Olympics and Happy Birthday Jay!

We were very excited to get home just in time for the Olympics. It was such a great opening ceremony. We loved watching it, and stayed up so late to do it even though our bodies wanted to go to sleep at about 6:00pm from the Jet lag. We arrived home early that same morning around 1:30am. Being here in China, and seeing all of the preparations going on for this big event has been exciting to see. They are so proud of having it here, and proud of how well they are doing. My driver has put I love China Olympic stickers on our side-view mirrors. I guess he must think we are cheering for China instead of the US??? :-) We are cheering for both. He is very happy to tell me that China is first, and the US is second. It has been interesting to try to watch the events. We live at a State-run hotel compound, which means we get Chinese television (which is all government run) and a couple of cable stations like Star TV, a couple of movie channels, National Geographic, and a couple more. The channels we have been able to watch the Olympics on don't show much other than the events that China took Gold in (and they show them over and over and over and over...) We have seen a couple of events with the U.S. involved. We mostly have to keep track online. It's fun to watch, though, and we are glad to be here during this exciting time for them. We are excited they are doing so well in the events.

Jay's birthday was on the first day of school. He turned 9 years old. He was very excited. Rachel and Caitlin went shopping to the new Toys R Us we now have here in Nanjing, and spent just a FEW dollars more than we would have paid in the US to buy some fun Pirates of the Carribean legos for him. Jay wanted hot dogs for his birthday. We have found some decent Hot Dogs (most hot dogs here are strange) but no decent buns. But we make due with what we can find. Luckily there is a big German population here, so it's easy to find sour kraut, which amazingly all of the kids like. Nicole made a chocolate cake for him, and Rachel frosted it. It was a team effort, and he seemed to have a great evening. Jay is such a great guy. He is growing up so fast, and he is excited to be in the 4th grade. He loves sports, and playing ps2 and watching any movie. We are so glad he is in our family! Happy Birthday Jay! Here are a couple of photos from Jay's birthday.

What a Summer!

Please forgive this long, long entry. It was a very eventful summer.

This has been quite the summer for our family. I mentioned the possibility of hip surgery on July 2nd. We arrived on June 24th, very anxious to see family! It is always so wonderful to be home and see everyone. This year was extra great because my friend Dede Dalton and her family met us for a day in Provo. We spent a fun day at BYU, and Seven Peaks water resort. It was so great to see them all after 3 years. The other days I spent trying to buy all of the children school clothes, etc. just in case I ended up having surgery. On Sunday, June 29th early in the morning, my Grandfather Gibb passed away. We all miss him so much, and are so grateful for the example he was in our lives. He was in pain and poor health for several years. He was such an example of enduring. I always felt like I was special to him, and I know each one of his grandchildren did.

Later that morning, I flew to California to stay with my brother Todd and his wife Jen, for the day. I had such a wonderful time with them. I loved getting to know Jen better. I'm so glad I was able to spend time with them. My Mom flew in that night after helping with funeral plans for my grandfather. Mike flew in to L.A. to come to the Dr. appointment with me. That day, June 30th, the doctor agreed with the other diagnosis that I needed this surgery. My scheduled surgery on July 2nd would stay as planned. We did a little bit of pre-op on the Tuesday, but then went to Disneyland with Todd, Jen and my Mom. It was so much fun! It helped take away the anxiety about the next day. I knew going into this that it is an extremely complicated surgery, and that the recovery is very long. Even more difficult than a hip replacement, which I am trying to avoid. While the recovery is more difficult, it is much better to keep my own hip, and that is worth it to me. I researched out top surgeons in the country for this operation, as it is extremely specialized and a handful are experts. Dr. Matta is one of the best, and most experienced surgeons in this field.

