshoppers anyone? How about some scorpions?

 Pick either one and they would deep fry it for you on the spot and hand it over.  What? Not your cup of tea?  How about these. .

You know, I've always wondered what fried seahorse on a stick would taste like. .

The octopus on a stick was pretty tempting, but nothing compared to these larger scorpions, big beetles and caterpiller things.

Is your mouth watering yet? I looked, but PETA was nowhere to be found when we happened upon these barbequed baby birds complete with head and feet.

Observation #5- Just in case you haven't already noticed, they really liked to serve things on sticks.

Observation #6- Even if the weather doesn't cooperate AT ALL, it is still cool to stand on the Great Wall of China.  It was cold and rainy and super foggy on the one day we had to see the wall, but we tried to make the most of it.

Observation #7-Flying on a discount airline from Shanghai to Beijing means that you will have the least amount of leg room you've ever had in your life and you will have to listen to one of the flight attendants stand at the front of the plane and try to sell you watches, plastic water bottles, and a million other gadgets in a really bad infomercial kind of way for the ENTIRE 2 hour flight.  It also means that when they tell you the safety information in obligitory English they will tell you to "stow your cassette players" and "make sure your car phones are turned off."  (Apparently they haven't had anyone retranslate their safety info since the early 90's.)  Taylor told us we should be happy that we couldn't understand what the flight attendant/informercial expert was saying because it was a whole lot of "You heard me right, folks, today only you can get it not for 40 bucks, not for 30 bucks, but for only 20 bucks!"  What kills me is that people were atually buying the stuff right and left!

Observation #8- I'm a sucker for anything that has to do with the Olympics.

Observation #9- English translations in China are hilarious.

Observation #10- I'm a fan of seeing things that are super Chinese-ee.

This was the water village where a portion of Mission Impossible 3 was filmed.

Observation #11- Is it just me, or does my brother Taylor look like a guy who should be named Vinny or Guido?  All he is missing is a gold chain.  Here he is in his "fuggetaboutit" pose.

He is a fan of the leisure suit, that is for sure, but on this particular day he had his black dress shoes from church because he forgot to bring another pair to change into.

Observation #12- When is comes to Karaoke, the Chinese don't mess around.

The was the hallway of the karaoke place.  There were a ton of different rooms that had their own sofas and karaoke equipment so your group could karaoke in the comfort of their own room.

I guess Karaoke is SUPER popular in Shanghai and all of the rooms were full.  It was first and last time that I will ever get to see Adam singing karaoke.  He was a natural.

Observation #13- Cheap massages are AWESOME!

90 min. full body massage--$20.00

60 min. foot massage--$15.00

45 min. hair washing complete with scalp, shoulder and arm message with blow dry at a salon--$6.00

I thought it was heaven, Adam passed on the opportunity.  He isn't so much a fan.

Observation #14- I totally just tricked you into reading an entire travel log!! Sucker! 

We had a great time.  It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience so thanks for letting me tell you about it.