While in Qingzhou, Shandong, China we decided to hit up 2 popular places among the locals. The first place was The Ancient Village of Jintang which as built in 1456 during the Ming Dynasty. Due to most of the signs being in Chinese and not having a tour guide, we were only able to learn about this beautiful city by looking at its remains. It was amazing to see all the ancient architecture as we weaved up the mountainside the city was built on. Ruins of homes and meeting place

When your concierge service is a robot, you know the future is now! While at our stay at the Courtyard Marriott in Suzhou, we were in for a surprise when we called down to the front desk asking for a comb. I had forgotten our hairbrush at home, and the nice woman at the front desk assured us that their assistant would be up soon with a comb for us. We explored the hotel for a minute and then decided to go back up to the room and wait for our delivery. While we got on the elev

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Our first day in Jinan we explored this beautiful park, but didn't get to see everything the park had to offer, so we decided to come back the next day and check out the rest. We found countless Buddha statues that towered over the masses of people wandering the park. It was so awe inspiring to see such beautiful and vast works of art. While walking around we found an entrance to "The Hundred Thousand Buddha Cave". I was so intrigued to learn if their were truly A hundred tho

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We were always on the hunt for new places to travel on the weekends and Jinan came highly recommended by many of our students. It's the capital of our province and many of our students were from there, so they gave us the inside scoop on where to go. We knew we wanted to go to The Thousand Buddha Mountain the first day, and figured we would spend one day exploring the city and take a day to relax at the hotel (may sound like a waste of time...but laying on a mattress and soak

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The name for the Forbidden City in Chinese is Zijincheng, which literally translates to "purple forbidden city". Purple, "Zi", refers to the North star, which the ancient Chinese believed to be the home of the Celestial Emperor. And Jin Cheng translates to forbidden city, which is a reference to needing the Emperor's permission to enter or exit the imperial palace. The construction of the Forbidden City was completed in 1420 AD and took 15 years, over 100,000 craftsmen, and a

We have 12 HOURS ON THIS PLANE WITH 2 KIDS?! Pretty much sums up my thought process of our China travels. Our kids are typically great travelers, but they’ve never been on a journey this far, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. When we arrived to the airport we immediately faced our first problem. How on Earth are we going to carry all our bags? When you fit everything you own in to a few suitcases, it seems like you’ve cut back so much, but when you try to walk through an airpo

Drew and I met at school in Rexburg, Idaho. A small, family-friendly college town, home to about 25,000 people. Rexburg is where we met, dated, and started our married life. It's where both of our children were born and where we moved from apartment to apartment until ending up in the beautiful home we're in now. We've made many fond memories and friends here and have stretched and grown in many ways. After a couple years in Idaho, it became apparent to us that it was time fo