Guess who bundled up in their warmest clothes and toured all around Beijing. That’s right us! It is official, we are all tropical babies and were not prepared for the cold in Beijing. We bundled up though and headed out though since there was loads to see.

It was pretty cute watching these two in the cold. Poor Malcolm wouldn’t even take his hands out of from under my scarf to eat his lollipop. That’s when you know things are dire.

For Randy and me, visiting Tiananmen Square was definitely the highlight of our day.  We have heard about and seen photos our whole life and it was pretty amazing to be somewhere with so much history.  When we talked about the highlight of our day Randy and I both picked Tiananmen Square.

And here is what happened when I asked Adam to give Malcolm a hug in front of Mao.

Inside it was enormous, and there was beautiful building after beautiful building! Apparently the city took 14 years and a million workers to be built in 1406! It used to only be used by the Emperor and his concubines and was forbidden to everyone else (except the many, many, many servants).

Just like California 🙂

After our long walk through, it was time to warm up at lunch with some flower tea, fried tofu, glass noodles, pickled cucumbers and Malcolm’s favorite- noodle soup.

After lunch we were off to the Summer Palace. It/s a beautiful area of mostly man made lakes and hills.

This little peanut was exhausted from traveling but at least I was able to tuck him in to keep him warm.

At the end of the walk we got to take a dragon boat back to the start. Here is Adam’s best dragon face. This was definitely Adam’s favorite part of the day!

After that we headed back to the hotel to relax and warm up.

We stopped at the hotel lounge for some marshmallows and wine and then we were off to a yummy duck dinner.

This right here is Randy’s dream, a huge book all about duck. We were even able to go back to the kitchen and pick our duck out.

There were super comfy beds.

While it was hard at times I loved being in the cold weather in Beijing.  I loved bundling up and bundling up the boys. I thought they would fight it but they loved wearing coats and hats.  Or maybe it was just so cold they knew it was the only option.

Number four on my list for Beijing was hanging out with my favorite people.

Even Adam was a fan.

Our first day in Beijing we went to the Temple of Heaven.  Once again Beijing blew me away. We walked into a beautiful park with amazing temples all over.  Adam and Malcolm have been watching Kung Fu Panda lately and Adam right away decided that this building is where Tai Lung had hidden the magic scroll.

We stopped in front of the Temple to practice some Kung Fu moves.

(My poor tropical babies are so not used to cold weather)

Next up on Beijing’s list is how cool it was. I never expected that Beijing would be so cool.  We spent our second half of our first day in 789 Art Zone.  It had art galleries and art all over the street.  It was so modern and fun.

We even went to an art gallery and it was one of the best art galleries I have ever been to. The artist was a Chinese artist, Zeng Fanzhi and his art work was so interesting.

In case you’re wondering how we were able to walk around an art gallery and enjoy it with two little boys. Well here you go. We only break out the kindles on vacations but this right here was genius.

And last on my list is of course duck, duck, duck .

More on the Wall coming up!

He even practiced his soldier marching.

I snuck out of work and got to school just in time for the parade!

Both boys were so happy I was there.  It’s always a struggle to get out of work and fight Manila traffic to get to the boys activities but it is always worth it. They are always so excited to see me! It makes it easier that they are at the same school too! It’s only a mile away from work, although with traffic it can take up to 30 minutes!

Malcolm wouldn’t leave my side the whole time.

Adam on the other hand, sang and danced with all of his friends.

One of the best things about their school is the boys learn so much about other cultures! The past few weeks the boys have been learning about different cultures and stamping their ‘passports’ along the way.

Surprisingly most of Adam’s ended up on the roof! He even made some patterns with the black bats and white bones.

 Eventually Malcolm stopped eating all the candies and put some on his roof.

They were so excited about this little house that there wasn’t even fighting over the candy. Thank you Trader Joes for packing lots of candy, enough for everyone!

 And with that our Halloween festivities come to a close! We’re away next weekend so we celebrated early.  Happy Halloween everyone!

Adam loved his toolbelt and hard hat. We even got him a pair of jeans.  Adam hasn’t had jeans since we moved to the Philippines so it took some convincing. I had to show him pictures of all the construction workers who wear jeans.  He wanted to be in character so he agreed.

Some of us were more interested in eating the prizes.

And some of us were really into the games.

We ran into another Paw Patrol Pup there, Sky! Who also happened to be Adam’s buddy from school.

Is there anything better than going through your Halloween loot the next day to see all the goodies you got? I remember Ari and I would dump our buckets out and look at all of our candy. We would make trades that would inevitably lead to me having 20 MaryJanes and Ari having all the Hershey chocolate bar (in case you are not versed in candy trades I was the loser in this trade).  It was like I was reliving my youth when I saw how adeptly Adam managed to move all the good candy into his pile leaving Malcolm with some stickers and all the candy with nuts.

And here is Adam if he was a Jack O’Lantern.

Here is Scared.

Here is Happy.

Here is Silly.

Here is Angry.

Which quickly evolved into Puma.

Happy Halloween!

We have been in potty training mode over here.  Grandma got Malcolm some Paw ‘Patrols to motivate him. He is so cute, whenever he has an accident he says – “Oh,I peed in my aw atrols” its pretty adorable. Every time he successfully pees on the potty he jumps up and says ‘Yay!’

Potty training is interesting. You basically hang out with only undies on by the potty on for days in a row. So….you are forced to amuse yourself in whatever way you can. Here are some ways we passed away the time.

Putting on ALL of our underwear at once.

Modeling our new undies.

Building towers, lots and lots of towers.

Running around in circles.

Hide and seek.

We did manage to leave the house for Adam’s soccer debut! Randy has been wanting to take the boys to soccer.  Malcolm was a little young so we had to watch but he will be trying out toddler soccer this weekend!

He was so excited about his uniform and even got his favorite number, 5.

I also managed to sneak away from work last week for Malcolm’s celebration of the Philippines at school!  He was a little happy to see me.