making up messes

The other day while cleaning and packing up some stuff, Carter got into a cupboard in the bathroom and snuck out with my entire makeup collection! He played in lipstick, got blush all over and was going for the mascara when I found him. Luckily, he really didn't make a huge mess, and was applying some Clinique lipstick when I cleaned it all up. Silly kid.


P.S. Only 13 more days until Ryan graduates!! But who is counting...

豫園 (yuyuan garden)

I still haven't blogged about Yuyuan Garden yet! I can't believe that we were there only four months ago visiting my folks. This is considered to be one of the lavish and finest gardens in Shanghai. We visited it twice while we were in China. I wish I could go back for more, it's breathtaking.

It's called "The Garden of Peace and Comfort" and is truly that. It's in the Pudong district (where my parents live) and it's only a taxi ride away from their apartment. It's so lovely!
It zigs and zags up a rockery, down a rockery, through tunnels, around ponds, etc. It's so cool!

Outside the walls there's a busy city, but inside it is quiet and serene.
Another little bridge going over the ponds and streams.

I would have loved something like this as a kid, because there's secret tunnels, rooms, and coves all over the place. Endless places to play hide-n-seek!

General Guan Yu's statue on top of the garden. He played a significant role in the civil war that eventually brought down the Han Dynasty. He is still worshipped in China today, a symbol of loyalty and righteousness.

(Here's what he looks like up close--yikes)

The garden is said to have been established in 1559 as a private garden by Pan Yunduan. He spent nearly 20 years building it to please his father.

This is one hallway from the inside, looking out.

A similar hallway, from the outside looking in.

Ryan outside of the hallway.

This is where you can pay to dress up in the traditional clothing and take pictures and cause quite a scene!
Lots of lucky gold fish. Some were gigantic. The biggest goldfish I've seen. They enjoyed the Chinese crackers I fed them.

I learned that if you go find the bathroom by yourself, it will take you about 40 minutes of aimless wandering around through the rock hallways, quarries, pagodas, courtyards and trees looking for the rest of the gang. And then they didn't even realize that you were gone...

My dad through a rock hallway.

I love this picture! You can see the old Ancient Shanghai garden in the foreground and then modern, smoggy Shanghai in the background! (it's the Shanghai World Financial Center building, the one that looks like a can opener--just to the left of the pagoda. Can you see it faintly through the smog?)

I told Ryan (when I finally caught back up to them again) "Hey look! A rockery." It's made of huangshi stone.

A rather large stone with writing on it. It is huge, look to the right of the stone, that's a person's legs. Not sure what it says and why it's significant, but it looked cool!

In 1842, during the Opium Wars, the British army occupied the Town God Temple for five days. During the Taiping Rebellion the gardens were occupied by imperial troops, and damaged again by the Japanese in 1942. They were repaired by the Shanghai government from 1956-1961, opened to the public in 1961, and declared a national monument in 1982. (taken from wikipedia.org)

Here's an ancient end table inside a little building. Betcha can't buy that at RC Willey. I was told this is probably original road, very weathered, and so cool! It was uneven at times, if you didn't watch your step, you'd trip like I did.

A rock "window"

My dad again. Where in the world were Aimee and Mom?




Another little tunnel through a rockery, where it can only be reached by little boat or wading in the ponds. See how the water comes right up to the steps?

(I loved this peaceful place, this is me hugging the garden--I didn't want to leave!)

"and we're walking, and we're walking..."

I love my pedometer!

It's my new best friend. I love it so much, I dedicate a post to it.

I realize that as a busy mom, I'm usually on my feet most of the day. Out of sheer curiosity, I wanted to see how many steps I took.

Considering that my house is one level, I don't have any stairs and I only have one hallway, I went over 12,500 steps yesterday. (That includes one hour and 800 calories burned on the elliptical) But still! That's over 5.5 miles!

That's a lot of steps for just doing the laundry.

ultimate shanghai adventure

One of Ryan's most favorite parts about going to China was riding the Maglev in Shanghai! It's only a few minutes drive from my parent's place and Ryan got lucky to ride it the very last day we were there.

When I asked him if he enjoyed it, he just giggled and then expressed that the ride was too short! He's always been very intrigued and interested in trains, so it's only fitting that he got to achieve one of his dreams!

If you want to read more about maglevs, click here.

new bike sans trainers

Lots of new independent things going on at our house, Ryanna can ride a bike without trainers, Dawson has a new SpiderBike and loves it, and Carter inherited Dawson's old Lightening McQueen trike. They all love it and want to spend every single waking minute outdoors.

Ryanna's not my most-balanced child so I thought that for her to learn how to ride a bike would have been more difficult. It only took her: 3 hours, 2 major crashes and 1 new bike helmet for her to get the hang of it. She loves it now!

We went to a big empty parking lot and let them ride around. Carter mostly pushed and pulled his little car. Thank goodness for the warm spring weather yesterday, it was so lovely.

We're working on words! See how extensive and cute his vocabulary is now...all within the last week!

whip it!

Isn't my little Indiana Jones darling? Take that Harrison Ford!