New Happenings

Well we have officially moved to China! Holy cow... Kunming is our home for the next year or so! Kinda scary but very exciting! We left the U.S. on Wednesday August 28th at 7:30 a.m. to drive to the airport. My parents drove us so that we could park our car at their house while we are gone. Let me tell you, that ride to the airport was nerve-racking! Lots of thoughts going through my mind! I think the thing I was most nervous about was Mason. "How was he going to be traveling for 23 hours?" "Please eat well on the plane, the last thing I need is a baby who is going through a phase and won't eat on a 12 1/2 hour plane ride!!" "I hope there are people at the airport in China to pick us up at midnight when we arrive!"... Lots of things were going through my mind! I think the scariest thought was that we had to leave his carseat behind. In China, if you find a cab driver that would wait for you to put a carseat in he was a saint! So instead of bringing that and probably not using it, we decided to minimize our luggage that we had to carry through the airports and leave the carseat in Utah! Scary! Mason did AMAZING in the flights! We had 3 flights. Our first flight was about 1 1/2 hours to Seattle where we had about a 2 hour layover. Then we had a 12 1/2 hour flight into Shanghai, China where we had about a 3 hour layover. Then we had our last flight from Shanghai into Kunming and that was a 3 hour flight. Oh man, it was a long day!! The worst flight was the last flight because I think Mason was fed up with flying and having his ears hurt on the landings. But I'll take it!! I think the best part out of all the traveling was when we landed in Shanghai and we had to find our next terminal. When we went to find customs, and we had to go through these doors which took us to the place where people were waiting to pick up people that were on the plane. There were about 200 Asians and as soon as the doors opened and they saw Mason, it was almost an uproar! Everyone cheered, clapped and tried to get Masons attention by waving. We are told that seeing a baby, this young especially, but an English baby is like seeing a baby panda bear. It is really rare and not seen very often. So for them to see a blond hair, blue eyed baby they all wanted to touch him and take pictures with him. Kyle and I didn't expect an uproar like that and so we just kind of were in awe at how many people were waving! It was a neat experience!

For our 12 1/2 hour flight I think we got the best seats in the house ... plane??.... besides getting first class seats of course. We had the bulkhead seats (which are the very first seats) and we had so much leg room that if I stretched my legs out I could barley touch the wall in front of us. It was awesome! When Mason was asleep, I would just lay him on the ground in front of us!

Here we were in Shanghai waiting for our last flight! We were ready to be done traveling!

Mason looking out the window! On every flight, we had the whole row to ourselves so we always had extra seats to stretch out and stuff. I think the Lord knew how nervous I was and helped out a lot!! 

Getting on our last plane in Shanghai YAY!! 

The first night was pretty rough. We landed in Kunming at midnight their time, 10 a.m. Utah time. We got our bags and headed to meet Taylor and Drew (Owners of who we are working for) who were waiting to take us to our apartment. We got to our apartment (2 a.m.) and wanted to go to sleep SO bad, but Mason was wide awake! So Kyle and I stayed up until 4 a.m. and Mason finally went to bed (or took a 1 1/2 hour nap!) All-in-all it has been a rough few days! Mason is just barely getting over the Jet-lag feeling which has made our days a lot smoother! I tell ya what, there is nothing like having a new born baby and rearranging their schedule to match yours and then 5 months later switching their days 180 again!! It's tough, but do-able!

Fresh fruit and bread was waiting for us on our table when we arrived! This looked like GOLD after eating airplane food for, what seemed like, forever! 

Living room

Small kitchen

Masons king-sized bed! This is where he sleeps until he learns to roll and then we have to buy a crib for him.

Bathroom... yay for an American toilet!! No squatters here!!

Our view from the living room

Loving life!

First day of church in China

We have a very unique and special opportunity when it comes to attending church here in China. We call into a branch up north in China and we get to listen to sacrament meeting over the phone. If we want to talk, like for fast sunday or if we have to give a talk, we simply un-mute the phone and we are able to talk to every member who is listening on this conference call! There are about 23 different locations here in China that are on the conference call. The number of members varies from 5 here in Kunming to up to 35 up North somewhere. When it comes time to bless and pass the sacrament, Kyle and Jeff (our good friend), bless and pass the bread and water to Maren (Jeff's wife) and I. It is so neat to be able to experience something like this!

Craving something sweet... Tim Tam Slam anyone?! Oh ya!! Hit's the spot!

We also have started feeding Mason real food (other than cereal). We smashed up bananas and gave that to him for his first meal! He couldn't get enough! He absolutely loved the texture and taste of the banana's! Let's hope that he isn't allergic or anything because it's awesome to see him eat real food!

Sorry this post is so long, but I just wanted to update you on what Kyle and I have been doing since being in China! We have loved being here so far! There have definitely been some hard home-sick moments with me, but Kyle is so good at comforting me and helping me through it.