Quinn Family love!

I have all these lovely thoughts in my head from the last of our 4 stops in US.  Now if I can just find the time to finish!!!

Thankfully, when we left the Calisoff’s house (see previous post) we didn’t need to get on another plane for our next stop.  We were off to spend time with the Quinn Family who live about an hour outside Chicago in St Charles.  St. Charles is super cute and spread out and has a wonderful shoe store that was so great I purchased 3 pair despite an upcoming trip to NYC!!! (shhh don’t tell Chris ;o)   Yes, it was that good!   I digress. 

The Quinns graciously picked us up and toted us to their beautiful home on a HUGE piece of land.  I have a tendency to get quite ‘green’ when I see that much grass.   We have been condo living for the kid’s entire life so it’s wonderful to see them run around on the grass.  I couldn’t wait to enjoy it myself as I promptly laid down in the soft grass and looked up at the amazing blue skies that one grows to appreciate immensely after living in Asia. 

From left to right: Indigo, 'little' Sara, Grace,
Helaina, John, & Katie

Sara and I met during the Chicago 3 day 60 mile walk and have been great friends ever since.  She also has 4 children (must be something in the Illinois water).  Sara and her family have come to see me in Florida, Hawaii (twice), and California so I was more than excited to visit her. 

Her youngest is 11 and her oldest is 17.  Truth be told I was a little worried that the kids had gotten older and might be bored with my little ones after then novelty wore off.  Shame on me as I should have known better.  Her children are the type of kids that prompt you to say “Lord, please let me children turn out to be that great.”   It is no exaggeration that they are all super smart, competitive, respectful, happy, patient, kind, (not to mention good looking), thoughtful and they enjoy hanging out with their parents.  You know by meeting their kids that Sara and Mike must have to look at each other and say we do great work together.

 If you have ever met Sara you would want to hang out with her too!   I refer to Sara as the same kind of crazy as me -- the good kind of course ;).

Onion chopping

One more of the million times Sara cracked me up

Their kids (and Sara) entertained my girls all the way!  There was frog catching, Polly pocket playing, swimming, sand box, book reading and a whole slew of things that kept them happy and entertained.  We also lay in the hammock, took bike rides and went to the zoo.  Like our previous hosts, Sara and Mike made us feel more than appreciated and special for coming. 

Big pool

little pool

Safety last

random gathering of children

Sushi.  Helaina and Indigo pretty much
ate more then all of us. true story

Indi was quite sweet on John

What a sweet visit.  Again, we are incredibly blessed to have such wonderful friends.  Now if only I could only convince them to come over to China for a visit.

Chi –Town: a few days in the life of the Calisoffs)

One thing about all the stops on this trip has been the same – it’s hard to say goodbye to the friends we have been visiting yet we are excited to see the friends/family we are off to see next.  This continued to a pinnacle when we finally returned home to see Chris. 

Our next stop in US tour 2014 brought us to see one of my longest standing friends from high school, Nikki (formerly Devensky) and the rest of the Calisoff family.  And when I say the rest of the Calisoff’s, I mean her mom (for a quick minute) her husband and her FOUR boys!!! Nikki’s entire brood is under the age of 7 including the 2 year old twins.  Before the trip, Helaina was lovingly referring to this stop as the house with the crazy/silly boys and as promised by Nikki, they delivered.  They are the lively bunch that you would expect from this make up. 

If you have kids (or even/especially if you don’t), you are probably saying, “I could not have that many children.”  But as a wise person once quoted to me, necessity is the motherhood of invention.  I would be failing miserably under this set up (and I say that out of honestly, not self pity).    Nikki has figured out a way to make it work for them and does things like blog everyday, exercises, cooks healthy fresh things and spends quality time with her awesome hubby.   One thing I love best about Nikki is her straight- forward honest approach.  If you have read her blog   (www.calisoff.com) she shares the fun as well as not so fun things of the days of her life in her intelligent and comical humor.  I can’t wait for her book!

