Jenny from the block

 Here is my beautiful, lovely and sassy sister Jenny!  She came out to visit a couple of weeks ago and we had a blast!  She came when Thunder was in China and kept us all from getting too lonely.  Since she lives in Texas with no mountains, we headed up the Canyon for lunch!

 See everyone... we did make a fire!

 She loved her new baby nephew so much that the carried him everywhere.  When we went in the car, she would even climb out of the passenger seat, walk around to where he was buckled in, and carry him inside.

Somehow I got the bright idea of running a 5k race together... and she took me seriously!  She went out and ran several times before the race, while I, uh... didn't.  The race was kinda tough for me.  But we both finished!  Jen finished well ahead of me... but we did it together!  And do you like our professionally monogrammed shirts?

We both bawled like babies when it was time for her to leave.  Jenny is so funny and the kids and I loved having her around.  Man, I miss living near family!

Conversations with a 2 year old...

Me: Wow Tornado, you put those shorts on all by yourself. And I thought you were just a little guy!

Tornado: No, mom.  I'm a big dog.

China part 2

So the Canton Fair--the largest fair in the world--is incredible. We walked about 9 miles a day, only seeing a fraction of vendors. 

We did find 3 new manufactures that we will be doing business with. One of the manufactures has a 24 year-old  sales representative named Yao Ming (or maybe Yan Mun). He speaks fairly good English and is well educated. We talked extensively with him as we traveled to his factory in a remote part of China. Yao is a great guy, I gave him a Book of Mormon I had on me and wrote my testimony in it, much more to that story for later. Anyways Yao and his company wanted to take us to lunch.  They asked if we liked pigeon.....and that's when all of a sudden we had another appointment we needed to be at.

Well by the pictures I have sent, we did enjoy a good back rub. These Chinese have it down to an art, even standing on your back, working magic.

The Canton Fair kept us pretty busy the remainder of the week, we did some tough negotiating and hopefully things will work out as planned. We were offered plenty of crazy food, but stuck with the Western/Chinese imitation food.

The Chinese are a humble people for the most part, just trying to carve their way in the world like the rest of us. They are crazy drivers, maybe even as bad as Utah drivers (which is pretty bad). After 15 more hours in flight I'm now in LA waiting for my last leg home to Salt Lake. I'm excited to see my family and resume normal life. We had a great trip. 

Birthday Boy!

Sunshine was invited to a fun birthday party last week.  And by "fun" I mean the snake-holding and reptile-petting kind. Yeeesh!

Last Monday I was invited to record on the EFY 2010 CD (a small choir version of "Let us all press on") and it went a bit longer than expected.  Poor baby Sunrise was getting mad and hungry at home, so Thunder let him try his first real food!  I was happy he remembered to take a picture.  I just can't take all this growing up!

 And speaking of growing up, Sunrise is our big 5 year old!  Since Thunder was going to be in China for his actual birthday, we had a party for him the Saturday before.  I found the coolest CD player for him- it's a giant Lego block.

The theme this year's party was... tiki???  No, it was actually Transformers.  Can't you see it now?  The Decepticon eying you menacingly and the Autobot proudly beaming at you?  Can't you see it??

 We had marvelous weather and found a good deal for this giant blow-up bouncy thingie.

 I had so much trouble lighting those darn candles!

Then at the end the kids had to fan out and search for the All-Spark.... you know, the magical life-giving box.  Ours had the treat bags in it.  I still can't believe my cute baby boy is now 5 years old!

Back to China part 1

Thunder is back in China for a business trip to the Canton Fair.  This is his second trip, so he got right down to business when he got there.....

Anyway, here is what he said about his trip so far: "So Sunday night was eventful.  It was nearly time to head off to China, but my partner Randall had came down with kidney stones at 3 AM, and for most of the day I thought I was going to be in China by myself. Well, after a battle of his manhood the stones finally passed and Randall was able to come to China. Even though he still had some discomfort from the whole ordeal he feels much better. We got business class seats from LA to China- what a great flight. We had plenty of room and slept a good portion of the flight, so it wasn't bad. We arrived at the airport and for the life of us, we could not figure how to get outside.  Finally we made it to curbside and got into a black market taxi cabs.  These are guys trying to make some money on the side, and it's illegal.  We got in a van with 6 other people, and they all must have been over 80 years old. We just kept saying 'Shenzhen Shenzhen' was where we needed to go. After 30 minutes the driver pulled off the side of the road and another guy picked us up and we made it all the way to Shenzhen. It was a 2 hour ride for 40 bucks for the both of us, not bad for driving by car. While in the car I took the time to testify of my beliefs in Christ to everybody in the car, though they did not know any English. Some just stared at me.

Once in Shenzhen, we headed to the copy mall where the negoitating went on. This is a mall with about 1000 little 50x50 rooms selling all your favorite handbags, clothing etc. They grab you as you walk by and everything is negotiated. Randall and I know we have done good when they get mad at us. Here is what happens: they ask a price, I counter, then I walk away, they come and pull at me and after going back at forth for 5-10 minutes I say 'nope I'm going.' Then I walk about 20 feet and they yell 'ok ok you win your price,' but by then it's too late.  I say 'nope, you should have taken my price earlier- now its less.'  If you have never seen mad Chinese, this does in every time.  :)   I got some cool stuff for my family so hopefully they will like it. At the mall they have pedicures, manicures and massages all for about $5.00.  You can't beat that deal, especially for one hour's worth. Of course we had our shopping agents- two girls this time. They said they had better deals at a warehouse near by, so we followed them to this old buidling. After about 30 minutes of debating to go in (thoughts of kidnapping, or it being some type of club- all types of things were going through our minds), we did, and it ended up being just what they told us and we purchased some stuff from them. They were nice girls just trying to make a living. Today we will head back to the mall for the morning and then go back to Guangzhou to get ready for the purpose of out visit: business."

Bryce Canyon

Twice a year, we have General Conference for church, where we get to stay home and listen to the prophet and apostles on TV.  Since catching the mountain "bug," we wanted to get out in the RV for one last trip this year... and decided to head down to Bryce Canyon with friends.

 Randall and Michelle H. were able to hook up a trailer and so we were able to bring bikes and our friends brought their smoker.... Tri-tip while camping, anyone?

 I can't describe the way I feel when we visit these beautiful places- free, fulfilled and happy.  It's such a blessing to be able to enjoy these majestic places with family and friends.

Sports Camp!

A few weeks ago before bedtime, I casually mentioned that we should be spending more time with the kids practicing baseball and other sports.   The next day, Thunder emailed me a whole agenda for the Boyd Family Sports Camp!  Go big or go home right?  So I decided to make some iron-on shirts and we had fun with it.