Bikes, Trikes, and a clever little joke that I'm sure you haven't heard before (is this title too long?)

It has been a while since the last post. Let me get you caught up to speed: Jenny and I have both been doing some college courses. Jenny has been doing Biology I, I have been doing College Writing I, and we have both been doing Psychology and Intro to Algebra (a.k.a. high school math) together. Three classes for the both of us.

Jenny has been working about twenty hours per week, watching the kids, and doing these classes all summer. Needless to say, she has been a busy little bee.

I have been doing those three classes and working my fitness consulting business full-time from home, which is going well. I'm waiting to hear back from the Minnetonka School District to see if I can get some more work there this coming school year. I'm also planning on getting a job for the weekends to get us back in the swing of things financially speaking.

The boys have been growing up quickly. Their favorite thing to do is ride their bikes/trikes outside. My favorite thing for them to do is play catch with me in the backyard, but they are not the biggest fans. (Why not?!)

Liam got a new tricycle today and he's been learning how to pedal (not peddle, which is to sell something that was stolen).

Yes, that is duct tape on his feet. He kept taking them off so I thought this was a clever way to help him figure it out. He did a pretty good job.

Allow me to share one of Liam's most recent jokes. I would categorize it as a classic "knock-knock" joke. If you choose not to allow me and are using a PC, feel free to hold ALT and press F4 or hold CTRL and press Q. If you are a Mac user, that's Command + W or Command + Q. For those of you who still have their internet open: Ahem... check check one two one two. Okay, here goes:

Liam: "Knock, knock"

Me: (or you, if that helps) "Who's there?"

Liam: "Levi"

Me/You: "Levi who?"

Liam: "Levi who?" (At this point Levi and Liam laugh uproariously.)

Feel free to share that one with as many people as you want as long as you give credit to my two year old.

Until next time!

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Rain!

We started the morning out by giving Levi his first shower ever. I turned it on, shoved him in there, and all I hear was joy-squealing with shouts of "rain!". It was adorable. I'm not fully confident he properly washed himself, but he had fun and enjoyed the experience. Our boy is growing up quickly.

While talking about son milestones, Liam asked to stop wearing his diaper at night times. So far, he's been sleeping at nap time and at night time sans-diaper and we've had no accidents. It's a wonderful milestone. I'm not a fan of diaper changing, though I'm not sure anyone is.

We then spent some time organizing the apartment.

Jenny took Levi to the store to get some ingredients for tonight's dinner: Meatballs, mashed potatoes, buttery rosemary skillet rolls, and home made red velvet cake for dessert! (YUM!)

During the time she was away, I was spending some time planning our anniversary which is coming up on the 2nd of June! It'll be our sixth anniversary.

I did my Tai Chi workout for the day while Jenny took a well-needed rest upstairs.

The Last Ten Seconds

11/19/2011 - Guys Morning

This morning, the boys and I went to Jenny's workplace to get some breakfast. She was so happy to see us and the boys enjoyed going as well because they have a little play area with toys and a chalkboard.


When the boys and I got home, we listened to some music and then watched a movie.


We were planning on going to Linder's for their grand opening night, but the snow was too much. We were slipping around while driving so we just stopped for some dinner then went home.


When we got back in the car to get home, one of our headlights was out, so Ron and I were working on fixing that while the boys, Aaron, and Jenny had a little snowball fight in the dark on the driveway. They had a great time and Liam kept coming up to me in the garage to throw a little pinch of snow at me.


We had our popcorn and movie night tonight so the movie tonight was Home Alone. We had a great day!

March 9th 2011 Video Blog!

Enjoy!

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Our awesome boys

Here’s just a quick post with some pictures of our two boys hanging out.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Liam’s 1st Birthday (part 2)

Our day with Liam was so good! Our little man seems to have grown up so fast! We spent some nice family time together this morning then had Liam’s first birthday party at 3pm. We had a great time with our friends and family here in Xi’an. Liam loved his cake, by the way. He dug right in! We have the two greatest little boys.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam 

Jenny at the village

There is a famous restaurant in the area called “The Village”. It’s famous because it serves decent western food; our dining there is not rare. :)

However, this is not the village Jenny went to. She went to an actual village. This was a little while back while I was out of town working at a camp for two weeks. She was crazy/incredible enough to take our two small boys there! It’s an hour-long bus ride each way.

