Shamian Island

This morning we took all of the kids to have their Visa pictures taken. They all did great but Justin wouldn't sit on the stool alone so I had to sit on it and hold him while trying to lean out of the picture, but we got it done and are ready to complete the Visa paperwork.

Justin's Visa photo

The rest of the day was basically a free day so we spent the day with some of the other families walking around the island and checking out the cute little shops. Shamian Island is beautiful and so peaceful compared to the rest of the areas we were in. It definitely has a slower pace, but just across the bridge within walking distance is a nice mall that has just about anything you could need. I  cannot say enough good things about our two favorite shops on the island, Michael's and Jenny's, and their owners. We had our laundry done at Michael's (it was cheap and they did a fabulous job) and bought lots of little gifts and souvenirs at both shops (I'll share some of those in a later post).

Jenny's Place

Michael

Since all of us were together again we decided to go out to eat as a big group to a local Chinese restaurant. It was just like when we were in Beijing except we had 6 little additions to our group. All of the food up to this point had been good and hadn't given Jason or I any tummy  trouble, but that was about to change :( We ate at this restaurant and I know what ya'll are thinking: she should have known she would have tummy trouble eating at a place like that with the food swimming around on the sidewalk! And to that I say: But lots of the restaurants were like that and I never had a problem before (except for the spicy lamb dish in Nanjing that almost killed me).

After dinner (and before the tummy trouble started) we walked around the island and could see the city of Guangzhou across the water all lit up and beautiful.

Boat on the water

This is not where we ate, but I would have loved to!

After our evening stroll we headed back to the hotel to try to get some rest which didn't happen because I was up most of the night with the tummy trouble, but we did get some cute pics!
Justin absolutely loves the stacking cups (and the baby keys and water  bottles are close seconds).

My tummy issues meant that Jason was on full time Justin duty for the night (have I mentioned Justin is not a good sleeper? no? well, more on that later - lots more) and for the next few days Justin was a daddy's boy.

Luckily, by morning I was feeling a little better and although I didn't eat much breakfast I was 'ok to go' (name that movie!) for the next day, and as a side note I was the only one who had tummy trouble from the meal which leads me to believe it was something that just didn't agree with me.

Note: Many of the photos in this post are compliments of Jamie (as usual).