She's Baaaccckkkk!!

Miraculously, Snowflake made her way to China (we ended up discussing in detail and she had to take two planes to get here ;)).

  

During the week, Wes helped me to gather all of the supplies and on Saturday morning, we surprised the girls with their North Pole Breakfast (China edition).

Complete with donuts, hot chocolate (chocolate milk) and all the marshmallows they wanted!

And she brought a little present for the girls too ;).

I was pretty pleased that all of those Christmas straws that I had been saving since last year made it (and were able to be located) too!

Wes was able to find the headbands at our local grocery store.

Ariel shot :).  I am not going to lie, most of the time I feel like I am just doing so-so on the whole parenting thing, but when I put together something like this - it makes me feel like I am top of this whole mom thing!

Wes handed me the camera when the girls woke up and this is him turning the lights on, Emma being blinded by the light and Everly taking a look at what Snowflake had brought :).

A little bit of confusion :).

Before the excitement set in (p.s. I just love this bedhead shot).

Her first act of business, pointing at Snowflake and grabbing her donut to take a bite :).

Here we started to discuss how Snowflake arrived (the girls ask so many more questions this year, I almost was not prepared for it ?!!)

and the girls dug into their presents! Funny side story, Wes was shopping while I was at work and he sent me a picture of the snowman that you see Everly holding and I definitely thought it was a stuffed animal, I was so sure it didn't even dawn on me to ask.  While he was putting the girls to bed last night I pulled out the stuff and I kept searching to find the stuffed animals - couldn't find them anywhere and it dawned on me that these snowman on a stick were my stuffed animals.  It all worked out fine and the girls said that Snowflake sent them magic wands so they could help them magic some snow ;).

Happy girls!

Snowflake brought the girls stickers and a piece of candy.

My favorite memory of the morning was watching Everly dig into her present while exclaiming, "oh gosh, oh gosh, ohhhhhhhh goooooooossssshhhhhh" every time she pulled out a sticker pad.

This is one of the girl's favorite chocolate's that we can find in China (the selection is pretty limited).

Those smiles make it all worth it :).

Sister smooches :).

We had a slow morning just enjoying our time together eating donuts and playing with stickers.

I think it is so funny, almost hilarious, to watch their little personalities emerge during play - Everly, our more free-spirited, easy-going kid just puther stickers wherever on the page.

While Emma, our more OCD (my mom likes to call it engineering) personality, lines her stickers all up in a line starting at the top of the page and working her way down.

These two were quite animated the whole morning and it was such a fun way to kick off the holiday season!

Snowflake was up to her first antics - while the girls were not looking, she flew to her first spot in our China house and the girls spent the rest of Saturday trying to convince her to fly down.

Welcome back Snowflake, we have missed you :).

Beijing | The Exhibition Hall

Glenn, our tour guide, ended up meeting us at our hotel and helped coordinate a taxi to the Beijing Exhibition Hall.  I just want to start off by saying that we would have not been as efficient or got as much our of Beijing had we not hired Glenn.  This was our first time opting for a private tour guide and it was worth every penny - we loved it.  It was so nice to not have to worry about transportation (he just hopped in the taxi with us).  If you are headed to Beijing and need a tour guide, let me know and I will give you his information. 

This was an important statue because it was a lion, with fish scales and ram horns and something else I am forgetting right now, which is why I should have written this post a month ago :).

I loved hearing about the layout of Beijing - with the rings it is a very similar layout to Chengdu.

All of the mountains surrounding Beijing!

In the middle is the forbidden city and Tian'anmen Square.

We went up to the next floor to see Beijing if you look at the longest road in Beijing that runs right through the heart of the city.

Here is Tien'anmen Square on the left and the Forbidden City on the right.

Coal park where we later climbed up to the top of that center building to get a panoramic view of the Forbidden City from above.

I have been a long time Olympic fan-lover and so I was definitely geeking out that we were going to get to see the Olympic park!

The famous bird's nest and water cube were my favorites!!

Then, we moved to the main attraction! A 3D model of Beijing - Glenn told us that they come in here every year to make corrections/adjustments as new buildings are added/demolished.  He pointed out all of the places that we would be going, other interesting sites and even our hotel!  It really gave us some perspective as to where we were staying and everywhere we would be going.

It was ginaormous.

So many buildings.

Can you believe we have made it this far in a blog post without a picture of our girls?!?

She loved taking a look.

This is where we had come in at the train station the night before.

Temple of Heaven.

The financial district which is newer and where the tallest buildings in Beijing are being built.

The girls discovered that they could push a button and make it go from daytime to nighttime.

Olympic park again :).

I also liked that from this perspective you could see how much greenery there was in Beijing - I am constantly amazed at how well done the parks are in China.

While we were waiting for the English movie to start, the girls had fun jumping around on this interactive play mat.

We watched the movie and learned so much about Beijing - our day was off to a great start!