Cookie Making

On Thanksgiving we made sugar cookies (shaped like turkeys, leafs and pumpkins) with Reister's cousin Sadie. We used blue and pink icing! :)


Reister had an itch ...


Sadie got a little more into it than Reister, and therefore got a little more flour on her :)

Six Sweet Years

Some of you may know that Micah and I are planning to take a short trip without the kids in February to celebrate our 5th year anniversary (but really at more than 6 years of marriage) We decided to not do too much special in terms of gifts, etc for the last couple of years so we could save up to take the trip. Micah's parents will keep the boys then. But we were able to go out to eat on our actual anniversary this year (November 15th) while my parents kept the boys. We tried a new seafood place near my parent's in Austin and it was really good. You can't tell from the picture, but we sat in what is called a "snug", a booth that has a curtain you can pull shut for privacy. Kinda fun! We enjoyed a night out by ourselves and were able to walk about a bit afterward. What a blessing it is to be married to such an awesome man of God, my very best friend!

Doctor's visits

This update is late in coming, but I wanted to let you all know about how Mason's doctor appointments have been going. On November 5th, I took Mason to Dallas for two appointments - with a pediatric urologist to follow up on his kidney issue, and with a pediatric ophthalmologist to follow up on his eyes. The first brought good news and lot of praises to God on our part - Mason's left kidney (that has been enlarged since he was in the womb) was perfectly normal in size! He has not had any infections or problems related to this since his birth, but it has always been something that needed follow up. The second appointment wasn't as encouraging. The ophthalmologist examined Mason and said he thought he still needed to have surgery to correct his crossing. He also said that Mason's eyes were sometimes straight with his glasses on and sometimes crossed. Apparently, this is uncommon - normally with the glasses on, a child's eyes should be straight all the time, or still crossed all the time. Mason's crossing is intermittent. This made the doctor concerned about whether there were any underlying neurological problems. He recommended that Mason see a pediatric neuro-ophthalmologist to rule out any neurological problems before surgery. As you might guess, that kind of doctor isn't exactly easy to find. But God really really provided because I was able to get an appointment with one in Temple, Texas (one hour from Austin) the following Tuesday. That doctor, Dr. Tredici, examined Mason and said that he doesn't think that Mason had any neurological problems. He said that really his condition is somewhat common. He did dilate Mason's eyes and determined that he needed a stronger prescription and changed up the instructions for patching his eyes. We will see him again on December 16th and will discuss surgery at that point because he also felt that Mason would need surgery to correct the crossing.
It is a little confusing that Dr. Yu in Hong Kong had such a differing opinion but I think Mason just was having a really good day in terms of straightness that day. Dr. Yu also said that he thought there was a possibility Mason might still need surgery or that the American doctors might have a differing opinion. So... we're continuing to pray for Mason and for the doctor's to have wisdom. We'll probably stick with Dr. Tredici in Temple instead of returning to the doctor in Dallas. He is both a ped. ophth. and ped. neuro-ophth. so he seems well qualified.
We appreciate all your prayers and will try to keep you updated as we know more!

Back in the USA

We arrived to Texas last Friday night. Our trip back was pretty good - the long flight over the ocean is never fun, but it was a little shorter this time (almost 11 hours) so that helped. The harder part was the jet lag that lasted about 5 days. The boys had a hard time sleeping through the night and therefor so did we. But then after they started sleeping through, Micah and I still had a hard time for a couple nights! Now we're all on Texas time - even with the time change off of daylight savings time.
Micah is in Louisiana for the week but the boys and I stayed in Sulphur Springs. Mason has two doctors appointments in Dallas on Thursday - for his eyes and kidney. I'll post after those to let you all know how they went.
We're really enjoying our time back so far. I'm loving the food and abundance of Dr. Pepper! I've thought of several things worth blogging about as far as differences between life here and back in Asia but I'll have to post another time as I'm pretty sleepy right now! :)

Mason Riding

This is from about a month ago, but thought you might enjoy seeing Mason on his riding toy.

A couple of pics and our trip home is soon!

Here's a recent picture of some local friends that came over


Here's Reister doing a craft recently (Thanks, Sarah, for the idea!)


We leave Friday to head back to Texas! Please be thinking of us during our trip - we'll be traveling for about 24 hours from about 9:30pm Thursday night to 9:30pm Friday night (Texas time). We are getting pretty excited, but we're busy trying to pack and say our goodbyes here. It's going to be so weird living in America after being in Asia for four years! I will try to post while we're back in Texas as often as I can!