So many family members had prayed and fasted for me. I received some beautiful blessings from my Father, and Mike and my Brother. I am so grateful, and know that this has made such a difference for me. The surgery went well. My mother flew back right after the surgery for the viewing and funeral of Grandpa Gibb. I was so sad to miss that, but so grateful I was able to say good-bye to him. when Mom got to the LA airport, there had been a bomb threat! She was able to call her friend, who got her a flight from a different airport. She was late, but she made it. I stayed in the hospital for a week, and then flew home to Utah and stayed with my Mom and Dad. Mike was with me day and night. It wasn't easy, and I couldn't have done it without him. A couple of days after I got home, I went to the emergency room after passing out a couple of times. They found 3 blood clots in my lungs. I was in the hospital 3 more days. I continued to pass out frequently, and they finally got me on some medication to help that. Mike had to leave on July 21st. Poor guy didn't really have any vacation. He is the best. My mother waited on me and my children hand and foot. I am so indebted to her and my Dad. She and my Dad even gave me their bedroom and moved downstairs! Everyone helped out so much. Brothers and Sisters, Mikes Mom and Dad. I was able to visit with cousins that I haven't spent time with for so long! What a wonderful family we have. I am so grateful I was able to do this in the US where my family could take such good care of me and the kids, and where we had good hospitals! There was a possibility to do it in Hong Kong this fall, where there is excellent care, but the blood clots would have posed a big problem when I got back here to Nanjing!

Well, that was a long story. We're back in Nanjing now. The children have started school. It was wonderful to see Mike again. We are looking forward to this last year in China. I am recovering one day at a time. The kids and Mike take care of all of the food. Luckily, I have Wan to come in 3 times a week and do laundry and clean. What a life-saver! The chinese people have been so sweet. They are always wanting to help and smile very sweetly at me. I have had a couple of interesting experiences, of course. When I went to the Chinese hospital for an x-ray to send to Dr. Matta, I was told to drop my pants. There were about 5 people in there. Some were techs, some Dr's and some were just people waiting for their turns. There were no sheets or hospital gowns. I never thought I would wish for one of those again. Let's just say I was grateful for my "funny" underwear! Another funny situation was when I went to the restroom at a hotel. The bathroom attendant was a sweet little lady, who came into the stall with me and wanted to help! I said thank you so much, but I could do it myself. Phew!

The children had a fun-filled summer. Rachel and Nicole went to EFY in Logan. Caitlin went to girl's camp with Catherine. Jay had his first pack meeting (thanks to Lori) where he received all of his awards for the last year. Rachel finished her driver's Ed course (and alive, too!). The boys played day in and day out with cousins, their favorite thing to do. They were able to spend so much valuable time with Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. We also were able to see our friends the Millers, before heading off to Germany. It was so good to see them. Hopefully next time we can do something more fun.

I wanted to share some of the photos we took this summer. Unfortunately, I was in bed most of the summer, so most of the amazingly great things the kids did with grandparents and cousins, I don't have photos of.

Eli and Brynna hit it right off after three years. They were very best friends for Eli's whole life before China. It was so great to see them having fun together.


It was hard to say good-bye to the Dalton family. But it was so much fun to see them.

Chad was the artistic director of the float for their stake. It was in several parades and won the sweepstakes award (the highest award given) and the people's choice award at the Day's of 47 parade. It was an amazing float. He and Jennie put so much time into it. We are all proud!


Todd and Jen. Doen't Jen look cute pregnant?

Here, Mike is examining which candybar is smooshed in the diaper at our baby-shower. Boy is he concentrating. Mom and I wanted to have one for Jen, and I think it may have been Mike and Todd's first one ever. I'm sure they loved it :-)

It's a Small World even with no small people... It's hard to grow up!

No photo this time of my hip... this time it's a little too much skin. But, Mike was very proud and thought it looked like a shark bite. Here, Todd brought the night shirt that Mom gave me. He sure looks good in it. Much better than I ever did. Purple looks good on you, Ogg...

Fishing at the fishery. Lots of fun and a guaranteed catch...

Say stinky fish!

Jay's first pack meeting.

Mariah, Parker, Jay and Eli are ready to shoot the rocket


Grandpa and Jude, Kellee's cute little boy. It was fun to meet new cousins!

Last Blog Entry Before Summer

This has been a very eventful year for us. The children will finish school this next Friday. Yes...a long school year. These last couple of weeks have been busy. We enjoyed Dragon Boat Festival, and the school play. We are looking forward to seeing our family, and some good friends, too. This summer is a bit up in the air, as I will possibly have hip surgery done the first of July. We are going to play it by ear, though the children have huge plans for playing with cousins. Rachel and Nicole will head to EFY and Caitlin, her first year at girl's camp. Here are just a few photos of some things from the last couple of weeks.