If you remember we just left a house with 2 girls similar in ages and “we” sang the Frozen soundtrack ad nausea all week long, and played with all things girly, pink & frilly. It took the girls a couple days or so to adapt to the cars, trucks, ninja, and poopy talk– however, they quickly followed suit.  We had a couple stolen moments of playing girly things with mommy but mostly they were happy to ‘crash’ things up with the boys too.

Nikki, as always, was very thoughtful and decided to give us more of the city experience to contrast our trip so far.  They live in a wonderful area of Chicago that has a ton of great houses, parks, retail, amazing FOOD (of course) and is VERY walk-able!  Each time I have visited her I have serious Post Vacation Relocation Consideration (as borrowed from a friend).  However, that could change quickly if I ever decided to visit during the ‘chiller’ months.   The weather during this visit was unseasonably cool which I think was disappointing to those who had just undergone a seriously long and torturous winter.  However, it was perfect for us.   We hit the beach and many of the wonderful parks that give Burbank, CA a serious run for its money.  Nikki and I fit in a couple longer (for me), runs which felt amazing in the non-humid clean air with beautiful scenery and a great friend to talk to.  

I love the equal parts fear and thrill on Helaina's face
at one of the many awesome parks with water features

Why yes Jack is suspending Ben upside down

We were quite the production when we walked places.  I
can only imagine the looks we would have gotten in China.  

Indigo devoured a small crop of watermelon

Ben's huge grin

Jack and Indigo.  Indigo kept following Jack around the
house saying "Jaaaaayyyyyykkkkkkkk".  Apparently all the ladies love him

Bean dancing

Did I mention how awesome the public spaces are? This park
has a giant video screen of faces that shoot water out every few minutes.
Loved by kids and adults too!

Just look at that clean air I was breathing.  No wonder
I was able to run long stretches.  ;o)

Nikki's oldest son Jack reading to H, I, Aaron & Sam (her 2 year old twins)
Could that be any sweeter?

With 6 kids and 3 adults, we took up the entire Fro-yo place that we were in.  

 As always, the Calisoff’s went out of their way to make us feel special, loved and we will miss them tremendously.   We have no plans for a next trip but with our long standing history of friendship, I know we shall meet again! 

Bye Calisoffs.  (sniff sniff)

While in Chicago we also got to quickly visit Jodi bird, Erin’s sister.  It was nice of her to carve out time to come visit us and she even revealed to the girls that she is expecting her own little one this winter.  How exciting!  I did notice that she didn’t drink the water at Nikki’s house – she may not yet be ready for 4 of her own ;o)

The Gerichs Family and Idaho

If you have been following my Facebook posts at all you must know that the girls and I are doing a US tour to beat the Shanghai heat and see some good friends.  The big downer is that Chris had to stay and work and I had to travel internationally with 2 toddlers by myself (in Economy plus!!!). #firstworldproblems

The good news is the girls were internationally traveling rock stars again!  We had a few bumpy spots but overall they did amazing on the travel.  What's my secret?  Lots of Ipad shows and movies for the kiddos who don't watch TV or movies on a regular basis, loads of 'fun' snacks, and a backpack chocked full of silly activities like sticker books, pipe cleaners and any other novel things that they don't normally do.  They only slept a total of 2 and a 1/2 hours on our red eye flight however, that somehow magically worked itself into instant acclimation to the local time with no jet lag.  

That was a huge blessing considering we wanted to get after spending time with our buddies straight away.  We know the Gerichs from Hawaii.  They are a wonderful family that are great friends.  They have 2 daughters that are very close to our girls.  In fact, H and their oldest were born 2 weeks apart. The girls wasted no time giggling, holding hands, and singing what would only be the non-stop singing of the Frozen sound track ALL WEEK LONG.  It melts my heart to have a family unit where the kids get along as much as the adults.  Bonus!

If you have never been to Idaho, I highly recommend it.  It's straight up good clean beautiful wholesome living and people.  The girls swam in the pool, swung on monkey bars, played in the sandbox, picked blueberries, & went to a water park.

