Seizing Moments: Local Tour Day

Today is Gracie Lin's 13 month birthday! To celebrate, we went on a tour of local markets. That trip started with Walmart! It was quite an experience! The department store items on the second floor were very similar to home and wasn’t a huge deal. The food section on the first floor was so different. I have a few pictures of the grocery sections. The biggest thing is that people stopped us so frequently that we couldn’t get through the store! Everyone wants to touch the boys and then check out Gracie’s sweet little face. They loved the head band today. We have cards to show people that will tell them that we are from the US and are adopting this baby girl. I think that would be very fascinating to most people but with the boys here, they are not that interested in the baby but want to talk about the boys. I think part of it is the blond hair and part that we have two boys.

After Walmart, we had a terrific lunch with an opportunity to try some spicy food. Our host only ordered one real spicy meal for the table; she’s pretty conservative with us in general. We tried 10 different dishes and I don’t think there was one I didn’t like.

Lastly, we went to the local market. I was five stories of clothing, shoes, stores to get custom made items, household items, cosmetics, and accessories. There were times in that market that we would just stand in one spot and be surrounded by people. Particularly at one point, there was a large group of you people that I though might be high school age kids. They stopped to check us out and they all brought out their cell phones to take pictures of the boys. Parker in turn pulled out his camera and took pictures because one of them had a puppy. It was such a fun experience! I forgot to take pictures there because it was all kind of overwhelming.

When we got back to the room, it was around 3 and the little ones had already napped in the market and on the bus. So, it was a rough afternoon with Carter wanting attention and getting into continuous trouble. He is having his moments over not being the baby anymore! Our prayer request is to be able to give him enough attention and enough things to do that will use up his abundance of energy each day!

This trip is amazingly hard with two little ones but it is also equally incredible because of the interaction with all of the kids. Gracie is very attached to Parker which is a blessing. I can pass her off to him to get things done and he’s the only one who has been able to put her down and she doesn’t mind when he puts her on the floor. I’m caught a smile to share!

The pictures are all in backward from my story but I'm too tired to change them now! Good night!