Modeling Gig

Yes, it's true, Kate and AJ had their first modeling gig here in China. As you drive up and down the streets here, you will see small clothing shops everywhere. There are a lot of clothing designers here. Not sure why. I am in a Shanghai moms group online, and I saw a post about one of the moms, a designer, who needed models for her kids' line. Well, I knew she wouldn't be able to say no once she saw how cute our kids are, so I responded. Her idea was to make personalized t-shirts for kids. I was thinking, could be cute, but not sure about it. Here are just a few of the shots they got. The first ones are the ones where they used a little photoshop.

Super cute, but you can't read their shirts because they had to lighten up the picture so much. They say "Twin Sis" and "Twin Bro". Not sure why they decided to put "katie and aj", when the shirt obviously says, Kate. Oh, well, not my clothing line. AJ was being a funny boy that day.They were doing good trying to show off the merchandise. Hey come on guys, there's a party over here! Kate and AJ seemed to have fun with it, and we got a few cute pics in the process.

Food Philosophy

A couple of weeks ago, two of my co-workers and I went to have lunch together. Since the frog eating incident, I have tried my best to avoid office lunches without offending the people that will make our company successful here. On this particular day, I was unsuccessful! We went to a local restaurant where we proceeded to order some sort of "mud-bug", egg plant, chicken feet and a pork dish of some sort. I must tell you that here, there is no thought of de-boning or removing of the fat, so the pork is more like pork flavored chewing gum with a hard bone in the center - Mmmmm delicious. I think I have described that the people here throw the whole piece in their mouth and proceed to remove the bone and spit it out, much like the de-shelling of a sunflower seed. During this meal I asked some specific questions about my co-workers eating habits. I was told of some old sayings from Guangzhou (a region in China known for its great food) that when translated go something like this:

We (the Chinese) will eat anything with four legs except a chair

We will eat anything with wings except a plane

We will eat anything from the water except a boat

We will eat anything with hair except a brush

Yep! - That pretty much sums it up.

It was this conversation that got me to thinking about my own food eating philosophy/sayings. I know that in general conversation I have stated many of my rules for eating, but I have never written them down...so here goes:

I will not eat anything with suction cups

I will not eat anything that I would also sleep with (good news for my family and pets)

I will eat anything that is fried as long as it does not conflict with other food eating principles

Ranch is the Michael Jordan of condiments

In the future, I will not eat anything that makes my arms or legs go numb

Peanut Butter + Chocolate = Magic

Butter is good!

If poop tasted like a Kit Kat, I would eat it!

Don't eat fungus

Later

Hong Kong

Sorry we've been off the grid for a while, we just got back from a short trip to Hong Kong. We went to the Disneyland and then stayed in the city for one night. We are glad that we will have an extra set of hands on the next trip we take. That's you Dad!

As we suspected, they loved Disneyland. We kept hearing how small it is, and everyone who told us that was right. It would not have kept older kids entertained for long, but for two year olds, perfect! There were the tea cups, Dumbo's flying ride, the carousel, a Winnie the Pooh ride, a Buzz Lightyear ride, cars, spaceships, and a few shows. Plenty to keep them entertained. The timing was good as well, because it was not very crowded, which meant a little more freedom for our two who like to explore(i.e. run away from us in opposite directions).

Hong Kong is a beautiful city that was a mix of San Francisco and Hawaii. There were incredible hills and it was lush and tropical. It is a very rich city, we discovered. We lost count of how many Ferraris we saw, and didn't even try to count the number of Bentleys. We fit right in, with our shorts, t-shirts, tennis shoes, and two screaming kids! Actually, though, Hong Kong was nice for many reasons. Every sign is in English as well as Chinese, most people speak English, the taxis are bigger(for us that is noticeable since we always cram in the back of one in Shanghai), we actually had people offer to help us instead of running over us to get there first, and we found Dr. Pepper. All these things we'd been used to living without in Shanghai, so we enjoyed it for a few days.