Blueberry pickin'

Most notably were honored to join our friends on a 3 day camping trip.  I had never been camping before so this was a real treat.   The Gerichs have been camping their whole life and have things down to a science.  Additionally, they took great pains to make sure us 1st timers were well taken care of including clothing us appropriately.  I am quite certain if we had to go on our own things would have been drastically different.  We enjoyed swimming in the refreshingly cold "Crick" - (or creek depending on where you are from), campfires (of course smores to go along with it), painting with nature, swimming in a hot spring and much much more.  Camping did not disappoint - with great friends, great times and FRESH air!  If only my love was there, it would have been beyond perfect!  Maybe next year  ;o)  Helaina was fascinated by the individual porta-potty that we brought that even had it's own tent.  It's the little things in life.  

Indigo also enjoyed the portable potty.
She has done amazing and didn't have any accidents on our flight!

Hopefully the girls overcame some of there "cityness" during their time there and on the other parts of their trip.  We started off with Helaina screaming at the top of her lungs because a fly had landed on her.

2 year old Simone explaining to Helaina
not to freak out because it's just a worm.

They also learned a lot about sharing with others - more than they have to at home.  There was some expected bickering with the kids that naturally comes with sharing your toys and such with people for more than a play date.  However in the end, my girls are still praying for their sweet friends and the time they got to spend with them.  

The toughness of my goodbye for the Gerichs was lessened as Megan (solo) has plans to come and see us in Shanghai in just a few months.  Although we don't currently have plans to get our families together at this moment, I am comforted by the fact that with friends like this, it will happen.  Thanks for all the great memories Gerichs family!

Japan and Japanese Friends

We have made it our mission to get out and see as much of Asia as our $$$ and time permits while we are here.  After the last trip to Cambodia , which was a slight fiasco, it was a good thing our trip to Japan was already booked or it's unlikely we would have gone.  Luckily, everything was set and the trip turned out great.  This time there were no delayed flights or interruptions and no one was ill.  Most importantly, our little world travelers were just that.  They gave us minimal amount of nagging.  Every once in a while Chris and I needed to reset our own expectations and remind ourselves that the girls are two and four - but that is not any different at home.

Sometimes a spot of Sake helped lower our expectations
for the girls at the nicer restaurants

No we didn't drink this much

What would an Asian vacation be without seeing and feeding monkeys?

The Japanese love Hello Kitty and so
do 2 little people I know

Indi is working on her smile

We spent 3 days in the big capital city of Tokyo and 2 and 1/2 in Kyoto which is more of a traditional Japanese setting.  If you don't know me that well, I must explain that when it comes to traveling, I am quite shallow.  Yes, I enjoy taking in a few temples and a museum or two.  However, just walking around the local neighborhoods, people watching, shopping, having a local beverage, and most importantly EATING are the things I like to do on vacation.  And eat did we!

For the record my favorite cuisine's, in no particular order, are Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and my first true foreign love.............Japanese (especially Sushi).  Now I haven't had the pleasure of going to India or Vietnam (yet) but I have been to Thailand.  In Thailand it was always somewhat challenging to order and you never knew quite what you would get.  I had some of the best and some of the worst Thai food I have ever had.  Now in Japan, there was not a single meal that I didn't LOVE.  We even picked up a bento box (described on Wiki as "a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento holds rice, fish or meat, with pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container.") from a train station that was lovely -- no really!

Best airport, train, or bus station meal ever.  So fresh

Every single thing we ate was fresh, delicious, clean, &  easy to order.
One of our favorite things was ordering food from a vending machine.  You put your money in, select your food vending machine style, take your ticket, sit down and your food is delivered a few minutes later.

Vending machine to order our food

We may have eaten Sushi once or twice (or 12 times) while there

"They pop in my mouth daddy"

kaiten-zushi -- who doesn't love sushi on a conveyor belt? 

Tempura

My mouth waters just thinking about this dish.

