Towers and Warriors

Say Cheese!Not the usual camera pose you see in America.

Points for creativity.

Mom and Pops in front of Emperor Qin Statue.
We visited the Terracotta Warriors.

This is a copper statue that was dug up in the ruins of Emperor Qin's grave.

These are the warriors themselves, up close and personal!

Proof I was there.

These statues were buried around the emperor's tomb on all four sides.

Here you can see what most of them looked like when they were first discovered. They others they have restored like putting puzzle pieces together.

No two statues are alike. They are all slightly different.

Some of them are missing heads and their wooden weapons have rotted away.

This is mom and dad with our tour guide.

The Warriors are located outside of Xi'an.Downtown Xi'an has two famous towers. The drum tower and the bell tower.

Above you can see the big bronze bell in the tower on the left side.

These are the drums with Chinese characters on them from the drum tower.

We also ran into some street performers doing acrobatic tricks for money.

Paint the Town

Recently a friend back home sent me some hair dye for the holidays... Here is the before photo.

It was Rj and Kelly's first time ever to dye hair so we made sure to read the directions.

Then we got to work dying my hair.

Soon my whole head was covered and we just had to wait.


The dye made me look quite shocking!

Not to bad in the end although I must admit it was not the color I was going for when I decided to die my hair.

The box called the color Paint the Town but I like to think of it as Dr. Pepper red.

AC in zero below

Because friends of ours were moving, and we got a good deal, we had an air conditioner installed at Rj's place in the dead of winter! Yeah it was even crazier then it sounds.

The week we had it installed was a week of below zero temperatures.The worker men carried all the parts upstairs...... and made a mess in the living room.They tied plastic bags on their feet so they wouldn't track dirt in.Quite ironic when you see all the dust they sent flying around!This guys hair was black when they started.Here they are tying the rope getting ready to put the window unit outside.And there it goes out the window.The worker follows it right outside.Remember we live on the fourth floor.They are pretty trusting of the two metal holders.

After the mess is cleared away it looks good. We will have to wait until summer to enjoy it though. Hopefully it was worth the hassle.

Christmas Eve and Morning...

Christmas with my two best buds!

The three of us. Opening gifts Christmas eve...


First 9 seasons of STARGATE!!! A nice wallet...

Oylmpic mascot friendly lucky knots were in my stocking.

Rj and Kelly playing with their stocking goodies!

I got a new bandana, ear muffs, and a mask.

Rj got us both aprons to wear on our cooking nights.

In my new batman shirt thanks to RJ!