Disneyland on Reister's Birthday

Last week our family went to Hong Kong to see Mason's ophthalmologist and we stayed for several days longer to have some family vacation time. Mason got a good report, just a slight change in his prescription (weaker). We'll keep going every 6 months to monitor his progress. Here are pictures from our day at HK Disneyland. We went last year but Mason didn't enjoy it b/c he had dilated eyes.

"See my cool card!?"


BUZZ!

Reister didn't want to be in the pictures the first part of the day but Mason loved meeting the characters!

It's a Small World ride (no line!)

Family photo opp in front of "It's a small world"

Mason LOVES Mickey!

Couldn't get this repeat out of the post...

Tigger was fun too!

The sword from "The Sword and the Stone"

Carousel

Space men!

Most of the characters really doted on Mason - especially Daisy - she squatted down to get on his level as best she could and gave him a big hug - he loved it!

Goofy and Reister being "goofy"

Sweet brothers

Reister got to wear this pin and a lot of the Disney workers would wish him happy birthday and ask him how old he was. He didn't really appreciate the attention (has anyone ever had a moody 4 year old?!)
Reister got kind of confused about his birthday being September 1st when he knew he was going to celebrate at his party with friends. He really thought he might somehow forfeit the party celebration if he celebrated early. He wouldn't even let us sing happy birthday that day. :) so we're going to do it up right with a Hot Wheels party this Saturday at our home. He's really excited about it. I hope I can live up to his expectations with the party plans and cake! :)

Reister gave Mason a check up

Haircut Time

This week is was high time to get both the boys' hair cut. I took Mason on Monday and forgot to take pictures. Today I took them both back and got Reister's cut. There is an import store near to our house called "Sabrina's" Actually we prefer to go to another one even closer to us called "Summer's" - we are friends with the owner.

Anyway, there is a "babyshop" next door to Sabrina's that has a small hair salon in the back for cutting kids hair. Since they have the fun car-chairs and a mounted TV/DVD player to watch, it's much more enjoyable for my boys than a regular shop. It's about a $1.20 more to go here (altogether the haircut costs a little over $3 ha!) Here's the store front - you can see Reister & Mason in the stroller and a couple that stopped to talk to them. They had just gotten their baby's hair cut.

Here's Reister getting ready to "race" :) Note his long hair! It has been full of sweat lately because of the heat and humidity.

This lady has been the one to cut their hair the last 3 times. He was tuned into the show playing on the TV in front of him.


He even allowed her to wash it after ward - of course I did bribe him with the promise of a sucker if he would (and was good during the cut)

Mason is chesing it up for the camera. He didn't get his cut too short - who could cut off those beautiful curls!

There is a play area behind the chairs and Mason was content to play there while Reister was getting his hair cut.

I thought this view showed off his new 'do and he seems to look older here too. (He will turn 4 September 1st)


I'm thankful for this place that opened up (at least the hair cut part) while we were gone to the states.

Swimming

It has gotten HOT here! Although it's still probably not nearly as hot as Texas, it is very humid and when you walk or ride your bike most places, it feels pretty hot! How do we cool down? By going to the pool! We don't have a pool inside our apartment complex but we found a nice one very close. Today we went as a family. We went last week too, and I took my camera, but forgot to take pictures! Here's Micah with the boys on our bikes. It only takes less than 5 minutes to get there riding our bikes.

The deeper pool is on the right and then there is a shallow kids pool straight behind me.




Reister has gotten very comfortable in the water and will even go under water to get his pool toys. He can't really swim yet, but he's made great progress in just a couple months.


Mason prefers to sit on the side of the pool and play with his toys. He pours water on himself, others or toys. Sometimes he'll let us take him in the pool with us, but really he's not that interested in it. Fortunately the people at this pool don't charge us for Mason. It's $1.20 USD for Reister and almost $2.00 USD per adult.

Brothers

Reister and Mason have been playing really well together lately. Sometimes I don't even think about arranging play dates with others because they are content to play with each other. I think it has a lot to do with Mason maturing, being able to talk and express himself more, and being into the same pretend games and toys that Reister likes. I'm so thankful to have two boys and that they are so close in age.
I'm sorry I haven't been blogging that much lately. We have a very busy month of July due to visitors from the US. It was good, there just wasn't much spare time. Hopefully I can get some more daily life type posts up soon.

Buzz Lightyear !!

Is that a cute Buzz or what?

A new site for photos

Every time I want to upload a photo to this blog, I must resize it and sometimes crop it. And even then I can only upload 5 at a time and it takes a really long time to upload those. Soooooo... I found another way to upload bunches of pics at a time and have a new site you can go to if you want to see lots of pictures at a time from our everyday life.

thewebbsonline.shutterfly.com

I just posted one album from last week with pictures of time spent with my BFF from the shining city who was in town visiting! Also reister with his teachers and friends at VBS which was a treat!

