Elizabeth & Alex Thanksgiving Lunch

The kids both had Thanksgiving celebrations at school.

Elizabeth Field Trip to Children's Palace

Many more posts coming.....
Elizabeth had a field trip to the Children's Palace in Shanghai. This is also called the Marble Mansion. History of this place is that it was built by a Sassoon (can't remember which one) who was a prominent Jewish business man in the 1900's. Please don't quote me on this at all....I need to take the Jewish walking tour of Shanghai. Anyway, this was his families house and now it is a an activity center for children in Shanghai. We were able to see an acrobat show and play on a great rope play structure. We had great weather for the day and the kids had fun.

Alex Brings Honey Home

Okay, caught up on the blog for a bit since we're in the US for Christmas now and don't have the censorship issues that we have in China.

Alex got to bring Honey the Honeybee home from his classroom. Here are some pictures of what Alex and Honey did together.

Santa Picture

Kids got to sit on Santa's lap at the Concordia Christmas bazaar. You can see Elizabeth holding Honey the Honeybee who was visiting us from Alex's classroom.

The kids liked seeing Santa. Elizabeth asked for a guitar and Alex asked for connectors. The one nice thing about living in Shanghai is that the kids aren't exposed to all the marketing of toys and such from advertising. They don't know to ask for much! I'm not complaining.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Shanghai Bus Tour Party

During the last Concordia Auction, Jim Pigott and Kirk decided to bid for the bus. This was in response to last year's party that G2 Forsberg hosted. I'm not sure how legal their bid was, I think they wrote down their name after the bell rang and upset another Concordia parent, but they were determined to win it.

So they won the bus, and were supposed to plan the trip, but it fell into the hands of Heather and I to plan. We decided to make it an International Tour of Shanghai.

We started at Declan's Irishman's Pub. Then we boarded the bus to head to Puxi and landed at Jenny's Bar. During the bus ride, we enjoyed beverages from Inbev (Budweiser) courtesy of Matt Rohm who traveled from the US, okay not just for the tour but timing was good.

After Jenny's (and the pregnant cat that Ken Holloway made friends with), we headed over to dinner at Cantina Agave for some tacos and Margaritas. Kirk didn't put names on pictures again, so I'll have to come back and do that.

After margaritas, we were ready to dance! We went back over to Pudong and landed at the World Financial Center. Up to the Top of the house we went to watch Carlton Smith and his band. Didn't get picture of the dancing but got video of Kirk singing on stage with Carlton, not sure why it's not posted!

HSBC Golf Tournament

We decided to take the kids to their first golf tournament. The HSBC tour is very popular in Shanghai but expensive in Chinese standards so it's not too crowded. The tournament is in Sheshan which is about an hour drive from our house.

All the big names were here. Tiger, Phil, Ernie.... BTW - this was before the Tiger scandal broke.

The kids had fun walking around the course, but Alex decided that the area to play in was much more fun. He played on the golf carts for about an hour.

We weren't allowed to take photos on the course so we didn't get pics of the big guys. But we saw them up close and personal.

Alex even got a signed glove from Jason Dufner. We were just standing watching the players practice and Jason walked across from the pitching green to the putting green and handed it to him. Alex was in awe, it was really nice of him to give it to us.

It was a beautiful day to watch golf.

Elizabeth's Cherub Choir

One of Elizabeth's after school activites was the Cherub Choir led by Ms Amy Camp. This is their end of semester concert. There were some really good singers. I think Elizabeth was nervous!

Melbourne Cup Party

Molly Forsberg organized a group of us to go to the Melbourne Cup Luncheon. The Melbourne Cup is actually a National Australian holiday, all the Aussies get the day off work. So this would be simliar to the Kentucky Derby.

It was great fun to see all the ladies decked out in their best with spectacular hats. Free flow champagne ensured that we all relaxed and had fun. We were able to bet a little and our table all won some money or some prizes.

Kirk didn't label the pictures so here are the people in them:
Group photo, Heather Pigott and Audrey Nord, Kath and Missy Stevens, Missy and Heather, Lisa McLaughlin and Molly Forsberg, Lisa with a bird on her head, Kath and Lisa, Kath and Audrey.

Shanghai Duathalon

Romo talked us into doing a mini duathlon. This was a 4k run, a 17k bike ride, finished by a 4k run. In this picture is Joe Taverna, Keri Taverna, Mike Romanski, Kath, and Dave Rockett. Kirk ended up hurting his back so he was unable to do this with us.

It was a really windy day and so made for a tough bike ride. Joe came in first for the whole tbing and Keri came in first for the females. Our goals was to finish in 100 minutes and Romo and I brought up the rear in under 100! We had a lot of fun.