Note where we fell on our face at the playground in daycare! Apparently we took it on the chin! 

Happiness is wearing a new jumper for Spring! 

And this is me with our short-hair chihuahua, Mamie.  

This is our long-haired chihuahua, Boutros Boutros Gali (nickname: bou bou), when she was a puppy. 

This is our rotten cat, Satchmo, having just consumed part of a roll of t.p. in our bathroom. 

Ravioli is, indeed, a messy business... 

Miss Olivia expresses great surprise at being photographed mid-ravioli! 

Olivia on the carousel at the Zoo; Chris and Hayden are to our left! 

Here we are at the St. Louis Children's Zoo with the Zychs (from whose blog I heisted these zoo photos!). Our camera broke in China and hasn't worked since! 

This ghostly picture is on the Zych's last night in China and, although you can barely tell, was taken on one of the famous "red couches" at the White Swan. The lesson here? Don't use the "night vision" setting on your camera unless you want to look like this.

When we arrived home from China we made the demoralizing discovery that our luggage had, in fact, followed us both to Beijing and to Guangzhou but neither of our Chinese adoption coordinators had made the attempt to get it to us. It was, however, ready and waiting for us in our living room when we arrived home! (More of that "Rosenberger magic!")

Fred is clearly LOVING it in China... actually, by the time we neared three weeks in China, we'd have done anything to watch American TV and drink water from a tap. 

We stocked our mini bar with American food for those inevitable culinary emergencies... 

Scenic Guangzhou from our room-- in the foreground is the top of a Catholic church, believe it or not.

Another view of our room at the White Swan. This was around the time Fred got food poisoning and, thanks to a mistake made by our travel agent, the hotel wanted us to vacate our room for 24 hours. (It was getting so bad that the Zychs began to refer to our luck as "that Rosenberger Magic!")

This same travel agent later canceled our flight home from LA. (Whereupon I vowed I was never traveling again...)

Fred at the Chinese Moose Lodge. 

Naturally, Livi had a meltdown on the bus ride home. 

Here are the Zychs-- Jay, Hayden and Chris-- at the "authentic Cantonese dinner" at the "biggest restaurant in China." For no reason I can fathom they held the dinner late in the evening and made lo-o-o-ong speeches before feeding the babies. Then they gave everyone just one tiny, thin paper napkin and fed us messy food. It was so bad it was funny!

Here I am taking my life into my own hands by waking Miss Olivia up. I have to get her dressed for the big Farewell Dinner being held for us at "the biggest restaurant in China" which turns out to resemble a Moose Lodge. 

Here's Livi enjoying her first peanut butter sandwich. (Note the smudge of peanut butter on her upper lip!) Yum! 

This is Olivia in the bath at the White Swan. Bubble bath was a huge hit! 

This is in the lobby of the White Swan-- it's a jade sculpture approximately seven feet tall. Really spectacular. I bought a jade mini ship at Jennifer's Place because I liked this one so much. 

The English translations of Chinese signs are questionable. 

EVERYTHING can be, and is, transported by bicycle in China. These water jugs are FULL.

This is typical of the more upscale Guangzhou architecture. (There are plenty of less upscale buildings, but they're on side streets) 

The broad, beautiful avenues in Guangzhou are very European in appearance.