Monday, December 22, 2008

Aren't they handsome!

Santa


My cute China boys on Santa's lap. They are staying home for Christmas this year. We did see Kathleen the first part of December when she came for her brother's wedding. She enjoyed the flight by herself! Kathleen's mom is spending Christmas with them.

China #2

The end of September, first of October, Daryl and I went to China. We had a great time. Daryl was up at 5 am every morning and went for a 2 hour bike ride. He came home and then took Liam to school on his bike. There are not many people out that time of day and so he said he could ride most anywhere. There are groups of older people doing exercises and dances or yoga. Jeff and Kathleen were on vacation the first week we were there and we took advantage of the bikes and bike carriers and went on a lot of bike rides. Daryl found a Walmart - it isn't ANYTHING like our Walmart - especially the meat department! We did some sightseeing and shopping.


This is Liam's school. This is a temple in a Chinese garden.


This is Century Park and the city is getting ready for the World Expo to be held there in 2010. It is a very nice park that has a stream of water running down both sides with tons of flowers.

One of the fun things we did was our visit to the planning and zoning building. Now, I know this doesn't sound like much fun, but they had an amazing scale model of the city of Shanghai including the new buildings, especially those for the Expo. Daryl could have spent days there.

We found a few shopping malls that are ten stories high with BMW's, Rolls Royce's, Mercedes Benz, etc. There are many many people at each station in the malls waiting to help you.

We were there for 2 1/2 weeks and can't wait to go back for another visit.

House

Daryl has wanted a project for awhile and every Sunday looks in the paper to see what houses are for sale. With the economy and housing market the way it is, there have been quite a few houses on short sales - ready to go into foreclosure. In August, we looked at a couple that needed some work (a project) and made an offer. It was accepted and the next weekend (Labor Day), we started moving in.

The house really can't be classified as a "fixer-upper" but needs some extensive work. All the windows and outside doors have leaked for a long time and need to be replaced; the inside is/was purple and all needed paint; the basement is completely unfinished. Oh, and it is a big house - our plan is to do the work and update it and then sell it in a couple years when the market turns.

The work done at this point is the basement has all new windows and one new door. We still need to replace one door in the basement. There is also a new window in the kitchen. The window replacement has been stopped at this point due to weather. We have done quite a bit of painting and have replaced some of the lighting and are now doing some electrical work. By they way, I use the term "we" loosely - Daryl works, I watch and run errands. I will post some pictures when I get them from one computer to another.