Massive Update

Wow! We've gotten busy with life and all of a sudden we only have three weeks left in China! Time sure goes by quickly.
Even though there has been a lot going on, we haven't updated our blog in a little bit, so this update will cover a lot of stuff!


First, from the end of September to the first week of October is the last major holiday season in China until the Chinese new year in late January/Early February. We are sad we are going to miss that... But anyway we decided not to go anywhere this time. We were thinking that we could go to Xi'an, but it ended up being too much money and too much of a hastle with little kids to go too far outside of Beijing. But we did have a fun Rail Baron game, last one we will host in China. It was a fun game. It always seems to happen at the end of the game, including this game, where someone is going home, and I am close enough to catch them (and their $50,000) but roll one spot short of them. C'est la vie. We had fun.


As Canadian Thanksgiving does not really get a lot of credit outside of Canada, Chelsey and decided to host a small thanksgiving party for the Canadians (and spouses) in our branch, plus one from work. We did it on the Friday after Thanksgiving. We could not find turkey's at all right now (come US thanksgiving we can find them) so we did a couple large chickens. We had a bit of a (mis)adventure with that. We decided to debone them. That went fine enough, and it made it easy to cut up the chicken afterwards. We also cooked the Chicken in a crock pot. Which is where the misadventure part started happening. We decided to stuff the chickens with some stuffing that we made the other day. The stuffing got overcooked a little bit as one of the chickens split open during cooking. One (borrowed) Crock pot decided it did not like our transformer - the transformer started to smoke and also shorted the crock pot. So we put the chicken in a double boiler to cook (it worked) all day. The chicken got a little overcooked, so it fell apart, but at least it was not dry. Other then this, our dinner went really well! We had about 14 people all in all, and everyone had a lot of fun.

Now, our Jada update. She seems to be getting taller everyday, but not much heavier. She weighs in at a little over 10Kg. She is also quite smart, and understands a lot of words in both English and Chinese. The other day we were out and somebody said hello to her in Chinese and she started waving at them. She does so many cute things: She dances with music (wiggling her little body around). She has discovered dipping french fries in ketchup or bbq sauce (she loves it! So much that she started to dip just to get the sauce!). She copies us a lot, when she sees Chelsey sweep Jada will try to grab the broom and sweep as well. Once after she had made a mess she went and grabbed the broom and pushed her mess around a bit. She giggles, and all it takes to get her going is to Chelsey laugh a little bit. She is also very ticklish. She first smiles, but after the second or third time tickling her, she is going in full laughs. She is getting 4 new teeth, really close together too. A couple of weeks ago, she got her first molars on top. Then this morning we noticed that she is (finally) getting her next two bottom middle teeth. Poor Jada, did not get a break at all with those teeth! But by the time we are in Canada, she will look like she has a mouthful of teeth! Jada also will fake cough when Chelsey coughs. It is pretty funny!

Well, I think that is everything that is going on. We've been doing a lot more stuff around Beijing, at least shopping. We are almost done that, still a few more things to get. The Weather turned colder the last few days, so still have to do some of the outdoor touristy things. We've been here for a year and a half and still need to go see somethings. You might ask how is that possible, but we get busy with work then don't feel like going out on our day off.