Big Summer Vacation, Part 1

Our family was so excited about out family's summer vacation this year.  This was the first time in 5 years that Ryan hasn't been in Alaska at the beginning of July, so we decided to add some family time to our annual New Smyrna Beach vacation.  Looking through all the options, we decided on a cruise out of Fort Lauderdale.  We knew we would drive, but man, that was going to be a long trip, so we started thinking of ways to break up the trip.  As luck would have it, in one of Lily's Lego sets there was a reference to LEGOLAND in Winter Haven, Florida.  That was more than halfway there, and we were certain the girls would love it.  They both have a great time with Legos these days, so we thought we would give it a try.  We didn't tell the girls about our idea though.  Central Florida in early July is known for its rain (and blazing heat if it's not raining).  So, we decided we would head on down, not buy our tickets in advance and make a day-of decision on if it made sense to go.  Well, we got up that morning, and even though we knew it would be hot, it looked like it would be a nice day so off we went.  The girls didn't have a clue until we pulled in and they saw the big welcome sign.  I love surprising them like this! 

 First up on our agenda was the double decker carousel.  Of course, we had to sit on top.

 Next up was the kid's animal safari ride.  I gave Lily my phone to take pictures while Mia "drove" the car.  Really, it was pretty impressive to see all the cool animals made out of Legos.  Not quite the same as the Animal Kingdom safari, but still neat.

 They enjoyed it.

 After that was boating school.  The girls actually drove us around; it wasn't on a track.  That was interesting.  Thankfully (and kind of miraculously) no one got sea sick even though those boats were rocking and bumping!  The girls were quite proud of themselves for their captain skills.

 Right next to the boating school is the driving school.  They have one for kids 6 to 12 but Lily became really nervous and refused to give it a try.  Mia however was super excited to try out the small track for kids 3-5.  I have to be honest, she showed some pretty nice driving skills here.  She started in the back of the pack since she was the last one in, but ended up driving around others in tight spaces to come out in first place.  She was thrilled to be given her "driver's license" when it was over.

 Some of the neatest things to see were all the Lego structures they had created.  Some were really impressive!  Here's Cape Canaveral and San Francisco.

 Mia and I also rode a neat little ride where we pulled ourselves up pretty high then released the ropes to drift back down.

 One of the day's highlights was meeting Emmett and Wildstyle from The Lego Movie.  Lily currently says this is her favorite movie while Mia says it is in her top 5.

 The girls were excited to ride this medieval looking ride.  They rode something similar at Hershey last year and loved it.  They thoroughly enjoyed this one which spins them around pretty quickly.  I was able to snap one not-too-blurry picture as they sped by.

 Here are they are looking upset to be in the stockade.  They were mad that we had said it was time to go.  It was mid-afternoon so we had been there for quite awhile, and we were all burning up.  We could see rain clouds moving in, and we knew we had another 3-4 hour ride ahead of us to Fort Lauderdale.  We had seen and done just about everything we were interested in (they didn't want to do any roller coasters and we weren't going to the water park because we didn't want to be soaked in the car), so it just made sense to go on and head out.  Regardless, this was their reaction, but to me, what better faces to have in the stockade!

 Of course, they cheered up pretty quickly when they remembered we told them at the beginning of the day that we would go to the gift shop on our way out.  They both picked out their souvenir (Cinderella's castle set for Lily, a sword and shield for Mia), and we picked up a couple of little surprises for them and our Christmas tree ornament.  It was a very fun day, and I'm so glad we added this to the front of our vacation.

We made it to Fort Lauderdale a few hours later.  We were all taking showers and relaxing and decided going out to dinner just didn't sound right, so we ended the day with room service, our favorite!

What a great way to start our vacation!

Awesome Family Vacation

We were so fortunate to have a two week summer vacation this year. It was great!  I hope to post lots of details and pictures soon, but I'm having problems getting pictures from my phone to computer. Here's the summary:

We left on July 4 (unfortunately missing the Marietta parade which ACCA participated in) and drove to Lakeland. We spent the night and spent about half of Saturday at Legoland. It was so fun!  It was also ridiculously hot but hey, it was central Florida in July. What do you expect?  

