Happy Dragon Boat Festival!

Last month we had fun celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival with lots of friends at the riverside, which happens to have a little sand like a beach. We fought for our spots on the bus at around 7 a.m., but still arrived after the boat races were finished. No problem. We still had a great time in and around the water. (I definitely wasn't planning on letting Archie get in the nasty polluted river water, but all the other kids were doing it so I just couldn't say no)

Archie with one of my best friends here! She was a lot braver than I was about playing in the water and Archie certainly enjoyed his playmate.

Grace enjoyed getting a little loving on the shore.

Another trip to Oil City!

We had so much fun last year in Oil City, we just had to go back. Remember this? It's the ubiqutious oil drill. I heard there are over 40,000 in the city. The literal translation is "nodding head machine" cause that's what it looks like's happening.

Here we are at the train station with our friend Laura and her parents. (This station is one of the suburb stations so it's different than the one we rode into last year.)

Laura is a college student where we live so she rode back with us. Archie liked watching videos with her:

This was one of our train mates. I thought she looked like a typical older woman from our culture so I thought I'd post a pic.

This little friend was Grace's favorite train mate! They had a real baby connection.
Here's a nice family pic from after we arrived:

We didn't do much sightseeing this time around. The best part of the trip was hanging out with our Asian friends and their families.

Archie getting dressed for an outing:

Quality brother-sister time:

Grace enjoyed the full-length mirror:

She also enjoyed studying her characters. Haha!

She slept between us on this bed:

But, she took her nap on this pallet on the floor:

Science is fun!

Two weeks ago I made my first trip to our local science museum, and I was AMAZED by how wonderful it was. We took the kids to the Hong Kong Science Museum in May and I was not that impressed, but our local one is wonderful! There was tons of hands-on stuff. I don't know if Archie learned that much about science, but he sure did have a blast!

Here's Archie with a giant water gun. He stuck his hands in the water but wasn't even phased by his wet sleeves. Our friends from town who introduced us to the museum are in the background. Archie loves playing with their four kids whenever we get a chance to travel the rather long distance to see them. (I love chatting with their mom, too.)

Grace was a bit indifferent to her surroundings. She probably would've preferred to be at home, but she was a good sport anyway.

I loved this climbing structure for preschoolers, but they wouldn't let parents in so I was a bit nervous for Archie with all the stairs.

Where's Hunt's body? This was a cool optical illusion display. They also had two weird houses you went in and got all kinds of weird movement sensations even though you yourself did not move. They kind of made me seasick.

They also had some cool skeleton and medical displays!

I think a trip back is definitely in our future. We really only got to see about two floors.

It's the most wonderful time of the year (in Asia)

Nope. Not Christmas. Here's the scoop on the Lunar New Year and how our family celebrated. (Maybe I should say "is celebrating" as the festival will continue for another week or so.)

Here's the appetizer to our walk through the New Year: My preciouses in their traditional New Year garb:

On New Year's Eve day, we packed up and headed over to our friend's grandmother's house. We ate a late but bountiful lunch with lots of relatives.

After lunch, there was a trip to the nearby park for Archie and visiting for the adults. However, firecrackers exploding constantly on the ground all around brought the excursion to a rather quick end as I feared for our safety and hearing.

The afternoon was spent playing cards, watching the New Year gala on TV, text messaging every friend you ever had, and making dumplings to eat at midnight (blog post coming soon on the art of dumpling making).

At 11 p.m., it was time to go set off our own fireworks. Can you believe they sell things this monstrous to the general public without a license?

Some pretty heavy duty fallout, wouldn't you say?

This lady made my life wonderful. She is my friend's aunt, and she loved taking care of the kids. As you can imagine, kids kept up until the midnight meal get a little grumpy, but she helped keep them happy. I enjoyed the conversation she kept having with Archie while attempting in vain to get him to take a nap during constantly exploding fireworks (these things never stopped).

Aunt: The airplane is going. (Archie loves talking about airplanes.) The rabbit is going, too. The tiger is also going. When the airplane comes back, the rabbit will come and say Hai Tao, Hai Tao (his name) wake up, wake up. Archie's eyes nearly close then jerk back awake. Deep, huh?

On Day 3 of the New Year, we went to a different friend's uncle's house for lunch. It was a crowd that was lots of fun, and the uncle is a professional chef so the meal was FABULOUS!

There were also lots of uncles and aunts for the kids to play with there and even some little cousins! Here's Grace with an aunt (to me) and Grandmother (to her).

Goodbye for now. I hope you'll come again next year. All doors are made festive with these couplet verses wishing good fortune and money over the next year!

MICKEY MOUSE! Here comes the parade!

What was the highlight of our Hong Kong trip? Other than seeing my parents, it was definitely seeing Mickey Mouse! I hadn't been to Disney since I was a kid and I was really excited to see how the HK version compared. Although the park is definitely smaller, I'll take it most any day because the lines were so short and it's less than half the price. I never thought I'd be able to ride Dumbo, Small World, the teacups and the carousel TWICE in one day as well as seeing shows and doing a bunch of other stuff!
We rode in on this cool, Mickey-themed train. (The handholders inside were even mouse ears.)

Cinderella's castle is always a favorite.
Everyone loves a parade. Grace watched from her stroller.

Archie preferred his seat on Daddy's shoulders.

My favorite parade float is the Mickey Mouse one at the end. Even though it's not the flashiest, it just seems classic and wholesome.

Well, maybe not quite as classic as these guys...

My Dad's favorite has always been "It's a Small World" and everyone in our family (even Grace) enjoyed it, too. The kids in the white are Thai and I feel a special connection with Thailand since both my kids were born there. The bottom left corner has good-bye in our language.

More pics coming soon.

A trip to Sunshine City!

The other weekend, our family of four took it's first trip to visit sunshine city, which is four hours south by the speed train and was pleasantly warmer.

The skyline from our hotel room:

All aboard! Archie loved looking at passing trains through the window and shouting "bye-bye train". In fact, he still shouts this all the time even though no trains are visible from our living room window.

Grace got plenty of cuddling while aboard the train.

She also liked snuggling under the covers after her bath in a real bathtub. (We only have a shower head attached to the wall in our apartment.) Actually, we could not get over how wonderful the hotel room was (even though it was not particularly expensive.) It had a mini kitchen with TWO burners. (We only have one.)

Archie enjoyed meals out, but we could never seem to find anywhere with a playground.

Here's the crowded street. The McDonalds and KFC have kind of a USA feel, right?

Touring the Bird's Nest

I recently had the opportunity to go to Beijing. Among other exciting things, I got to tour the Bird's Nest (Olympic Stadium) and water cube. Of course, Hunter jokes with me that my favorite thing about the trip was getting a three day break from baby care. You will probably never see so many pictures in a post just featuring me. However, since Hunt and Archie weren't with me, pics of me (with Grace inside, of course) are all you get this time :)



Do you know these guys? I mean the Olympic mascots. It's impossible to live in Asia and not know them by name, but I was talking to some Americans at the Bird's Nest and was shocked to find they had never seen them. Their names are really cute. Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huang Huang, Ying Ying, Ni Ni. (This means Beijing welcomes you.)


Here's the water cube!