2nd Generation

Here is Will and his buddy Stockton playing in the childrens market in Shanghai.  Will loved having his friend to visit.

I'll post more pictures later, they are taking too long right now.

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The first year we moved to China we were invited to a Halloween Party. We had only been in China a short while and had fun getting to know the people in the branch.


Last year at the branch Halloween Party Will was Santa Clause, me and Taylor his elfs. I stood outside practically the entire party holding my little Santa Clause who couldn't calm down. He was fussy every night, it seemed, for the first 4-5 months of his life (A lesson I learned from that: he's tired! Put him to bed!).

This Halloween Taylor will be in the U.S. :( We are sad he won't be here.

Ty and Sarah came and visited us here this past week! We are so happy they could come. W. sure liked waking up to a friend every morning. He loved having a partner in crime. They would stand out on the balcony every day and scream to the people below doing their morning tai chi, and get into the flower pots. We enjoyed our fair amount of massages--out and at home, shopping, shopping,...and more shopping.

I was able to download some summer photos from their camera. We celebrated our 3rd anniversary this summer with them and Seth and Meagan. We went waterskiing at Jordanelle, and then to a quaint Bed and Breakfast in Midway. We are thankful to have such great friends. I don't know if it's normal to celebrate wedding anniversaries with friends, but we always have, and it's a blast.
Tay, you're the greatest husband and Dad ever, and I love you. Cheers to 3 years of marriage!

pictures to follow.

Bali - Bangkok

WB and I were able to accompany TP on his business trip to Bali and Bangkok these past two days. He asked if we wanted to come along...I didn't have to take a moment to think about that one!
We spent our days hanging out on the beach while TP worked. He had one full free day where we all sat on the beach. We listened to the waves and the water ebb and tide, the sky a perfect shade of beach blue with white clouds passing slowly...and we chased Will around as he tried to eat sand and swim alone in the ocean. Since this trip came up sudden I forgot to pack W's swim gear and summer hat...He sure looks cute in his new gear.
TP had a business dinner on the beach to his favorite type of meal--seafood. I'm not sad I missed out on that one.

Bangkok is a cool city. I am most impressed with a nearby park where we ran. It was a fairly large park with a lake in the middle, similar to some back in our hometown, but this park was filled with runners, groups of people doing yoga, tai-chi, badminton, and most impressive of all were the groups of people doing step aerobics with loud stero systems. It made me happy that so many people were enjoying exercise.
And, they have the best mango sticky rice here, naturally. And they don't skimp on the rice. SO TASTY! More than a couple times we had to take second glances at some "women" who had man hands and features.  Thailand is the world's capital for 'ladyboys'.  Nastsy. We also experienced a tuk tuk - little taxi type thing.

WB makes so many people smile. He can now wave on command when I say, "Shuo Ni hao" (say hello). Or if I say "gei wo" (give me) he'll hand over whatever it is he has. He is very smart and picks up on so much lately. He can say 'Baba' (it means Dad, in chinese). He can also say 'Dadda', and 'Momma'. 'Baba' and 'dada' are the favorite. 'Momma' only when he's hungry, but it's super darling. When I say, "chew your food" he chomps his mouth. I am so impressed he can understand me. He seriously brings so much happiness into our lives. Oh, lest I forget, he can also throw a pretty good tantrum. He's doing it right now. We are so proud of him :)




seafood dinner.

bangkok taxi.



I look so great here, but the sun was in my eyes :)



on a tuk tuk. Look at W's face. Shocked.



6 pearly whites, and a cute smile.

Japan...Again & Happy Birthday Will

I'm in Japan again this week so I can do a blog post again.  A week ago today was Will's first birthday.  We had a birthday party with another boy in the ward that has the same birthday as WB (Wild Bill).  The other boy is the same age but he is about half the size of Will.  A few other friends came over to join in the fun.  We got some sand toys to play in the sandbox outside and he love them.  I gave him his first pair of running shoes.  See the pic below of WB standing tall in his new Nike running shoes.  The other little boy had a bunch of gifts to open that were all wrapped up.  Fortunately WB was sidetracked enough with a soccer ball to realize that this other kid got a lot more presents that he did.  Jen and I felt like bad parents for about a two seconds but those feelings didn't really last - it's his first birthday after all.  He may not have many toys but for his first b-day I got him a 529 college savings account.  (does that sound like a Price thing to do or what?)