When we had our Lego fill, we headed south to Ft Lauderdale. We took it easy and had room service for dinner. On Sunday morning, we enjoyed breakfast and Wimbledon before heading to one of my favorite lunches:

Bubba Gumps!  Love it!  From there it was time to head to the port. We were so excited for a week's cruise on Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas. It was pretty spectacular. We cruised to Nassau, St Thomas/St John and St Maarten. These places were so beautiful! We went snorkeling, on a semi-sub, shopping and touring there. On our days at sea we enjoyed a carousel, shows (broadway style, ice skating and water theatre ones), mini golf, ping pong, movies, fun food treats, parades and face painting. The kids loved going to kids camp too. Lily even said her favorite part of the cruise was making new friends. We all had a blast!  It is impossible to show the whole trip here, but here's a few pictures. 

It was fantastic!  When we docked back in Florida, we drove a few hours up to New Smyrna Beach for my family's annual vacation. My parents, Liz and my cousins were already there enjoying the sun. We joined right in and had a great week with family. On Wednesday, our cousins Emily and Kate drove over from Lakeland to spend the day with us too which was great. We don't get to spend nearly enough time with them since we live so far apart. Here's a fun picture from that relaxing week. 

We had looked forward to these two weeks for awhile. I'll fill in more details later, but until then, know it was lots of fun!

Mia's Ailments

So two funny side stories on Mia not feeling great recently:

She started having some fluid in her ears last week that smelled horrible. She wasn't complaining, but I assumed it was infected so we went to the doctor. Turns out it is swimmer's ear from our recent trip. As Mia explained it to Ryan and Liz when we got home "I still have beach stuff in me."  That's one explanation!

About a week ago, Mia woke me up about 2:30 in the morning. She stood right next to my face and said "I think I'm gonna throw up" to which I promptly replied "Get in the bathroom!"  She calmly walked in and leaned over the toilet. I held her hair back. She forced herself to cough a couple of times, spit once and then said "Oh, I think I just had a piece of corn stuck in my throat. I'm fine now."  She then went back to bed and fell fast asleep. If this kid wasn't so stinkin' cute, I would have been upset!

Recent Life

Our summer is off to a great start!  I love this laid back time of year.  We decided to kick off summer with a backyard cookout.  We started by roasting hot dogs which turned out delicious.

 Of course, you can't have a summer fire and not make s'mores!

 At Mia's request, we decided to have a water balloon fight afterwards.  Lily and I were on team Balloon Busters while Ryan and Mia were on another team.  We spread these balloons all over our deck and had a blast getting soaked!  Hopefully we'll do this again soon.

 Afterwards and we were drenched.

 I put this picture in purely for Mia.  Love her enthusiasm!

 Liz took the girls to Shades' VBS for a week, and they had a superhero theme which went over well with our girls.  Here's Lily modeling her superhero outfit for me.

 One of Lily's recent drawings.  Love her creativity!

 Meme turned 93 last week.  I adore this lady.  I went to visit with her the Friday before her birthday.  When I walked in, she was sitting in her wheelchair with her Bible open on her lap.  When I asked what passage she was reading, she said she was studying the different names of God; she said that never gets old.  I wish I could have snapped a picture just before she looked up; it's a sight I will never forget.  I am so thankful for this wonderful woman and the influence she has had on my life.

 I wasn't able to join Meme on her actual birthday because Ryan and I were in Florida.  His grandfather passed away, so we went down for the funeral.  Ryan was able to give a tribute to Grandpa Hooks at the funeral, and he did an outstanding job memorializing this incredible man.  He certainly led an exciting, interesting and full life.  There are many that are going to miss his zest for life, generosity and wisdom.

 

Back at home, the girls built this fort and we kept it up for several days.  They had a great time crawling inside to read books or play on our iPads.