Mason's eyes update

Mason and I got back from our quick trip to Hong Kong today. We saw Dr. Yu yesterday and he said he saw improvement in Mason’s eyes – so much that he does not recommend surgery. He said Mason’s eye crossing is intermittent and is not the infantile condition that requires surgery. Dr. Yu increased Mason's prescription when he saw Mason in July and he thinks that was very helpful for his vision. He said to continue with regular visits while we are back in Texas to the pediatric ophthalmologist we saw in January to monitor his progress. He needs to continue wearing his glasses and patching his stronger eye for one hour a day.

So we are really praising G0d for answering so many pryrs for Mason! Thank you very much to all of you who have expressed concern and pryed for Mason! We're so glad he won’t need the surgery and agree that he eyes do seem straight a lot of the time, especially when he’s wearing his glasses.

By the way, we have our tickets to return to Texas on Friday, October 23rd! We can't wait to see and catch up with many of you over the six months that we're back in the states!

Tickets!

We got our tickets to go back to the states! We're going to be back in Texas for almost six months - we don't know exactly when we will come back here, but it will probably be sometime early to mid-April. But the important date right now is October 23rd! We will be flying into DFW that night. We are getting very excited! We can't wait to see all our family members and friends and just enjoy life in America for a few months. We'll be staying primarily in Sulphur Springs with Micah's parents but will be making lots of trips to Austin to see my family and some other trips to other places to see family and friends. Woo hoo! We would have been in East Asia for four years if we stayed till October 28th. In some ways it's gone by pretty fast, but the fact that we're going back with two kids really puts things in perspective! This last month is going to fly by, I'm sure!

What a sweet big brother

This was all Reister's idea. He wanted to "feed" Mason - wanted him to lay in his lap and everything! He loves Mason so much!

Mason's Walking!

Mason finally learned to walk. He's almost 15 months! I find it really funny that he walked this late because Reister walked at 10 months (on the day). But every child is different, and I've heard of kids not walking till they were 18 months. Anyway, check out this video I took yesterday. He's gotten even better today. He actually started walking a little bit almost two weeks ago but I didn't really count it till he could walk across the room totally unassisted. Do all kids walk with their arms up like that when they first start walking? I think I remember Reister doing the same thing! I don't know if the video will still come up, but click here to see Reister's first steps again.

Remember Reister's friend Michaela?

Can't you just imagine what she's saying to him here?


And then what he's saying back?


These pictures are the best quality because I was trying not to distract them. Just another day at the playground, huh?

Weekend Trip

Over the weekend, we took a spontaneous trip to a water-park of sorts that's about an hour and half away. We had heard about "the dead sea" and were expecting some sort of natural salt lake. But, it turned out to be completely man made and had several water park type water slides, a wave pool, kid area, warm lazy river, inside small pretty clean "dead sea" and an outside {murky} "dead sea".

Here's our family at the kiddie area - most of it was closed for most of the time we were there but Reister had fun just climbing up the slide halfway and sliding down into the water.


I enjoyed the water slides - I think I've seen one like this in America - you drop off pretty steep and then go back and forth until you come out at the bottom.


This is the right side of the inside area. The water slide in this picture was smaller and they allowed Reister to sit in our lap and go down it. He really liked that! The lazy river and inside salty pool was on this side. You really did float in it. We didn't find it till the end (we thought the outside one was it) so we didn't get much time in it and Reister didn't like it because the salt stung his skin.

Here's the outside part - you can see the "dead sea". It was very salty but a little too murky for me.

Sorry this is out of order (silly Blogger) but this is the other side with the bigger slides and kiddie area. I did one on the far right and far left. The middle one (upside down mushroom thing) wasn't open :( Micah did the far left one once. (I'm a bigger fan of rides)


It was a fun outing as a family and a good "East Asia" memory!

Reister's Party

Buzz Lightyear cake

Right after Reister blew out his candles (which he did on "Happy Birthday dear Reister" instead of waiting till the end of the song). He was SOO excited!



Family picture

We gave Reister a set of 3 Toy Story figurines (Buzz, Woody, and Jessie) He hasn't stopped playing with them since!

Our neighbor's daughter, Michaela, turned 3 the day of Reister's party. He and Micah went to her party for a little while before Reister's party. She came for a little while at the end of Reister's for cake.

