Spending the day with my Rat Rat

I love that Erika calls herself Rat Rat and calls me Mama Rat.  It really is so cute.  

The other day Katie had a substitute teaching job, Mike had an interview with the U and after worked at Smith and Edward's.  So I picked Erika up to spend the day with me.  We had a full day.  First we had to pick Grandma Kofoed up.  She had a doctor's appointment with Dr. Lewis.  And after we went to the Hospital to get some blood work done for Grandma.  That didn't take long cause Grandma forgot to fast.  We decided to do it another day.  Erika was so good, I told her I would buy her a treat.  She chose an ice cream cone.  We all went back to Grandma's and finished our ice cream cones.  I was scheduled to work up at the North Ogden Great Harvest.  Erika came with me.  She brought her little back pack filled with things to keep her busy while I worked.  But to my surprise Chris had someone else work.  At first Erika was a little bummed but not for long.  I asked her if she wanted to eat some lunch there and she got really excited.  After we were done I wanted to stop at a store and buy me some hair dye.  We stopped at Walmart.  What fun we had.  We walked around the store looking at the toys, christmas things, nail polish, hair dye, movies, etc.  We were there for quite awhile.  I purchased How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  We went back to Grandma's to watch it until Katie came to get her.

 

Nutcracker with the Girls

It was fun to go The Nutcracker with my sisters, their girls, and my Grandma.  We all enjoyed it.  But I am not going to lie I still get board during the second half of the play.   I thought maybe with age that would have changed.  I guess not.  Erika was pretty tired, she fell asleep during the second half.  Dani and Sariah loved it, especially Sariah. She told Katie that she wants to be in The Nutcracker when she is older.  It was fun to see them get excited about different parts.

Afterwards we all went to Farr's and got ice cream cones.  All the little girls picked play dough flavored ice cream.  I feel so lucky and blessed to have these ladies in my life. :)

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Margot Elizabeth Wood

The Nutcracker

 

It was fun to go The Nutcracker with my sisters, their girls, and my Grandma.  We all enjoyed it.  But I am not going to lie I still get board during the second half of the play.   I thought maybe with age that would have changed.  I guess not.  Erika was pretty tired, she fell asleep during the second half.  Dani and Sariah loved it, especially Sariah. She told Katie that she wants to be in The Nutcracker when she is older.  It was fun to see them get excited about different parts.

Afterwards we all went to Farr's and got ice cream cones.  All the little girls picked play dough flavored ice cream.  I feel so lucky and blessed to have these ladies in my life. :)

Lights at Temple Square

 

 

The Music and the Spoken Word

Hangzhou Botanical Garden

Every Monday is family date day for the Holmes family.  Mike does not work on Mondays.  On Monday the 14th of March we rode the bus to the Hangzhou  Botanical Gardens.  We had purchased cards that allow us to get into certain parks for free or at a discounted price.  So we were able to get in for free.  The park is huge, we walked a lot.   It didn't help that we got off the bus at the wrong entrance of where we had planned to go.  Not all of the flowers were in bloom, which made some of the park not as pretty as it might be now. We really wanted to the plum blossoms, which were beautiful.  Sariah called it her fairy land.

Here is the first slide I have seen in China.

Unfortunately there was no ladder.

Sariah's fairy land.

Erika was given this balloon by the people in the background.

We had a hard time finding an exit.  I am not sure if the one we took was a real exit. They are reconstructing this area.  We walked along this road to find a bus stop.

Hangzhou doesn't have parks for kids but there are exercise parks.

Fitting in with the Chinese fashion

One of the popular fashions in China is to wear glasses without lenses.  After I was told I noticed I would look twice to see if people had lenses in their glasses or not.  One day Katie and I were at a small store nearby her house.  There were a bunch of glasses with no lenses.  We joked about how funny we thought it was that people really wore them.    I put on a pair as a joke and to my surprise Katie liked them on me.  So I purchased the ones I put on.  I didn't look at any of the others.

The girls and I have had fun with them.

I love her smile.

This cracks me up every time.  Sariah and I laughed so hard the other day when we saw it.

She make a great slurping noise when she thinks something is yummy.

Erika being cool.

Xiangji Temple

Finally, I am going to post pictures.  Doing a blog is so new to me, I am still figuring out how to work it.  It takes me forever to get motivated.  I have tired to figure out how to post video's but no luck there.  I wish I could use You Tube, it would make things so much easier.  I found a couple of sites but they only allowed me to upload two video's, which seemed like a waste.  So no video's.  The internet here, at their apartment, isn't always very reliable.

Two weeks ago on Thursday the weather was really nice.  The prefect day for a bike ride.  Katie, the girls, and I went to see a Chinese Temple.  The temple was really neat.  We were only allowed to take pictures outside.  I wish I could take pictures inside, they had really cool giant statues of buddhas and cannons.  Some were craved out of wood, but the largest and most fearsome character was golden. They had to have been 12 to 20 feet tall.

Here are some pictures of the ride over and around the temple.

I love the look on Sariah's face.

We found out later that building is a restaurant boat.

The Xiangji Temple.

This is the courtyard of the temple.  It had about eight different building and each has a giant statue in it.

Showing that the doors are taller and me.  Unlike in Japan.

Since I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside I thought the best I can do is take a picture of a picture.  This is one of the statues we saw.  It's gorgeous and the colors of this particular one are so bright. The tiled background was especially impressive.  It is incredible.