Alex's New Bike

Romo's gave us their third wheel bike. This hitches on to the back of the adults bike and then they act in tandem. He loves it! We get a lot of looks everytime we use it. It helps us get around town a lot quicker.

Kirk's 40th Birthday

We had a party for Kirk to celebrate his 40th birthday. We had several friends join us for mexican food at Mi Tierra, pretty good food. After dinner, we headed to see Carol at the Cat Bar and did a little dancing. Can't find the picture now, but I had Romo and Roessler's freshman yearbook pictures as a game - guess who the 40yr old is. It was funny! Happy Birthday Kirk, you only get better with age!

Adventures with Grammy in Shanghai

Grammy made her annual trek to see us in Shanghai. We are always to grateful to have her come even though we know it's a tough trip to make.

This time she was a big help because I had to travel to India for work so she helped Kirk out during my absence.

These are some photos of their weekend without me. Kirk took Grammy to a water town - Qibao Ancient Town. I can't say much about this as I've never been here.

Looks like they also make a trip to the Barbie Store on HuaiHai Lu. Poor Alex, he's been here once and he's not a big fan. Although, I think he found some cars to admire. Elizabeth had fun looking around, but she is not a big barbie fan. In fact, I recall that she called me while I was in Jaipur crying because her Daddy wouldn't buy her the Barbie Skateboard :)

Thankful that Grammy visited us! Hope she makes the trek again, I have some new stops to show her.

Concordia Book Parade

I had to travel to India while Grammy was here so she helped me prepare the costumes for the kids book parade at Concordia. Alex was Squeak the Mouse from the book Scaredy Mouse. Kirk made the mask from a pattern I found online. So cute. Elizabeth was Junie B Jones. Her hair is Kirk's mullet. They trimmed it to make it look like Junie's hair. The mullet is no more.

Elizabeth's 7th Birthday Party

Hard to believe that the little peanut turned 7! Here are some pictures and video of her birthday party. She wanted to have an art party. We decided to make sock puppets and then have the girls decorate their own cakes.

Grammy was here and of course was a huge help. One day, we braved a serious downpour of rain and went to Puxi to the art street and bought lots of art supplies and goody bag items. Then we went to the hotel supply store and found small cake pans. I made a monster load of frosting and then we made tons of different colors for the girls to use to decorate.

She invited all the girls from her class and then her other best buddies. The only ones not here were Lucy and Allie and they were traveling and unable to attend.

It rained cats and dogs on the day of the party. The girls had fun making the socks and then put on the puppet show. They had more fun doing the cakes and used a lot of creativity.

Especially happy to be at the party was Alex!

Vietnam & Cambodia

For Chinese New Year, we went to Vietnam and Cambodia with our good friends Missy, Luke, Lucy, and Allie Stevens.

I started writing this blog while sitting in the hotel room in Saigon while Alex was under the weather.

Day 1 - Flight to Saigon

We flew from Pudong to Guangzhou and switched planes to fly to Saigon. We arrived into Saigon late. Here, we had to get our local visa. We had done the online registration so we thought that would help the process, but we still had to wait in a long, disorganized line when we got here. It took us about an hour and a half to get our visas and then we were able to leave.

We went to look for our transport to the hotel. When we walked out of the airport, it was just after midnight. It was Tet - Vietnamese Lunar New Year’s Eve. Fireworks were going off. Our driver had just arrived. We boarded a bus and drove into the city to get to the Sheraton.

We saw the largest amount of people on motorbikes that we’ve ever seen before. It reminded me of when I was in Shanghai in the 90’s and all the bicycles on the road. Makes me wonder if we’ll be living here in 10 years. So many people were on the street celebrating the new year. We passed the Notre Dame Cathedral. I’d like to go in and see it but not sure if I’ll get the chance. We drove down a street all lit up with lights and millions of people walking around.

We arrived to the hotel after a harrowing drive dodging motorbikes and pedestrians. One thing that sticks out in my head was watching families of four on a motorbike, usually two of the kids were sleeping. We got checked into the hotel and got to sleep pretty quickly because we knew we’d have a big day ahead.

Day 2

We woke up in the morning to the sound of drums of the Lion and Dragon dance. It was officially Tet. Elizabeth and I got up and went down to breakfast. While we were down there, we saw the Lions dancing and listened to the drum music. We met up with Luke, Missy, Lucy, and Allie. The girls went and watched some acrobats.

