Thailand D3/D4

Finally some sunny skies and no one on the beach.

We also spent some time at the JW Marriott's pool area as we have access to it through our resort and it is close by.

This afternoon we spent time at the a safari park riding elephants and so on...but that is for another blog. Until next time....

Thailand - D2

Day 2 - Wednesday, October 7th... brings more on and off rain, so we ventured out with umbrellas in hand.Yesterday at the beach the waves and the surge were very high. Today they were not so high, but the beach here is very steep...so the occasional "surprise" wave happens.

Ava didn't like it when a huge wave surged ashore and took my shoes - that I had set on the high beach area...out to sea. I had to drop everything and make a quick run to save them. After a quick dash into and a dash back, a swish of the sand, and all was well.Spent some time at the pool today as well...this is Ava on the the kiddie slide pool. (fun for dad, too)

Until next time...Go Twins!

A Viking in Thailand

We are in THAILAND!! Although it rained almost all day today, we did have a good first day. The weather is warm so we checked out the nice swimming pools at our resort. - rain / swimming they go together...I guess. The place we are staying is the Phuket Marriott Vacation Club Resort and the rooms are nice and big...actually the room is suite with a common living area and two separate bed rooms. The picture above was taken from our balcony and the one below from the far end of our suite.

We arrived late last night as the flight from Shanghai is about 4 hours to Bangkok and then another hour to Phuket. We are here with our neighbors in Shanghai - the Sagans. Our kids idolize the older Sagan kids and it is OK for mom and dad to play "second fiddle" for the time being.Until next time... Go Vikes! 4 and O. I awoke very early this morning to watch the game on the internet. The right outcome and thus there was a smile on my face all day... Although the picture above didn't capture it. Smile Tony, smile.... ;)

Summer Reflections

We are having some difficult times accessing our blog and thus the updates are much fewer and farther between then we'd like as we are blocked from this website at our home. This is very frustrating to us and we've heard from the "frequent visitors" to our site that you have missed the updates. Well I'm in Korea for the evening and I happen to have a few pics in my computer from this summer. I have a few not all of them... Having this in mind, I'm dropping in some of our favorite pics from the summer... Remember your first carnival ride? This one is at Lakeside Park in Fond du Lac, WI.

A picnic with the cousins is always fun...

The first trip to the dentist...

Brandon and I at the 4th of July Parade in Devils Lake, ND. It takes me about 3 days and I have a full out beard... this one was taken at 2 days... ;)

{yes, my 15 year old son is taller than I}

More time with more cousins...at the Wixo Lake Cabin...

One final pic from Hong Kong. This is taken near the bay at Stanley Market. Cool place...

Until next time...our next blog will be from Thailand. Taking some time off...

First Day of Preschool

It finally came...the first day of school! We were so excited to finally be able to put on our uniforms and pack all of our new school gear into our backpacks.

We are just like all the other big kids in our neighborhood now...except we don't get to ride the bus. Mommy and the driver take us to school with some of our friends.

Caden liked music class and the spaghetti for lunch. I liked the puzzles and apples and rice. We didn't have time to brush our teeth and it rained so we didn't get to go on the playground - maybe tomorrow. We liked our teacher Robin, but we didn't like the Chinese sticky rice cakes for snack. We both cried a little bit, but the teacher gave us ooh ahhs to make us feel better.

We were very tired when we got home and Mama said we were whiney the rest of the day. I will go to school tomorrow, but Mama needs to stay with me.

Day two of school... no pictures, too many tears.

Until next time...here's to hoping the" first day enthusiasm" comes back!

A Bit of Our Time at the Home of the Panda

This past June, Brandon and I took some time to visit Chengdu, China. Chengdu is the home of the panda. So I looked into the opportunity and happened upon..."feed the pandas". So we visited the National Panda Breeding Center high, high in the surrounding mountains... but before we could feed them we first had to put on these goofy coveralls.

On this day it was about 95 degrees with about 85% humidity. Needless to say they were not comfortable (nor stylish) but we did get to feed the pandas as you can see below.

The pandas native diet is one of bamboo. The bamboo, they told us, is only found high in the mountain tops in the surrounding area. We fed them panda "cookies" which is their main diet at this facility. The cookies are made from a combination of rice, sugar, wheat, and ground up bamboo. After we fed the pandas (about 6 of them), we then had to carry some bamboo into their roaming area.

The feeding experience was rather surreal. Though one must keep in mind - these are bears - they are very gentle animals. They would grab their cookie and sit on their rears with their hind feet out in front of them. These bears were in captivity obviously but I did not get the impression that they were aggressive. Having this said, we didn't take our chances and we were very cautious.

Until next time...a hard days work deserves a bowl of noodles (and a Coke).

We are back...

Sorry for the long time since we last wrote. It has been more than 2 months since our last post. The reason for this is delay is two fold. 1. We were in the US over the summer for only one month and this was an action packed month as Sabrina typically spends two months in the US. This didn't afford us any real time to sit down and pound out a blog. 2. We then left for China at the end of July and arrived August 1st. As noted in previous blogs our blog is still not accessible in China. This is rather frustrating, but it is what it is. We did find a secret way to get on so I think our blog posts should increase. I am also heading to Taiwan this next week so I'll take some time and provide an update. Taiwan does not have a block on any websites including Facebook or Blogger...

Until next time....