(Love the black Chinese shoes!)
It has been a lovely week. It flew by and was filled with fun times and new discoveries. We just finished enjoying Saturday together.
We visited our new-found fruit market.
I love this one so much more than the other dark, damp place we used to go to.
Jimmy had to pick up something at the hardware store. This is not one aisle of the "hardware store", it is the whole store. They have so much random stuff crammed into these places.
We stopped in to Jiadeli to buy some eggs and paused at the meat counter. Scary.
I like to play a little game called "how many animals can I identify?".
One of the wives found a park not far from our place. Actually it's just down the street and around the corner from the new Jiadeli that we go to so we stopped by on our way to the store. As Ali touched these (DIRTY, GERM-INFESTED) X's and O's Jimmy said, "This would not have happened two months ago." So true. I would have never stopped at this park unless I sanitized it first. Oh, how I'm growing and changing!
She liked all the slides, but liked them even more if she could sit on Jimmy's lap. She not exactly a thrill seeker yet. I think she gets that from me. I always say I'm allergic to adrenaline.
Before we moved here we read an article about split pants. Chinese babies and children wear these split pants instead of diapers. They say that the babies are potty trained before they're 6 months old. You can see people holding children over trashcans and anywhere really. So we caught a little peek of this kid's split pants. Which reminds me, I need to put Ali's pants in the wash since she was going down the same slide as this kid's private parts.
Before school started we went to Yuyuan Garden, a place we went during our first month here. We wanted to pick up a red Chinese lantern for Chinese New Year. All of the shops were incredible! We LOVE our lantern and can't wait to hang it!
We've posted several pictures of the random carts that drive around town filled with cardboard and styrofoam. They also have carts that are filled with fruit...
and DVDs. This is the DVD cart that parks outside our apartment at random times during the day. We've bought "several" of these but I'm surprised at my serious self control since technically I could buy them whenever I want (for only 75¢).
They actually use these ladders:
Daddy must have been tired... but that doesn't explain why he's snuggling with the bear and the lamb. Cute!
This is a photo from New Year's Eve. We went to a friend's house for dinner but since everyone there had kids the party ended around 10 pm. Ali fell asleep on the bus on the way home and Jimmy and I hung out till midnight and watched the fireworks out our window. Since we're so high up, the fireworks were right at eye level for us. It was a pretty fun thing to see. January 1st isn't that big of a deal here but Chinese New Year is HUGE. It's a one week celebration and they set off fireworks around the clock all week!
This is proof that children are watching everything we do! Ali picked up my deodorant, pulled her shirt up and tried to put it on. I didn't even know she was watching stuff like this. Children are so precious and we have to be so careful about what we say and do. This also helped me realize that she could be learning useful things like her ABCs and scripture stories.... and how to put on deodorant I guess.
I love to see what things Jimmy comes up with. He's so creative and random. The perfect combination for Ali.
