I’ve been a bit worn down and not seeing enough of the kids as I would like so I decided this weekend would be a family weekend. Which is kind of hard because the kids can contribute to the worn down-ness feeling especially if you are, as I said, starting out worn down. But what is not to love about Aidan’s fascination with Pokémon Cards, Lydia’s joy with her purple horse, and Elisa’s exuberance for old fashion chocolate donuts. So Yang and I debated on where to take the kids. We considered the wild animal park out by Badaling but was worried about the traffic and (at least me) the effect on the kids of seeing small animals eaten alive by lions. Especially since Lydia really wants a rabbit and rabbits are one of the main feeds. So we instead focused on a outing closer to town, in Shunyi.  After a hearty lunch, we headed over to a villa complex that was rumored to have rabbits. In the parking lot out front, Lydia demoed her new hat, which she said was a Michael Jackson hat. (MJ has been really popular here, especially after his death)

So we heading inside and indeed there were rabbits. And you could buy one to take home for 20 RMB. Or 1 RMB less than my morning starbucks coffee. Yang told me not to tell Lydia they were 20 RMB, since Lydia wanted one so bad. I told Yang, yea, but for 20 RMB they are pretty cheap for dinner. And with that we headed out back to the slide float thing. All three kids got on and had a blast (by the way, cost per kid was 20 RMB). While they played, Yang ran into an old friend who she used to play Mahjong with. They talked some and he suggested I do a better job teaching them english and I guess he is right.

We headed back inside to the rabbits. There were two young girls holding rabbits. They were holding them when we came through the first time, the rabbits seemed quite content with them. When Lydia tried to grab a rabbit it scurried away. She tried another, it ran away to. I was thinking our Ayi could catch one since after all she probably has experience cooking these suckers but I thought better of suggesting that.  One of the rabbit whisperer girls came over and wanted to help Lydia. Distracted with my rabbit thoughts I never did know if it was the girl or Yang who helped Lydia. In any case, success at last. ydia got to hold her rabbit if not take it home (a fact she complained about for some time).

And then we dropped of Yang for and afternoon of MJ and me and the kids returned to Beijing. I promptly napped for two hours before taking them for ice cream, Elisa insisting on her very own child’s cup of Baskin Robbins and me assisting when she could not finish.