Lizzy & Alex + A Beautiful Shanghai Sunset

These are just photos from our everyday life. One night the sun set as a beautiful red ball. When they talk about the red sun in China, it is literally a red sun. It is amazing and my photo taking ability does not do it justice.

The pictures of Elizabeth and Alex are along a path along the river that runs through Century Park. Just off of Fangdian Lu, the path starts and it is quiet, peaceful and right now you can smell the jasmine flowers. In fact today, Alex and I saw a beautiful humingbird buzzing around a jasmine tree in the little park.

Elizabeth took some of these pictures. She loves to take pictures.

Chinese Idol

KTV click above for pictures

Okay, I think there is a bad video attached to this. I did not approve that this be added, but if I remove it, Kirk will be offended. And I was sober!

After the Autoshow, Kirk wanted to take his team out to express his appreciation for their hard work. Unfortunately, Cindy didn't feel good so she left early. Hudson, Cici, Dr. Wang, Dr. Wang's sister in law, and Kirk and I had dinner and then went to KTV to do a little Karioke. That is a big thing here. You get your own little room and sound machine. Hudson and Cici love to sing. Hudson is really good too! Much better than me.

Book Character Parade

2007-04-27 Book Character Parade click above for pictures

It was book week at school during the week before vacation. On Friday, they had to dress up as their favorite book character for a parade. The whole preschool and elementary school was there.

Elizabeth and I have been reading the Charlotte's Web chapter book so she decided to dress up as Fern. She wore a yellow dress just like Fern did in the movie for the fair. She brought her stuffed pig to be Wilbur and a big spider to be Charlotte. A lot of people first thought she was Little Miss Muffet, but then tney saw the pig and understood.

A lot of kids dressed up like princesses or spider man and bat man. I was really proud that she chose to be such a warm, loving character like Fern.

Alex's 2nd Birthday

2007-04-25 Alex's 2nd Birthday click above for pictures

We celebrated Alex's 2nd birthday a couple times. He got to open up gifts from us and other family on the morning of his birthday. We even had a couple web cams.

That night, Elizabeth got to pick where we went for dinner. Her choice - Hooters. It just happened to be the night of the Miss China Hooters 2007 contest. So Alex got to get his picture taken with some of the finalists. Of course, Elizabeth passed out at dinner and missed most of the party.

A couple days later, Alex's friends George and Lin came over for a playgroup party.

Then when we were all home that night, we celebrated again with his cake and singing Happy Birthday. He likes singing the happy birthday song now.

It's hard to believe he is two already! Time flies.

Work Visitors to Shanghai

2007-04-22 Work Visitors to Shanghai click above for pictures

Along with the autoshow came work visitors. Both Kirk and I hosted people from the States. We were able to meet up for a bit as a group one night.

The large group picture from left to right was: Rob Eckstein, Larry Denton, Cindy Zhou, Tim Glock, Hudson Yang, Sean McGuire, Dr. Wang, Kirk and I. In the next picture, it was Kirk, me and Matt Pohlman.

Kirk and Sean were so stressed out from the Autoshow, they had to get a foot massage.

On the weekend, I took Matt for a whirlwind tour of the popular tourist attractions in Shanghai. Then later that night, we met up with Clifford Kang and his wife Wendy Wu. We had dinner at a great Korean barbecue restaurant and finished the night at the piano bar in the Jin Mao tower.

AutoShanghai 2007

2007-04-20 AutoShanghai click above for pictures

The last few weeks have been kind of crazy. These pictures show the Auto Shanghai show. It was just as big and glamourous as the Detroit Auto show. The show was at the exhibition center just around the block behind our apartment.

Dura had a booth and Kirk was very busy involved with the preparation for the show. You can see the booth and some other pictures of cars that he saw.

You can also see how much traffic was in front of our apartment. It was awful, it took forever to get around that week. We were glad when it was over!

Guest Blog from Gigi and Bumpa

Would you believe that Bumpa and Gigi would fly to China? So many things to do and see.If we weren't sightseeing we were entertained by Alex and Elizabeth.

Alex loves to play with all his cars and trucks. Bumpa would ask him were the tractor and cars were and he would line them up ready to play.

Elizabeth likes doing puzzles and dolls. We went to Elizabeth's school and Gigi read them a book she composed about the farm. They enjoyed looking at Elizabeth and Alex pictures. The boys liked the picture of the homemade tractor plowing snow.Some have not seen that much snow. We went to Alex's school, the girls out numbered the boys. Before Easter went back to school for an Easter egg hunt and lunch with Elizabeth's class.

We went to the markets and could not beleve what goes on. A person can buy anything they want. They had their calculators out, ready to bargain. And don't touch it because they thought you were going to buy it. Marion said that was the biggest goodie barn he ever saw.

About the traffic and drivers. That is another story in itself. I think GiGi had a hole in the floor from braking so much. We managed to cross the streets without getting hit by the buses,cars,motorbikes and bikes. That was our first lesson.

Marion said the only safe place to be is on the 20th floor of their
apartment and watch all the traffic. What a view they have. A person would
not believe they lived in the city looking out the window. At night the
buildings are lit up and a couple of nights we watched some fireworks.

