HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Ok, so I tried to post this before midnight, but I failed :( This marks our first holiday that we are apart from all of our families. It just wasn't the same not being able to be with you in person, but it was nice to see some of you via skype this morning. Sorry to those who we had just missed!!

It's different- Chad had to work on Thanksgiving and the kids and I went shopping like it was any other day. And then of course there is no Black Friday shopping for me either :( However, I am so thankful that we live in this techy world to help keep us in touch with everyone!!!

We were invited to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday with a couple expat families. Rilynn saw on Nickelodeon (which is amazing we have it here!) Thanksgiving turkey sugar cookies that they had made. Well, we decided to see if we could find everything here to make them to share on Saturday. We had to improvise a bit (could not find candy corn) and spent about $30 to make 9 cookies, but we did it and had fun too :)

WE LOVE YOU ALL AND HOPE YOU HAD A GREAT THANKSGIVING!!!!

Our turkey creations!

Kids Paradise

Well, the kids and I ventured out today to the Super Brand Mall by our house. We wanted to see what the Kids Paradise on the 7th floor was all about :) We first went to Tom's World, aka Chuck E Cheese minus the food, and went on an airplane ride for only 10 RMB each ($1.50) Kids had fun!

Airplane ride

Next, we headed to Yuku's Island in the heart of Kids Paradise. It was the cleanest indoor playground I have ever seen!! They sanitize everyone's hands before you can enter and were continuously cleaning while the kids were playing. Also, the entire place was soft so they could run and fall without getting hurt. Definitely right up my alley!! LOL.. This was a little more at 50 RMB ($7.50) each, but you could stay there all day if you wanted too. It was all enclosed except for one entrance with an employee guarding the door. It was also surrounded by chairs on the outside. It was the first time in 2 weeks that I felt I could relax having both of kids out and about by myself. It was heaven!!! Next time I will be bringing a book though :)

Ball pit

A waterbed with lights :)

Brady's punching bags!


Swinging balls on vines, a hit with Rilynn!



Brady spinning around like a washing machine!

All the toys were fully automated and moving

Rilynn with Tigger

The biggest hit, BALLOONS!!!

And of course a day in Kids Paradise wouldn't be complete without a trip to McDonalds :) Unfortunately for us it is so cheap here! For an extra value meal and 2 kids meals it was 47 RMB (only $7!).. This could be dangerous, very dangerous!!

Now the best part of the day for me will be happening later.. Chad is going to take the kids swimming so I can enjoy my first massage here!! They are everywhere and sooo cheap, you can't go wrong.. I'll give you a review later :)

Welcome to our New Home!

Finally, as promised, here are some pictures of our new home. In the last 2 weeks we have done a lot of rearranging and shopping :) It's starting to come together and feel more "homey". I still have more visions, but am happy for how it is coming along already. The bedrooms have wood floors and the rest of the floors are tiles which are not the greatest for the kids. We still have to buy some more rugs to make it feel more warm and cozy..

However, the absolute best part of our apartment is something that cannot be bought at IKEA... OUR VIEW!!! It's so amazing at night looking over seeing the river and Puxi side all lit up with lights.. Definitely not like Woodbury!!

I am trying to find an ayi for us to help with the cleaning, laundry, and some cooking. We will start with a PT one, about 12 hours a week and see how it goes. I've already met a lot of moms and most of them have FT one's, but I need to "ease" into it and see how it is.. Everything takes so much more time to get anything done, so it will be nice not to have to worry about the home chores.. Plus the going rate is around 15RMB/hr which comes out to be about $2/hr!! Can't get to used to it though, cause coming back to the States I will be scrubbing my own toilets :)

OK.. Here's our new home in Shanghai China!!

Our skyscraper apartment!!

We are on the 21st floor

View of one of the three clubhouses in our compound- This is the closest and has the bowling alley in it which we have already spent 2 of our nights there..

Daytime view of Pudong from our apartment

The AMAZING nighttime view of Pudong, Huangpu River, and Puxi all right from our living room!

Our Bedroom moving in.. Lamp went right into storage!! They definitely like gold around here!

Now, after :)

Our bedroom

Kitchen

Rilynn's room- Don't mind her mess- She LOVES her desk!

