7/11, Shopping & Sun Yat-Sen

Thank you so much for all the prayers you guys are praying on behalf of our family and Everett’s flight.  I simply cannot say thank you enough.  When I say they mean the world, we really mean that.  We are incredibly grateful.  Right now we are still waiting on some doctors’ letters and then on Monday morning we are going to the local Delta office…they are closed for the weekend.  Praying they will be able to help get something done.

Since getting Everett we’ve stayed in our hotel rooms quite a bit.  He is still adjusting of course and is napping a lot.  He gets quite grumpy when we wake him prematurely so we’ve been trying to let him sleep as much as he needs.  He has been so quiet and somber.  Josh calls him Silent Bob 🙂  Every day we get a little more of a glimpse into his personality and it makes my heart soar.

 Right now he does not love being touched (outside of being carried around) or snuggled, but yesterday we were able to tickle him a bit and get him to laugh a little.  Today he played some in the hotel and was being silly.  I just sat there in awe of his little self.  These little glimpses don’t last long, but one day this will all be a distant memory.  I cannot wait for the day when I can snuggle him to smithereens and get him to really belly laugh.

The big kids have been handling the hotel life with trips to the pool and short outings here and there. The weather is beautiful here, but not hot so the pool water hit right around 60 degrees.  Way too cold in my opinion, but they all still took the plunge.  They bounced back and forth between the cold water and the hot tub.  We were the only people at the pool the entire time along with our personal lifeguard 🙂

We’re starting to get out more with Shuai.  He either wants Josh to carry him or he loves the stroller and lounges just like Amon does.  He and Amon actually remind us of each other so much.  We cannot wait for them to meet.  #BFF

The other night we got out for some dinner (by the way we are trying ALL THE FOODS and are soooooo loving everything) and also went into a 7/11 market.  Shuai was hilarious just walking around and gathering up all kinds of snacks into his arms.  We were all laughing and just losing it over how cute he was.

Today we went to a local market/mall.  It was HUGE!!!!!!!!  So many stores and pretty overwhelming, but we still did some shopping.  Chinese dresses for Harper and our littlest, bracelets, key chains, chopsticks, fans, bracelets, ornaments, magnets, paper lanterns and more.  It was really fun seeing everything and picking goodies out to take home to family and friends.  The kids were all on the lookout for gifts for their teachers and classmates.  Harper scored the cutest panda pens for her class and the boys picked out fun pencil sharpeners for theirs.  They are all missing home a bit and especially their school friends and teachers.

“Oh my gosh, please hurry up already.”  This kid!  You guys, he is a total trip.

We also went to the Sun Yat-Sen memorial.  It was GORGEOUS.  Oddly enough this might be one of my favorite places we’ve been so far.  It was simple and small, but so pretty.  The architecture was crazy beautiful and there were flowers and big canopy trees everywhere.

I knew nothing about Sun Yet-Sen before this stop, but found everything so interesting especially that he and Mao had a little beef between each other, but then not.  Confusing right?!?!?  It was not crazy busy and they had little stamp stations through out the place for people to check off areas they’d been to.  There were lots of families and small groups getting their different stamps.  I snagged one for my little China sketch book too.

Tomorrow we are getting back out for the Qing Ping Market and Shamian Island.  We’re all excited to be getting out more and more.  And in 6 days we’ll hopefully be headed towards home.  We miss Amon and our littlest a ton and cannot wait to get Shuai home.

Thank you again for all the prayers and crazy kind words.  I really cannot say that enough.