Happy Birthday Tiny!

Holy cow! It's been a while since I've posted!!!  Guess I was kinda hibernating over Winter?!! 

Well... today mark's a major event...

TINY IS FIVE YEARS OLD TODAY!

Can't believe she's five.  Seriously, it seems like yesterday, when we first met her in Guangzhou... she was 16 months of age.  Wow.  Five years old?!

How old are you?

Playin with my new toy!

I couldn't wait to read my Nikon manual!  So I read... I fiddled... I read some more... I fiddled some more....

Much more reading and fiddling needs to be done - but here's some of my "test" runs!

This is the first photo I took with my new camera! 

Tiny, Diesel, me and Nikon went for a walk...

I love this pic - Diesel's ears are in the foreground, and Tari holding Bo in the background!  Would of been spectacular if Bo was looking up too!

I overlayed the same photo in black an white to get this look...

Finding Focus...

this one is entitled "The Ball"

 This one is "The Paddock"

 This one is "The Swing"!!

We went on a houseboat for a few days - saw some wicked clouds!

:) Oh what fun!

Sunday Snapshot 20 May 2012

It was a stunning afternoon here, in South Australia!  Perfect conditions for a photo shoot in my backyard!  I was so happy with so many of my pics - I'm not sure which one should be my Sunday Snapshot?!!

I eventually  picked this one for my Sunday Snapshot!  I can't help but sing to myself:
"These hands are small, I know, but they're not yours, they are my own" ~ Jewel

I used a Sony Cybershot DSC-H7 - I used the ISO setting (which is by far the best for outdoors), I think my ISO was 450, and F2.7... I've just order my first SLR camera! I'm so excited!!  Its a Nikkon D3100... twin lens!  *squeal*  I was going to hold off, taking the kid's pics - but the weather was too good today!  With Winter looming, I don't know how many nice days we have left!

Sunday Snapshot 130512

I took this pic on at a party on Sat!  I've fiddled with it in Photoshop, added high contrast and lightened then overlayed it on a black and white photo.  It doesn't look as crisp, now that I've compressed it?

Sunday Snapshot 29.04.2012

Its Sunday again!  I haven't done Sunday snapshot for a few weeks... we went to our friend's daughter's birthday party yesterday, so I got all excited and snapped lots of pics!

This is my favourite... so it'll be my Sunday snapshot!  She's my friends youngest daughter - and she is ever so sweet!

Here are my kiddies!  (a slightly over exposed pic of Miss M!  The lighting was terrible! Miss M likes to "over exposed" look... she says it washes out all her blemishes!!!)

Sweet pea, pulling a pose!

My handsome H-Man (slightly out of focus!! Its was hard!! They were running around playing soccer!!!)

Stephanie (from NiHao Y'All) asked participants to leave photography advice!  As you can see above, I need all the help I can get!!  My preferences are: Outdoor photographs, in late afternoon light.  I use Photoshop CS5, to do some editing.  I don't edit all my photos - but if I do - I generally use "Curves" (in Adjustments Menu) and I like Increased Contrast or Medium Contrast - and fiddle around with the settings. 

Pics of my babies

I snapped some pics this week...

(if you look closely - Bo is cuddling his toy mouse!)

We're back!

So sorry we couldn't access blo.ger while we were in China!

We had a fabulously exhausting time! We stayed in most places 3 days, before moving on to the next adventure! Everything we saw was fantastic.

We visited the Pingyuan SWI. Amazing. The Director is a lovely man, who genuinely cares about what he's doing, as do the Ayi's. After an interesting banquet put on by the Director, he offered to take us to Tiny's finding place.

What can I say but WOW! I still well up with tears, thinking about it now! Its funny how from reading the report, I had imagined what the place would be like... it was very different! I expected it to be near the city or a very public place, but it was in quite a remote rural area. I'll tell you how it all progressed... the director hopped in the van, and after driving further and further away from the city, he eventually asked the driver to pull over, and he'd ask for directions. He walked up the driveway, of a pretty ram-shackled little house, and started talking to someone in the front rice paddy / garden. A little lady emerged from the garden and talked with the Director for awhile. The Director motioned for us to get out of the van, and come over. Our guide spoke with the Director for a bit, then looked at us with an odd look on her face, and said "This is the Auntie that found your daughter".

Oh my. (my stomach still drops, and I still cry, when I think about it!). We are still in absolute awe and amazement, that we actually met this wonderful lady. Without her, we wouldn't have our daughter. Without her, our daughter most likely would've died. She was quite beside herself to see Tiny again. She even waved peopled down off the street as they rode past on their bicycles! Our guide said everyone in the village/area knew of Tiny because she was such a small newborn. She was just so so happy.

Absolutely incredible.

I booked our trip "solely" because the airline released a new route, and had cheap flights. We always intended on going back, but we thought we'd wait til Tiny was about 5-8 years old. You know... it's funny how you do things, because you think it's "your" good idea... turns out God was the mastermind?!!! We were meant to be in Pingyuan on 14 March 2012! Just the say as Tiny's Guardian Angel, walked along that road, on 30 September 2007.

Pics from our trip in posts below!

Pics Beijing

We stayed at Lee Garden Apartments - 2 bedroom apartment - 5 min walk to Wangfujing Street and 15 min taxi ride to Forbidden City / Tiannamen Square. Great accommodation, with washing machine. Doormen very helpful.

Next stop - Chengdu

Pics Chengdu & Jiuzhaigou Valley

We stayed at Chengdu Grand Club Hotel - which has been recently renovated, so was really nicely furbished. Couple of issues with hotel - its the banking district, so we found it hard to find a restaurant open for dinner! The staff speak very little english, and the hotel reception is on the 4th floor! I booked our Chengdu & Jiuzhaigou Valley tour through Jiuzhaigou Holidays - they were really good.

Jiuzhaigou Valley is spectacular. It is 3,000m above sealevel, so the air is a bit thin, but well worth it. I ended up having a massive puke fest while there (made the mistake of having cold and flu medicine, which reacted in a very negative way!), so I didn't get to actually visit all the beautiful lakes - but my wonderful family and guide took lots of pics and videos for me! We stayed at Intercontinental Jiuzhai Paradise Hotel. It was our most expensive hotel, the hotel itself was massive and spectacular, but the rooms could do with an upgrade. Unfortunately, the bathroom in our room stunk to high heaven! The room was big, and had a "sunken lounge area", and the view from the balcony was gorgeous! Specially when it started to snow! We don't have snow in our State - so it was totally cool!!! (literally!!! It was minus 10 degrees when we landed at 2pm!!)

Pics Guilin & Overnight train to Guangzhou

We stayed at Starway Grand 0773 - had "fantastic" reviews when I booked... but the price should've given me warning bells!! It was definitely clean, and had a good shower - but was definitely a budget a hotel! It was in a great location, 5 min walk to everything! (Elephant Trunk Park, shopping and KFC!) I booked our Li River Tour through Lychee Tours - they were excellent, ended up booking all our train tickets through them as well, and our car and driver for our Pingyuan SWI visit - best prices, Nancy hand delivered our train tickets in Guilin! We booked "soft sleepers" - which is a private cabin, with four beds in it. As there was four of us - we had the whole cabin to ourselves, but be aware that if there are only 2 of you, or 3 of you, you may get a stranger in with you!