Poppa and Granny

It has been a long time since I have updated; sorry. I have a bunch to blog about so I will just dive right in. In February we took a trip to Beijing to pick up my dad and Karen. We took a train to Beijing. It was pretty nice. We ended up taking soft sleeper because we were originally trying to get round trip tickets. That didn't work, and we had to fly back to Hangzhou. Traveling around this time of year (Spring Festival a.k.a Chinese New Year) can be tricky. Anyway, we had a whole compartment to ourselves and it was pretty comfortable. To be honest, Jon and I did not really sleep that well, and we were up early the next morning, but it was comfortable. One time that night, I woke up and looked out the window. I actually saw stars!

Liam playing a video game on the train, Jon is watching.

Hallie is reading to them before bed time.

We arrived in Beijing around 6 am. It was pretty cold. But we were well bundled. The first day we spent checking into our hotel, and getting acquainted with the area. We bought a few groceries and took a nap. That evening we found Peter's Tex Mex!!! It was so very good.

They even had Dr Pepper!! We were so exited that we eve let the kids have some!

They had hard tacos.

We also ordered Nachos, but they were eaten quicker than I could take a picture. We don't get food like this very much.

The second day in Beijing we went to the airport and picked Poppa and Granny up! The flight from Chicago is about 14 hours--that is a long time to be on an airplane. The kids were very excited (me too) and Poppa and Granny were excited too!

Hugging Granny (not a great picture)

Hallie and Liam hugging Poppa ( Eryn is probably still hanging on to Granny)

From the airport we were going to take two taxis back to the hotel, we met a guy with a van, we negotiated a price we could all agree on and we were off (all together). It worked out well, and we hired the same guy to take us to the Great Wall and also back to the airport when we left Beijing.

We took Poppa and Granny back to get settled in and then went to dinner. Eating in China was a new experience for them! I will post more about the trip very soon.