Shanghai has two seasons…. winter and summer.  Spring and autumn are only a few weeks long each so have to adjust quickly!!  It’s starting to get HOT and humid outside so the best thing to do is turn on the sprinkler in the backyard, get the kids and dog running around and call it good!  We actually did try to dip our feet in the pool but it was still to cold for my taste.  The backyard provided tons of fun while the golfers chuckled their way through the 15th green – I guess we were quite the site!!

Chasing Sisters

Making a Swimming Pool

Ladybugs

Summer is coming and that means ice cream!  Thank goodness both girls don’t mind sharing….

What a full week it has been!  We got back to Shanghai late Thursday night and here it is Thursday night again so we’ve been back a week.  Maddie spent a fair amount of time in the pool which meant we had a lot of time for some interesting conversations.  Maddie has been on so many planes this summer that she has decided that she wants to be an airplane girl.  Later, when I asked her where she wanted to go she said that she wouldn’t ever get off the plane.  She would just stay on the plane forever to help people!  Okay, so maybe the 11 take-off and landings this summer had an impact on her mental health!

Like any good mom, I took Maddie to the doctor on her birthday because she needed a check-up in order to go to school this year...

This summer vacation flew by so fast – Maddie blinked and it was gone.  There were so many highlights which is great, but Maddie has found herself wanting more and more of the highlights.  Gee, life is hard.  Everything is so good and we just want more of it!  It was a year ago that we moved into our new condo and Maddie sat there singing a song at her reflection in the tv.  Now she sits and ponders…  in her words, she loves America better than Shanghai.  Why?  Because, in her words, she gets to love her grandmas and grandpas and brothers and cousins and, and, and.  She gets it.  She really gets it.

For this reason it was really, really difficult to leave home this year...