August 2 - Good Eats

OK... Before we EVER LEFT the States my Inay kept telling me to be careful not to lose the kids. That DEFINITELY applies to downtown Hong Kong.


Trying to move around with 4 small kids was tiring, challenging, and stressful. BUT! we still managed to make our way to a wonderful restaurant, Yung Kee on Wellington St. We heard about it from one of G's relatives, Julie, who live lives in Hong Kong. It was DEEEEEELICIOUS. The duck kicked butt! We also had our first taste of "1000 year old egg" AKA "100 year old egg" Century Egg Info. In this region it's typically eaten with a slice of pickled ginger. Geoff and I had to sit with it a minute and decide how adventurous we were going to be... T-boy on the other hand was ready to dive in to the egg adventure. We all loved it!






During a break at the hotel Geoff takes these pictures from our hotel room.



After having Happy Hour drinks and fries we took a night boat cruise and watched the Symphony of Lights. Turner wasn't too hot about getting on a boat but once the light and "laser"(said in the Austin Powers Dr. Evil voice) show started he got over his fears. He still wasn't brave enough to venture to the upper deck where there's a better view... but it turned out. R and Cambo had solid underwear surprises that I needed to clean up and we were the ONLY ones on the lower deck.



After that we have a light dinner where Cambo and R are sleeping on chairs while Flea, T, G, and I enjoy a more quiet meal. Afterwards we walk our way carrying the 2 younger ones to a designated Taxi stand and call it a night. We're going to need more caffeine tomorrow...

June 2 - My good buddy... azithromycin

OK... It’s just not our week.

1st – Felicia’s sick, coughing… which means puking.

2nd – Food poisoning for me (So glad Geoff could leave the plant early and find that Z-Pack for me)

3rd – It must be fruit fly season… in the house?!?

April 5 - Oh Cr-p!

Kids are up at 3am local. It’s a sh—ty morning. I’ll elaborate…

1- Cam does his usual poop and bounce on his bottom. It can’t be too messy for him. Thank goodness for the handheld sprayer in the tub.

2- We’re in Japan. They’ve got these fantastic high tech toilets. They’re so high-tech that toilets have warning pictures. One of them is a caricature of a little boy sitting on the toilet leaning back on the lid with an “X” next to it, warning not to lean back on the lid or you may break the toilet structure. Turner’s interpretation: Little boys may not sit on the toilet. Yep, he had to poop. So where is a little boy to poop if NOT on the toilet? Where else but in his underwear while on the white, white, white bed linens… of course. So that’s mess number 2.

3- Felicia’s excited to take a bath in the fabulous, high-walled tub. So I help get the bath drawn and get her IN the tub. While she’s in there she gets her urge to poop and goes to the toilet to poop. Well, she didn’t quite make it… Did I mention that the tub was deep? She calls me to help her get back in the tub….. THAT’s when I see what’s happened to the white, white, bathroom. There’s now brown, brown: in the bath water, on the tub where she eventually climbed out in a trail connecting tub to toilet, and toilet to the door to call me. Oh, and then there’s Felicia.

Geoff was sleeping since he stayed up late with them while I passed out as soon as I hit the mattress… airplane clothes and all.

We hit the buffet breakfast at 6am and all is well :o) It’s the first of many occasions where I attempt to communicate that I can’t communicate in “fill in language here”.

So we squeeze on to the 7am bus to Narita Airport. We need to unfold seats that fill in the aisle. Fun for the kids. Not so fun to get through passport/ID check to the airport.

At check-in we try to convince the airline to let us bring Cam’s car seat on to the plane… nope. Looks like we won’t be able to strap Cam into a seat to keep from losing him… that’s going to hurt. Turner’s asthma kicks into full gear on the flight. By the end of the flight we could tell it was FINALLY improving. Phew! Nanay was scared. I’m also VERY sick of pacing the aisles with Totoy(Cam). So I’m in tears by the end of the flight between Turner’s asthma scare and the Cam challenge. So glad that Ronan sleeps the whole flight and Felicia is self entertaining for the 6 ½ hours.

WE’RE IN THAILAND!

Where’s the stroller? Waiting…. Waiting…. Waiting… “So sorry for the inconvenience the stroller is at baggage claim.” No biggie. Trip to bathroom… go through customs and make our way to baggage claim… we’re thinking we’re sooo not going to see the car seat or stroller. But hey! There they are! Got the blue Samsonite (which I’ve grown to loath… I swear it refuses to close for ME)… But there’s no black bag or silver bag. Geoff finds our black bag on someone else’s cart. We find a bag that soooo looks like ours. But soooooo is not. Thai Aiways rep is very helpful in filing paperwork to find bag. Hmmmm what was in the bag? Over $1000 of meds! 4 months of Singulair and inhalers, Tamiflu, Z-packs, malaria, etc… Gifts for Thai folks and our family toiletry bag! Maybe it wasn’t a mistake…. Maybe someone hit the pharmaceutical jackpot?

An angel with driver is at the airport to pick us up. Jack and Peter-the-driver (from Delta… company in Thailand) drive us to our temporary home. It’s over 90 degrees F and humid. It feels like 4th of July. We’re so happy to ride in an air conditioned van with bottles of water.

We get to the house and meet our very nice landlady and her husband. We get a ton of keys and a very nice looking bottle of wine. Jack and Peter take Geoff to the store so we can get toothbrushes, food, etc.

WE MADE IT!

Quote by Jack while shopping with Geoff at the Carrefour store, “Ahhhh, garlic! Very important.” Some things are universal, aren’t they?