Mechanically Inclined

 

So last Friday night our friend Matt agreed to help install new front brakes on the Jeep; he has access to a shop with a lift which certainly beats crawling around on the ground changing brakes. About 15 minutes before I was heading to his shop I asked Nicole if she wanted to come with...after pondering for a minute she agreed. This ended up being a great thing for me as Nicole actually got into "spinning wrenches" and getting dirty, so much so I found her pushing me out of the way to thread some of the bolts back in place on the calipers (nice job dear) - J.S.

 

"That's right, I did a brake job" - N.S.

Tianzifang, Shanghai

Was invited today to go to an area of Shanghai called Tianzifang. This area is filled with narrow walkways lined with shops, art and photography studios, bistros and clothes shops.



One of my favorite shops was the studio of Ruiyuan Chen a Shanghai photographer. Ruiyan does what I would term "real life" and architectural photography. I picked up a couple prints from his studio along with a couple sets of chop sticks; one formal set and then a 10-pack of various styles of sticks with fabric sleeves which Joshua and Trevor can pick from and share with friends. The highlight of the day was having dinner with Frank Xin (business partner from our Shanghai Team) at a restaurant called Tai Thai. Without question the best Chicken Currey and Spicy Thai Beef I've ever had; arguably my new favorite restaurant in Shanghai.

World Expo - Shanghai

While on travels in China this May I was fortunate enough to have two of my business partners from our Shanghai office take me to the World Expo. The World Expo is a global cultural, sustainable living and natural resource fair of sorts.



We went to the Expo on a Friday afternoon at 3:30 and stayed until 10:00 pm. The weather was pretty good, not very hot (mid-70's) and only rained a little in the last hour we were there.

There are around 220 countries represented with pavilions. The most popular ones were China, Japan, U.S.A, Germany, France and Saudi Arabia. The following are pictures of some of the pavilions and the grounds of the Expo.

Boy's Weekend in Eau Claire

Last weekend Nicole had a photo shoot for school she needed to get done so the boys and I headed to Eau Claire for the weekend. Had a good time mainly riding the four-wheelers, clearing a couple of trees that fell in the woods last fall and had a bonfire. The best part is the all the fresh air really knocks the boys out as they go all day and then crash at night...just wish I could get them to sleep later then 5:30 am (I think Grandma and Grandpa Stewart would also appreciate this).

The weather was warm enough to start softening up the crusty layer of snow which made it a bit more difficult for Trevor to keep his and Joshua's four-wheeler moving through the snow; however he managed by not taking his thumb of the throttle until he got stuck and then proceed to yell for me and Joshua (along with Uncle Scotty and Grandpa) to dig him out.

Happy New Year and Family Updates

First off happy new year and sorry we've been neglecting the blog for the last several months. I am sure we'll start off strong with the updates for 2010 and once we get to spring time we'll neglect it again.

For the holidays we stayed close to home. The weather in the twin cities was not ideal for road travel so Christmas was spent in Chaska with just the four of us, was rather nice not having to run around. The boys got lot's of books, some cloths (which they weren't all that excited about), a Playstation 3, snow sleds and something called "Flarp". Flarp is a gooey gel that sits in this little plastic container and you push your fingers in it to make "unique" sounds...by the end of Christmas day they spent all of 15 mins with the Playstation 3 and about 3 hours with the Flarp; best $0.99 Nicole ever spent.

We caught up with Nicole's side of the family the Tuesday after Christmas, hung our in Afton and had Amma's (Nik's mom) famous Wild Rice Soup (it's pretty awesome).

Later Tuesday we arrived in Eau Claire and had dinner with my family and did the present opening, etc. Our plan was to leave the Eau Claire on Wednesday morning to head back to Chaska however about 2 hours before we were to leave I got the great idea to update my mother's laptop (software stuff) and based on the mess it was in we ended up spending New Year's in Eau Claire.

New Year's dinner consisted of crab leg's and more crab leg's. Trevor wasn't a big fan of them but Joshua has a new favorite food. He was keen on watching the adults take the meat out of the shell and then taking it from our plates.

We did one more stop in Afton on our way back home for a short visit and then we finally made it back to Chaska on Friday afternoon.

We are now getting ready for our next big event which is Joshua's 3rd birthday (1/4/10). We are going to have a small just Nicole, Trevor, Joshua and I event on the Monday of his birthday and then the rest of the family is invited to come over this weekend for a little party.

Overall Joshua is doing great. His arm is all healed from his bike accident and arm seems just fine. He is still extremely rambunctious and enjoys reading John Deere books and ponucing on his big brother.

Trevor is getting ready to go back to school tomorrow as holiday break is over. He enjoys kindergarten and loves riding the bus to school. He recently got his own Skype account so he likes to video chat with his grandparents.

Nicole is also getting ready to start a new semester of school. She is planning to be done with her Photography Degree in December 2010 assuming the class schedules line up as she needs.

I took the last week off of work, ok really only two days and I worked when Nicole wasn't looking. No major business travel planned until this spring sometime. Overall work has been very good and I truly enjoy the people I get to work with as they are all great individuals.

That's all for now. Once we download some of the pictures from the last couple weeks we'll get some of them posted to the blog.

Have a great 2010,

JS

Rosie

The boys grandparents in Eau Claire decided to get a puppy to occupy their "semi-retired" time. Rosie, as she is named, is an English Shepard. She pretty quiet, plays well with the boys and thus far is very well behaved.

Joshua Update

So Joshua (the 2.5 year old) broke his arm in a biking accident. Went too far off the trail down a steep grassy hill and flew off his bike at the bottom of the hill. The ER doctor confirmed he fractured one of his left arm bones. They set it as best they could in the ER and suggested we take him to see an orthopedic surgeon as a follow up which Nicole did today at Children's Hospital in St. Paul. The determined they needed to actually break his arm to get it set back in the correct position in order to properly heal which they did this evening (sounds like no pins or screws were needed). Will be in the cast for 6 - 8 weeks.