Now that Sophie is crawling all over the place, she tends to get into things...a Lot. This time she found a picture of Granny Larsen and spent a good while staring at her wonderful picture.
Hillcrest Swim Team ... July 11, 2011
Katie and Ashley participated in the Hillcrest swim team once again this year. We were fortunate to arrive back from Shanghai just in time for their final swim meet of the season. Sara and Emily Nickel were visiting us for a couple of days with her family and she joined us at the pool for the evening.
The girls are doing great swimming, both getting better every week. Katie is especially good at backstroke and Ashley can now swim the length of the pool without getting distracted!
Shanghai, China ... July 6 - 10, 2011
So...I resigned from GE to go work for Tyco Electronics. After 13 years, it was not easy, and I will miss it. But we are excited for our new opportunity in Shanghai, China. Heather and I left our kids with her sister, Dawn (thank you!) to travel over to China to look for a house. We were on a pretty tight schedule considering school there was to start middle of August. We had to get our house on the market, get packed, and find a place to live in a short period of time. We left for five days, but really only had three considering the travel time. But as with all of our moves, we were able to find a house very quickly and even had some time to spare to visit a Buddhist temple and the People's Garden/Park.
It was there we noticed a lot of people standing with papers with Chinese characters written on them. Somebody informed us that this was actually a marriage fair, or something, where parents or grandparents were sharing information about their children or grandchildren in hopes of finding a match. Admittedly, maybe this is an efficient way and probably less expensive than some of the dating services?
While we were walking to the temple, an older gentleman stopped us and told us he just wanted to "practice his English". We let him take us around and he was actually VERY informative and taught us a lot about the temple, what each of the parts of the temple meant, etc. This was the Shanghai Jade Buddha Temple, established in 1918, so really not that long ago. The man took us through the temple and then to what we knew were his obligatory tourist shops, but even those had interesting backgrounds. He took us to the silk shop, which was just a touristy silk shop except that it had a small "museum" that actually demonstrates how silk is made. So ultimately we didn't feel like he was wasting our time, and we went ahead and bought a few things at each of the places that he took us to, so I am sure he was very glad. He was a nice man and I was fine to pay him a little at the end, even though I am sure he figured he had suckered us in to letting him tag along to "practice his English"!
We went to our branch on Sunday morning. The church is allowed to exist here but only for people holding a foreign passport or the spouse of a person holding a foreign passport. Active or passive proselyting is forbidden, a regulation they highlight at the beginning of each and every Sacrament Meeting. We are glad that we will have the opportunity to attend church here, even if others here can not. Since the weather in Shanghai is so hot and crappy in the Summer, most families spend the Summer's back in the US. So while there are probably a couple of hundred members in our branch, probably only a quarter of them were present for our first visit. It actually felt more like Budapest, but supposedly once all the expats return it is large enough to be a ward (which it probably would be if the church were allowed to organize differently...Taiwan, for example, has five stakes). Anyway, we will see what it is really like once we get back there permanently with our family.
Overall, it was a great first visit and we accomplished everything we set out to do. And Dawn did great with the kids, but I am SURE was glad when we arrived home on Sunday night.
Ryan's Swimming Lessons ... July 5, 2011
Ryan is terrified of being in the water by himself and holds on for his life if I or Heather venture out deeper into the pool. He finally started swimming lessons and made a lot of progress right away. He will now put his face in the water for a few seconds and will even make his way across a portion of the pool as long as he can hold on to a kick board. This was great progress in just a few lessons.
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