Weekend trip

Wow,

What a beautiful set of kids we have!! It will be a sweet reunion when we see each other again. Hugging with some good old-fashioned tickling soon thereafter.

I spent the weekend at the most famous mountain range in China. It was kind of a "farewell" trip for my engineering team at work. It involved a 7 hour bus ride each way with lots of steps in between. An old chinese proverb states, "Once you have seen Huangshan, you have seen all mountains." Click here for the stats. It did not disappoint despite some overcast weather. I'll let the pictures help tell the story.

This looked precarious and death-defying until a woman's head popped into the shot.


There were 2 teams. Team 1 was the "I don't care if I walk like a 90 year old woman on Monday" team. Team 2 was the "If you see one of the peaks, you've seen them all" team. This was Team 1. And yes, we need walkers today.
We were not looking quite so chipper at the end of the day.
This mountain range is famous for the "cloud sea" that can be seen from the upper peaks. We saw a lot of this as the days were mostly cloudy.
Yep.
You can find a small lake down in the bottom of that gorge, if you look closely. Also, see if you can find Waldo.

I have lots more pictures to load but blogger is giving me the bizness. I might try again later.

Give my family a hug for me.

Pictures from Holland

Anna has been such a big help to me with Ryan gone. She has been loving getting Rachel out of her crib, holding Rachel, and helping me in the gardens. Today she noticed that I still have not made a walking path through the newest flower beds so she decided to make her own. Her creativity always amazes me!

Elijah also has been a great helper to me. He has loved having the airplane shipment toys be at our house. He missed his race cars and track. He LOVES to hold Rachel and to kiss her--she gets 100's of kisses from her big brother. Elijah has also been so kind and generous in letting Anna sleep with him on the nights that she is feeling afraid.

Rachel is getting so big--I can't believe it! She is crawling more than scooting now. I took maybe one of the last pictures of her doing the army crawl. I took some video of her crawling--I have no idea how to get it on the blog, but I took it! :) She is happy really all of the time. She gets into everything. Her favorite things are books, Elijah's cars, and standing (holding onto something) to watching Anna and Elijah play.

We are doing well-- trying to keep busy to distract ourselves from missing Ryan. We have been enjoying being with family and friends that we have missed so much. I wish I would remember to bring my camera with us everywhere we go. We have been to some of our favorite places and not captured the moments-- Nana and Papa's, Gramma and Papa's, the library, the Critter Barn.... the list goes on and on.

We miss you, Ryan! (Thank you for the beautiful flowers!)

anybody out there?

Whoa,
I'm not sure anyone is left here at this ghost town of a blog. But just in case, here are some pictures of my recent trip to Hanzhou, a famous city near to Shanghai. It's known for a picturesque lake called "West Lake" and lots of beautiful gardens/streams/architecture.....oh, and tons of people, at least on the weekends.

This city had 1 million people living in it 1276. Yeah, Columbus did not even discover America until 1492.

I visited with our good friends Joab/Emily/Miriam/Asa. Miriam is not pictured as she was on the back of my ride.

I rode the 9 miles around the lake on this smokin' hot ride. My knees just barely got beneath the handlebars. And yes, those wheels looked pretty cool while spinning.
We rode a cable car to the "North Peak" and got a great view of the lake and city.


There are lots of gardens/streams that make pretty good kodak moments.

This is the famous West Lake...
This would have been a real nice photo if the knucklehead hadn't ruined it.
Traditional chinese bridge. One of my favorite pieces of architecture in China.
Yes, that is a fanny pack. However, I never wear it on the side of my hips.

It was a great trip and a wonderful memory made with the Meyer family. You can check out their blog on the right hand side there on this web page, see "Global Meyer Minutes".