China!- January 27-31.

Now, I'd been feeling pretty lousy for the past 30 weeks, but I wasn't going to let that stop me from taking one last trip abroad before #4 made its appearance.  

I geared up and flew out of Greenville feeling very excited about my trip to China with my cousin Andy and his family.  The prospect of a few weeks off from 3 kids is enough to perk a lady up considerably.  I flew to DC and on to Chicago and spent the night- allowing me to spend a little time in very cold conditions and to actually see some snow.  The next morning, I took a 13 hour trip to Shanghai, next to a very concerned Indian man who was nice, but not entirely sure a woman in my condition should be traveling abroad.  Luckily, the flight was without any excitement on the part of #4.

At the airport I met up with my cousin Andy and his wife Christina, their two boys Charlie and James, and met Christina's parents, Agun (Grandpa) and Abu (Grandma).

Poor Charlie did not adjust to the 13 hour time difference and spent most of the trip awake and asleep at odd hours and mostly not enjoying the adventure.  Agun didn't mind holding the youngest while the rest of us explored.

James, on the other hand, was ready to go, and we had a good time playing together.

I had a good time playing the fun aunt who didn't have any responsibilities.

We all visited a traditional market and were pleased to find a common love of street food and got down to trying out chunks of ground, marinated tofu on a stick and warm soy milk. 

We visited a train museum in Shanghai.  James really loved the big trains!

We left Shanghai to travel to Christina's hometown of Jiangyin.  (She called it a very small town- though it has a population of 1.2 million.)  

Grandma and Grandpa had presents waiting for the boys when we arrived.

Great Grandma came up every day to watch James terrorize the toes of everyone in the apartment!

In preparation for Chinese New Year, we spent the day getting hair cuts and entertaining the boys at the big grocery store down the block.  

And Abu made so many dumplings and stick rice balls!

A big tradition of the New Year is firecrackers.  The louder, the better.  Here are some that Grandpa set off.  The box was the size of case of beer and from what I could tell, NOT the biggest fire crackers you could by.  But they did make some noise.

Still super jet-lagged, none of us made it to midnight, but I did wake up at midnight to more fireworks.  I'd say it kept up at this level all night long and well into the next day. They then slowed down a bit, but were steady through the whole week of new year celebrations.