This is a picture of Will hanging out in his crib in the old house.  Will broke my iphone so I don't have a camera to take pictures anymore.  So this old picture will have to do.

This is the fam on WB's birthday.  Jen was having a bad hair week but agreed to let me post the picture anyway.

We have officially been found out and are switching branches this week.  The cool thing is that we found out that there are seven other families from the new branch that are in our new complex.  How cool is that!  The play group and a bunch of other activities are in the complex.  Jen is really excited about that.  The bad thing is that our old branch asked us if we would speak this Sunday and you know that the new branch is going to ask us to speak soon.  Double wammy.  

Japan

Nagoya is a very quiet and clean city. I imagine the rest of Japan is just as great. The people are very polite here and bow all the time as a form of respect. It's a bit funny to see, actually. I had to chuckle when we first arrived at the hotel and the lady helping us with our luggage kept bowing low. All the taxis are very clean and neat. All the taxi drivers wear suits. All the cars are waxed and shiny. All the cars stop when the light is red and people only cross the streets when the green man says 'GO'. Very orderly and refreshing.
TP had meetings the first part of our time here and then we were able to see a few sites, eat some great Japanese food, and do a little shopping. The guy who works with TP here in Japan took us to a historical castle--I imagined something like a castle in England, but of course, it was more like an Asian temple...and to his home. He lives up in the mountains of Japan and I kept forgetting we were in Asia while we were up there. It looked like good ol' C. County. His home is an actual tree house in the mountains that he designed himself, actually elevated off the ground.
In TP's meeting on Monday Gary Stevenson from the first quorum of the seventy was able to attend. Gary is one of the owners of TP's company and is now serving as the Asia Area President in Japan. It was very neat to meet him. If you all remember he spoke in General Conference 2008 about looking toward the temple and used the Logan Temple as his example. Will was very honored to meet him as well.


We return home this evening and get to put our house together since we moved the day before we came here. Yes, we will have to switch branches, unfortunately, but I am also looking forward to living closer to members. There are a few families that I have heard of that live in our same complex. We love being in our current branch and were going to keep our move a secret so we could continue to attend, but alas, our secret has leaked. We thought it would be easy to keep a secret since only a few friends of ours have actually been to the house (we live the farthest from anyone), and there were a few key people that we decided couldn't know because of their calling (Elders Quorum, clerk, and Branch President) since they might be obligated to tell us to switch. One of those key people was buying our treadmill from us and was coming to pick it up the day we were moving. The treadmill movers came and moved the Incline Trainer to our new location and moved the other to the lobby so this key person could pick it up easily, but it worked out that he came early and asked to come up to the apartment...Since all of our belongings were packed up I had to brief him in the elevator and he ends with "I'll keep your secret." ! Wow! Really?! Too cool, I thought. Since no one knew about the move we couldn't really ask for help so we did it all ourselves, and it took all day long. By nightfall we were in our new apartment and I get a phone call from my friend who is the Primary President and whose husband is in the branch presidency. "Did you move to Pudong?" She asks... and our secret is blown. :)

In WB news: He is running all over the place and getting into everything. While I was unpacking a few things the morning before we left WB was running all over and getting into everything. After a moment I couldn't hear him and found him in the storage room sitting amongst our vitamins and calcium pills with a multivitamin in his mouth, him in the middle trying to get all the caps off (he can now unscrew lids of things, like toothpaste, and vitamins). In our new apt. the landlord has a big statue of Buddha about the same size as WB that she hasn't removed yet and and W will often stand in front of this statue and have a conversation with it. He sure has a lot to say.