 Last week the girls went to tennis camp.  They had never picked up a racket before, but they both did great!  They loved it, so we're looking into finding a coach to continue these lessons.  I was 6 when I started, so I think they are at the perfect ages to start.  I love that they are loving this!

I don't have a picture of this, but I took the girls to Barnes and Noble last week.  They have a summer reading program that Lily participated in, so we went to pick up her free book.  On the way, Mia asked if I would get her a toy there.  I said no but I would get her a book.  When she responded she didn't like books, I suggested that maybe we find one on a subject she really likes, like superheroes.  She lowered her voice to a whisper and said "Mommy, just so you know, I'm just pretending to be a superhero right now but when I get older, I'm going to be a real one."  Somehow I don't doubt her!

 

We also have enjoyed a Braves game with our good friends, the Gary family (happy father's day present to Ryan).  It was a blazing hot afternoon game and the Braves lost, but we had a lot of fun with our friends.  We also went that evening to a surprise party for Shane as he recently received his college degree.  We are so super proud of him (he did a 4 year program in 9 months, yes, 9 months!) and look forward to seeing where this takes his family in the future.  It was so incredibly hard not to say anything to him at the game though!  Thankfully I hadn't told the girls so the secret was safe.

 

Let the summer fun continue!

China, Spring 2014

I am so humbled that I had the chance to return to China a few weeks ago.  I visited in October of last year which you can read about here.  While there, I fell in love with it's people and culture; China is a fascinating place to be, so I was excited to return.  Our same group plus one other gentleman, John, traveled together, and we had two reasons for this trip.  First, we wanted to follow up with some of the individuals we met in October.  Second, we wanted to see what it would be like for a family, couple or individual to move to a smaller city called Xichang.  As in my last post on our trip, I am not going to put all the details or stories in this blog post.  However, I would love to talk with you more about this trip, so you can hear some of the great things our God is up to.

 

We left early on Saturday morning and flew to Detroit.  After a couple hours layover, we started the 14 hour flight to Shanghai.  Wow, that's a long flight.  After a short layover and a changed flight, we continued on to Chengdu.  We arrived in Chengdu Sunday evening, checked into our hotel and got some much needed sleep.  On Monday morning, we met with our partners in Chengdu to discuss the upcoming trip.  We took the afternoon to do some sightseeing.  We spent some time at Dufu's Cottage which was beautiful.  Dufu was Chinese poet from this area, and he is very highly regarded.  It was an interesting place to visit.

 On Tuesday, we started our drive South.  We took a break in the city of Ya'an to visit the Panda Conservatory.  It's always fun to see these beautiful giant pandas!

 Some of the steps we faced to see the pandas.  We registered about 14,000 steps today.  We certainly got our exercise in!

We arrived in Xichang, checked in to our hotel, walked around a bit and got some dinner.  This is a city of about 700,000, and it's where many Chinese rockets and satellites are launched from.  The beautiful Qionghai Lake is here, and we were looking forward to seeing it.  On Wednesday, we split into two groups.  Several individuals met with our friends that we met last October.  I went with a few people to tour the city and see what it would be like for someone from Atlanta to move there.  We visited one of the college campuses as someone would need to be a student to learn the language.  Here is their main building where we saw lots of students coming and going.

 The walls around campus were really cool as they were lined with famous individuals, and (I'm assuming) quotes from them.

 We saw a couple of signs in English which surprised us, but it was neat to see.  We didn't see much English in the city.

 We visited the library.  It was packed with students studying hard.

 It was fun to walk all around the campus.  Lots of students were on and near the athletic fields, and they were all polite to us.  We walked up the mountain behind the buildings where many students had found a quiet spot to study, and we could see beautiful views from there.  We even ran into a few other foreign students, so we talked with them for awhile.  It was really interesting to see this campus and the students there.  We also drove around the city to see about housing opportunities and see what it would be like to live there.  We visited a little market selling lots of beautiful red stones.  We discovered there is a Wal-Mart in the city, so we stopped in.  Sure enough, anything you need is here.  Absolutely a livable city.