Brady's room

Dining Room before- Notice the rather large glass top- See previous blog post for after pic of that.. LOL

After- We went to the Flower Market and bought some greenery. Now we'll just see how long I can keep them alive :)

Our lovely living room before- Notice Chad's excitement!! LOL

And after- thanks in part to IKEA!

Chad needs a pair of slippers!

OK, so the kids and I made our 2nd Ikea run today to buy some more stuff for the house. I'm dying to decorate it and make it feel more homey. I also decided to rearrange the furniture, which meant taking off all of our glass toppers on our tables. Glass and kids just don't mix! Well, I had everything off to the side until Chad got home to move it into our storage room. We were both moving the kitchen table glass and almost made it there and Chad (and yes he will admit it!) dropped his side down and hit the tile floor just right and SHATTERED into a million pieces!!! Not really what we had planned for our evening :) Too make it worse, our cleaning supplies are lacking a bit yet, so he had to make do with what we had (which was no broom!) It's cleaned up as best and we can do, but I'm sure we'll still be finding pieces for the next 2 years.. UGGGH. The kids and I have slippers already, but pretty sure we'll be shopping for a pair for Chad now :)

The remains of our glass table topper!

Ahhh Walmart :)

Chicken anyone?

Or how about some pork? LOL


Walmart in Shanghai

Bowling night
Rilynn with her doughnut man :)

OK, so I'm definitely a Target lover, but since that's not here Walmart it is!! However, it is definitely different in Shanghai :)

It's divided in 2 floors- groceries and home/clothing. We made the mistake of going there on a Saturday afternoon. Not the smartest move, way too crowded! We did find some items that we needed and Chad was able to find a somewhat tolerable milk to drink. I haven't tried it yet, but the kids don't seem to mind it with chocolate or in their cereal so that's good. Chad wasn't a big fan of the first one we bought. I see trial and error happening a lot with the food here!

One of the biggest changes for me to get used to is the smells, especially in the stores. Besides seeing people picking out raw meat with their hands or seeing a pig hanging in the aisle, the smells is what gets me. The kids don't seem to notice so that's good :)

We were warned about strangers coming up to the kids and wanting to touch them and take their pictures. Well they were right. We were thinking it would be Brady's white hair that would do it, but it seems to be more Rilynn. It is mostly the older generation (men and women) and they will just come up and start talking in Chinese and touch their hair or cheek. We even had a huge group of people stop and take their picture with the kids!! LOL.. The kids are not quite sure what's going on so they are still a tad shy when they come up. However, they are getting pretty good saying "Ni Hao" (Hi) to everyone, which is pretty cute.

We are loving having a driver. Mr. Hou has been great. We tell him what time to meet us downstairs and there he is. He opens the door for us and helps the kids up in our minivan. We never worry about having to find a parking spot, he just drops us off the main entrance to where we are going and picks us up there too. We were bagging our groceries the other day and turn around to see him already taking our cart out to the car to load up! Very nice ;)

Today was Chad's first day at work. He is an early riser so he left at 6am. He said the

re was no traffic and only took 15 minutes to get there. However, he's not home yet so we'll have to see how it is at 4:30. The kids and I tested out the swimming pool at our clubhouse. It was nice, I'm sure we'll be spending more time there :) We also tried out the bowling alley the other night which was lots of fun!!

The great perk of being here is that you can almost get anything delivered!! There is a service called Sherpa's where you can order online in English from a bunch of restaurants and then they go pick it up on their motorcycle and deliver it to you. We had some pizza for lunch yesterday that was pretty good, thankfully!! We also rec'd our first grocery delivery today. It's free delivery if you spend like $20, so that's not a problem to spend. Today we ordered from Field's, an organic grocer. We've heard it's the best and cheap too boot!

OK, so I could go on and on, but I need to go for the repairman coming. We haven't quite figured out all the appliances yet. We have somewhat figured out the washer/dryer and stove, but not the dishwasher/microwave/oven. I am sick of handwashing all the dishes so hopefully he can help me to figure the thing out!!

More to come.. I'll try and post some pics of the apt soon!! BTW, glad we left when we did and avoided the snow :) Hope you all have fun shoveling.. Ha

We Made It!

Well, after a tearful good-bye, lugging our 10 suitcases, 2 carseats, double stroller, and 8 carry-ons we finally arrived in Shanghai around 10pm Tuesday night. We had a 12 hour flight to Japan with a 2 hour lay over and then a 3 hour flight to Shanghai. The kids actually did surprisingly well. Brady even told us and actually went to the bathroom on the plane! There was a couple empty seats next to Chad so they were able to sprawl out and nap which was nice.

