Birk Adventures

I don't have anything particularly exciting to blog about today, so I decided to blog about the hidden spiders we saw in Hong Kong. If you glanced at the picture above and didn't see a huge scary spider, look again! He's in the middle, maybe a little to the left with long skinny legs spread out. Our last Saturday in HK we took a ferry to nearby Lamma Island, which is smaller and only 12000 people live on it. It was very charming. We landed at a little floating fishing village and hiked across the island to another ferry which took us home, stopping for a swim in a beautiful beach. The pathway was lined, sometimes covered, with trees. At one point I looked up and noticed a big spider in its web, hanging above me. As I looked around, I realized that they were all over and completely camouflaged themselves until you started looking for them. Once I started seeing them, I got a little panicky and ran away with Marian to a break in the trees. See if you can find the spider in th...

Here are some entertaining videos of Marian. One day in Hong Kong I heard her making the same babbling noise over and over. I realized that she was actually saying a word and by process of elimination, discovered she was saying "umbrella." Since then it has become our favorite thing to have her say. She knows it's funny so she loves to say it for people. Several times she's been in the middle of a tantrum when I've asked her to say it. The tantrum goes on hold while she charmingly looks at her audience, says umbrella, then laughs harder than anyone. What a ham! This next one has umbrella and some of her other new words (we're still working on them, especially watermelon). I discovered that she knows how to say Book of Mormon one night when I was trying to get her to bed. She would not come to get her pajamas on and kept saying "muh-muh-muh" and pointing at the bookshelf. Finally I realized that she was reminding me that we needed to read Book of Morm...

But better late than never, right? Important event #1 I am late in blogging about: Happy #25 Birthday Adam!! As of Sunday Adam is officially in the quarter-centurion club (a title I've had for a while). It was a little crazy as I worked the night before and on his birthday. Thanks to so many who called so he wasn't lonely on his birthday! I am so grateful for my Mosobo. The kind of husband and father he is has totally surpassed my expectations. Not that I had low expectations, but just that he is amazing. On top of that, he teaches me so much about being a good stay at home mom, as he is a much better cook, cleaner, seamstress (is there a masculine version of that word?) and home-maker than I am. My whole life I thought that when I got engaged, my parents would sit me down and ask if my future husband treated me well enough. Instead, after I got engaged, my mom sat me down and asked if I treat A...

Well, we're back on "this" side of the world again, after a long trip home. We were delayed leaving Hong Kong so missed our flight to Salt Lake from San Fran. Because of fires in San Fran the airport is running at much lower capacity and everything was backed up! There were 2 more flights to Salt Lake that day but we couldn't get on them. We ended up flying to Sacramento at midnight, "sleeping" in the airport, and flying home at 6 am. Needless to say, we were SO excited to get home. Adam was so great in taking care of Marian--he slept less than an hour the whole way home. Marian was a trooper and only threw one major tantrum (not bad for 33 hours of traveling). So now we're back and it's been great to re-immerse ourselves in our life--seeing family and friends, using our oven, eating brownies, not hand-washing our clothes, seeing all the babies we missed being born, having a door to shut when going to the bathroom, using our cell phones, not sleepi...

OK, so our internet is actually being really fast today so I have uploaded a ton of pictures! I'm trying to play catch up on the last couple weeks. But don't get burned out on all the pictures because you'll love the video of Marian doing "push-ups" at the end! To get started, here is the Great Wall of China!! It's kind of crazy to me that we've really been there. And yes, it's all that it's cracked up to be. Things don't just get named one of the 7 wonders of the world for nothing. Seriously, it's amazing how they built it--not only is it incredibly long but is built along the mountain ridges. I don't know if you can tell, but it got really steep in some places. Marian did a good job climbing and we got her an outfit that says "I climbed on the great wall of China." Kind of cheesy, but how many one year olds can boast that? A couple more random China pictures. This one if from the place we ate lunch at on our way to the Wall....

Sounds kind of romantic, doesn't it? The Forbidden City, also called the Imperial Palace, is where the emperors of China lived for 500 years during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It's HUGE because each emperor would add onto it. It's also an extensive museum where many Chinese artifacts are displayed. We walked through courtyard after courtyard lined with buildings and inside the buildings were museums. To see it all you would need 3 whole days or something. So we just enjoyed what we could see in an afternoon. Here is the famous Nine Dragon screen. Dragons are good luck in China. There are 9 because odd numbers represented masculinity or power and 9 is the highest single digit odd number. I just like the expression on this dragon. (It's the middle one.) This is the crown one of the empresses wore. We just had to get a picture. These people would have a heart attack in Utah if these mounds constitute "perilous hills." We needed to get back to the hotel in a hurr...

I have fallen behind in my blogging. It's kind of feast or famine with me it seems. Anyway, I fell behind because of our fabulous trip to Beijing! The Chinese government blocks blogs so we could not access our blog there or anyone else's. (I guess it's part of their strict media control.) We went for a week and 2 of those days Adam had a Law & Religion Symposium. I actually did really well getting around Beijing with just Marian and me. Most the signs were in Chinese and English, which was great. The challenge was that no one spoke English, whereas in Hong Kong, almost everyone speaks at least some. Anyway, it was great when Adam's meetings were over and he could communicate. We saw the major tourist attractions and also talked to some American/church member attorneys practicing international law there. That was very helpful in giving us a realistic view of what life is like for them. It is definitely not for the faint of heart. It sounds like 70-80 hr weeks are no...