I found this photo/description on yahoo news. Isn't it beautiful?


A resident crosses a bridge shrouded with fog at a park in Beijing February 21, 2007. A dense fog covering Beijing cut visibility to a few dozen metres and paralysed flights in and out of the national capital on Wednesday, disrupting China's week-long Lunar New Year celebrations. REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV (CHINA)

In the mail

Andrew loves getting mail and packages. He was so excited to come home from school and find a package on our front doorstep.

Enclosed was a bird's nest sent from Auntie Glenda. Andrew pointed out a shoestring, Christmas ribbon, lint from a dryer and a piece of a candy wrapper the bird had used. He didn't want to mess it up, so he didn't take the plastic wrap off.

When he took it to school and pulled it out of his book bag, he got a great surprise. It had a beautiful blue egg inside that with all the jostling, had worked itself to the outside of the nest.

Andrew thinks this is the best package he has ever received!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year!

We had a blast yesterday. We went to the China town area and saw a great show. There were plays, drums, singing and throwing candy and money (which hurt when it hit your head!). Andrew's Chinese teacher met us there and gave both he and Anslee red envelopes with money and candy.

We tried authentic Chinese food ~ which as we found out while we were in China is nothing like the Chinese food we eat around here. :-)

After the show we went outside to watch the dragon dance.

Anslee and Andrew both fed money to the dragon. Anslee ran ahead and ran straight to the dragon to put her money in the mouth. Then she kept running back to us to get more money.

Chinese New Year lasts for fifteen days, so we still have a lot of celebrating to do!

A new building

Anslee's orphanage in Fuling is being relocated and built higher up a mountain. When the Three Rivers Gorge dam is completed her old orphanage will be completely under water.

They are still asking for donations to complete the building. If you would like to help, click here for the details.

This is a picture of the entrance when we were there. I'm sad we won't ever be able to bring Anslee to the orphanage to see where she lived for the first ten months of her life, but the children who are still there will have a much nicer place to live.

Our neighbors

Anslee and Andrew love playing outside. We have had such a mild winter until now that they have been able to play outside a ton. Yesterday and today have been bitterly cold (for Georgia!)

so they have been inside. If it is not going to snow, we are ready for spring!!

Exciting news...

My sister and her husband are going to have a baby!

My nephew is going to have a sibling!
That will bring my parents a total of 12 grandchildren!

I am so excited!

Can you tell by my use of exclamation marks?

Terri

Reality check

I love my sister! When I am having a rough day she always makes me feel better because her day is always much harder!
I called her yesterday and was telling her about all the things I had on my "to do" list for that day. She listened and gave me advice. Then I asked her what she had done yesterday. She gave me her usual huge long list and then said when she and her family got home last night they were checking on all the farm animals because it was really cold (17 degrees).
The pigs and the sheep were missing. They had to treck all through the woods looking for them. When they found them they had to be herded back to their pens and enticed to enter. It took about an hour in below freezing temperatures! My chores look much easier after hearing that.
I remember one day after talking for a while she told me the day before that one of their goats was dying during kidding. They had to put the goat down, deliver her babies by c-section, run to the house and get a lamp electric cord, and strip the wiring out so they could intubate the babies.... Can you imagine starting your day like that?!

Anslee helping with chores on the farm.

Andrew feeding chestnuts to the pigs.

I'm off to start my easy day :-)

T

Disney World January 1st - 6th

We had so much fun at Disney World. In the five days we were there we visited Magic Kingdom, MGM, Epcot and Animal Kingdom. We spent the majority of the time at Magic Kingdom and MGM.

We made a huge mistake our first day at MK. We took Andrew and Anslee on Snow White's Scary Adventure ride first. Anslee was petrified. Afterwards we rode the carosel, It's a Small World, and Peter Pan and she would hide her face in my shoulder. That entire day she was sure something scary was going to happen again. By the second day she was much more secure that we weren't going to do that to her again.

Some friends of ours went to Disney with us. We met up for most of the meals and would stayed together off and on in the parks. This is a picture of us at the Chef Mickey character breakfast. Anslee couldn't believe that she got to talk to the real Minnie Mouse. She was so excited.

We spent the least amount of time in Epcot. We rode all the rides there. I thought Test Track was really fun but Andrew said his favorite ride was Expedition Everest.

Disney is having a year of Magical Moments where a Disney employee will come up to you at one of the parks and give you a "magical moment". You are just picked at random.

Our friends were picked at Animal Kingdom. They were there when it opened and an employee asked them which ride they wanted to ride very first. They picked Expedition Everest. He took them there and let them choose what seats to ride in. Then you get a certificate about your moment.

We got a magical moment at the tea cups in Magic Kingdom. They picked us to have an unbirthday party. There was a long line for the tea cups she took us in the side announced who we were and we choose a cup and everyone sang happy unbirthday to us. Andrew and Anslee loved it. Keith looked like he wanted to crawl under the seat :-).

We'll go back one day when Anslee is older but I don't think we are one of those families who'd want to go every year. It was a blast but we were all exhausted the last day.

The perfect ending to our trip was going to the beach in Melbourne, Florida the day before we went home.