You can see a video of it here! If you are not on our site, you can come watch the video by clicking here.

Hope you got a good idea of what a village looks like here in the Xi’An, China region!

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Liam Crawls

So the day after I left for the camps I was working at, Liam took the liberty to learn to start crawling. How selfish, right?!

 

Well by the time I got back, he’s still been mastering it, but at this point, he’s almost a pro.

 

He’s super cute, and of course now we’re dealing with chasing him around and making sure he doesn’t destroy everything! So far, he’s already killed the cords that connect our DVD player with our TV. Good work, Liam!

Liam laughs

Liam is super tickle-ish.

 

You can see some video of him laughing here. Enjoy!

 

 

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Liam eats

Today we got a good video of Liam feeding himself pancakes for the first time. He was going crazy on those things; he loves them! During the whole video, Levi was trying to steal the spotlight and for the most part, he did. Watch it here:

 

 

Something else that might be noteworthy: We now have a link that directs you to our YouTube channel, where you can see all the videos we have on the internet. You can find it under our “Important Links” section on the left side of our blog.

 

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

800 and some other updates

Yesterday marked the day where I passed 800 Chinese characters learned. It's been a difficult attempt at 2400 by 2011, but I'm going to press on! (Due to falling behind by our trip to Hong Kong and other factors, I'm behind my goal by 400!!!!!! (I know, I know!) I'm going to continue on, though! Really, four hundred spanned out among six months means I only have to learn an extra 60-70 per week. Not too bad compared to the overall goal.

Levi has been so active! We have gone swimming at a local indoor pool a couple times now. It's really fun! The water is heated (almost to a fault), so it feels like a warm bath. We bought some floaties for the boys here for about $2-$5, so they really enjoy feeling safe and independent in the pool. Even Liam :) Levi also really enjoys helping vacuum, which is ironic because it's actually much more difficult when he's "helping", haha.

Liam has been SO attached to his mommy lately. No matter who plays with him, he will always cry if Jenny walks past him and he remembers she's not holding or playing with him. On the plus side, he's been sleeping and eating a lot! We're thinking he might be hitting a growth spurt.

The Dragon Boat Festival is coming up, so I have a couple days off of work this coming week. It's been great teaching those kids. My largest class is 62 first graders... Can you believe it?! It can get out of hand really easily, haha!

That's all for now... Have a great day!

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Ferry to Kowloon

On the fourth of May, we took a short ferry ride to Kowloon. Once we crossed, we walked around a bit until we found a TGIF's.

A short but good time! Enjoy the video. Click here if you can't see it.



Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

The Hotel & Peak Tram

I am just getting over a sickness, so I haven't posted anything for the past couple days. Let's get right back into it, and post about our May 3rd in Hong Kong!

We took many pictures here. We started out eating some ice cream in the hotel in the morning. (It was SO hot/humid outside!)

After the afternoon naps, we snagged a bus to take us to the Peak Tram. What an incredible experience! It is beautiful up on top of that mountain! We spent some time in the mall which is up there, then went to the top floor to eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp. MMMmm!

After that, we spent some time looking at the city as the sun slowly set. We went to the McDonald's outside playplace, then returned home. What a great time! I recommend everyone goes to the Peak Tram if they find themselves in Hong Kong some day. Below is a video of us looking at the city from the mountaintop. If you are reading this via email or Facebook, click here to go to our blog so you can see it!





Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Outback Steakhouse

We have a new video up at the end of our first day in Hong Kong.

We originally flew in to Hong Kong on May 1st, which is a holiday here in China. Many Chinese were travelling to Hong Kong, so it was a little crazy with the amount of people.

We flew into Shenzhen, China, then rode a bus to Hong Kong. Partway through your bus ride, you need to get off the bus and go through customs. That's where we were stuck for a couple hours.

Outback was REALLY good, for those of you who were curious. ;)







If you want to watch this video and are reading this post via Facebook or email, click here to go to our site.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Liam's Big Head

Hey Everyone! We have a new video up of Liam! Here it is!



