Photo shoot of Big Will--Big Willy style

Will loved his photo shoot today at Target. He's such a fun smiley boy.

A childs prayer

While staying at my sister's house this past week, I got to take part in their family prayers, which is always so fun considering her girls say the darndest things.
My niece Ambs, gave one of the nighttime prayers.

"And please bless the people in Haiti, that the storms will go somewhere else....like Salt Lake....Er, not Salt Lake... like somewhere off the world".

She was so sincere, and kept pausing to think it through. We couldn't help but laughing out loud before the prayer had ended. Bless her faithful little heart.

Hello Taiwan

This blog post actually starts down below about mid way through but then I added a few more pictures and then ended up on the top instead of the bottom and I don't know how to switch them....

This is Logan. One of my companions taught and baptized him. He used to go on exchanges with me all the time and was a big help to the missionaries when I was there. He is now a returned missionary and we got together for dinner tonight. It was so fun to see him.

PETA is no where to be found. This dog is for RENT. You can also give donatations to the dog in his tip bucket.

These are more dogs for rent. You can also rent to own one of these puppies. I'm not sure if the dogs are extremely well trained or sedated but they all were there laying in a row with lots of people around and lots of noise. This is the fist time I've seen dogs for rent. PETA would love this.

Once again I'm on the road sitting in a hotel with a few minutes before my next appointment so I thought I'd do a quick post. The past three weeks have been bit of a whirlwind with stops in SLC, Shanghai, Xiamen,Beijing,Taipei etc. Right now I'm in Taipei. Every time I come back to Taiwan it remindes me just how much I like Taiwan. The people are so friendly and polite. The food is amazing. It's just a great place. Whenever I'm here it also reminds me just how different Taiwan and mainland China are. They really are two different worlds. Below are some pictures from the past week.

This is an outdoor food court in Taiwan. Some of the best food on the planet can be found here. Some of the worst food can also be found here - stinky toufu!

This sign is for my sister who laughed at all of the translations in China. This one was on the Great Wall.

This one is also for my sister. When she was here it was so foggy that none of our pictures turned out. You can photo shop yourself into this one!

This is the Taipei 101. It used to be the tallest building in the world. Now it is #2 behind the monster of a building in Dubai. I went to the same tepanyaki restraunt in here that my parents took me to on my last day in Taiwan after my mission. The food was amazing.

This is an old, unrestored section of the Great Wall. It is mind blowing to even think about building such a structure, by hand nonetheless.

I guess the new cool thing is to wear a panda on your head. We saw so many that we finally stopped someone to get a picture.

Clayton, a colleague from New Zeleand, thought they were so cool he wore his panda at everywhere, including the packed subway.

Another random panda sighting. Do these remind anyone else of the mouse hats my parents used to have???

These are two guys I work with, well sort of - one is based in Australia/New Zealand and the other is in the US but always traveling in Latin America, I took them to eat the real local food in Taiwan. They were sceptical at first but ended up loving it all.

My sister wanted to get pictures of the Great Wall winding off into the distance but it was terrible weather the day I took her so I took a few pictures this time. The pictures aren't great though because they were taken with my phone.

Mei guo

The other day was sunny and warm enough to help G-ma and G-pa out in the garden.

We are enjoying the USA. In Cache County we enjoyed a week visit with TP's sister. We watched a movie, watched our nephews soccer game, witnessed the annual Cub Scout Pinewood Derby competition, laughed while watching a movie, enjoyed a Slurpee, went to lunch with great friends, and attended the Logan Temple. It is such a beautiful Temple, sitting high upon a hill in the most beautiful valley. You can see the sky for miles! I savored every moment. I have come to love this city so much.

Now my adventures bring me South to my sister's home. It is always an adventure here, and Will is loving the walker she has here. He loves to zoom around, running into everyone's achilles.
We have to be quick when he comes around.

Will is on the verge of crawling. He can get up on all fours and rocks pretty hard. He started to scoot backwards the other day. Sometimes, when on all fours, he'll lift himself off the ground, on tip-toe, and army crawl a few paces. He has a strong core. He also started picking up his food with his thumb and pointer finger and putting it in his mouth. He's been feeding himself with a spoon since he first started rice cereal at 4 months. He's full of tricks.

Will loves wearing his 'Too Cool for School' glasses.

My two handsome boys. We are sure missing you TP!

USA

I'm sitting in the airport in San Fran right now waiting for my flight. This is the first free time I've had since we got to the states a week ago. Jen, Will and I got to Utah a week ago but have been up north because I had to be in the office all week. This was a very busy week. I've probably slept about 8 out of the past 72 hours, not fun. But coming to the US is always enjoyable and it's always fun to see friends and family.

Here is Will and one of Jen's former coworker's son. They were so kind to invite us over for a home cooked meal. Will is about the same size as this little fella but half his age. This kid can walk! Will is getting close to crawling, and has obviously perfected eating.

Will doesn't have much hair compared to a lot of other kids but if you look at his genes that is something he should just get used to.



Here is Will hanging out with Great Grandpa. He is 96! Glad we were able to go down and visit him. Jen doesn't know I took this picture but her and Will looked so cute. Wild Bill had some serious jet lag, which made ours that much worse.

This is the week before we came back to the US. This is on the newly reopened BUND in Shanghai. This is a 5 min walk from our apartment.

Jen and will sporting their sunglasses. He loves to wear them!

