Crook Family Photos 2012

Yes - we did it! And of course it took me six months from the original thought I had to get our yealy family pictures made but - its complete; until next year...

Since this was our first year in China I thought we would do a theme - Han Dynasty. At first, I was just going to buy a Qipao but that it was hard to find one to fit my bust, then I was going to have one made but it became too expensive - apparently since I am American and have three kids, I have alot of money considering "the Government pays to take care of my children". I am not sure where this thought comes from but a fairly large amount of people believe it.

Anyhoo, I finally decided to use scrounge the net looking for a deal. I found one on the chinese groupon site. This turned out to be great because during the actual picture shoot Colten did not cooperate like he told me he would each day leading up to picture day (I tried to prep him prior to).

The first pictures were taken inside and at first he was into it but when it was not his turn anymore things went down hill fast. He screamed and cried and kept tearing his clothes off - which made it more difficult after an hour of redressing a screaming child.

Next, we went outside for some "on location" shots - - by  this time it was high noon, and in Nanjing you might as well call that Hell. It gets so hot here. Imagine if you can two Americans walking through the streets in Chinese garb followed by two children, also dressed, and another one acting a fool and looking a mess. It would be an understatement to say we stood out in the crowd.

So we were melting, sweating, yealling, redressing Colten - it was crazy. The package only cost 248 RMB which equates to about $39.36 - this includes a 12" photo, 7" mouse pad, 4 wallets, an 8" photo book, and 18 photoshops - - we don't get those until next month.

If you look at our photobucket page you can see a slow progression through our photos of Colten's toll on the process but - - for $40, as long as one family picture is good - I'm good.

  

Happy 7th Birthday Avery

Avery had a birthday pizza party which included a huge, white chocolate cake with pink chocolate roses and chocolate butterflies - so good! After opening a bunch of gifts, every headed upstairs in the mall to the IMAX theatre to watch Journey to Mystery Island in 3D.

In the evenng some family friends took us all to dinner to celebrate Avery's birthday. We ate a (maybe the best) hot pot restaurant called HaiDiLao. There the staff sang to Avery and we also had the pleasure of eating "king fu noodles" - basically the guy slings the noodle around in front of you - but its pretty neat to watch.

All in all, a great day - We Love you Avery!

Shanghai

Our time in Shanghai was short but we tried to make the most of it, even through the bitter cold, and see as much as possible. 

We were lucky enough to stay in an apartment hotel (for only $50 a night which is a steal from the regular rate) that was walking distance to Nanjing Lu, People's Square and The Hersheys Store, which in my opinion, had better hot cocoa than the actual Hershey park in PA. 

The People's Park was fun. There were several amusement rides  that  the kids (and Andrew) enoyed it while Colten took a nap.  The prices to ride were moderate but you do need a tickets for each ride - no "bands" like we are use to in the States. 

We also made it to the top of the World Financial Centre which has the world's highest observation deck - with a glass floor - which really freaked Colten out for about the first 20 minutes of being there.  We waited until dusk so that we could see the day and night view for one admission fee. The night view was great, not only for the beautiful city lights but because of the new year celebrations, we saw fireworks shooting off as far as the eye could see - everywhere  one after another. Pretty amazing!

While in the area we took a few photo ops in front of the Oriental Pearl Tower, which Colten really wanted to go into - everytime he sees it now he say "me, go".

Let's see - - oh, and apparently fresh pressed sugar cane juice is big on the streets so we had some of that - not my thing but it was ok.

We also checked out a place we now refer to as "toy street" because it was packed with nothing but and where Drake picked up a long awaited Mickey Mouse transformer -  it was a pretty big deal for him - and only cost 20 yuan... roughly the equivalent of $3.30

At some point during our trip we found ourselves defrosting in a Toys r Us and Colten fell in love - with Pluto. He must have pushed this dog around for 2 hours so, of course, we had to buy it.

Last but not least, Shanghai is famous for their xiaolongbao so we had to go to the famous Nanxiang Dumplings at YuYuan Gardens - we tried everything on the menu - yum!

High Speed to Shanghai

For Drake's b-day weekend we headed to Shanghai via the Bullet Train. What could be as long as 4 hours by car, 2.5 hours by rail is cut down to only one hour on the High Speed train from Nanjing to Shanghai.

We were excited to ride the train and were pleasantly suprised by the comfort in the first class car. While walking to the dining car we went through the coach car, which was pretty packed and is set up similar to a bus - still for the time savings, not a bad way to travel.

For all five of us to travel first class cost about $50 USD.

Happy Thanksgiving from Nanjing China

Today we watched Andrew’s class put on a play about Thanksgiving in America – Avery had a role and it was her first performance ever. She had the only solo line (“Land-ho”) and pulled it off without a hitch!