If you are seeing this via email or Facebook, click here to go to our site.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Da Da Da

Liam has been babbling so much lately! Sometimes, he'll just lay on the carpet and say "da-da-da-da-da"

It's really cute. He's working so hard on rolling over some more as well, but he hasn't done since he was three weeks old. (Click HERE to watch the video)

Levi and his friends love Liam a lot. Just today, Sydney was petting his hair and loving on him. It's adorable to watch and I'm happy that Liam has such great friends and family around him.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Coo

Liam has been cooing a lot lately! He's such a happy boy and we are so proud of him. He's making so many different sounds and it reminds us of when Levi was a little guy.

He's eating more and more and he's starting to lock his legs so he can maintain a standing position and he is practicing sitting up these days. He's a great little man!

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Newest Developments

Hello again!

Well we are "officially" unpacked and settled into our new apartment! We LOVE it here at this apartment, so that's a great transitional aspect of this whole trip. Our place is on the 18th floor, it has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a dining room/living room area as well. It's probably not as big as it sounds haha. It is furnished with everything we need minus a dryer, which we went out to buy a week ago. We are very grateful we can buy dryers here :)

We have two new pieces of information!

Levi is out of his pack-and-play and into a big boy bed! The change was surprisingly easy! He's been great staying in his bed at night and even during his nap-time. We are so proud of our boy! I even think he might sleep better in the bigger bed. (Maybe it's more comfortable?) Anyways the first morning he slept in the new bed I heard a squeaking sound coming from his room. I went in, and I didn't see him in his bed, so I quickly followed the noise to behind the curtains where he was sitting, looking out over the city from our 18th story window. It was really cute. (The squeaking sound was because he was twisting the metal rod that is a part of our fence that keeps him or other children from playing with and/or opening the windows. Baby-proofed 18th story windows... Glad to have those!)

Liam has his first teeth! The two front bottom ones. It explains a lot because he has been really uncomfortable and hasn't been eating as much, but by the posting of this blog, he is back to normal, so that's really good. Glad we brought Baby Orajel and Baby Tylenol!

I've got a job offer so they are working on my visa stuff. I'm not sure how long it'll take before we're all set up, but I'm excited! I hope it doesn't take long.

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

中国！！！

We've arrived in Xi'an!

Sorry it's been a couple days to write this, but it's been incredibly hectic, as I'm sure you'll all understand. Since this will be a hefty post, I'll separate the paragraphs by topic. Enjoy!

How did all that travelling go? Our flights were as awesome as they could be! Levi and Liam were CHAMPS! Levi happily got on plane after plane, despite the incredible length of time we spent on them. We flew from Minneapolis to Tokyo to Beijing (spent the night) to Xi'an. What was it like seeing your friends and brother's family again? It was amazing! We saw them when we were coming down to the baggage claim and everyone involved was beaming with happiness. Levi was pulling his little luggage along and I showed him Sydney and he ran to her with happiness and was not shy of anyone! In fact, we immediately left him with them while we went and "claimed" our luggage. He was completely okay with it! Seeing everyone again was such a great experience.

Where are you living now? We have taken over a place that our friend had while she was here. She moved back to America for now, so we just moved right in! Jenny and I LOVE it!!! We had the landlord over today and after some bartering and discussion we reached a great deal! We have signed a TWO YEAR lease on this apartment, which we are both very excited about. We can now "officially" move in! Can we see pictures? Definitely! Just please give us some time and we'll get you all the pictures you need! :) Since we didn't officially rent the apartment until today, we haven't focused on unpacking yet. We'll start all that tomorrow, and I'll take some pictures as soon as we get the place looking pretty nice. :)

What is next for you guys? We are going to focus on getting settled in and making our apartment a home. After that, the next task will be Jeremy getting his job teaching English and we'll both get set up with a Chinese tutor/school so we can get our learning going. Things move slowly here though, so we need to be patient and move forward with the progress we are allowed here in China.

How is the family feeling? All the boys are sick with a cold. I blame myself (Jeremy) because I got it in Minnesota and I was not being careful around the boys. Levi has a rough cough going on and Liam has coughs as well. Other than all that, we are really really happy to be here!

I hope that caught most of you up to date on us here in China! We'll be posting more as things progress around here!

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam