Fun Times at Grandpa's House ... Summer 2013

Fun Times at Grandpa's House

Summer 2013

It is so fun to have Grandpa Larsen finally moved into his condo in downtown Salt Lake City!  We loved to go visit him in his beautiful home.  We spend every Sunday going to church with him and at his house, having Sunday dinner and hanging out.

Utah Summer Days ... June-August 2013

Utah Summer Days

June-August 2013

We LOVE our summers with family and friends in Utah.  We started off with an informal Stucki family get together at Zions Summit.  

Katie went to soccer camp at BYU and had a great week!

Sophie is always a handful and so fun to cuddle.

The kids love the stream that runs through City Creek.  They like to throw a couple leaves in the stream and watch it run down the stream, under the bridges and see whose leaf can go faster.  

Only in Utah do you find street signs names after Book of Mormon prophets.

It is always so fun to cross paths in Utah with Mindy.  Some of the best years of my life were the four years that Mindy and I shared a room in Chatham Town together.  We are still close and I am so grateful for her!

Free Slurpees from 7-11 on 7/11!!  

Quick lunch at Chic-fil-A with Julie Martinez, my friend from Louisville that moved to AZ a couple years after we moved to Toronto.  Utah is the best place in the summer to cross paths with friends from around the world!

Couldn't resist this cute bath picture of Sophie.  Just can't get enough of this spunky girl.

Beijing Zoo and Temple of Heaven... June 2013

Beijing Zoo and Temple of Heaven

June 23, 2013

We really wanted to see Pandas in China, so the Beijing Zoo was our best bet.  We saw the lazy, sleeping pandas not doing much of anything except eating bamboo, but we were happy we went.  There were some other cool things to see, and the kids were able to play around like pandas on the bars.  Ash even used some of her own money to buy a stuffed panda.  

Glen then took us to see the Temple of Heaven.  The Temple of Heaven was built in 1420 and was used by Ming and Qing Dynasty rulers as a place to go and pray for good harvests.  It is a beautiful area with so many intricate decorations and symbols found throughout the complex.  It was difficult to get a good picture of the inside of the temple, but it was painted in bright colors, similar to the patterns found on the walkway at the Summer Palace.

Glen brought brushes and a bucket of water for the kids to participate in a traditional Chinese activity.  It is common to see elderly people in the parks practicing their Mandarin Chinese characters with water and large calligraphy brushes.  Glen and the kids wrote their names in Mandarin, with the breathtaking Temple of Heaven in the background.  

We met Kym and Mark for dinner at Bellagio, a favorite Taiwanese restaurant chain.  Sophie is happy as long as she has fried rice.

Summer Palace Beijing ... June 2013

Summer Palace 

Kunming Lake, Beijing

June 23, 2013

It wasn't a super clear day.  The smog was typical for Beijing.  We were so grateful we had a clear day at the Wall the day before.  But the Summer Palace did not disappoint.  I think my favorite part was the detail of the paintings on the covered walkway along the lake.  The vibrant colors and ornate patterns were so stunning. 

Kunming Lake is a man-made lake. Its predecessors were called Wengshan (Jar Hill) Pond and Xihu Lake. They were reservoirs which had been used as sources of water both for the city and irrigation of fields over a period of 3,500 years. Guo Shoujing, a famous astronomer and engineer in his time, developed it into a reservoir for the capital of the Yuan Dynasty in 1291. The conversion of the area into an imperial garden was commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor with the work being carried out between 1750 and 1764. In the course of creating the gardens, the lake area was extended by a workforce of almost 10,000 laborers.

In the year 1990 and 1991, the Beijing Municipal Government undertook the first dredging of the lake in 240 years. A total of 652,600 cubic metres (853,600 cu yd) of sludge were removed in the work. 205 Japanese bombs dropped during the Sino-Japanese War were also found.