After breakfast, we walked around the area outside of our hotel. We walked to Nguyen Hue Blvd. This was turned into a pedestrian walk lined with amazing flowers. Again, so many people dressed in their best and taking lots of pictures. The weather was pretty hot already for the morning, the sun beating down.

I called Kirk and it turned out that Alex wasn’t feeling good and got sick during breakfast. He thought he was okay, so I walked back to the hotel to pick them up while the Steven’s took Elizabeth and found inexpensive manicures. I arrived back and Alex was laying down. He said he felt okay to get up and go, so Kirk, Alex, and I walked back to the flower street to find the others. Along the way, Alex didn’t look so good, so he and I went back to the hotel.

Once Kirk got back, we decided that Alex would need to stay in the hotel for the rest of the day, so we split up. Elizabeth and I joined the Steven’s for lunch and a tour of the city while Alex and Kirk rested.

We started out having lunch at the Lemongrass Café. There weren’t many restaurants open since it was Tet. We started with some shrimp chips and then ordered spring rolls as an appetizer. We ended up eating a mango beef salad, chicken in curry sauce, chicken pho while the kids had calamari, fried rice and rice vermicelli. Elizabeth didn’t eat much. Food was good but we had to run to catch our tour.

Missy arranged the tour through the hotel. We boarded a bus with 4 other families and started our city tour. Our first stop was to the Spring Flower Festival in Tao Dan Park. There were vendors here and many different kind of flowers, specifically a lot of orchids. We spent about 30 minutes going through this park, it was hot!

Our next stop was to a Taoist Temple. This temple was over 400 years old. It was very smoky from all of the incense burning. People were here worshiping their ancestors. We walked around a bit and bought the girls some incense to light. After this, we walked across the street to the next part of our tour.

Now we got on rick shaws to drive around the China town area. The rick shaws were bicycles with a seat up front for one person. Elizabeth sat on my lap. I took some video of this. It was a bit of a long ride in the hot blazing sun, but was really neat to be on the street with all the scooters. Didn’t see many cars, but the ones we saw were mostly Toyotas and VW’s .

After the rick shaw ride, we got back on the bus and stopped at a shopping area. Here they had overprices local artwork. Pretty much a rip off. $45 for a plastic coaster set. Good thing we are experienced Asia travelers who have some idea what things are worth. Then we went on to the next Temple. This was a Buddhist temple. Again, many people here praying as it was Tet and that is one of their traditions…to go say prayer at Temple. We had to remove our shoes and everything was quiet. This temple had monks and nuns praying here.

Our final stop was the highlight of the tour. We stopped at a local Vietnamese family’s house to see how they celebrate Tet. We weren’t sure what to expect. We walked into the house of many people and our tour guide explained that our host was Mr Mung. He was dressed in traditional Vietnamese clothes and hat. We sat down at round tables and were served tea by his two nieces.

Missy and I observed that these girls who looked to be the age of about 8 of 9 had breasts. We wondered if it was traditional to stuff your bra that early. Turns out these girls were small people and were 32 and 22. Later, Luke told us that their cousin said they were small people due to Agent Orange. Not sure if this is true or not. It turned out that they were fabulous singers and they sang a couple traditional songs for us accompanied by another relative who played the moon guitar. After they sang, two other singers got up and also sang.

Some observations about the house. Tile floor. Many antique objects (vases, furniture, grandfather clock, temple). Large flat screen TV with a Wii! So different, so alike.

Our tour guide told us we’d get back to the hotel by 6pm. At 6pm, the host told us that he would be serving us dinner. We moved to the temple as they lit incense to worship and then we went outside to the courtyard to have dinner. We did not expect this.

We were served traditional Vietnamese dishes and some were from an area in the middle of the country called Hua. We had steamed sticky rice, other different glutonous rice dishes, some pork and chicken, some steamed conch which was an expensive delicacy as well as some preserved vegetables (cabbage). During dinner, they brought out this large jug of wine. We were all to drink out of it as a way to bond. It didn’t taste very good! Mr Mung told us if we got drunk on that wine, we would be sick for three days.

