It’s Spring Break for the girls and Quingming Chinese holiday for Jim. Jim has Monday and Tuesday off for Ching Ming – Tomb Sweeping Day. The Qingming Festival (清明节, Ching Ming Festival in Hong Kong), Ancestors Day or Tomb Sweeping Day is a traditional Chinese festival on the 104th day after the winter solstice. The Qingming festival falls on the first day of the fifth solar term, named Qingming. Its name denotes a time for people to go outside and enjoy the greenery of springtime (踏青, “treading on the greenery”) and tend to the graves of departed ones.

There is a reason our blog is full of fun adventure travels – we have these weeks off during the school year for a perfect family get away. There is a week in October for Chinese National Day, two weeks for Christmas, a week for Chinese New Year and a week in March/April for Spring break. However, we are staying home for our second stay-cation of the school year. It has been a long, cold winter with no sun. It would be nice to go find the sun, but it is also nice having no schedules to keep. Roxi likes when we have a stay-cation.

On Saturday and Sunday, Jim was completing his pool dives in Puxi. He missed the pool dives with the class last weekend since he was in Hong Kong at 7’s. Jim left the house at 7:00am to return around 2:00pm. He was tired after diving all day, but loved it. He is thrilled to be getting PADI dive certified with Emersyn.

The girls, Roxi and I hung around Yanlord. We had nice weather to enjoy the gardens with Roxi. On Saturday morning, I sent Emersyn on her way for tennis lesson at 8:30am. Eleri and I took Roxi down to the “doggy play date”. At 8am on the weekends, a group of us meet in the dog area for a “doogy play date”. Roxi loves this time to run with her buddies. The dog park was full and Roxi was in dog heaven. Eleri and I stayed in the garden until almost 11:00, therefore, we had a very tired and happy puppy! We spent the afternoon relaxing and catching up on our “to-do” lists. Sunday morning was about the same with the dog play date most of the morning and relaxing at home.

Monday morning I woke up to the sound of packing taping ripping. It was 6:30am and I could only guess what Eleri was making. I rolled over for a bit longer, but couldn’t sleep with the loud sound of tape ripping. I came out to see what was keeping Eleri busy all morning. She had made a ping pong table. It didn’t work as the balls didn’t bounce off the cardboard, but it looked good. She cut out cardboard paddles for her table.

Since we were all up early, we took Roxi down to find the weekend dog play date was in full swing. All the dog owners had the Chinese holiday off and the sun had arrived in Shanghai for a lovely morning in the dog park. The dogs were thrilled to see their buddies three days in a row.

Lili was in town for Spring break, also. The family had to cancel their trip to Thailand because her father had surgery on his ankle. While waiting for Lili to come for a sleepover, Eleri made herself into a French man. She is good at keeping herself busy! Emersyn was busy reading her book – mostly her ipad these days. She downloads about a book a week with her love of reading and loving the extra time to read.

When Lili arrived, the girls went swimming in the indoor pool. They had fun splashing around and being silly. We tend to only use the indoor pool when friends are over to play. Upon returning from the pool, I put the girls in the big tub in our bathroom. They said they didn’t want bubbles, but I left the bubbles out for them…BIG mistake. They poured most of the bottle into the tub, turned on the jets and there were bubbles everywhere! They had fun laughing and giggling for over an hour. It only took 10 minutes to clean up the mess so well worth the laughter and fun!

Lili played all day Tuesday with time in the garden and time in the toy room to wii. These two always have fun together and are always laughing. Lili went home after 4pm. The Bishops arrived at 5pm. The adults (Faith & Dan, Jennifer & Scott and us) were having an adult dinner out at my favorite place on the Bund, Lost Heaven. The Bishop girls, Avery & Riley, were spending the night. We order pizzas for the girls and they were happy to spend the night watching movies. We enjoyed a lovely night out. We took the ferry across the river on a beautiful night to enjoy the view.

Wednesday was kites on the river. Emersyn wanted to fly kites during Spring Break. Jim had the idea of walking the two blocks to the river. The Bishops and the Jenkins joined us for kites on the river. We took Roxi and Spanky (the Jenkins’ dog) with us. It was a beautiful day for flying kites – warm with a nice breeze. Eleri had the first kite to go in the river, but we just pulled it in to send it back out flying over the river.

The kids flew kites for about an hour when they found new entertainment – Roxi bush jumping. She is a jumper with style pulling her back legs way up – like a deer. She doesn’t need much room as she jumps very gracefully. She does this all the time when I am walking her in the gardens. She falls behind from sniffing and will take the short cut of jumping the bush to catch me. She has only missed once when she jumped a bush near the pool that was about one and half the size of the red bush below. She was a bit surprised by the width as most of the bushes seem to be trimmed to the same width.

It was time to walk down the river to Paulaner’s for beer and pretzels. The gang of kids had fun on the walk posing with the various status along the riverfront.

It is a Chinese holiday, therefore, the restaurant was packed as everyone had the same idea…a drink along the river outside on this beautiful day. The kids took up the grass area with the dogs. Jim found us chairs to sit on to enjoy the view. After our afternoon fun, we went home for a quiet family evening after a two-night sleepover.

Jim’s Chinese holiday ended and he was back to work for Thursday and Friday. The Lyon ladies still had a few more days to play. On Thursday, Elle disappeared to Lili’s all day. On Wednesday night as I tucked Eleri in bed, I reminder her she need to get up tomorrow morning to go to work with Dad. She asked how long she had to be at Dad’s office? I laughed as she took it literally she had to go to work with Dad. She was very happy when I explained she was only riding to work with Dad. Mr. Nie would drop her off at Lili’s after dropping Dad off at the office. Bindi took the girls to a park all day and then a sleepover at Lili’s house.

No Dad, no Eleri, therefore, Emersyn and I took advantage of the time for a little one on one girl time. We walked to the Super Brand Mall for some shopping and lunch. We didn’t find anything to buy in the shopping department, but we had a lovely lunch at Din Tai Fung – a favorite dumpling restaurant. We walked home enjoying the beautiful afternoon.

Friday was another girl day with lunch with Dad. Emersyn and I drove out to Jinqiao earl so we could do a bit of shopping for her dive trip at Decathlon (my favorite store) before picking up Eleri. We picked Eleri up at Lili’s house to drive back to Decathlon. We had promised the girls rollerblades as an Easter gift. Eleri has never had a pair of rollerblades. Emersyn’s rollerblades we bought when we arrived in Shanghai six years ago. The rollerblades at Decathlon are very nice at reasonable prices of 200rmb for Eleri and 300rmb for Emersyn.

Once we had our rollerblades in hand, we drove to the Kerry Center to have lunch with Jim. Of course, we ate at the Blue Frog. After sending Jim back to work, the girls and I went for some nail spa time at The Dragonfly. The Dragonfly has opened a branch in the Kerry Center. Emersyn is now full price at the age of 11 – takes away the extra cheap part of getting the girls’ nails done. Eleri still has a few more years at half price. We went home to strap on the new blades and hit the gardens. Roxi was happy to enjoy the new outdoor gear with us!

Saturday I became Baker Brenda. I made a double bath of cookies for Faith’s house on Easter Sunday. I made a double batch of cupcakes (86 cupcakes) for Emersyn to take to school. She wanted to raise money for the charity of the month, Baobei. I was in the kitchen from 9am to 5pm. My next bake will be birthday cakes in May.

Sunday Easter was spent at Faith’s house. See the post, Easter in Shanghai.