Welcome to China Mom and Dad S.!!!

We finally (I know it's only been 3 months!!) have our first visitors here in China! Danny's parents arrived in Beijing on Friday to spend 10 days with us! We are so excited that they are here and can see how we truly live! They were fortunate to arrive in time to trick or treat on Friday (see post!).

On Saturday we became tourists with them! We went to visit the Summer Palace and the Olympic Stadiums. The Summer Palace was built for one of the empresses because she felt Beijing was too hot in the summer. It is a huge place and really would take an entire day to properly cover all of the sights! Needless to say, with three children, we were there for a little over two hours! It was beautiful with a huge lake in the middle.

These are part of the stairs going up!

Ahhh...we made it to the top! This is what we saw!! Not sure what it is, but it must have been important to put it so high up!!
A little snack break!

Danny taking a break after climbing halfway up!

It was a beautiful day so we decided to climb to the top of the Tower of Buddhist Incense. There were gorgeous views from the top although I was a little scared of how high up we were! Wouldn't you know it, at the very top, after we had congratulated ourselves for making it, Eens has to go to the bathroom - he needed to sit down if you can understand!!! So after a total of about 3 minutes on the top, Danny quickly descended down the steps to find a restroom for Eens!! After that, the kids were pretty tired of looking at the landscape that I was in awe of, so we headed to the Birds Nest!

I knew the Bird's Nest was a very interesting structure, but to see it up close is very cool! The unfortunate part is that because of the pollution, in the short time since it has been built, you can already see the build up of "yuk" on it. We were able to purchase tickets to go inside where we could go to the floor and see the original costumes used in the opening ceremonies. It was a lot of fun to visit! I think the kids even enjoyed it!

We went back to the hotel for a rest after our busy morning and then we headed out to have Peking Duck for dinner - Danny's favorite! The kids all had colds, so they were not the most cooperative, but we were together and that is what mattered!! When the kids were in bed, Danny and his dad headed out for a drink while his mom and I had a very relaxing foot massage in our room! A perfect end to a perfect day!!