We went to an Chinese Acrobat Show and they had 8 motorcycles in a cage.
They went ever which way but loose, around and round, up and down. They sure
do know to entertain. If you ever get a chance to see one of their shows it
is a treat.

The gardens and the flower show were just beatiful. But I have to remind
myself they have many people working on those. So if I choose to do a couple
of new projects in my garden I'll be happy this year. The ideas are going to
be time saving for me, like less weeding. Of course, Marion doesn't know what
is in the planning for him to help out.


All in all we had a good time with the Roessler Family. Thank you again. Marion and Karen

Shanghai Botanical Garden & Expo Museum

Shanghai Botanical Garden & Expo Museum click above for pictures

We went to the Botanical Garden on Monday after Easter. When we first walked in, we thought it would only take 30 minutes to walk through the exhibition. Little did we know! This place is huge, a lot like Century Park. It had some amazing exhibits and we really enjoyed walking through. See some of the pictures I took of flowers that I thought were especially pretty.

That afternoon, we watched Elizabeth dance again with her friends. They have a recital coming up at the end of May or in June.

On Wednesday, I pulled Elizabeth out of school early and we went to People's Square to check out the Shanghai Urban Planning and Exhibition center. It was amazing. It has a model of the city of Shanghai! We saw our apartments, although they must have been planned to be on the opposite corner of Huamu Lu and Fangdian Lu.

We had such a great time with our visitors. Gigi will be doing a guest blog for me (hopefully) so that you can hear her perspective. I think they enjoyed themselves and they even got comfortable enough to take the Metro around by themselves!

We're thankful that they came and thankful that Kirk's Mom came in March. It will be busy for us until we come home in July, but it helped get us through!

Okay Pelton, that should've kept you busy for a while. Stop pestering me now! :)

Easter

Easter click above for pictures

We decorated Easter Eggs. Elizabeth had a lot of fun doing this with the Princess Easter Egg kit that Grammy had brought. You can see the beautiful eggs with GiGi and Elizabeth.

On Easter Sunday, we went to our church, Sacred Heart in Pudong. It was pretty crowded, but we got there early and got a good seat. We ended up seeing Elizabeth's friend Sophie and her family and they sat next to us. Alex went into the nursery and loved it.

After church, we went to Elizabeth's friend Oia's birthday party. I forgot to take my camera, but she had a blast.

Then we got to do the Easter Egg hunt. Alex just liked finding the eggs, shaking them, and opening them when the shaking sounded liked Jelly Beans. He thinks they are "nummy". We had so much fun and were so thankful to have family celebrate Easter with us as it wouldn't have been the same.

The last thing we did that day was take Alex to Farhana to get his hair cut. He was a little better this time. We really chopped it off and with it we chopped off all of his sweetness. He is a full blown terrible 2 year old!! We'll take more pictures of him but he really looks like a little boy now, not a baby, and he looks just like Kirk.

Najing Lu

Bumpa & GiGi Visit - Nanjing Lu click above for pictures

On Saturday before Easter, we went took the Metro (subway) to Xintiandi. This is an area of Shanghai in Puxi that was occupied by the Europeans and then once they were kicked out, it was the site for the first Communist party meeting. Now it is an upscale shopping and restaurant area. We ate at Latina which is a Brazillian steakhouse. The food was very good.

Then we walked to Nanjing Lu. This is a pedestrian street in Shanghai that has always (since the 1800's) been a shopping area. It is now lit up with many neon lights and is a site to see. We stopped at a Pearl market and Gigi was able to spend some money that had been burning a hole in her pocket.

Gigi and Bumpa found the Metro so easy to use, the next week, they mastered taking it on their own to many places.

Science Center & Crystal's B-Day Party

Trip to Science Center and Chrystal's B-Day Party click above for pictures

These are funny pictures, I'm just getting a look at them for the first time. So Kirk and Alex took Bumpa to the Science and Technology Museum and Gigi, Elizabeth and I went to her friend's, Crystal Tan, birthday party. Apparently Bumpa and Alex were a big hit with the local Chinese students! They all wanted their picture's taken with the Laowai (foreigner).

The party was a lot of fun and Crystal's parents, Dave and Peline, did a great job organizing it. It was at their apartment's clubhouse and their were 28 kids. On top of that, there were parents and Ayi's too! Elizabeth had fun and you can see the picture of her and her buddy, Jacob B. I think they have a crush on each other. Jacob is a very rambunctous but smart 4 year old. He draws pictures all the time for Elizabeth and she brings them home in her lunchbox.

Touring Downtown

Bumpa & Gigi Visit - Touring Downtown click above for pictures

The Monday after we returned from Beijing, we just did a little local sightseeing. Bumpa had read in the newspaper that Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft) had his yacht in town. Liu drove us down to check it out. Well as you can see in the pictures, it was pretty huge! It has a crew of 60 people, a helicopter, and a submarine!

Another day we went to the Oriental Pearl Tower and looked out at the sights. We saw the progress of the new financial tower vs the Jin Mao tower. We went to the Bund on the Pudong side and had dinner at Paulaner.

Finally we ended up at home with both kids on Gigi's lap for some stories.