Our Last Day Together

Hello everyone!
We've been so busy this summer that we've not had any time to post on our blog.  In fact, we're on our way to the airport right now.  Alex and Connor are heading back to Newcastle, England.  They're looking forward to seeing their mum but not looking forward to going back to school next week.  Eddie is off to China and Erica is heading to Augusta for some time with her mom.  Once the dust settles from our traveling we'll get busy on our blog and post pictures and stories from our summer.

For now, here are a few highlights:
- Visiting the Viking Museum in Stavanger Norway
- Playing table tennis 24 hours a day, every day on the cruise
- Alex loved hanging out in the Teen Center (VIP Room) on the cruise
- Geocaching our way around the world - we we hit two continents this summer!
- Connor getting stung by a jelly fish - twice
- Seeing Bonnie
- Catching a shark and a sting ray
- 9 geocaches in one day in Asheville
- Visiting Chad's microbrewery
- Dolphin cruise
- Booggie boarding so much that Connor's board broke twice on Huntington Island
- Seeing old friends
- Eating all the pulled pork in the restaurant
- More geocaching
- Watching Crocodile Dundee
- Getting dressed up for our family photo-shoot with Bonnie
- Eating cookie monster ice cream

Sunshine in Edinburgh

After a blissful few days in Belgium with my mom and dad, Eddie and I were able to steal ourselves away to Edinburgh for four sunny days with Alex and Connor. 

At the moment Eddie and I are camped out in the KLM lounge at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam - our home away from home.  It's nearly time to board our return flight to Beijing and I'm considering latching myself to the chair so we can't leave.  I know how very lucky we are - that our chosen lifestyle provides us the opportunity to see the world, to taste and smell and hear the world.  But there are days I'm enough of the sights and sounds and smells of China.  A week in beautiful Belgium and green Scotland make it awfully hard to return to the dusty, polluted business of Beijing.  

This week proved to be well worth all the fuss of packing and unpacking and fighting our way through airport security check ins.  A day with my mom and dad in downtown Brussels drinking Belgium beer and gorging on Belgium chocolate was well worth the hassle of international travel.  Four sunny days with the boys in our favourite city in the world made six flights, two parking tickets and remembering to stay on the left side of the road worth it.  

Naturally we geocached our way through Edinburgh.  

Here we are underneath Dean Bridge 

- a beautiful leafy little village tucked inside Edinburgh.  

Runners, bikers and dog walkers enjoyed the rustic path as much as we did.  

Our second geocache in Princess Gardens.  

This time the boys mastered a puzzle cache.  A brilliant find!

My favourite picture of the boys from this trip.  

Alex is truly becoming a teenager.  

He spent four days happily encased in his headphones listening to his music.  

Naturally Connor talked away at him as though he was listening to every word.

It's a fantastic treat that the boys' taste buds are expanding.  

We've spent the last couple of years convincing them 

to give up chicken nuggets and hot dogs with ketchup.  

It was Connor's idea to try this Middle Eastern restaurant along the Royal Mile.  

Not a bite was left.  

Our first official visit to Canongate Kirk where we will be married in April of next year!  

After a half hour meeting with the reverend at Canongate the boys let off a bit of steam.  

A trip to Edinburgh wouldn't be complete without a stop on Rose Street for Eddie to have a pint.

So brilliant to be able to take the boys to their first opera.  

They loved the Scottish Opera's performance of Pirates of Penzance.  

On our last day in Edinburgh Eddie's mom, sister and her husband and son joined us for a trip to the Botanic Gardens.  The sun behaved beautifully and it was a grand family reunion.  

It's only a matter of months now before we pound the pavement along Princess Street.  

How To Say Goodbye in Chinese

It's been a full year since our last visit to Da Dong restaurant.  Da Dong is one of the most touristy restaurants in Beijing - famous for Peking Duck.  It was the first meal the boys asked for upon their return to Beijing this trip and we made them wait the full two weeks before we feasted.  Duck pancakes are without a doubt our absolute favorite meal.  Chopsticks be damned - we used our hands.  

Mamie in her beautiful new Christian Dior glasses she got from the Silk Market. 

The boys salivating over the duck.  

They would have eaten the duck there on the carving table if they guy would've let them.

On our last day together in Beijing we took grandma and the boys to our favorite restaurant, Capital M.  Capital M is a very special place to us - it's where Eddie proposed to me on my birthday last November.

Cap M's balcony overlooks The Forbidden City.

Dad and Connor toasting a fantastic holiday in China.   

Alex and Grandma raising their glasses to another wonderful Clan Flett get together.

That afternoon we walked the length of Beijing.  

Our first stop was Tiananmen Square to find a geocache.  

It's an awfully big place to find a tiny little cache.  

About town in Beijing.

