Some Randomness for your Saturday

I wanted to pop in today and share a few random things that are going on with us right now.  This picture has absolutely nothing to do with the post, but is one of my favorites from our recent vacation - the Great Wall was a phenomenal experience for us and surpassed all of our expectations :), if you can - find a way to get yourself there.

... our computer charger stopped working.  We got home from vacation and our Mac wouldn't charge. My husband is a great researcher and he was able to watch a YouTube video and re-wire our Mac charger and now it is working again - his skliz amaze me, I wouldn't even know where to start with fixing that problem.  Needless to say, we have been a bit slower to download our vacation pictures this go around :).

... our neighborhood is decked out in Halloween decorations.  I am so excited that my kiddos will get to experience a semi-normal Halloween.  We kicked off Halloween today with a neighborhood party complete with games, crafts and pumpkin hats.  And on Monday, the girls will have a school parade, Halloween parties and then a neighborhood party just for foreigners.  It still feels absolutely crazy every time I refer to myself as a foreigner.  Also, after four straight years of Emma being some sort of animal (a monkey, a elephant, a cow and a giraffe), she opted to be a princess this year.  I feel completely torn up about this :/.

... to keep the holiday randomness going, we are going to Thailand for Thanksgiving.  When it came right down to it, I just had this nagging feeling that we needed to spend Thanksgiving at a beach (we have spent the last five years in Port Aransas with my family for Thanksgiving)! I know I will be all sorts of sad when I see pictures of my family together popping up on Instagram, so hopefully this will ease the pain a little bit.  It will be a quick trip, but we are excited to soak in lots of family time and talk about what we are each thankful for :).

... the girls mention at least one time a day how they miss Nonni, Papa George, Grandma and Grandpa; we have officially started the countdown over here - 48 days to go!!!  We are pumped that we get to see all of our favorite people!

... I am still thinking about the steak that we ate at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant in Shanghai! We don't eat a lot of red meat in general in China, so that fact combined with the steak being cooked perfectly (medium-rare) was quite a memorable experience! And I could totally go for a another one ;).

... I got my first real haircut in probably close to two years!  I have just had Wes give me trims for the last two years, well we found out the place in our neighborhood gives head massages and hair cuts and speaks a tiny bit of English - so one hour and 80 RMB (about $12) later, I was feeling like a new person.  I tried to convince Emma to go with me to get her hair cut - just a trim, but when it came right down to it, she was a little bit too nervous.  4.5 years old and still no hair cut yet :).

... we are heading back to our favorite playground tomorrow. The girls adore that playground and it sounds like a perfect low-key activity after 8 days of go-go-go on vacation followed by four days of go-go-go school/work routine.

... I mentioned this briefly in my last post, but our stroller got stolen at Shanghai Disney.  It was close to the end of the day, about 5ish and we were walking to ride the Hunny Pot ride when we spotted Rapunzel at the princess station.  Rapunzel is one of Emma's favorites, so we hurried over to see if we could get in line to find out that they were closed.  I told a broken-hearted Emma that we would just have to wave hi, because the line was closed for the day.  Emma waved hi! and Rapunzel and Emma started chatting with each other in between other visitors and so I asked Rapunzel if she would stay so we could get in line and she said yes!! So we hurried over just leaving our stroller right where we were.  Well, by the time we got out of line (we were the last) our stroller was nowhere to be found.  A couple of Disney security and checks around the park, they couldn't find it and we were on our way strollerless.  The price of the stroller is no big deal, the big deal - we were on our 2nd day of an 8 day mostly-walking/exploring vacation... ay yay yay.  At least I had brought the Ergo with us.  For the next 6 days, I toted 35 pound Emma around in the baby carrier.  My back is still recovering.

... I have become obsessed with dried mango's. I just thought you might like to know that :).

Hope you have a great rest of your weekend! See you back here next week!!