I'm going to get on a plane soon but Jen and Will are staying in the US until the 4th of July. Now is the time of year when our branch starts to empty out because many of the families head back to their home countries for the summer. It usually goes something like this; the whole family leaves together for a week or two and then the husband comes back while the family stays home for another month or two. Fortunatley I already have a few friends in the branch that are in the same solo boat as me and they usually get together a lot to keep each other company.

I'll be in Taiwan next week and should be able to blog again then.

Quick update

I'm in Japan again so I thought I'd do a quick update and post a few pictures. Last week when I was here I bought Will a little shirt from the Nike outlet. It fit him perfect so of course we took a few pictures.


Here is Will sporting his Nike Track & Field shirt. If you look close you can see that it says 1972 Olympic Trials, Eugene, Oregon. To my fellow runners it is really cool. To those who aren't fans of running this shirt probably doesn't seem cool at all.

Will hanging out at the dinner table in the Buff. Decided not to post the family photo.

Pulling a face for the camera. They learn so young!

Enjoying the fact that he can sit up now.

I head back home tomorrow. Can't wait to get there to see this little guy again, and Jen of course.

Long Over Due

It has been a very long time since out last post. With blogs, facebook, and youtube being blocked in China in kind of separates us a bit. But I'm in my hotel in Japan right now so I can log on! I'll try to briefly recap that past month. We had Chinese New Year, welcome the Year of the Tiger! Supposed to be a great year. We had constant fireworks for two weeks. Will was a real trooper. We put a noise maker in his room so he could sleep through them since they would go off at all hours of the night. One night these huge fireworks were exploding about 10 feet from our window and the sparks would shoot at the window and the window would shake during the explosion. He didn't sleep through those ones though, but we had an amazing view. We live on the 22nd floor and these were only 10 feet from us! I also watched a group of people light off a few hundred thousand firecrackers at once! It was the loudest thing that I have ever heard in my life. So crazy!

In the middle of Chinese New Year I had to start traveling for work. My first stop was India, always an adventure. My trip there this time had two purposes: 1. have a meeting with my customer 2. attend the wedding reception of my customer's brother, who I also work with. The wedding reception was unlike any I've ever attended. I was the only non-Indian and non-Hindu at the 500+ person gathering so there were more than a few who wondered how I ended up there. The stares increased when they dressed me in a traditional Indian wedding outfit for the brothers of the groom. I was also included in most of the family pictures. Quite the experience. 10,000 pictures and greetings later we had the wedding feast of 100 different kinds of vegetarian curry and nan bread. All, of course, to be eaten with your bare right hand. I like curry, but not for 3 meals a day!

From India I went to Thailand which was nice because the food is always good. My customer there is a Taiwanese guy so communication and culture is much smoother than in India, even though India is all in English. In Thailand I had an experience that made me chuckle. There were four of us having dinner. Me, the American living in China, my customer who is Taiwanese and splits his time between Taipei and Bangkok, his assistant who was born in China but is a citizen of Burma and Thailand, another guy who is a Argentine born Chinese guy. The for of us were having dinner in Bangkok and everyone spoke fluent Chinese. This world is an amazing place where you can have a random dinner with a group like that. Every now and then I have situations like this that just make me realize what a neat place this world can be.

After Thailand I had two special days back with Jen and Jr. It was so much fun to be with them. Will is growing and changing everyday. We got to go to the park and run and play then we went for some tasty American hamburgers and shakes followed by Krispy Kreme doughnuts :) yummy. Our fun was short lived because I had to take off to Nagoya, Japan which is where I am right now. Things have gone very well here. Yesterday I went up to Tokyo and had lunch with Elder Gary Stevenson from the Seventy. He is serving as the Asia-North Area president right now. He is one of the founders of the company I work for. It was a lot of fun to spend the day with him. We went to his office and to the Tokyo temple. He was so nice and accommodating and willing to spend his day with us. It was great to see him again.

I go back home to SH tomorrow morning. So excited to play with Jr and see Jen. It's hard to be away but I'm glad we have skype so I can see them on the webcam everyday so he doesn't forget me!

I do have skills, like numchuck skills, but I don't' have blogger skills so below is a random mix of pictures from the past month. I don't know how to get them interwoven with my text in my post.




We mounted a TV on the wall in the workout room in front of the treadmill so we could be entertained to run longer.

The Tokyo temple. Couldn't really get a great picture of if because it is nearly on the road! Space is tight in Tokyo.

Contrary to what it may look like, this is the food BEFORE I ate it. Vegetarian curry at the wedding.

Jen and Jr having reading time.

Me and Jr hanging out

Jen taking him out for a walk. He loves going for walks in the stroller.

This is the "Bubble" we put around him. He keeps off the wind and the rain and most importantly all of the locals hands! They all think that we like strangers to come up and touch our babies face! are you kidding me??

Jen and Will working out on the treadmill. He likes the sound of the treadmill and will sit and watch us run for a long time.

Will laughing at Jen's jokes in the car.

This is a bus stop in India. Full of garbage and cows.

Bride and groom. They met last month. Like most Indian marriages it was arranged.

This is one of 10,000 photos taken on this stage.

Cows in India are holy so they have free reign of anywhere they want to go. This is my customer petting the cow in the middle of the city.

The "brothers" of the groom. There are three other brothers, just not in this picture.

Jen and Jr. during one of our walks.

Jr. bundled up in his sleeping bag outfit. Keeps him nice and warm!

Will looking studly.

Several hundred thousand firecrackers going off at once. This was insane.

Before they lit the firecrackers they made them into the shape of the Chinese character "Cai" which means money - of course!