Finally, Mr Mung and his family gave us hongbaos with two $2 bills in them. Our tour guide later told us that he had no idea that they would be so hospitable and that Mr Mung did over and above what the tour company compensated him for. We asked why he would do that. The tour guide said that Mr Mung was a weathly owner of a publishing company. His house was worth $5 million US. He wanted to share this tradition with others and felt that since he was wealthy, he wanted to do this in goodwill to give back to others.

We took pictures and said Chuc Man Nam Moi which is “Happy New Year” in Vietnamese (thanks to Thuy Marchal for giving me some quick SMS lessons!) and then got back on the bus to return to the hotel. Again, so many people out on the street. We had to exit the bus and walk about 5 min back to the hotel because the bus couldn’t get through. Great day.

Day 3
Alex is still a little under the weather so Kirk and Elizabeth are touring today. They are going to the tunnels. I’ll let Kirk talk about that.

Day 4
We loaded up in a van a drove about 3 hours to a beach in Phan Thiet. We stayed at the L'Anmian Resort. The resort itself was pretty new so the property was beautiful but the service only so/so. For the next two days we pretty much hung out at the beach and the pools. We had a pool at our villas so it was nice to come back in the afternoon and just hang out there. At night, we ate at open air restaurants and had some decent seafood. Missy and I discovered Vietnamese Coffee. This is really strong coffee with sweetened condensed milk. Sometimes we even added some Baileys. Okay, all the time we added Baileys. Really good stuff. We had excellent spring rolls pretty much everyday and loved most of the food, including the Pho.

Day something. I've now lost track. I guess fully relaxed by now. We have loaded back up into a van and drove back to Saigon to catch our flight to Siem Reap. We plan to try to see as many temples as the kids will stand.

We end up meeting up with Scott and Anne Richardson and their daughters Juliet and Lillie. Lillie is in Alex's class and she keeps him in line. She is a very adorable, smart, sweet girl who has been incredibly blessed by God. Everyone is happy to have more playmates.

The first day in Siem Reap, we to the Tuk Tuks to a few different temples. Can't remember the names now, only Angkor Wat. But the coolest one was the one with trees Ta Prohm. Alex wasn't a big fan at first but then he kind of got into the climbing. He really liked the Tuk Tuks.

Siem Reap has a lot of poverty. We took a boat tour out to a water village. Here was saw a lot of poverty and that was hard to take. However, sometimes I think if that's all they know, maybe it's not that bad for them.

The restaurants in Siem Riep were all really good and the tuk tuk took us everywhere. There is a night market that is nice. Missy, Ann and I went and had our feet eaten by fish. Not cool, didn't care for that at all.

Le Meridien was really nice hotel to stay at. Would definitely do this trip again.

Concordia Dragon Dance

Video from the Chinese New Year Celebration at the kids school.

Daddy Daughter Dance

Elizabeth and Kirk attended the Daddy Daughter Dance. This year's theme was a Hawaiian Luau. Elizabeth wore a pretty flowered sundress with a Lily clip in her hair. Kirk had a pink, floral vest underneath his nice black tuxedo. He had it made last minute. They looked lovely together though. Sounds like Elizabeth just ran around the dance floor all night chasing her friends, but they had fun.

Florida

After our Dufon Christmas, we flew to Florida for a little warm weather. Except there was no warm weather. It was Freezing!

The kids swam the first day we got there and that was the end of swimming! Can't believe it was so cold. We still had a lot of fun. One day we went to the Manatee Park to see the manatees. Although it was really cold and we didn't stay too long :).

We also got to catch up with family. We had dinner a couple times with Aunt Cathy and Uncle Tom Roessler and Aunt Gretchen Roessler. We played spoons one night which everyone except Aunt Kathy loved. She was a really funny sport about it though.

Another day, we had lunch with Aunt Chick, Uncle Jerry and Aunt Honey and Mary Ann. Wow, it was so good to see them. I wish we could have gotten together more, but our time was so short while we were in Florida.

The rest of our time was spent loading up on stuff. Someone has to keep Target and Costco in business since the rest of you Americans aren't spending money. Oh - how I miss those stores :).

We did have a chance to go to Naples and check out a sunset. Honestly, in our years going to Naples, this was one of the most beautiful sunsets we've ever seen. Wish we would've known more about how to use our new camera. We also hit the Cheesecake factory. I love that place and their fish tacos.

