Trip to Baltimore

After staying late at the wedding, we got about 4 hours of sleep and headed out to the airport to fly into Washington DC. The airport was surprisingly crowded for 5:30 in the morning on a Sunday, but we eventually made our way through security. Both Maddie and Jacob were a little cranky when we were getting onto the plane, so the people around us were not too happy thinking that our kids were going to be a terror on the plane. Well after lifting off our kids were back to sleeping and they slept basically 3.5 hours out of the 5 hours on the flight, so they were the last thing that we needed to worry about. Most of you know that most US domestic flights no longer serve meals, well after being in Asia on really quality airlines I must say I do not look forward to flying US domestic flights. We picked up our car and headed home. Thanks to my younger sister's boyfriend, we surprised the family cause they thought we were arriving on Monday, but we got in on Sunday...my mom's face was priceless.

The Wedding

The wedding was an outdoor wedding at a country club. The weather ended up being great (some people were worried it would be too hot, but it wasn't too bad). I didn't get to see much of the ceremony as Maddie and Jacob wanted to play, but from what I heard it was really nice. The reception was also very very nice, the food was surprisingly good and Maddie and Jacob had a great time dancing. I even danced with my father in law's sister, Aunt Lu Lu and everyone in the family now says that I am her favorite, turns out I do know how to butter up the family.

Funniest part of the wedding (for me) was that they had the kids sitting outside of the reception area. They ate first (customary) and then the food was served to the adults. The only down side to serving the kids first was that they were done way before all the adults. Midway through the adult's meal the place brought out the desserts and they set them right in front of the window in front of the kids. So the kids had to suffer staring at the desserts while the adults finished their meal. I would glance over every once and a while and notice that there would be 2 or three kids with their faces planted on the window drooling over the desserts and looking like they were suffering, pretty classic.

California

Our first stop was Northern California for my niece's wedding, my niece by the way is older then me, many people are confused by this fact, but I think its cool. We met Renee's parents at the airport and then drove north of Sacramento to Roseville. Over the next couple of days we would gradually be meeting more and more of Renee's family that I had never met. So I put on my happy face and tried to do my best to remember the names of all the people we were meeting. Her family is great and really nice, so it was good that not only did I get to meet them, but also that they got to meet Maddie and Jacob. We all had fun hanging out before the wedding and getting to know people.

While the highlight of the trip was definitely the wedding, I must say that I found my new favorite supermarket in the world. The former champion was Wegmans, but alas I found a new market, Nugget Market, in Roseville that takes grocering to the next level. The employees were extremely nice, actually genuinely nice as opposed to the clearly forced courtesy you get in most places. The market was clean, produce looked fresh, great selection of items, all over just a really great grocery store that I would actually want to go to (I'm not a fan of most run of the mill supermarkets).

Plane Ride to the US

In an attempt to catch you all up on our trip back to the States, I have written a series of blog entries that will give you the highlights from our adventure back home.

Our flight from Shanghai to Seoul was slightly delayed, which typically is not a problem, but with only a 1 ½ hour layover in Seoul before catching our connecting flight to San Francisco, any delay does not bode well for us. We were flying on Korean Air, our first time, so we were looking forward to the experience. After a half an hour delay, we got onto the plane, which, to my surprise, was completely filled. I was surprised because we were on a 747-400 (for those of you not familiar, this is a really big plane) and the trip is less then 2 hours on a random Wednesday during the week. The plane was a new plane that had the seat back entertainment that would have been awesome for the kids except for the fact that they slept through the whole ride, but I definitely won't complain about that. The best part of the trip was during lift off when we were about 7,000feet in the air, Maddie's juice cup (which contained grapefruit juice) started to make noises and then all of the sudden started spraying juice all over Renee's leg, it was pretty cool and something I have never seen (not too cool for Renee). Overall the rating for Korean Air is a solid 8.5 out 10, great service, nice clean plane, but the delay didn't help.

We arrived at Inchon Airport and I ran from the transfer area (the story of my life as you will see later) to the Singapore Airlines desk to make sure we were all set for our flight. After some negotiations on making sure we all were sitting together, we were able to sit down for 5 minutes before having to load onto the Singapore Airline flight to San Francisco. Can I say that Singapore Airlines is the best airline in the world absolutely 10 out of 10, I don't know how I can put myself through the suffering of being on a US domestic carrier, they are about 10 notches below Singapore Airlines (so basically a 0), the service was great, the plane was nice, the food was…a good 2 steps up from typical airline food, oh yeah and the kids slept almost 8 hours out of the 11 hours on this flight, so again no complaints in this arena, actually this was by far the easiest 14 hours of flying with kids I have ever experienced, they just slept the whole way, which makes for a nice smooth trip.

The Good Ole US of A

We are heading out of China (me for a couple of weeks and my wife and kids for a month) going to America. We leave today, so there might be less and less writing on this thing over the next couple of weeks. So for all 3 of you out there that wait and wait for updates, I just wanted to tell you that your lives can go on for the next couple of weeks until I get back, then watch out, this thing will be bigger and better (is that a good cliffhanger to leave things on?? Will you really come back?)

You're afraid of what?

Kids go through many stages of fear where each stage has a different character; monsters, boogey men, Nick Nolte, and men with clip on ties. Now my daughter has claimed to have feared many things from bats to robots (not sure why she is afraid of this one), but last night was the weirdest one yet. After her bath my wife started to comb her hair and she began to get squirmy. My wife asked her what was wrong and she explained, "I'm afraid of coins in the bathroom." Now I had just emptied some coins out of my pocket right before the kids got into the bath, so that explains the coins in the bathroom, but I have not idea why coins in the bathroom would cause fear. In fact, I can think of many people that would ecstatic to find some money in their bathroom. Anyway, not sure if there is a phobia for this, maybe coinandflushobia (sorry that was really bad), but I hope she can get over her fear as this could cause some problems later in life, believe me I know.

I'm laughed at...all the time

As you know from prior posts I have gotten into bike riding and while my dreams of Lance Armstrong have been shattered already, I still move forward. I normally do my bike riding in the morning before it gets too hot (for those of you not in Shanghai it has been around 100F over the past week), well this weekend I decided to ride in the evening after church. I put on my riding garb that I normally wear that includes a bike helmet. Now for those of you who know me, you know that my head is pretty rotund, almost meteoric like. Well when you add a not so aerodynamically produced bike helmet, it appears as if my head is reaching levels that only the Tower of Babel could reach, yes my head is like Sputnik. Needless to say, I entered onto the elevator only to find that a 3 year old boy and his Ayi began to laugh at me and my enormous bike helmet head. Yes, even 3 year olds still laugh at me.