The traditional food of the Dragon Boat festival is a sticky-rice wrapped in Bamboo leaves. It usually has a flavor, and maybe a small piece of meat or sometimes other scary things :-) Here is Caitlin unwrapping hers. We thought we should try them out. You will notice that she has a very special treat on her plate with it...Tortilla chips. Very expensive, but sometimes available from a foreign food shop. We thought we should eat something we know is good with it. We didn't try the scary-looking shrink-wrapped eggs that came with them.


Up close.. Honestly, some of them tasted pretty good, and some of them were not good at all. We'll just say it was an experience. They were given to us by the hotel.


After I was told to stop running, Mike and I gave each other Mountain Bikes for Christmas. We have been loving going out early Saturday mornings. There are a lot of beautiful places, some nice and smooth like these, and some really rocky and tough ones. LOTS of uphill. It's a really great thing to do together. I will miss it SO much, since I won't be able to do this with him for a while.




These are some photos I took here in Nanjing this last week.

School Play

The school play was this weekend. They put on Midsummer Night's Dream. The girls worked very hard and the play was really great. Rachel played Helena ( In love with Demetrius, who didn't love her back), Nicole Titania (the Fairy Queen), and Caitlin was a fairy. Here are some photos of their play.

Here is Rachel(I mean Hermia) BEGGING Demetrius to love her. Poor desperate thing!!!!


Here is the Donkey Coli (or Titania) falls in love with.


And here is the donkey asleep on her lap :-)


Helena and Hermia(played by Rachel's good friend Maria)discussing love...


Titania and Oberon, the Fairy King.


Caitlin, a cute yellow fairy.


Titania and Oberon...


The boys fighting over Rachel, I mean Helena.


Dancing fairy Caitlin...



"How could you do this to me!!!!"

More stuff...

Nicole had her birthday party the other night. It was lots of fun. Some of her friends were out of town, but 4 girls came over, and I took them to a hair salon and they all had a beautiful hairstyle done, we then went to Burger king (which is a big deal, if you can imagine) and then her friends were given a small amount each to find "silly" gifts for her at Confucius temple. They were all really cute and fun. They spent the rest of the evening dressing up and playing party games. I'm sure you can imagine what a crazy night it was. Nicole never ceases to make us laugh!
The salon:


Beautiful Girls:


Dress-ups????



Sunday morning we woke up and Mike went to see what the boys had been doing (they wake up with the sun). I was called into the bathroom, where I saw Eli. Now, I had just woken up, and it took me a minute to register what I saw...Every square inch of his face was covered in red. Apparently, when Mike went in, he asked if he looked like spiderman(???)! We had to keep straight faces and desperately wanted to take a photo of him, but knew it would send the wrong message. Nicole, however, was very unhappy that he used her make-up. I don't think Eli enjoyed washing all of that lipstick off of his head.

Well, things are pretty crazy around here right now. All three of the girls are in the school play and are practicing like crazy. There are of course lots of friends leaving at the end of the year, and lots of go-away parties. Things are all wrapping up with school etc.

I went to Student-lead conferences a couple of weeks ago. This is where you spend almost an hour with each child as they show you all of the things they have worked on this year. It was fun to see how proud they were. Some of the children showed me EVERY detail. It is great one on one time. I think all of the children have had a very successful year at school.

Last week was our final fundraiser for the year with Hopeful Hearts. We try to raise money to give to the Nanjing Orphans and some poor children around the province the heart surgery they need. We were able to earn enough for a surgery with this last fundraiser. There seems to be more and more cases brought to us, so we are working hard to try to earn money for these sweet children. When I am feeling stressed out from all of the fundraising, all I have to do is see the children. My favorite part is visiting them at the hospital, though sometimes it can be so sad and hard. This last week, we visited a 15 year old boy who needs an extremely complicated surgery. I felt such an amazing spirit from both him and his mother. Beautiful smiles and eyes! I wanted so badly to hug her, but I knew she would cry, and that isn't looked upon as a good thing here. We also visited a sweet little 4 month old girl who looks newborn size. She was so beautiful! I just want to take home every one of them!

May 27, 2008

This has been such a sad time here in China. It's difficult to know how to appropriately address the earthquake and all of it's destruction. On the day of the earthquake, my friend Julie and I were walking to my house. I got an email that afternoon from my friend Heidi in Jakarta asking if I had felt the earthquake. I had no idea what she was talking about and looked on my news-page and saw nothing about it. That night, I saw something about an earthquake in Chengdu that killed 4 people. I thought it was sad, but didn't dwell on it too much. The next morning, my mother called, wondering if we were OK! All of those thousands of people. It has been such a devastating blow for the Chinese people. The aftermath is even still going on. So many people without homes and still in danger. It was felt in some tall buildings in Nanjing, but no damage was done.