The weather never improved. Stayed cold the whole time so the kids didn't get their normal swim time in. It was okay, we still had fun.

Dufon Christmas

The pictures need to be updated to the Dufon Christmas.

We drove north on Christmas day so that we could see Bumpa on his birthday. Here we found snow! The kids had been wanting to play in snow ever since they arrived. There was plenty here to play in.

More to come when i see the pics to remind me

Roessler Christmas

Once again, we landed in Detroit and bombarded Aunt Chrystal and Uncle Kevin's house. There was no snow this year, so the kids spent quite a bit of time running around and terrorizing the house.

The photos start out with Christmas Eve mass. The kids were all dressed in their best and looked really cute. They were all good in church. After church, we came back home to have our "party". The party included snacks, drinks, and dinner. I'm not sure anyone made it to dessert.

The kids made cookies for Santa Claus and had fun watching Santa on the internet. They were very excited about him coming the next day and were trying to be on their best behavior.

No one was disappointed the next day when they came downstairs to see that Santa had come!

Polar Express Train Ride

Chrystal arranged for a ride on the Polar Express train ride. This was put on by the Clinton Township parks and recreation and they did an awesome job. We got cookies and hot cocoa when we boarded the train and saw our friends Frosty, Santa, and Rudolph.

Frosty read us the story of the Polar Express. Santa took time out of his busy schedule to come give the boys and girls bells. Rudolph came on and we all sang Christmas carols.

After the ride, we went to Kirk's favorite - Outback.

More posts coming....Kirk has to load the pictures :)

Shanghai Christmas Tree

Here is a picture of Elizabeth and Alex opening up presents from Xiao Ju in front of our "Charlie Brown" Christmas Tree. Each year it's getting prettier and prettier with all the decorations that the kids make to put on it. I LOVE this tree.

Concordia Christmas Parties

The kids also had Christmas parties. I was able to go and help at both. Lots of fun!

Concordia Christmas Programs

Elizabeth and Alex both had Christmas programs. Elizabeth played the kazoo in hers. Alex was not the most well behaved kid in his program - I'm sure all of you who know him are not surprised. Great memories here!

Farewell Party for Heather Pigott

Heather and Jim Pigott and their family - Emma, Ben, and Alex moved back to their home in Chicago area. Missy held a going away breakfast for Heather. They had been in Shanghai for three years and were ready to get back. They are a really nice family and will be sorely missed.

Stevens Christmas Party

Luke and Missy Stevens hosted a Christmas cocktail party to get us into the holiday spirit. We all had a lot of spirit and food!

Shanghai Visitors

I had a couple former co-workers in town. Rajesh Chawla is a friend of mine from Delhi who I worked with but has since left Delphi. We had some good Indian food for lunch.

I also met up with my friend Mike Lawrukovich, a guy I worked with when I first graduated from GMI. We went shopping in Tai Kang Lu and then took a tour of the Lupu Bridge area. We walked up on the bridge and viewed the Expo area. We finished with dinner in YuYuan area at Din Tai Fung and had great xiaolongbao.

Guilin & Yangshuo

Kirk had a work conference in Guilin the first weekend in December so the kids and I flew and met him for the weekend. Guilin is a city in the Guangxi province which is south and west of Shanghai.

We only spent one day in Guilin which is a city and then we took a car into Yangshou which is a town in the countryside. Wow, what a beautiful place. We stayed at the Yangshou Mountain Retreat which is kind of a bed and breakfast sitting along the Yalong River. You can see in the pictures and videos of the bamboo rafts floating by.

We took bicycles through the little countryside villages up to the Dragon bridge on Saturday. This was a lot of fun. At the bridge, we hopped on bamboo rafts and drifted back down the river. After two hours the kids got bored, so we pulled ashore and got back on our bikes back to the hotel.

At night, we went into the town of Yangshou and had dinner along the pedestrian shopping street. After dinner, we took a car over to this light show. The show was pretty neat but the kids were too tired to enjoy.

We had planned another day of biking and site seeing on Sunday but Elizabeth's earring back embedded itself into her ear and got infected so we caught an early flight back. This place is great for biking and rock climbing and we would like to come back to get away from the craziness of the city again.

Elizabeth & Alex Thanksgiving Lunch

The kids both had Thanksgiving celebrations at school.