So, here are the pics. The only decent family pic:) We walked into the hotel to check in and Cinderella was there, I didn't get the camera out quick enough to capture the excitement on Kate's face. Breakfast with the characters was fun. They didn't really know most of them, but that didn't stop them from loving it. AJ running up to Mickey. Kate enamored with Minnie. They both liked Goofy, well, because he's goofy. He "picked" some fake flowers from the arrangement behind our table to give to Kate. We seem to have a lot of pictures on the carousel since it was their favorite, as you can see by their faces. AJ got to sit in the driver's seat, which made him feel, oh, so cool. And, well, he is! Just cooling off a bit. They didn't have to wring out their clothes this time. Our friends, the Youngs, just sent a bunch of pictures from their Disney World trip, and they got about 25 good family pics in front of Cinderella's castle. This is what we got! As you can see our kids are not fighting being in the strollers. As this does not usually happen, know that they were exhausted and they were watching fire works. AJ especially liked the show. The rest of our trip we were in Hong Kong, and since it was incredibly cloudy/smoggy, we didn't take any pics that are worth sharing, but Hong Kong is set in a beautiful part of the world.

Recent Pictures

I wonder what the Chinese equivalent of white trash would be? Whatever it is, Kate and AJ are pulling off the look well. It was fun to watch them stomp around the apartment with our shoes on, unfortunately, we didn't get the video camera out in time. Since this picture, they have stopped using their pacifiers. Yeah, before three! Now let's see if we can get out of diapers before then.
Even though we took this picture, we don't condone topless dancing.

There is a big park here, Century Park, where the water fountains and little amusement park are, and they really love to get to run around and play. AJ bookin' it when the water came on suddenly. Kate wringing out her clothes after the fountain play. It didn't help much, they were soaked. AJ watching Kate and Mike on the bumper cars. We walked from the park to an eating area, and they loved being on Daddy's shoulders. Of course, they almost hit their heads on the trees. AJ got a kick out of wearing his hat and Mike's. He kept saying, "Two Hats, Mommy!" Kate looking cute in her hat, too.They have a lot of fun at a nearby play area. Kate puts on the Jasmine or Belle costume as soon as she walks in. Then she goes to the mic to show off her musical prowess with a riveting rendition of the ABC's. AJ usually goes straight to the train table, then works his way around to the other boy things. He got very into the construction stuff this day.

Another great example of the attention they get here. We stopped for a minute to buy some "cotton candy" from a street vendor, and this crowd formed in that time. Notice AJ. There was a guy with a video camera as well, but he put it away before I could get out my camera. Every time this happens, which is a lot, we wonder, "What are they going to do with the pictures?!"

We had to buy swim caps to be able to use our pool, so they got into their new "hats". Funny!

Home Sick

Sundays here are very different. Even though we have a church we can go to, the service is in the middle of the day, 3:00. With kids that are usually napping at that time, it is hard to figure out our day around it. So, all this made me home sick today. Sundays at home start a little hectic, but we love being able to get up and get ready to go to church. Maybe stop for a special treat of donuts, where we usually see one neighbor headed to church, too. Then we can take our kids to a familiar, comfortable place where we know they will hear about Jesus. And we are able to go fellowship with our friends. A quick lunch after church, then home for a nap and some football. Then a fun evening with our Sunday night dinner friends.
Here, just getting to church is interesting, since we don't have our driver on Sundays, we have to take a taxi. Lately, taxi rides have been iffy. Kate has had a sudden burst of motion sickness, and that could be a whole other blog in itself. Each time we leave the house now, we are stocked with a ziploc, change of clothes, and a plastic bag, that she has come to call her "throw up bag". Sounds fun, I know, and you may ask yourself, as we do, is it worth it?! We decided, we would go to lunch and walk around an area that is half way from our house to church so that we can break up the taxi rides. I think it worked well, no vomit. After lunch and wandering around a little, we taxied to another area closer to church to wander around, again, no vomit, bonus. We didn't do much, but it was what we like to call a penalty kill. We seem to be doing a lot of that lately, you know, things to kill time because you really don't have any thing else to do. No, you probably don't know because you're all busy with something or at least enjoy just relaxing at home. Here, home is a small apartment that gets a little crowded with two, high energy two year olds. And to Mike's dismay, no football. Actually, there's football, but it's really soccer. So, once we get to church, sit through the service and get home (no vomit then either, extra bonus), there's not much for us to do except find another penalty kill. Basically, Mike and I work all day just clearing the puck out of the zone. Today, we watched two movies, which is about a week's worth at home. There's some value to Disney, isn't there?!

