Day 14- A day in the city

Since today was Sunday, we did not have any adoption paperwork to do, so we took our time getting ready for the day.  We decided to talk a walk in the city and observe the sights and sounds of Guangzhou.  We all agreed that this city seemed a little more like what we were used to..not completely, but definitely unlike Beijing and Zhengzhou.  I really love the weather here.  It feels like a winter day in Florida... not too hot and not too cold.   They even have palm trees here too... (:   We ate at a few local restaurants.  Toby loved his fried rice and playing Chinese checkers.   Funny thing is, when we got our bill for one of the restaurants, we noticed that they charged us for playing with the games..  Oh well..  that was different.  Later in the day, we took a subway to Shamian Island.  It is a cute little section of the city that has a river surrounding it.  We got to enjoy a choir singing Christmas carols in a church called "Christ Church".  It was such a beautiful church with beautiful pictures of the life of Christ on their windows.  We would have loved to have gone to the service that morning, but Toby would not sit longer than 5 minutes in the service.  We have to get him used to going to church because he will be at our church a lot.   We ate at Lucys restaurant and found grilled cheese sandwiches... Hallelujah!  It is the little things. (:

  We enjoyed just walking and enjoying the evening there.   Toby was getting a little restless towards the end of the day so we decided to get back to the hotel.   Today was not too exciting of a day, but hopefully every day Toby is learning that we are his family and that we love him unconditionally no matter if he is happy or has a tantrum.  Prayers are appreciated for us as parents as we have to deal with disciplining this "live wire" in a loving, consistent way.   Do you remember the "terrible twos" stage?  Well I think Toby was saving that stage until he got into a family..  haha  He is cute as a button, but gets into everything and can't sit still more than a few minutes.    I admit that it is a challenge and yesterday my emotions got the best of me.  I cried a bunch.  Thanks for your prayers.  We will happily take the good with the bad.   We wouldn't trade him for anything.  He is such a blessing to our family!