China and more

I certainly don't get around to posting much. It's now October and I haven't posted all summer and especially since our trip to China! So I better start there. My sister Dawn and her daughter Quinlan (6) and I traveled to China May 18 - June 4 to pick up Lindsay (2), Dawn's new daughter! What an awesome adventure! We started in Beijing and chilled for a couple of days to get over jet lag and get ready for the real fun. We went to the city of Shenzhen in Guangdog province. Dawn has a really good blog here. This is the wild handoff video. This is fun in the hotel eating noodles. And this is the best when we're back in the Beijing hotel and settled and some shots from their home in Winnipeg - watch this. The following is what I posted on Dawn's site. I'm copying it here as it is a list (I am a list-maker!) of a lot of the things we did.

Lindsay's Lucky

Often, when someone hears that you have adopted a child, they say, "Oh that child is lucky" because they are going to Canada etc. But Dawn usually responds, "No, I am the lucky one" to have two beautiful children. Well, I have to say that Quinlan and Lindsay are very very lucky to have a wonderful, intelligent, thoughtful, adventurous, and very caring mom, Dawn. I am very proud of her and thank her for her inspiration and the opportunity to share in this journey.

We all did a lot on this trip.

Of course, the absolute best thing is what a spark Lindsay is. She is happy, engaged, curious, sly, playful, cuddly, willful, left and right handed, strong, still smells and fells like a baby, and is now another great part of the Sutherland family.

Other things that we did:
- safari park in Guangzhou was a surprising highlight (50+ tigers, 10+ animated panda bears, 20+ giraffes, an elephant troupe, koalas, rhinoceros, etc.) Great drive-though savanah.
- bought a cello for Quinlan
- went to an amusement park in Beijing (slogan is "because Disneyland is too far")
- shopping at pearl market twice
- lots of travel on subway. Map here http://www.chinahighlights.com/image/city/beijing/beijing-subway-map-2010.jpg
- new shopping area south of Tian'amen square at Qianmen station, was both Champs-Élysées-like (in a China kind of way), and also had a maze of Chinese-style shopping behind the main street
- many parks, including: Beihai (ho-hi) near Forbidden City , Ditan (Temple of Earth) near Dali Lhama temple, Purple Bamboo Park near Beijing Zoo, Summer Palace is magnificent and this time we saw it in the Summer, took a Dragon boat across the lake and had many Popsicles. Beijing map here http://www.chinaodysseytours.com/maps/photo/beijing-map-overview.gif
- Dawn still didn't get to the Forbidden City. It is not stroller-friendly or kid-friendly.
- bought a Lion and a Dragon marionette
- saw an awesome acrobat show
- climbed the steep section of the Great Wall http://kinabaloo.com/juyongguan_great_wall.html
- had to use UV-umbrellas for the first few days in Beijing
- could see the mountains from our hotel room in Beijing on one day
- ate lots of noodles, pizza, bacon and egg breakfasts, dumplings, etc.
- drank quite a lot of beer since it is almost as cheap as water and tastes better than water kept slightly cool in the hotel room fridge.
- ordered ice from room-service once
- met lots of nice people
- spent 3 hours on the tarmak leaving Beijing for Vancouver as they had to replace a part on the plane
- smiled and laughed a lot
- thought about how lucky we are


Another nice thing is that in September mom visited Dawn for 2 weeks in Winnipeg and then visited us in Calgary. Mom and I took a road trip to Jasper and it was beautiful weather and very nice to spend some time together. Mom will be 78 this year and lives in Toronto. We see each other probably twice a year. She's doing fine and has Glen and Jill near her. But it's a bit hard not to be closer, so it was really nice just to live together for 2 weeks. She loved Jasper.

Finally, for this post, I am turning 50 next week! Yikes! And Brett's football team went undefeated this year and will be in the playoffs beginning next week. And Barry, Brett and I are going to Europe (London, Paris, Munich, Venice, Rome) for 2 weeks in March. Well, you'll have to wait for the next post. In the meantime, here's a photo from Brett's 16th birthday at the Calgary Tower.