He Made My Dream Come True

As we went to bed one night I told Autumn that "tomorrow my dream is going to come true."  Autumn then asked if I had really had a dream and I told her "no."  So she asked, "Mommy are you sure know what 'my dream is going to come true' REALLY means"?

I don't remember much from seventh grade.  I can off the top of my head remember 2 things...I remember my strange science teacher trying to teach us evolution and I remember the "Terracotta Soldiers".  I don't remember anything else from Social Studies, I can't even recall who my teacher was, but I remember sitting and staring at that picture and being mesmerized.

For Mother's Day, Joel surprised me with the promise of a trip to see the soldiers.  :)

We left on Saturday night arriving in Xi'An after midnight.  The next day we just lounged around and tried to catch up on some sleep.  I could try to tell you what we did each day but I am getting kinda old, so I will just give you a summary of what we did over the whole 4 days.

We went and saw the Muslim street.  We bought some street food and bought some souvenirs while we were there.  My favorite is a chess set (Isaac loves chess) with the pieces being the soldiers!  We also bought one thing each for the kids.

We went and saw the Bell Tower.  There are at least two towers there that are very old.  One is the Bell Tower and one is the Drum Tower.  We knew we would have to pay to go up them so we chose the Bell Tower since it had the best view of the city.  Here are some pictures while we were up there.

We of course went to see the soldiers.  I was surprised at how many soldiers they have not yet uncovered.  One pit sits almost completely untouched as I guess they are waiting better technology so that they can preserve the color of the soldiers.  It was simply amazing being there and seeing statues that are so old yet so well made.  It was a lot of walking--believe it or not, and I was pretty exhausted after that was over.  I even fell asleep on the bus on the way home which is not like me.

On the last day we rode bikes around the city wall.  We rented the bikes for 100 minutes and Joel was determined that we could make it all the way around.  We made it--and we later found out that the total distance was 8.5 miles.  It was a lot of fun!

For Christmas my Dad and Deborah had given us some money to use for a mini-vacation.  So we actually decided to use the money on our trip to make things a little more comfortable and enjoyable.  We ate out quite a bit......Papa John's, Dairy Queen (at least 4 times), Indian Restaurant, etc.  We don't get to eat those things in our city, so it was a real treat.  We used the money from Dad for those meals.  So many thanks!!!

 We got back on Thursday and we were pretty tired but we have since gotten back on our routine and are looking forward to our friends being here in the next 15 minutes!!!!  More pictures of their visit coming soon...