Back at the National Centre for Performing Arts - this time to fly our kites and hunt for a geocache.  

On the move - we made our way to The Place - a great area near the China World Tower full of coffee shops and restaurants - and of course - geocaches.

After a full day of going walk about we put our feet up for full mani and pedis.  

The boys splurged and spent the last of their money of hot chocolate while getting foot rubs.

Come Sunday morning suitcases were packed tears were at the ready.  The boys were armed with their new hard suitcases haggled for and won at Yashow Market.  A four wheeled suitcase and a pre-teen boy does not a good mix make. 

It's ridiculously painful saying goodbye to Alex and Connor.  They bring total chaos into our lives each time we are together and then leave behind smelly toilets, wet socks, sweetie wrappers, electronic cords, swim goggles and a hollow feeling when they go.  

I've heard people say that the term blended family likens to the feeling of being thrown into an actual blender and getting tossed up and chopped up till you're a bit unrecognizable.  It makes sense - I can't actually remember anymore who I was before the boys came into my life and I know that Eddie can't figure out how he's supposed to be a part time dad when he wants nothing more than to be the full time dad he was before the blender got turned on.  And then there's the boys - trying so hard to make everyone happy while shuffling back and forth with such gallant intentions.  

While the boys were here these past two weeks we made smoothies each morning in our noisy Chinese blender.  We tossed in bananas, apples, strawberries, kiwis, raspberries, blackberries, yogurt and milk.  Connor or Alex would push the button and then push it again and again till the blender was screaming at me it was going so fast.  And then - we'd toast our day with a cold, healthy drink that wouldn't have tasted nearly as delicious if it hadn't been blended with such ferocity and enthusiasm.  

Chengdu - Market Street

On our last morning in Chengdu we visited Market Street.  So many wonderful stalls with handmade toys and trinkets.  We walked about for a few hours enjoying the sunshine and culture.  For lunch we ate at a traditional Chinese family restaurant and were impressed with how much better we'd gotten at using chopsticks.

Here we outside our hotel - couldn't tell you the name of it - as you can see - it's written in Chinese.  Eddie's got his morning cup of Starbucks Coffee.  We couldn't help it - every morning we had breakfast at Starbucks (that was just just around the corner, naturally). Lattes and cheese and ham croissants.  

The rest of the day it was dumplings and pork.

Connor on his quest to find all food items shaped like snakes.  

Seeing as it's the Year of the Snake - and he and I are both snakes - 

he's determined to quite literally eat his way through the year.  

This treat was a lolly-pop of blown confection sugar.  

In honor of Connor's fantastic handwriting work he'd done this trip, there was an entire market stall devoted to handwriting tools guaranteed to give you fantastic handwriting.  

The boys looking very Western in their Life is Good hats.  

We purchased a painted ornament to remember Chengdu by.  

This gentleman used a tiny stick to paint the word family for us inside the glass ball.

Beautiful street decorations.

Chengdu is in the Sichuan Province - the gateway to Tibet.  

Just outside our lunch restaurant were many monks who were out enjoying the spring weather. 

The boys showing off their Kung Fu bracelets.  Did you know they are Kung Fu masters?

Chengdu - Pandas, Kites, Uno and Hot Pot

Today we visited the Panda Breeding Center - reason enough to visit Chengdu!  We saw a gang of teenage pandas that were born the same year as Alex.  They were perfect 13 year olds - eating their weight in bamboo and throwing grass at each other.  

The bamboo was simply beautiful and the sun was  shining on our perfect day.  

My new motto.

Connor feeding the coy fish - they nearly jumped into his lap to eat!

Did you know there are red pandas?  

After our trip to the Panda Centre, we headed to Wang Jiang Lou Park where we had a ridiculously fabulous afternoon.  Kite flying, geo-caching, Uno and spicy spaghetti.  

Chinese calligraphy at the entrance of the park.  

After a bit of haggling we got our kites and settled into a beautiful patch of green.

One of the coolest things about China is getting to see older Chinese people 

do their daily exercises in sync with each other.  

By far the best part of our day - a few rounds of Uno at a Mahjong table 

in a traditional Chinese Tea House.

Making our way across town to get our nails done - a regular activity in any Asian country.  

 The boys were skeptical at first - but ended up loving it so much 

we went back a second time and had our toes done!

Eddie's favourite part of the day - Hot Pot!  By now the boys had tried Sichuan numbing peppers, ginger dumplings and spicy spaghetti.  But nothing could have prepared them for Hot Pot!  The entire process was only made worse by the fact that you were meant to dip the already slimy and slippery food into a steaming pot of hotness - with chopsticks.  We pretty much spent the night fishing our food out of the hottest bowl ever and sucking the oil off the end of our sticks.  

Still - it was pretty great our our sinuses were cleared out!