Japan, Moving

I'm making this post from my hotel room in Japan right now. Jen is asleep on the bed next to me and Will is asleep in his crib. Originally I wasn't supposed to come to Japan until the middle of September but I recieved a phone call just a couple of days ago saying that I needed to be here on Monday for an important meeting. Because I had just spent the previous week in South Africa and Thailand I felt bad coming home for just 24 hrs before jumping on a plane to Japan, so I booked three tickets instead of one and brought the whole family along. I however, am exhauseted. In the past four days I've been in four countries, South Africa, Thailand, China, and Japan - these places aren't exactly next door! But at least Jen and Will are with me now.  This is the 4th country Will has been to before turning 1 years old, little fella is starting to fill up his passport!

In the 24 hours that I was home this weekend we spent out weekend in true Price fashion, we moved!  We moved to the other side of the river in Shanghai.  The area where we live is called Pudong.  This is an exciting move for us because in this area of the city we will be able to run outside and we are close to big parks and fun areas for Will.  To put it in my sister's terms, this new area is much less 'Chinese-y' as it had sidewalks, trees, parks and much less traffic.  Our new compound is quite large with about 100 buildings in it that are all over 30 stories tall, so we probably have a couple hundred thousand people living in our compound alone.  But the compound is very kid friendly and very cool.  Moving by yourself makes for a very long day.  Jen kept Will entertained and cleaned the old place while me and the driver lifted boxes and made trips back and forth all day long.  We are looking forward to getting settled in the new place and will post pictures once we do.

This is a moving-truck-taxi that we called up.  These have pay meters just like a regular taxi.  In the end this truck cost me a whopping $16, not bad! 

These are the moving boxes that we bought online and had delivered to the house.  While I was traveling Jen packed up the whole place in these boxes and labeled everything so that when we moved into the new place we knew where every box needed to go.  Way to go Jen!

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This is Will at a Japanese restraunt in Japan last night.  He was really liking the miso soup and couldn't get enough of it.  He got tired of waiting for spoon fulls so he just dove right in and started drinking it up.

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I forgot to post this picture last time.  This is the view out my hotel room window in Cape Town, South Africa.  This is the Atlantic Ocean so it's very cold.

This is out the window of my hotel room in Durban, South Africa.  This is the India Ocean so it's very warm.  The warm ocean makes for nasty flights over it.  It sends up drafts of warm air which create a lot of turbulance for the plane.  The flight from SA to Thailand was 11 hours of the plane bouncing all over the place.  I hate this flight.

South Africa

I'm in Cape Town, South Africa right now.  It's nice to have access to blogs again.  Since I have the opportunity I thought I'd post real quick. Yesterday I was in Johannesburg and was able to attend a big rugby game.  The game was a lot of fun but I still don't completely understand all of the rules and strategies etc.  This picture below is of a percussion and dance group that was playing music outside of the stadium before the game.  They were play the world cup theme song, Waka Waka by Shakira (one of WB's new favorites)

I bought a South African Springbox jersey at the game.  It was only fitting since the other 95,000 people were ALL wearing jerseys.  Rugby is less of a game and more of a religion in SA and NZ.  During the game I was getting constant texts from my friend/colleuge in NZ who was awake watching the game with his 3 sons at 3am NZ time.  They are so passionate about this game.

Here is a picture during the game.  The New Zealand team (All Blacks) won the game.  I think most of the players on the team were cousins of the UofU and BYU football players. 

I had a bumpy flight from Joburg to Cape Town today.  It is winter here in South Africa right now.  But after landing I went to the hotel which is right on the ocean with an amazing ocean view.  The waves are crashing cloudly outside my window right now.  Then I went and had a great seafood dinner at a small restraunt accross the street from the beach.  Jen isn't a big seafood fan so I usually eat seafood when I travel.  The seafood in Cape Town is always sensational. Tomorrow I fly to Durban for a Tuesday meeting and then back up to Joburg for one final meeting before going to Thailand for a meeting then finally back home on Friday.  A flight per day for a week is not my idea of a good time.