To Beijing and Beyond

For those of you non-Toy Story fans, I'm trying to be funny here with Buzz's famous words, "To infinity and beyond!" Cooper's favorite movie right now is Toy Story 2 because Buzz and Zurg battle. He insists that he can fly when he is in his Buzz costume, which can be quite scary when he throws himself on the floor!! It should come as no surprise that one of my children would refuse to take off a costume. Eens once wore Minnie Mouse to Wal-Mart where he was loved on by all of the women and Ellie was mad because she was receiving no attention. She used to wear her princess costumes non-stop at our house, and even now will turn into Snow White in a matter of minutes! Coop refused to take off Buzz on Tuesday. Typically I would not care, but we were planning a trip to Beijing to meet our friends, so I really didn't want him wearing a costume all that way in the car.

This will be a big surprise I'm sure, but the 2 year old won!! He was thrilled to show off his super powers to everyone he met. Many of the local people could not help but gawk at my long eyelashed, little, white Buzz running around trying to shoot everything! I'm pretty sure they don't see that on a regular basis! Here he is at the play area in Beijing with his friend Ben!! They had so much fun and I think Ben may have caught the Buzz bug by the end of our time together!!

Besides meeting up with our friends and eating a yummy Italian lunch, we had another matter to take care of. I mentioned in a previous post that Danny and I wanted to run a 5K on the Great Wall. Well, one would think that it should be simple to sign up for a race where I am going to pay almost $200 to be in agony for 30 minutes. This was not the case, of course! Instead, I had to fill out an on-line registration, only to get an e-mail with the same form attached that needed to be filled out in pen. It also required that I provide copies of our residence permits, passports, and pay in cash. They politely said that I could put it in the mail, but I was not about to pay that much money and first off trust the mail system here, and second not have a receipt!! So, Cooper and I got to spend over 45 minutes driving around Beijing trying to find this "office" to deliver all of the paperwork too! We did get it done, and now Danny and I are officially registered for the race on May 16th! Really though, wouldn't it be easier for all involved if we could just pay by credit card on-line and scan in copies of our passports??!! Just a thought!!