Brady with all 10 suitcases on the way to the airport :)

Our helpful family at the airport!

Kids on the plane

Mr. Hou (our driver) met us at the airport and was able to get all of our luggage in the minivan and we headed back for a cramped drive to the hotel. Next morning we went to check out our apartment. Without not seeing it before we lucked out. The furniture was actually decent :) The biggest thing we have to get used to being here is the different types of smells all over, including our apt! We then ventured out to Ikea to go shopping. However, we were all soooo drained and exhausted it wasn't the greatest trip. My patience with the kiddos was definitely tested! Brady didn't last the whole trip though, he crashed half way through..

Brady a tad tired in Ikea :)

Thursday morning we checked out of the hotel and headed to the apt to unpack. We then headed out to Carrefour to go shopping. I can already tell I will be spending a lot of time here :) It has a floor like a department store and another floor is a supermarket. Grocery shopping was interesting. I'll have to remember my phone next time to take pics of some of the items. We were looking for just plain potato chips, but had a hard time. They had Blueberry, Spicy Fish, and a bunch others I can't remember. We did pretty good though finding a variety of foods that we like. The only thing we couldn't find was a good pizza. Once again very different types, definitely no pepperoni and sausage :(

Today we gave Mr. Hou the day off to go and explore around our apt. We made it to both of the clubhouses and walked around the compound. It's great weather here right now, around 21 degrees Celcius (still getting used to this) today, which is around 68 degrees.. Kids had fun running around and playing at the playground and checking everything out. It is pretty cool that neither kid has even made a comment about the language, people, or surroundings being different. They are just going with the flow and I think that's pretty neat.

Pics from around our apt compound

Tomorrow we are venturing out to Walmart for another shopping day. I can definitely see how one would need a nanny, cook, and maid. You cannot just run out to the store real quick. It's pretty much a one stop shop per day. Hopefully it will get easier, but for now it's been very overwhelming shopping. It's just so many different things that I need to get used to.

I have so much more to talk about being here for the first couple of days, but I really need to go to bed :) I can't wait to get over this jet lag!!

More to come..

Packing and more packing!

Wow, what a crazy week this has been!! The house was so nice and quiet having the kids in Mankato last week, but that sure changed in a hurry! We had a wedding in Mankato on Saturday (Congrats to Jim and Barb), then came home Sunday to watch the game, and then finally went trick or treating with the whole family. We had to also find some time in between things to try and get our air shipment ready.

Kids all ready for the wedding

Kids in their costumes

So, right on time at 8am Monday morning about 7 movers came with our one and lonely box for the air shipment. It was 58"x42"x45".. Not too big when you are trying to ship 2 years of stuff in it! We were limited as to not pack any books, dvds, cd's, or any liquids. We also had to keep in mind that this box will not arrive for about a month, so it made for a HARD pack!!

Our one and only air shipment in route to China. Can't wait to see you again in a month!!

So now here I am sitting in our lovely lawn chair in our empty living room. We sold our furniture on Friday so it's been fun. LOL.. Tomorrow brings the movers back to pack the rest of house into storage until we come back. After Thursday we will be left with 2 carseats, stroller, and 9 suitcases.. That will be what we live on for the next month.. Fun times, fun times!!

We are planning on staying in our empty house on Thursday for a camp out, then head out to a hotel for a couple nights, then back home for another camp out Sunday to get our laundry done, and then off to the airport Monday for our flight at 1:10pm. Whew!! I honestly just cannot wait until we are actually there.. The prep work is exhausting!

Here is our China address:

Lane 2 Wei Fang Xi Road, Shimao Riveria

Unit 2102, Block 15

Shanghai, China 200122

We also are able to bring our home phone number with us using Vonage, so you can call us in China just like you would be calling us in MN. Same with us, it's just like dialing locally back home. However, make sure you remember that we are 13 hours ahead of you. We don't need any 3am phone calls :)

In case we didn't get a chance for us to personally say goodbye before we left please know that we love you all and you will be greatly missed by our whole family!!

Next post will be coming to you from China!! Well, that is if we survive the 18 hour flight with the kiddos!!