Jia's Dance Recital

Jia had her dance recital last Friday. The theme was One Hit Wonders and Her group danced to Achey Breaky Heart by you know who!!!
They were so stinking cute! I will try to add the You Tube link from my laptop later, but here's some adorable pictures of Jia and Jemma I took afterwards. Jemma has been home one week.
Oh, and we forgot to pick up Jias bouquet of flowers before the flower shop closed, even though I was we'll prepared and ordered them days in advance! So she and daddy picked them up Saturday morning. She loved them. The purple flowers would have clashed with her dance outfit Friday night anyway! Lol!!

Jory's End of Year Awards

Having done this the day before, Jemma wasn't nearly as bashful! But with all the craziness that has consumed us since we got home just 3 days ago.. I got the time wrong and missed most of the awards ceremony!
Jory had the best teacher this year. I have known Mrs Schmidt forever and love her dearly. I hope the girls get her as well. She truly is a gem. And she was so supportive of Jory missing school for his once in a lifetime trip to China to get his little sister!
Next stop for Jory...Middle School!!!

Jia's End of School Awards

We've not even been home 48 hours and we're already out and about. Not ideal... But this is the last week of school for Jia and Jory so there lots of little things going on.
Today was Jia's classrooms awards ceremony. Jemma was not happy about being there. She wouldn't even go in the classroom, so we sat in the hall. After a while sh relaxed and clapped for the kids and by the time Jia got her awards she was smiling and waving at her.... From the hallway.
Jias teacher said the best things Bout her! She got an award for most positive attitude and Mrs. Carlson said she always is smiling and kind. She got a 'Dogtag' award with a dog tag necklace. You can see from the pictures that Jemma seen her showing it to me so she showed me her jade necklace to! So cute!
Loving my girls! Tomorrow is Jory's awards, so we'll see how that goes!

Jemma Anne YaWen

She sure does LOVE her big brother! 

He has been such a blessing and we are so thankful we were able to bring him!

 

Gotcha Day was devastating... but this was a few hours later.

She is so very resilient!

 

The next day we had to return to the Civil Affairs office where we got Jemma and we were expecting it to be very traumatic.  But she and Jory played in the play area and she did amazing!

 

This is the Orphanage Director that Jemma clung to the day before... and the next day she posed for pictures with her and didn't even tear up!

 

She loves the computer and she loves my iPhone!

And she loves her GeGe!

 

On the streets of Nanning, China

 

Fixing to go swimming at our hotel

 

Jack and Jory in Nanning

 

Looking at her photo album with Baba

 

Rainbow over Nanning...

and we found the pot of gold!

 

God is GOOD!

and HE SETS THE LONELY IN FAMILIES!!!

Beijing

Wow... So behind in this blogging, but this trip has kicked my butt!

Our guide, Andy, in Beijing was AMAZING.  But that guy is in shape!

We hit the ground running walking and didn't stop.  When we did stop, we crashed!

No supper, no blogging.  Just bed!

But boy did we see some stuff in Beijing!

Pictures are out of order, and I only uploaded a few favorites for now.

 

I don't think this one needs any explanation!

We went to the Olympic Village and seen the Birds Nest, the Water Cube and Pangu 7Star Hotel.

 

 

This was the cable car ride up to the Great Wall.

We visited the Mutianyu Section of the Wall.

Our guide taught us a quote:

"Unless a man walk the Great Wall, he is not a 'real man'".

Chairman Mao

 

This picture was taken at the Forbidden City.

I bet we had at least 30 different people/families want their picture taken with us, and especially Jory.

Women were even trying to hand Jory their babies!

At one time our guide left us to go purchase some tickets and when he returned we were surrounded by people taking pictures of us and with us!  We should have charged and paid for our flight home!  :)

 

Jory's first flight!  Going well!

 

The street vendors food in Beijing!  If you watched the Duggar episode... this is where they were!  The heart of Beijing... just a few blocks down from our hotel.

 

The Stotts men are 'real men'!

 

The Temple of Heaven.  Click HERE to learn more.

 

Jory at Tiananmen Square

 

This was at the Temple of Heaven. Our guide told us to visit the last 2 buildings and meet him at the gate.  We were wore out!  So we sat and people watched!  Don't tell Andy!

 

Back to the Food Tables in Beijing... Crickets and Scorpions.

 

Just 1/2 of the food tables... Jory walked down the sidewalk with his hoodie up over his nose!

 

The middle of the bottom row is what we were looking for....

fried snake.

(glad the camera focused on Jory and blurred the back ground)

 

We took at Rickshaw ride through Hutong.  The very heart of Beijing.  A preserved part of the old original Courtyard Homes with the narrow streets and all. We actually were able to visit one of the homes.  The guys were mad because my rickshaw was #12!

 

The Forbidden City once you walk inside the gate. 

This is still the outer court.

I think there were over 8000 rooms inside!  The Emperor had something like 3000 concubines.

 

As interesting as Beijing was, I know you're wanting the good stuff, JEMMA!

I'll try and get those up ASAP!!!

 

Here we 'GROW' again!!!

I messed around with Google Map a little bit and I'm going to try to post our journey!
Go HERE to view the map of our journey!  I can't figure out how to embed it!