A Long Morning...

We put Mason in Reister's room when we got home from a morning out to help him stay awake a little bit longer. But, I guess it didn't work....

This is how we found him when we went back in. (And he wasn't just showing off his flexibility, he was fast asleep)

Reister is 3!

Can you believe that Reister Laing is three years old? Yesterday was his birthday but we're having his party on Saturday morning. It's going to be a "Buzz Lightyear" party although I'm still not quite sure what will make it "Buzz-like" besides the cake... I'm so NOT creative!
Reister is such a joy to us. He is so active and smart and funny. We are so very thankful for his life and that we get to be his parents. I'll try to post some pictures of him from this week soon!

Wide and Narrow Alleys

There is an area of the city we live in that has recently been "redone" to look like traditional architecture. The Enlglish translation is "Wide and Narrow Alleys" and we went yesterday with some local friends. It was really pretty and interesting. I took several pictures with my phone because we forgot our camera and I was impressed with the quality!

A couple preparing to take wedding photos (here they take them together before the wedding, rather than the day of)

I think this was a building built by Europeans sometime in the past that was restored, but not for sure...


It's everywhere!


So pretty!

This is on the "narrow" alley (there are two, one is wide, one is narrow)

This was a restaurant, but to me it looks like an old church! And I think it's interesting that a red cross is incorporated into the restaurant's sign (on the triangular shaped glass piece right above the umbrella)

If you ever come to visit, we'd love to take you for a stroll. Unfortunately we didn't know how cool it was while Sean was here, but we took him to another area similar to this.

A Home Cooked Meal

While Sean was visiting us (July 10 - August 5) we were invited to a friend's home to eat a home cooked meal. It was delicious - and I thought it was also very nice looking!

Hong Kong Views

Here are a bunch of pictures from Hong Kong. It truly is an intriguing city. If you ever have the opportunity to visit, I highly recommend you go. It's a maze of skyscrapers, but yet it's clean and surrounded by lush green mountains and the ocean/harbor. These are kind of random but I wanted to share. I think you can click on any of the pictures and it will open up for you to see a larger version.


This was a shot from the MTR (subway that sometimes goes outside as well) Just trying to capture the hugeness of the apartment buildings. Almost everyone lives in high rise apartment buildings in Hong Kong (much like China)


A historic looking Catholic church we saw while we were walking down from the top of the mid-levels area of town to the botanical gardens.


Sean took this picture of the traffic roundabout also during that walk


This picture was after we went to Disneyland at an MTR stop - I wish we could have gotten outside to get a better view of the beautiful mountains and sky. (We don't see such a beautiful contrast between the blue sky and white clouds in our city)


I think when this building was started it was supposed to be the tallest in the world (it's still not finished) but now we heard there is one in the middle east that will be taller.


This is on Hong Kong Island (there are two main parts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon - which is still part of the mainland penisula) I think it's so crazy how many tall skinny (and considerably old) high rises there are - just like the blueish one on the left between two shorter white buildings)


We ate here for lunch after Mason's eye doctor appointment. It was really good Mexican food! But it's really small and they didn't even have filtered water to drink - a mineral water cost more than a coke - so I got a coke!


This is my favorite picture - unfortunately I wasn't even there for the taking of this one. Micah and Sean took a hike on the island one morning and got to see some awesome views. There are lots of trails (some cemented) to hike around the mountains surrounding Hong Kong.


Also a view on their hike - that's a golf course


The famous nighttime view of the harbor - this is from the Kowloon side looking at the skyline of the island.

I'm still hoping to post more pictures and report on Mason's doctor visit! Stay tuned!

Walt Disneyland Hong Kong!

Trip back to the Shining City

We took a trip back to our old city. We have been gone almost a year and it was so wonderful to go back. It's so much cooler and drier there. But the best part was seeing all our old friends. Actually we couldn't see everyone because it was a short trip.
Here is Reister with our old househelper. She was so happy to see Reister and play with him.

Here is Reister and Mason with Cheng Cheng, my B.F.F.'s son. He's two years old. We went to the People's Park which was so nice and had a new really nice kids' playground.

Here are the high school (now two are in college) that I used to have to my house. They were so grown up!




Here's a group of friends that we used to hang out with often. The lady in pink and the lady in black own a dumpling shop together.

Here's our good friend Lucy enjoying giving Mason a banana.


It was a short, but great trip. We wished we could have stayed longer but it was really awesome anyway.