"The Pit"

The Russ family (mostly Bekah and I) have grown lackadaisical on one of our most important rules for raising our kids, and yesterday, was a brutal reminder of why we avoid THE BALL PIT.

The summer after my senior year in high school, I took a job working at a bread factor. This job was going to be the greatest money making venture of my life. I was set to earn the large sum of $9.00/hr to simply make bread - easy enough. In fact many of the people reading this blog will remember that I tried to recruit them to join me in what I called "the richest summer ever"! I had already planned all of the things that I was going to buy with my newfound fortune, but it wasn't meant to be...I only lasted 3 days before I quit. A friend later wrote a song called three days in hell to commemorate my time at the bread factory. I would love to take some time and recount those three days of bread making genius, but this blog is not dedicated to that brief chapter in my life. What I learned as a result of quiting at the bread factory and subsequent 2nd job of the summer is the "meat" of my message.

Desperate for a job to earn some spending cash for all my "ladies", I took a job as the "Game Technician" for a little outfit called Chuck-E-Cheeses Enterprises. In my mind, I was several notches up from the lowly pizza runners that were a dime a dozen, I was 1 of 3 game technicians for the Lewisville store that also happened to have the highest play rate of any arcade in the metroplex. I was big time! It was here that I promised myself that if I was fortunate to have a child and if I wanted to be even a marginal parent, I would not allow my kids to EVER play in a ball pit. One of my main job functions, to go along with making sure that ski-ball, pop-a-shot, whack-a-mole and the various other games were in working order, was to make sure that the ball pit was clean and sanitary. The evening of my first day, the last item on my checklist was to make sure that the ball pit was clean. To do this properly, all of the balls are removed from the pit and put into a garbage bag, the garbage bag is then taken to the utility closet and all of the balls are washed as quickly as possible in the utility sink (sometimes with soap and sometimes not so much). Then, prior to returning the washed balls to their home, you were supposed to remove any loose items that had been caught in the netting that holds both child and balls. It was then that I made a startling revelation...I will never let my kid swim in a pit of balls. There starring up at me from the bottom of the empty pit were several pieces of candy, chewed gum, Barbie arms & heads (severed of course), several dozen of the "prize" toys that are purchased with the tickets won on the games that I maintained, stained netting (I would supposed some sort of concoction of urine and vomit) and...a petrified poo log! Yikes! I knew that many of the past Game Technicians apparently had not taken their job a seriously as I. I put on my C.E.C. hazmat uniform and managed to remove the debris, but was unable to do anything about the stains. My manager later told me that it is not unusual for ball pits to go several months without a good cleaning.

(Now take that same ball pit and put it in a country that routinely goes to the restroom anywhere and everywhere and dresses their children in pants without a crotch.)

Why do I tell you this story from my youth? Because yesterday the curse of "the pit" took its vengeance out on my children. Bekah and our ayi took Kate and AJ to the ball pit in our apartment complex. When they arrived, there was only one other child playing in "the pit" - fortunately for us, he wasn't wearing poopoo pants...unfortunately for Kate and AJ he wasn't wearing pants at all. You may be saying to yourself that is when you would have turned around and walk away, but you are not in a foreign country, with little else to do and high amounts of pollution clouding your mind. Before Bekah could get her wits about her, our ayi had already put the kids in with the balls. So, in violation of rule #1 in the Russ parenting book, we allowed Kate and AJ to play in a ball pit. Apparently our complex's ball pit is equipped with the latest and greatest invention...the urine slide!

Maybe in relaying this story, we can save some other children from the pain that can be caused by the ball pit. Maybe some of you reading this are thinking "of course" I already knew that about ball pits, and maybe there is another small faction that is thinking..."a urine slide - sounds fun"! This is just the latest in a string of minor disasters from our time here.

Days here will seem to be going along fine, then wham! - A BIG KICK TO THE GROIN. It happens almost every third day. So much so that Bekah and I have adopted a phrase call T.I.C. This Is China is similar to Hakunah Matatah - "It's our problem free philosophy".

And yes - I have worn the Chuck-E-Cheese costume!

We're OK!

Just to let everyone know, we're OK! We got a lot of rain, but no real typhoon activity. I think the worst of it hit just outside the city and on the coast. Thanks for all your emails and prayers.