Finally Some Pictures

Here is a start to our summer pictures:


We had to stay a night in Beijing on the way there.  Thankfully our hotel pool was working :-)

From 2013.6 June

Commandeering an airport go-cart.  Matthew loves anything with wheels!

From 2013.6 June

Look there's our plane to America!

From 2013.6 June

I'm really not sure what's going on here...

From 2013.6 June

Look Daddy, in America they have things called water fountains!  You can drink right out of them!

From 2013.6 June

Matthew and Papa-best of friends.

From 2013.6 June

Cousins :-)

From 2013.6 June

From 2013.6 June

Papa and Lizzy's silly faces.

From 2013.6 June

My parents had some chicks hatch while we were there.

From 2013.6 June

Papa was the king of getting babies to go to sleep.

From 2013.6 June

And of making them laugh :-)

From 2013.6 June

We had lots of time with ALL our grandmas.

From 2013.6 June

To be continued...

How Simple Tasks Become Complicated

Lately I've felt overwhelmed by how difficult it seems to carry out simple tasks.

Exhibit A:
I want to post pictures of the kids on my blog.  Should be easy.  Take a few pics, upload them, put a few captions, and you're done.

Why it is difficult:
Most of the pictures are either on my tablet (which can't upload to blogger in China), my old laptop (which is only half working), or still on my camera.  Before I can upload any pics I have to locate the ones I want, fight with my half working computer to organize them into a understandable folder system, get my proxy to work, and (hopefully) have success in uploading them.  Meanwhile, my laptop over heats, the proxy server times out repeatedly, my transfers break, ect.


Exhibit B:
I need to fill out some simple paperwork and e-mail it off to the appropriate parties.

Why this is difficult:
Problem 1: The paperwork includes some simple bank information.  A certain country is currently messing with my access to any https: website, making it near impossible for me to find the information I need online.
Problem 2: I need to print the paperwork, fill it out, scan it back in, and e-mail it off.  However, the computer I'm using has not yet been set up to work with our printer.  So I have to locate the driver disk.  Driver disk appears to be broken.  Give it to my techie husband who concludes it is indeed broken and recommends I download the drivers from the internet.  I search online for the appropriate drivers and begin the download.  Estimated download time? 14 hours.  I'm going to bed.  Wake up the next morning to find the computer has shut down and cancelled the download.  Restart the download.  8 hours later, estimated download time is still 14 hours.  Bring in my husband again.  He downloads the drivers with his super techie-ness and transfers the drivers to my computer over the network.  Begin installation...

In case you were wondering and haven't been bored to death by my incredibly boring rant, I am currently waiting on the installation. 

I think I'll go check on my picture transfers...

What Does Normal Look Like?

Well, we arrived back in China on Tuesday after a 2 1/2 week trip to Oregon.  What's worse than an international flight with two kids?  An international flight with two kids and a terrible stomach flu (thankfully me, not them.  Although Matthew got it the next day).  It was terrible.  I couldn't keep anything in me, just sipped on sprite for hours in excruciating pain and hourly trips to the plane commode.  Longest trip EVER. 

To top it off, our kids are having a terrible time adjusting back to China time.  Matthew wakes up 2-3 times a night, and is up permanently somewhere between 2:30 and 4:00.  Lizbeth has been sleeping through, but is also up around the same time.  One of them has been up at 3:00 or so every morning.  How I miss sleep!

So now that we're back I'm trying to get back in the swing of things, but find it difficult on such little sleep.  Actually, though, this isn't a new thing.  Since having Snow, then Matthew going through sleep issues, then Snow again, then the trip to America, I've been living on 4-6 hours of good sleep for the past 4 months or so.  I can't even explain the exhaustion I feel.  I keep thinking things are about to turn a corner, but a new circumstance shows up to take away my sleep.  So, I've started to think:

Is this the new normal? 

And can my body and brain handle it?

The trip, by the way, was wonderful if not exhausting.  It was incredible as always to see our kids with their grandparents.  Definitely worth it.