Labor Day Adventure

On Labor Day, the Barbe's took the Light Rail in Phoenix down to the Children's Museum.

Loves Music, Loves to Dance

Our Two Girls

The girls sat for their official portrait for Grampy last week.

Hard to believe July is almost over! It's been hot hot hot here in AZ. Temps in the 110 - 115. We are getting a lot of pool time in.

Things have been great with Michelle. She is such a happy kid. Katie loves having a little sister. They play well together. Val started back at work on Monday after almost 7 weeks off. Fritz is having fun with his girls.

Back in the US of A

We finally made it back to the US last Wednesday. We have been having a fun time in Texas. Katie just adores her little sister.

We leave for home tomorrow - our new family of four.

See you all soon!

Love,

Fritz, Val, Katie & Michelle

Last Slide Show from China

We have a final meeting at the US Consulate office this afternoon for the Oath ceremony. Then it is a night of packing! We have to get up at 5am to get ready for our long journey home. At 9:15 am, we take off for Tokyo. Then it's off to LA, Phoenix, and then finally Dallas. We miss you all very much and cannot wait to get home!





Love and Kisses!

Minor Food Rebellion

Hi There,

We have completed another day here in China and have 2 more full days ahead of us.

Today we went to a Christian Church across the street from the hotel that was held in Cantonese and English. It was interesting but we quickly got tired of sitting on the wooden pews after an hour and the enjoyment of the experience soon waned.

At dinner tonight our entire group went out to eat Chinese food again and a few parents started to complain to the guide and asked for any other type of food. Our guide Allison (who is a very nice woman) seemed to feel the frustration of the whole group and offered to get Pizza Hut pizzas for us tomorrow night and this seemed to quiet our group down.

I mean, I like Chinese food, and even I am getting bored with it. I want a burger....I want a taco....heck, I even eat one of those salads with the dressing on the side that Valerie likes so much.

If it sounds like we are whining about little things like dinner, I guess we are, but our time here in China has been long, hard, and stressful at times. (see previous email about our close call with the Swine flu)

We have been thru so much, we have our beautiful new daughter and we just want to be back in America.

The Fritz

Made it to Guangzhou!

We had a bit of a scare yesterday. We were at breakfast at our hotel in Nanchang. One of the parents in our group told us that the Govt had been contacting Alison (our guide) several times a day because there was a confirmed case of the Swine Flu on the domestic fight we took from Beijing to Jaingxi. At 1st, I thought Kelly was saying a confirmed case on her international flight from Chicago to Beijing and I thought 'sucks for her, we weren't on that plane' (how nice of me, huh?), but then I realized that she was talking about the domestic flight we were all on. We were all affected and being hunted down. Alison provided updates all day. At first, the govt wanted to bring in the health people to our hotel to check us out. Alison kept reassuring them that we were fine. We took off for the airport not knowing if we were going to be able to travel or if we were going to be checked out. Evelyn, our other guide, told us she had a group get checked out a couple of weeks back. One person had a bit of a higher temp (maybe just around 100 or 101), but was showing no signs of the flu. They took him and made him spend a night in the hospital. We were afraid this was going to happen to us. Needless to say, we were all very stressed out all day. Everyone was reaching out to their prayer chains to get the word out to say a prayer that we get out of Nanchang and closer to coming home. Well, it worked! We had no problems at the airport - no men in white suites and masks. We still were not sure if they would catch up to us in GZ, but we were getting out of Nanchang! Nothing happen here and it has been a week since our flight, so I think we will be taking off the watch list. But I have to say, if we have to be quarantined in a hotel, The White Swan is where we would want to be!