My baby is 3 (sniff, sniff)

It has gone by way too fast. I honestly feel like I just had him!! This little boy has my heart. He tests my patience and can be a little too rough a lot of the times. But then he cuddles with me, comes and gives me kisses (which sometimes are inappropriately too long) and hugs. Tilts his head and smiles at me. Takes my face in his hands and kisses my cheeks when I am sick or when he thinks I'm sad. He yells "I'm not anybodies friend anymore!! Except for mommy!" (that's his big threat when he's mad -- I'm not your friend) But he can never bring himself to be mad enough to not be my friend anymore. Even when I am the one that has made him mad. He'll look at me and get so mad and start to yell "I'm not..." then pause "...DADDY's friend!!" It's so cute I can't help but laugh.

He loves everything boy. He thinks he is a ninja or a kung fu panda. He goes into those modes at any given moment. He loves to say poo, pee, fart and penis --ALL the time. He actually requested a fart, poo, pee party for his birthday. I would have given it to him too but he changed his mind. I already was brainstorming all the nasty treats I could come up with to that theme. Maybe next year ;)

He talks non stop during a movie in the movie theatre -- he's just too excited about the whole thing. He loves his sisters. And he loves to kung fu his sisters - which they don't always appreciate. They sure love him too. It's really fun to see how they each interact with one another.

So my baby is not my little baby anymore and tears fill my eyes just writing those words. But like I tell all my kids -- you are ALWAYS my baby, no matter how old you are.

I love you my little man!

here he is blowing out his magic candle Sam and I brought back from China. When you light it - it pops open into this cool flower and then plays happy birthday in a super high pitch sound. And the only way to make it stop playing is to cut the wires..... and even then - when you are sleeping in the middle of the night it somehow starts playing again. (a little creepy)

He ended up going with a Cars theme party. This is the little cake I made for him. I am somewhat proud of it because I decorated it in about 5 minutes. I had my sister in laws baby shower immediately before his party and then rushed home and was decorating as my family was walking in the door. But it still turned out pretty cute and he was really excited about it - so that's all that matters.

Newport Aquarium

Before the Phairs left me and did this to me......

(I don't want to talk about it)

We all went to the Aquarium together and had a fun day at the beach. :)
This snake was pregnant and HUGE
This took some convincing to get them this close - they were pretty freaked out by its size
Such a cute boy
We even got Ben and Shelly on the trip which is always a treat.
Then we played on the beach for hours and the kids got SOAKED. No matter how many times I warned them before hand that they better not get wet... :)
Dirty half naked boys warming up in the yurt. They also had a movie playing -- I took probably 10 pics of them and not one where they are both looking at me. One or the other always had their eye on the movie. :) It was a fun trip

Desirae and Rusty came to visit!!

Sam's brother and sister came up from California to visit us for about a week and a half. We don't get to see them too often so it's always nice to be able to spend some quality time.

While they were here we went to the Sea and Art Festival in Lincoln City. It was the smallest little festival - but it was a beautiful day at the beach so it was still awesome to just hang out.

Side story: While we were there Jessica's family had just arrived. I went to their car in the parking lot to help them unload the kids. Then we hear a horrible sound - a dog screaming. I run over to see a pitbull has a small dog locked in it's jaws. It was sickening. He would not let go. Finally after what seemed forever - we poured enough water on it's face that he finally let go and the little dog took off running scared. I would like to believe that the little dog lived - but I don't know. The owner took off as fast as she could with it - understandably. Jessica called the cops on the owners of the pitbul and then stood there and said "You guys better stay here because I called the cops on you" The girl has more guts than me. :) And the guys actually stayed around and talked with the cops.

Anyways -- here's some pics of our day at the beach.....

At night they had a lanterns that you could light and release -- just like the movie Tangled. But not even close to the number they show in Tangled. But still cool and the girls absolutely LOVED it!!

School stuff

The last award assembly of the school year -- Addie received the Most Improved Award for reading. I was so, so proud of this. She has come so far in her reading and I am so proud of all of the work that she has put into this. I actually catch her reading on her own now - enjoying it. This never happened before, when it was hard for her to read - she didn't want to do it. It was hard and not fun. Now it is fun and I love that!! Yay Addie!!

Then there was Gwen graduating Kindergarten. Three times!! The celebrations just kept coming. First - the school put on a little song performance - very cute.
Then on the last day of school - some moms in Gwen's class decided to put on their own kinder celebration for the kids. They had it at the park - provided lunch, had a bounce house, played games and gave out little year books. ( i didn't get any pics form this - sorry)

Finally, another mom, from the other kindergarten class decided that she wanted a kindergarten graduation for her son, so she decided to put one on herself. She held it at a park - had it DJ'd, Scooby-Doo handed out the diplomas and the newspaper covered it. And she even got Little Caesars to donate pizzas. Where the heck do these moms come from?!?! I suck :P

Poor Addie got totally screwed - she only did the little song thing at school when she graduated kindergarten. She kept saying "another one?!?!" when I'd tell everyone about the different things for Gwen. Oh well - she's a good sport. Hopefully there will be some cool moms when Jackson graduates because you know I'm not going to do it. ;)

China

I have been avoiding this blog because there was just way too much to write about on our trip and we have over 700 pics -- so it was just too overwhelming. But today is the day -- I'm just going to do an overview of everything. You may not even care anymore since it took me so long. Oh well. Here is goes anyway.