 

In the afternoon, we spent time in a coffee house back together as one group.  It was nice to see our friends again and hear about what was going on with them.

 

In the evening we walked to dinner which was nice.  This statute was in the road showing the Chinese soldier at peace with a Yi soldier.

 There is a large park where people gather in the evenings.  I liked how they had one area set up for kids to ride bikes and skate.  Chinese children are so precious!

 On Thursday, we excited to see more of this city.  We spent awhile at the Yi Slavery Museum which told the history and culture of the Yi people.  It was fascinating to learn more about them.

The view from the front of the museum.  It was beautiful!

 That's right, there were monkeys by the gate as we were leaving.

 We had lunch that afternoon with a few foreigners who are already living in the city.  We wanted to learn about their experiences which have been fascinating.  One of the couples recently adopted a precious, almost 6 year old little girl.  She met us after lunch, and I fell in love with her!  Such a sweetheart.  She played with my phone, and I found this picture a little later.

After lunch, we continued with our sight-seeing.  We went to an area where many minority Yi people live.  They were selling many spices, herbs, medicine and beautiful handmade items; I bought purses for the girls.  Here is a picture of the wall to the old city.

 On Friday, we made the drive back to Chengdu and on Saturday morning we flew back to Shanghai.  From the airport we rode the Maglev which goes 300 km/hr which is about 180 miles per hour!  It was a short 7.5 minute ride, but it was neat to do.

 We checked into our hotel and met our tour guide for the day, Ting Ting.  She showed us all around the city.  First we stopped for lunch, and then we started our tour.  Unfortunately, it was overcast and a little drizzly but it was still a great city to visit.  We spent a lot of time at Yuyuan Gardens which was beautiful.  It used to be a private home, but has been converted to a historical site.

 Notice the dragon on the wall of this garden.  It was crowded here today, but I can see how this could be such a relaxing place to be as a residence.

After the gardens, we visited a silk factory which was really interesting.  We learned about the life cycle of a silkworm, how the silk is harvested (see the machine below) and then stretched.  We even had a chance to stretch it ourselves.

We spent a good bit of time here because it was fascinating.  While here, Walter had the chance to share the gospel with an employee who was helping us by using the Chinese characters for blessings and righteous.  It was really neat to hear this, and I'm so glad this opportunity came up.  Walter wrote this explanation recently which explains it way better than I can:

 

(There are) two Chinese characters: 福, which means blessing and 義, which means righteous. 福 (fu) has several important parts, the left side indicates God's involvement, the right side means sky, people and land.  So the Chinese concept of blessing is God's involvement our lives. 義 (yi) is two characters put together.  The top part is a lamb and the bottom is me. So the Chinese concept of righteousness is a lamb over me: Jesus substitutional death for my sins.  These characters are powerful because they communicate a powerful story in the heart language of the people.

 

After the silk museum, we took a cruise on the Huangpu River.  Even though it was overcast, it gave us a great idea of how beautiful and culturally diverse this city is.



 On the boat and seeing the sign that reads "I love Shanghai."

 We also walked around the Bund area, did a little shopping and visited the French Concession area of the city.  We enjoyed dinner and then headed back to our hotel for the evening.  On Sunday, we started the 14 hour flight back to Detroit.  Again, it was long, but it was smooth and an easy flight.  We ended up with a much longer than anticipated layover in Detroit due to mechanical issues on the plane (believe me, I would much prefer to be on the ground than in the air knowing that), but we finally made it to Atlanta at about 1:30 on Monday morning.  I was so happy to see Ryan as he picked me up and then the girls the next day!

 

This was another fantastic and amazing adventure in China.  There are so many other details that I didn't write in here that I would love to share with you.  Our God is mighty, and it's amazing to see what He is doing in the lovely country.  I am so thankful to see what's going on first hand.  I hope you will continue to pray with me for the people of this country.