Happy birthday, teenager!

My oldest son turns 13 this week. Unbelievable!Here he is as a newborn in 1996.And here he is now. The thing that baffles me the most is how he could have grown so much and I still look exactly the same. One of the mysteries of the universe, I suppose.

Photo tag

Karmyn has tagged me with a photo meme. Here are the rules:
1.Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.

2.Go to the 6th Folder, then pick the 6th picture in that folder.

3.Post that picture on your blog and the story that goes along with the picture.

4.Tag 6 other peoples that you know or don’t know to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog or an e-mail letting them know you chose them.

When I went to my sixth folder, I found nothing but more folders (yes, I am obsessive about organizing my photos). So I went to the sixth folder and then found the sixth picture there. Here it is:This is a picture of my oldest son looking out the open doorway on the end of our house. We have since installed a deck outside that door. Interesting side note: our neighbors' cat used to climb up that ladder to get into the house.

Now, since Karmyn thought this would be a good chance for me to share more China photos, I hate to disappoint, so here's a China pic for you:
We saw this on the sides of all the public trash cans on Mt. Tai. If anyone knows what the Chinese actually says, I'd love to know. I'm relatively sure it's not an invitation to live in the garbage can. But then, when you've got such a huge population, maybe this is free public housing.

Confucius say, "Wise man stay at sea level."

After walking around the highest point of Mt. Tai and admiring the view, we began our descent back to the cable car station. We went down a different way than we came up. One of the temples we passed on the way down was called the Confucius Temple. Confucius wrote about this mountain and apparently climbed it more than once, long before there were buses or cable cars. And I thought Confucius was supposed to be wise!The guys coming down those steps were Indonesian tourists with a Chinese friend of theirs, who were all speaking English to each other. We chatted with them a bit on the way down the many, many steps. We went through several gates on the way down. Each of them has an interesting name, but you pretty much have to know Chinese to read them. Here is one of them.You can also see some of the many shops over on the right. They sold everything from souvenirs to hot tea and noodles. The hot souvenir seemed to be rocks. Rocks of all sizes, engraved with Chinese characters.

Now, you might remember that I said Hubby climbed this mountain at a previous time. He started at a little after midnight and got to the top in time to see the sunrise, which is a big deal. Most Chinese people aspire to one day watch the sunrise from Mt. Tai, or so the literature tells me. Anyway, here's just a small portion of what he climbed to accomplish this task:You can see why I was all for the bus and cable car idea! So, at long last, our day on the mountain was complete. We headed back to the cable cars, just in time to be treated to a spectacular sunset.And so concludes my day on Mt. Tai, chief among the five sacred mountains of China.

This afternoon, we're leaving Tai'an to go back to Beijing, where I will catch my flight home on Monday. We plan to do more sightseeing over the weekend, and hopefully I can get online at our new hotel and share some more pics!

Fit to be Tai'ed

Sunday, the weather was supposed to be clear, so we made plans to go to the top of Mt. Tai. The hotel we're staying in sits right at the base of the foothills of this mountain. Now, if you'd like more information about the mountain and its importance in Chinese culture, you can go here. Go ahead, I'll wait......

Okay, so we set out about 9 a.m. to climb the bottom part of the mountain. We planned to climb as far as the cable car, and then take that to the top. Unfortunately, out of all the ways up the mountain, we seem to have chosen the wrong one, because we never got to the cable cars along the path we took. On the bright side, I'm pretty sure we saw parts of the mountain that most tourists never see.This place, for instance, seemed to be all new buildings. People were still working on finishing the interiors of them. We climbed a little higher than this before finding some very nice people who, while they didn't speak English, were nevertheless able to communicate to us that we were in the totally wrong place.

So back down the mountain we climbed. We took a cab back to the hotel so we could get the ATM card, so we could get more money, so we could take a bus to the cable cars. We also ate lunch because by then it was past noon. So, greatly refreshed, we headed out again.

This time, we took the bus to the mid-point of the mountain. Here is a view out of the bus window:The ride to the cable car took about 15 minutes. We got off in a little area with lots of shops and walked up the path (more climbing!) to the cable car station. The ride up the side of the mountain took another 10 minutes or so, and we emerged on the summit of Mt. Tai!
And now this post is already too long, so I shall continue my tale of adventure tomorrow!

Scary

Here are some pics from Halloween!
The little one dressed as a cow again.
The six year old wanted to be something scary. I'm scared. How about you?
My twelve year old dressed as (let's see if I can get this right) a Visorak from Bionicle. He passed his alien costume down to his brother, who ended up winning the scariest costume prize!
He also won two prizes bobbing for apples (and hopefully not too many germs).

Carnegie Science Center

Here are a few pics from our recent trip to Pittsburgh. Enjoy!
Daddy and the three year old play with blocks! The point here was to make a structure that could withstand an earthquake. Naturally, Hubby the engineer managed to do it!

The super-awesome food science demo, in which we learned that flambe can be fun!

On the deck of the USS Requin, a real Cold War-era submarine.

Luckily, these guys were not part of the Cold War-era crew.

My Precious

It is tiny and golden.

Battles have been fought for it.

Every human who sees it is possessed with a strong desire to have it for his own.

Once you have held it, you must hold it again.

And I must admit, it is Precious to me.
The One Thing that rules us all.

Colonial Williamsburg

Here are some pics from our trip last week to Williamsburg. Enjoy!The boys meet Thomas Jefferson.

Nothing says, "Welcome to my home" like a wall full of swords and pistols.

Going into the ever-popular maze.

He's waiting for a carriage to come pick him up.

Don't think they didn't deserve this!

Introducing Rusty

We added a new family member over the weekend. Allow me to introduce you!
Um, okay, well, you can't really see him there. Let me see if I can get a better angle.
There's his leg! Uh, let me get the boys to hold him so you can see him better.
I'm guessing he's in the box, but that doesn't really help, does it? Let's open the box and snap a picture real quick.
Oh. Well, there's his tail! (Ignore the dust. And that white blob is one of the kids' toys.)

Time for me to take over. Here he is! Meet Rusty!

Fun with scrapbooking

Fake Quote of the Day:

"You cook like a three-year-old!!!" - G. Ramsay

Ever since I discovered digital scrapbooking, I've had a lot of fun finding free downloads of kits and elements and then matching my pictures to them and creating layouts. I have yet to pay for any of the things I've used, there are so many free things available. But the other day, I wanted a specific background and I couldn't find it. So Hubby helped me design the background and then I made the page. I present to you my adorable son making his cooking debut:

We've got character

One thing almost everyone with little kids has to do at Disney World is get pictures taken with the characters. It makes a great souvenir, and the kids love it. Now, the autograph thing I just don't get. Why get somebody dressed in a costume to sign a name that isn't theirs and will never be worth anything? I don't know. But hey, at least they hold up the line nicely for everyone else. So here are some of the characters my kids got to see.

That's Rafiki from The Lion King.

Pocahontas - whose song got stuck in my head and wouldn't get out. Lilo and Stitch - a dream come true for my guys, let me tell you! Woody from Toy Story. Buzz Lightyear was there, too, but his line was crazy long. And I got to meet my girl, Kim Possible and her guy Ron Stoppable. Yeah, we hung out for a bit. Hey, Kim, you can call me or beep me, you know - if you want to reach me.