Beijing, The Great Wall and Miss Lily

Our travels to Beijing went really well, slight delay at the airport caused us not to get to the hotel until 1:30 am, but Lily had a great first plane ride. She slept for half of it and then was very good for the rest of the flight and the bus ride to the hotel. The hotel we are staying at is opulent and very comfortable and we are really close to many of the 2008 Olympic spots and see the construction going on. The Bird Nest facility and swimming facility are awesome. We are close the many pizza restaurants and Lexi chose Big Pizza to go to last night. We all had a "western food fest" with a buffet we all enjoyed. Lily got her first taste of ice cream. Of course, she liked it. She continues to eat everything we give her and is such a good eater.

The first day in Beijing we toured the Summer Palace, which is quite impressive. Basically an empress wanted a summer cottage, so she had thousands of people build her a lake and an estate which is amazing.

At night we went to Big Pizza and the local department store so I could get more memory for my camera. I've taken too many photos and ran out of space. Well Lily decided to have a huge #2 diaper that was explosive and caused us quite the stress. People here do not like to see any baby skin exposed to the air and will come up and tell you to cover her up. Chinese babies usually do not go outside at least for the first year, a cultural thing. I had to take her into the department store and throw away her tights and clean up her dress (Auntie Linh if it wasn't your dress that you gave her I would have thrown it away. So Lily is bare legged, Charles was taken to task and had to go buy her pants for the walk back to the hotel. He said they were the most expensive baby pants in Beijing but when you need pants you need pants. He also bought a larger snugli so we could go up the Great Wall in the morning.

The weather is Beijing has been record breaking warm. Yesterday 12 C and probably the same today. I do not have a winter coat here and haven't had to buy one yet.

Today was the Great Wall - we went to the Bading area and climbed up four towers. This is an impressive sight in the world and it was warm and not windy so we had a great climb. Lily slept through half of the hike but was awake for the "roller coaster" down. It was like a toboggan run/roller coaster that you went down on. It was lots of fun to ride down to Bear Park and back to the bus.

Also shopping was on the agenda today with visits to a jade factory and a cloisonne factory. I did purchase a beautiful jade bangle that I'm supposed to pass along to Lily when she gets married. The Chinese know how to sell product. It was a full day and Lily is now sleeping soundly.

Monday we take all the children to be checked out by a doctor for their medical approvals. I'm sure Lily will pass with flying colours. We will find out her true weight. My guess is 23-25 pounds.

Lexi and Lily are great sisters. Lexi can't keep her hands off of Lily and tries to wake her up in the morning for play time.

Lily has some Chinese words for bottle, mom and dad. She also understand hello and goodbye. She is developmentally on target. She is amazing and we can't wait until everyone can meet her face to face.

They guys are all planning to watch the Super Bowl during breakfast tomorrow. Go Colts!

Signing off for Sunday night.