Cuteness under the table 

Japanese seems to love their sweet things and so did Helaina

More Sushi

These 'cute' lil' dry fish were consumed by the
girls and Chris.  I wasn't feeling that adventurous

Nabe

Japan had some delicious fried chicken

I could go on and on about food forever.  However, I must tell you that there were so many other things I loved about Japan.  I really do love living in Shanghai but as you may have read there are some challenges that come along with living here.  Japan seemed to answer all the things that are the hardest for me in Shanghai.  Although, I feel physically safe living in Shanghai (despite it being a huge massive city), petty theft is a huge problem.  Pick pockets, scams, & people looking how to make a dollar at someone's else's expense is a big concern here.  In Japan, people operate on trust.  How refreshing it was to see people ride there bikes pull up to where they were going and leave their bikes outside.  NO LOCKS people.  I have never lived or even vacationed in a place like that!  Another Shanghai comparison was the overall cleanliness of everything!  Surprisingly enough there were very few trash cans.  Chris actually had to carry a poopy diaper around for several hours before finding one to deposit it in.  But despite the lack of trash receptacles, there was hardly any trash and things were kept neat and orderly.  I also did not witness one single nose picking, loogie hocking, or public expelling of #1 or #2!  This may sound normal to you but not if you have been to or lived in Shanghai, what a treat!   One of the best clean things....The potty's.  Even the public squat pots were cleaner than many toilets I have seen at friends houses in the US!   They all had running warm water, TP and soap (and many with baday for the adventurous). This was especially helpful since Indigo decided she was ready to full fledged potty train whilst on vacation.  She did a great job but apparently she has great taste in or "WC" AKA, 'dooble-veh-ceh' because she stalled out for a good few weeks after returning to Shanghai.  We are back on track as today was her first accident free day but that is for another blog.

Another thing I loved about Japan was people's willingness to help.  I lost count for the number of times that someone came up to us while we were looking at a map trying to find our way and offered unsolicited help.  One man even walked me 3 blocks to show me where I should go.  It was refreshing.  
Another standout was Japans conveniences.  There were so many cool gadgets that made sense.  My favorite just might be the outlet in the safe in our hotel.  You always need to charge your devices but want to keep them safe while in a hotel -- brilliant! 

Being fair to Shanghai, there were a couple things that did make my return somewhat less painful.  I tried to focus really hard on those things upon our return.   Getting to the airport was a challenge as both airports were a good distance from town.  Taxi's were quite expensive compared to Shanghai -- (however, can you put a price on safe driving and cabs that I might have felt comfortable eating off the floor of?)  The few times we did take a cab, we had to keep reminding ourselves not to open or close the doors as most were automatic.  Because of the high cost, we opted to take the Metro quite a bit.  Although you could get almost anywhere on it, it was quite complicated.  There are many different operators of the trains so getting from one point to another was a bit of work and LOTS of transferring.  Hardly any of the signs were in English but luckily there was always a willing local to answer questions in their perfect English.   Also we did notice that not many people took their small children out to restaurants at night.   This made some of 2 and 4 year old typical outburst a bit more uncomfortable then in Shanghai.

"Intimate" traditional Japanese dining.  The girls loved eating
sitting on the floor but also saw it as an invitation to run around.
We only got scolded once by the waiter.  Yes, we were those people. 

Completely staged but it was tempting.

All in all we had a wonderful time and we got a little wind in our sail to keep booking our loft vacations while we are here.  Although it's not Asia, I would like to take advantage of minimizing my travel time by half (from Florida), not having to change time zones for the kiddos and being able to check out Austrailia and New Zealand in October.  Nothing is booked as of yet but I am hopeful!

And speaking of Japan........
As I have said before, one of my favorite parts of living in Shanghai is the expat community.  We have the pleasure of having friends from all over the world and it is a blessing.   When I got home I was feeling "1st world sorry for myself" that I would no longer have access to the Japanese food that I ate.  Imagine my luck when I received an invitation by two lovely Japanese friends for lunch in one of their homes.  Ayako and Saori are friends in my mommy group with children ages similar to Indigo.  We along with some other friends were invited to a homemade feast.  Everything was delightful and the presentation was stunning.  It was so nice to share the food and conversation while my youngest played with kiddos from all over the world.  While I am eagerly awaiting my visit to US next month, these are the type of experiences that will make my return to Shanghai a bit easier in August.

What a spread

This picture alone reminds me of the value of the girls time in Shanghai

Ayako - one of the lovely hostess