So much to be thankful for!

Hello Canada,

Well we had a chance to Skype with Mara and the crew this morning (god the 13 hrs time change is challenging!) and we were totally thrilled. She seemed so happy and excited. Made us want to jump on a plane right away. We miss her terribly. The right decision for her to stay home, but 2 weeks feels like forever. 3 more sleeps for us.

We had an amazing, relaxing, breakthrough day with our little Lyla. It really is incredible how much you learn with your first child. Lesley and I have been patient and responsive to Lyla as she works through some of her grieving and it is paying off. Lyla is really starting to show her true colours. Her little smile (with about 8ish teeth) melts our hearts. She is laughing and interacting more by the hour. Pre bedtime tonight was awesome. She was down to a diaper and running around the room saying Momma and Tata and giggling and playing peek-a-boo and kissing her reflection in the mirror – so much progress in 7 days. She loves to be nearly naked – so cute. Dad and Lyla had a big breakthrough. I got to hold her for about an hour while we visited the Temple of Heaven. This huge 257 ha park in the city is spectacular and was so quiet and calm. Lyla snuggled me and she laughed and we played kissy and spinning around games. So wonderful! She is pretty shy around new people but again this is becoming less so everyday. Lyla has a definite temper and let’s us know physically and vocally when she doesn’t wish to do or eat something (yup, she will fit right in!) This kid has a fantastic appetite. She will eat pretty much anything and will eat substantial quantities (just like her dad). We have had a great time with the family from Saskatchewan and are so glad that have been sharing our time in Beijing with them. Their daughter is a wonderful little girl. Another family that our red thread path has connected us to. We are so grateful.

We visited a silk factory today and were completely amazed at this process and the products. Lesley bought silk pillowcases – very beautiful.

For those that haven’t traveled to China through this process, the guides often arrange for a tailor to come and offer custom tailored men’s suits, women’s jackets and shirts, and traditional kid dresses. We didn’t take advantage of this in 2006 but did this time. This is a fantastic deal on beautiful clothing. Hopefully we will see it all tomorrow. The guide also arranges for custom chops (stone stamps) of the children/family’s names, and beautiful scrolls with the kids names and birth dates and we also purchased these. Mara has a set of both and we love them. We have done some shopping but the price of things is very high. Not that we are shopping in the high-end mall (great window shopping though) but a pair of leather boots in a boutique Timberland store is $500 CDN – crazy!. We didn’t dare look at other items. Back to the small street shops to get some special things to bring home - the prices generally are higher with less negotiating room – damn Olympics ;)

Anyway, should try to get to sleep. Hope everyone is doing well and that the rain has stopped. Thanks for all of your comments – they mean so much to us and we are so anxious to check for them when we get back to the room. I have tried to reply to some messages on Facebook but some of the functionality is not working properly from the China end – very interesting – thanks for those notes and messages as well – so great to hear from you all.

Goodnight (goodmorning)!

Lee