First of all - I am not sure what exactly I was expecting - but I wasn't expecting it to be as poor as it was. And we were only shown the best parts - so I know there is so much worse. It seemed no one had washers and dryers. Everywhere we went we saw clothes hanging out of all the windows to dry.

I was also blown away by the amount of people. There are so many people. Everywhere. They have tons of tall apartment buildings because they don't spread out - they spread up. So many cars on the road (every one honking) - and so many people on bikes. It really seemed like getting around on a bike was much faster than a car because the streets were so busy. I understand now why they put a limit on children. I still think it is sad - but now I at least can kinda understand.

These were the bathrooms. Some stalls had doors, some did not. Some bathrooms had toilet paper - a lot did not. You were safest to always carry a wad in your back pocket, just in case. At first I was totally scared of these squater toilet things. It a hole in the ground. But after using them for a while I actually found I preferred them to trying to squat over a regular toilet. You don't have to put as much effort into avoiding contact with the toilet. Our hotels had normal bathrooms - which was nice. And clean. :)
Our food. The first day it was kinda fun. But after that I was over it. It was funny because our tour guides would take us to different restaurants every meal and would describe it to us and make it sound like this meal would be totally different than the last. But no - everything tasted the same. Very greasy and salty. I was so swollen all week from all the salt. I ended up losing 6lbs -- but quickly found it back in the US. ;) Also everything had bones in it and joints. And I am not entirely sure what all meats we were served. Some had some very strange texture -- I don't think I want to know actually.

All meals were served on these big lazy suzans. And all meals were served with beer or coke (warm) as a drink. No ice because we were never allowed to drink the water there. It would have made us sick. We even had to brush our teeth with bottled water. Even with all of those precautions - I still am pretty sure I came home with some sort of parasite or something. Sam put me on a Coke diet for a day and that cured that. (he learned that in Argentina)

Anyways - if I ever have to eat Chinese food - from China - it will be too soon.
Okay -- onto the locations.

First up was Beijing

Olympic Village - Birdsnest...

The Forbidden City (this is where all the emperors lived - it's huge)

The Summer Palace (one of my favorite places. This is where the "Dragon Lady" primarily lived - she had this place made because she didn't care for living in the Forbidden City)
Ming Tombs (where a lot - not all - of old emperors were buried)
The Great Wall of China (highlight! It was beautiful and amazing. And there were a million trillion steep steps)
At the great wall there were all these locks. We found out that people go there to confess their love to one another. They put a lock on and throw away the key. Awww... :) Too bad we didn't know this before and bring our own lock.
Old Beijing. We were pulled in this by a little man on a bike (poor guy) They took us around to show us Old Beijing - it was pretty poor
While in Old Beijing - they set up for us to eat dinner in a locals home. It was tiny -- we were eating in their living room. They had one little room off of each side and a tiny little kitchen. They were very sweet and made lots of food for us. It was pretty darn cool.
Temple of Heaven
next City... Suzhou
This city had my favorite place - Tiger Hill
Tiger Hill had this leaning pagoda. The whole place was just beautiful. Lots of beautiful plants, flowers, trees and buildings.
While in Suzhou we went on a boat tour thru their Grand Canal. It is called the Venice of China.
While going thru the Grand Canal we stopped off at a farmers market. It was MUCH different from what we would find in our farmers market here. I didn't see anything I would even know what to do with there...
and I had a really hard time with the smells...
Next city - Hangzhou

Here we went to a green tea plantation. It was beautiful and pretty interesting to learn about.
While in Hangzhou we went on a boat ride in West Lake. Can you see that cool boat out there? Ours wasn't as fancy. :)
Final city - Shanghai

Here we got to go on the Bullet Train. SO FAST!! I got a little nervous on this.
see!! fast!
The is The Bund -- the smog was really bad - but it is a place with tons of big new buildings in Shanghai.

Can you see the big, blue, glowing building?? That's our hotel in Shanghai. Our room was on the 34th floor. I think this hotel was my favorite - maybe tied with our Beijing one. But all 4 of the hotels we stayed at were extremely nice. They all were 5 stars and pretty fancy.

Our last full day in China they took us to this huge shopping bizarre area. As you can see, it was a bit crowded. They have knock off of everything and lots of funky other stuff you can shop for. They gave us 3 hours here - it was crazy. But we got some fun stuff to bring back for the kids. And a fake Coach purse for me. :)
We really loved both of our tour guides -- but our second one - Jacky really won my heart over. I just love him. Here we are at the airport saying goodbye.
Above everything else - one of my (and Sam's) most favorite things about the whole trip was all the friends we made. It actually surprised me. I knew we were traveling with a group - but I just figured we go along but Sam and I would just kinda do our own thing. And then when we met our group and found that we were at least half of everyones age - I really thought we'd be on our own. But I was totally wrong. We LOVED these people. It was like we became family on our trip. And I'll cherish their friendship forever.
Well that about covers everything. Hope you made it thru all that. Sorry for the delay. But I'm glad it's done.