The American Philippine Cemetery

I went to the American Philippine Cemetery.  All of the U.S. soldiers who died in WWI defending the Philippines were buried here.  It was a very peaceful place.  You can't see it very well but the shape of the cemetery is a circle and the graves are in rows forming an arc.  Behind me is a large structure, also shaped like an arc, that houses information regarding the different battles in Asia. There are many maps on the walls and a list of all of the soldiers names who died here. 

My New Goggles

This weekend Danny went to two over the top birthday parties. The first was for a 5 year-old girl which had a Mermaid theme and the other was for a 1 year-old boy with a Veggie Tales theme. At the first party they had a catered lunch, a mini hamburger grill, cotton candy machine, a puppet show, a magic show, girls that danced with big bubbles and games that the kids won prizes at, lots of prizes. He came home with more in prizes than I spent on the gift. The pink goggles and dolphin gun were two of them. Yesterday he wanted to try them out so I took him upstairs to the pool. The goggles were like suction cups on his face and when he took them off he had two red/purple circles. It reminded me of when we used to take the vacuum cleaner and suck it on our arm so it would leave the circle marks.

The second party would have cost about $5-7 thousand U.S. dollars. Everything was customized with their son's photo on it. As you came in the kids got tokens with the little boy's picture on them and they could redeem them for prizes. Danny ended up with about 15 tokens so he got 5 gifts--A kite, a mickey mouse drum, a dart board, a tambourine & something else that isn't memorable. This party was in a banquet hall with catered food. They had a stage built with a huge Veggie Tales backdrop, a photo booth with his picture and Veggie Tales as a background, a huge screen that continuously showed the Veggie Tale movie and the ceiling had tons of balloons that were blown up and shaped like different vegetables. I made sure to tell him that his birthday party won't be like this one.

My Danny-Mommy Date

On Friday Justin had a dinner goodbye party for his boss' boss so I decided that he and I should have a Mommy-Danny date. I picked him up from school and we went to TimeZone (an arcade) and to the movie Tangled. We had such a good time. Danny has this thing about THE CLAW. Every time we go to an arcade all he wants to do is play The Claw. We have never won anything and we have spent a good amount of money on them. So, Danny and I played The Claw and we actually won. I won a basketball and right after I won he won a stuffed pig with a suction cup on it! Following our win, we ate popcorn and saw the movie Tangled. It was so cute. Following that we went hunting for a back pack. His friend Markol has a Disney Cars backpack with a lunchbox and a watch on the back of the bag and he wanted one just like his. His were in bad shape. The inside of the bag was flaking off and the lunchbox lost its handle. We went to 4 stores and walked a long way but, we didn't get lost. I felt so proud that I didn't get lost and that I didn't need my driver to pick us up and take us to another store (different malls on different streets). We couldn't find the one he wanted so we settled for a plain Cars bag.

Jerimiah Wilson is here

Jeremiah Blake Wilson

Born January 10, 2011 at 2:54pm

Weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz.

Length 21 inches

http://wilsonwa.blogspot.com/

Our Last Day in China

For our last day in China we decided to go to some museums. First we went to the Capital museum and then we went to the Sony ExploraScience Museum. The Capital museum has over 200,000 cultural relics such as chinaware, bronze art, calligraphy, paintings, jade ware, sculptures and Buddhist statues and gadgets. We went through most of the museum in 2 hours. Justin could have spent all afternoon there but Danny and I aren't big museum lovers. Danny did so well though. Normally I think he would have done it in 30 minutes. Our tour guide, Christina, was with us and he really liked going with her and holding her hand.

The Sony ExploraScience Museum was specifically chosen for Danny. It is a hands on museum that mainly focuses on light and sound waves. There were activities such as throwing a basketball into a hoop while looking through refracted lenses, a green screen, a booth that you stepped into that took photos of you from multiple directions, and a computer program that pitted you against another person to see who has the happiest face. It compared several features on your face such as teeth, eyes sparkling and the creases in by your mouth to determine whose face was the happiest. There was also a screen that changed the sounds made from a musical instrument into a visual representation of the volume and type of sound you made displayed on a large screen. There was even a 3-D movie about the ocean which was mostly in Chinese but had a couple parts that were in English.

Hutong

One of the highlights of our trip was going to the area of Hutong. It is a very old and expensive section of Beijing where we took a rickshaw ride and then we went to a traditional Chinese home. The ride was freezing and Danny was all wrapped so you could only see his eyes. Long ago, homes were laid out in a rectangle with a courtyard in the middle. Prior to the Revolution, many were owned by one family or several generations of one family. Each side of the rectangle would be a separate house. We spoke with a woman whose grandfather owned these houses and she told us all about "the old days." It was very interesting. Another plus was that she had a heater which we snuggled up against.

It was interesting to know that the number of steps that led up to your door marked the status of the family living there. Hers had 4 which told others that they had lots of money and that her grandfather was in the army. As we were walking out of her door I couldn't see where I was going because my camera was sticking out and I missed a step and fell and scraped my knee. Luckily I didn't rip a hole in my pants but I was cut up pretty good. It still hasn't healed completely.

After picking myself up off the ground we took another rickshaw ride over to another home where they made lunch for us. It was the best Chinese food we ate. I think Danny's favorite thing about this house was that it had a sit down toilet. In the upper right hand corner is a photo of the home. The owner is a Kung Fu master and his son is living in California and teacher Kung Fu. He and his boys have met Jackie Chan and there was a photo of them together. I would have loved to see him wield the sword but I was trying to take care of Danny and there wasn't a lot of room in their kitchen to move about.

Hard Rock and the Toy Market

After Fundazzle we tried catching a cab, which was nearly impossible to do, and made it to Hard Rock.  We got there at 3:00 and they told us that they were getting ready for their New Year's celebration so we had to be out by 4:00.  No problem.  The food was good and Justin and Danny each got a Hard Rock shirt.  Justin's had John Lennon's charity on it and Danny's had panda bears.  Their souvenir is a Hard Rock shirt and I get a magnet.  The cool thing about this Hard Rock was that it was inside/outside a hotel.  We walked out one entrance and ended up walking around the building and noticed that there was a Taxi stand.  We headed there and the doorman got us a cab.  We showed the first cab driver the toy market name and location and he refused to take us there.  The second did the same thing, I guess the third time is the charm.  

The toy market was pretty cool.  It was a building that had lots of little booths inside that each sold different kinds of toys.  Some sold stickers or barbie dolls, action figures and trains.  Many of the items were from the 80's.  The guide book told us that the toys were 50-70% off what you would pay in the States but that didn't seem true.  We ended up getting Danny a helicopter, which broke withing 1 day of playing with it, and 2 tops.  We did bargain a little bit but it was just neat looking at all of the booths.  As we were getting ready to leave I noticed a sign that said upstairs had a stationary store.  That made me think of scrapbooking so we went up.  Most of it was tacky souvenirs or cards and some statues but I did find a really cool paper item that I cannot describe well, but the doors open and there is a photo inside.  We left in a hurry because they were getting ready to close up for the night and they were doing some kind of demolition and there was broken glass around.

That night our guide picked us up and took us to the Chinese Acrobat show.  It was really neat but you couldn't take photos.  They did acrobatics, a lot of bending in unbelievable places, and some Kung Fu and pole acrobatics but their finale was having 12 girls balancing on one bicycle riding around the stage.