Exactly one week later, I was walking the same path home, and suddenly everyone stopped their cars and started honking continuously. As you can imagine, it was A LOT of honking. People on the sidewalks stopped. The sirens all over the city went off. It was such a touching experience to see them doing the only thing they could to mourn for those people lost in the earthquake. There is one bright thing that has come from all of this. I have seen Chinese people helping people in ways I have never seen before. There is such a feeling of unity and selflessness, which seems like a new thing to this nation. For a people who is so used to scraping by, and just "fending for themselves", it's a wonderful thing to see them volunteering time and money.

This morning, I went with Julie to see the Olympic torch while it was here in Nanjing. What a contrast. People were all so excited, and dressed in all sorts of Olympic paraphernalia. They were just thrilled. It was so funny. Julie and I posed in photo after photo with so many Chinese people. We bought flags and t-shirts, and everyone was so excited to see us foreigners excited with them. It was a great morning. Here are some photos of some excited people! Also, here is a little bit of trivia... The torch was made here in Nanjing. It looks like a scroll of paper, because the Chinese are proud to have invented paper.




I decided to take a photo of people taking photos of us. There were so many people that wanted photos with us, I think I know how Mickey Mouse feels??? I felt like a theme-park mascot!

May 6 2008

We've had a nice May holiday. Now back to life. Here are a few photos of things we have been doing. Rachel, Nicole, and Caitlin will return home tonight from the China International District Youth Conference they have attended in Shanghai. It sounds like they had a great time. We are so glad they were able to go.

The youth were told to do a fundraiser for their youth conference. We actually have 9 youth right now, believe it or not! Rach, Coli, Cait, and the 2 Yu kids, a boy who lives in Xuzhou, and 3 kids from the Faucet family who are here for 6 weeks. So a not to shabby sized group of youth went this year. They decided to do a "pancake dinner" at our house on a Saturday evening. They did a great job. There were pancakes, eggs, bacon and a fruit salad. I think everyone went away still hungry, but it was a fundraiser, what more can you ask for?

The hotel brought over some tables and chairs and we had a nice "candle light" dinner. The youth served everyone.


I've never had so many people in my kitchen at once!


After the dinner, the girls did some hula dancing that Sister Panoke taught them. Everyone loved it.


Our Nicole turned 14 on April 28Th! Happy Birthday Nicole! It was the break, so I took the girls to lunch and a foot massage that day. Then, Nicole wanted pizza, and pavlova for her dinner. She was also able to go to the youth conference dance and is very excited to go to EFY now that she is 14!

We woke up one morning this last week to this beautiful creature in the kitchen! He is at least 2 1/2 inches long! Then, we found another one in the kitchen yesterday! Is there a colony of huge ugly beetle things in my kitchen? Or maybe the same one likes us so much he found his way back??


The boys and Mike and I did some exploring while the girls were gone to Youth conference. We went to the zoo one day. This is a tiger cage, we thought might be a good thing to try out with the boys :-)


We went to these 2 really neat caves. The boys loved them. They do crazy things like put colored fluorescent lights all around. It looks pretty psychedelic.

Apparently there have been ancient bones found in this cave, so they put this nice neanderthal man in it. It freaked Jay out when he saw it. I think he jumped 5 feet! One sad thing was that we could have bought some stalactites on our way out. They chop them off and make carvings out of them and sell them. We didn't buy any.


We also went to the ancient stone quarry to see where 100,000 workers were commissioned to carve a huge monument out of stone by the Emperor Ju Li. They got quite into the project when they figured that they would never be able to move the stone. It was just too heavy. So, they just had to abandon the project. It's amazing because you can see the lines where they carved by hand. So much work!

OH...this first photo is one I had Mike take because we saw this beautiful tunnel of fake flowers on the way, and I always see ladies posing like this for photos...Don't worry, you too could look this special with plastic grapes and tinsel. If only you could find some!


There were 3 or 4 different parts of this big sculpture. This was supposed to be the head.


We read that just the base is over 250,000 tons.