To warm-up the crowd, Colten’s class did a rendition of wheels on the bus – Colten loves that song but was more interested in watching his classmates perform and pulling his pants legs up than rolling the wheels 'round – all in all, very funny and cute!

The play was great, and it was also written by Andrew. Everyone seemed to have fun and the other parents were very impressed. Afterwards, the class sang a chinese song about being thankful - so cute! It had somewhat of a Napoleon Dynamite feel to it - hahaha.

Happy Halloween from Nanjing China

Since we can’t just buy a costume at Wal-Mart… 

Today, I painted Avery’s face like a kitty and made her a tail with one of my scarves.  

Drake happened to have a skeleton shirt so, we went with it an painted his face to match. Colten had his lion costume from last year which is suppose to fit a two year old but, the pants only came to his knees and he didn’t want to keep the head piece on so, he was just Colten with a furry short-pant suit on.


The school hosted a Halloween party and along with treats and costume contest, they did the monster mash and other silly dances...

Thanks to Andrew; Lots of fun for everyone!

Double Happiness

Last night we attended the wedding ceremony of our newest friend here in Chine, Luan (Chinese) and Bjorn (Swedish). They are already married, in Sweden but now needed to be married in China as well – more for “face” reasons or as Luan put it "my parents want to make sure everyone knows I am married"… as she is pregnant. It was a great party. The food, spirits and festivities were hun hao.

Bjorn serenaded Luan with a popular Swedish tune and then his rendition of its now or never, which I thought was an inappropriate but hilarious choice considering the occasion. After the ceremony and dinner there was karaoke by several drunken Chinese men, a tai chi dance by Luan’s mother (it’s her new hobby), all of the kids were able to take the mic and sing – yes of course Drake and Avery sang about three times, Colten danced. I told them to sing the ABC’s once – they did and all of the Chinese people loved it. They all received stuffed animals as prizes and at the end Luan gave all of the children in attendance 100RMB each (about $16), she says its tradition. 

There was also this weird period of time during dinner when the “dj” played careless whisper by Wham! On loop for at least an hour - - let me repeat, ONLY that song for an hour… also hilarious!

One fish, two fish, my fish, free fish

Today Andrew, Avery & Drake were invited by, our good friend, Wong to go fishing. Bright and early this morning Wong rang our buzzer and off they all went. He was so thoughtful when planning this outing, days before he bought and prepared the rods for the kids.

The day started off slow, with a long train ride to the end of the metro line, near Nanjing University. Andrew was pretty surprised to walk out of the subway only to cross the street and begin fishing in a pond or as he described it, a really big ditch. This body of water was pretty much in the middle of the city and we still aren’t sure where the shui was feeding from but it was apparent that any catch of the day was not for eating… at least by us.

To sum up the day, Andrew and Wong caught sardine sized fish while Drake had all four of the biggest catches of the day and half an hour into fishing Avery decided she would just be the bait girl, and hooked the worms for the guys.

 

Back at the apartment, the Ayi had just arrived for work when the kids came home with a bucket of five or six fish. Wong told Drake he had to bring the fish home to show me how well he did. I was very proud! Now, what do we do with these fish, in a bucket sitting in the kitchen floor? Give them to Ayi! (my idea) so, I showed her and she got really excited and wasted no time grabbing the cleaver and cutting of heads.. about three fish into prep the kids walked into the kitchen. After a moment of awe at her process, it began to sink in that she was killing the fish and going to eat them. First, they began to stand in front of the bucket and yell “NO, you can’t have anymore!” after, I asked “what are we going to do with these fish!? She is excited and she is going to eat them, that’s great – you provided her with dinner, you should be proud.” The tears began to flow. After a short debate with Andrew, we told the kids that if they could get the fish to our community pond without anyone seeing them, they could release the fish there. They perked up and the mission began.

They made it to the pond and the release went well. Drake attributed sneaking the fish passé dpeople to Avery’s cuteness in distracting them. The Ayi didn’t quite know what was going on or why they took the fish from her but it didn’t matter – she got 4 out of 5 and all was happy in the end!

Another Day of Firsts - Downtown ATL and centennial Park

Well, we had intended on a trip to the GA Aquarium today however, by 11am the wait time in line to go in was about 2. 5hours so, we readjusted our plans while enjoying a Coke (in a glass bottle) and a few strawberry minute maid ice treats.

Colten had free run of the park between the aquarium and Coca Cola Museum.

 We decided to take advantage of the nearest playground where Colten climbed up steps for the first time and used a slide for the first time - weeee! 

We also took a family photo op:

and Drake just hung around...

Afterwards we walked to Centennial Park just in time to see the fountain musicals and the joined in the fun!

 

Southern Summer Fun!