Happy 2nd Birthday MASON!

We celebrated Mason's 2nd birthday with a party at our home this past Saturday morning. We decided to just invite a couple American families and FIVE local families. We don't know any of the local families too well, but we are trying to get to know them, so this seemed a good opportunity! It was a little stressful for me since we had a very busy week last week but it all turned out good. I wasn't very pleased with the cake - I had two failed attempts at making the colored decorative icing and ended up sending Micah to the store to buy imported colored icing for writing. The cake itself tasted really good but was a little too moist maybe due to not cooking it long enough. (but you know how you never know how done it is till you flip it over to ice the "bottom" and by then if it sticks to the bottom of the pan it's too late to cook it more!!)


These two girls are actually 3 years old - Mason is holding some books that the girl in pink gave him (all in chinese, but very cute pictures and the chinese characters are accompanied by the phonetic pinyin so I can use them to learn and practice my chinese!)


Mason blowing out his 2 candles. Before we sang Happy Birthday, Micah read (in chinese) from Psalm 139 about how we are fearfully & wonderfully made and talked about how the Father knew Mason before he was born. Don't you love the way the little boy (Tong Tong) on the left is holding his hands over his ears? I guess it got a little loud for him.


Family pic at the end of the party


It was super fun (a little chaotic with 10+ kids in our home) and everything came together nicely. Our friend Ann brought lots of Mickey Mouse party supplies from Hong Kong and that really was special to have. Mason's actual birthday is Wednesday the 30th. He is getting to be such a big boy. Although he is sometimes hard to understand, he loves to talk, loves to repeat anything anyone says and has the sweetest disposition (most of the time;) ). He loves to play with Reister and loves to say hello to anyone he passes (and since most of the people he sees when we're out are Chinese, he addresses them appropriately in Chinese: "Ayi" (auntie) "Shu Shu" (Uncle) "Jie Jie" (big sister) "Ge Ge" (big brother) "Mei Mei" (little sister) "Di Di" (little brother)
We're so very thankful for our Mason Turner and the blessing he is to our family!

Running

In April my parents bought me a great little gadget for an early birthday present. It's called the "Nike + iPod"
You can use it with an iPod Nano, iTouch or some iPhones. I have an iPod Touch and have LOVED having this little thing! I have never been a runner, but for some reason this has motivated me to start running. It tells you how far you've gone and at what pace and in what length of time. Then it stores all your run history and you can even sink it to your Nike+ account online. I started running a little before we left Texas but have actually kept it up and run 2-4 times a week. I normally run 2 miles at a time but have been trying to go further as I'm gaining endurance. I go at about 7am when the boys are normally just waking up and Micah can take care of them. I've really enjoyed getting exercise first thing in my day. I try to do a few sit-ups, push-ups and other stretching when I get home. I'm actually kind of proud of myself because I have never consistently exercised in almost my whole life. I hope I can keep this up because I know it's good for my body (so far I haven't had any major knee pain, etc), heart and spirit, really :) Another friend and I have even tried to go together when our schedules/lives allow once a week.
If you have this Nike+, add me as a friend (I use my actually@pobox.com address) so we can keep up with each other's progress. I had it linked to my Facebook account for a while but then got a little embarrassed at it showing my runs EVERY time I went, so I took it off.
So now that I've posted about this, I'll hopefully stick with it and update you all down the road!

Sunday School

My friend SB told me about this curriculum last year but I wanted to share in with you all in case there are others of you out there searching for Sunday School curriculum to use in a home group setting.
www.praisefactory.org
We used it some last year and are using it again with the friends we meet with here. As I'm preparing to lead the kids tomorrow, I just thought it might be good to let others know about it!
It's systematic theology for kids :) yeah!

A Fun Family Outing to an Amusement Park!

This past Saturday was my 31st birthday. I started the day by running (jogging?) with a friend. That's another post in itself, which I'll try to do later this week. Then our family went to Peter's Tex Mex for breakfast. Their food is really good and pretty authentic. I had a breakfast burrito and cinnamon roll, the boys had sausage patties, and Micah had a egg white omelet.



Our family on the patio before we left

Then we brainstormed about what to do with the rest of the day. I love to go to the pool so we considered that, but it still wasn't quite warm enough. So we decided to try out an amusement park in town called "Happy Valley" or 欢乐谷 in Chinese. We were thoroughly impressed and had a GREAT day!
The front gate

You can see the giant Ferris wheel in the background. Both boys got a lot of attention and had their pictures taken by strangers many times throughout the day. The lady below is posing while her friend takes a picture of her with Mason.

There was a large childrens area with lots of rides Reister could ride and some that Mason could ride. Here we are on the carousel. You can see Reister in the background on a horse.

Here's Mason getting swarmed by people wanting to admire his cuteness and take his picture

This was an indoor (and air-conditioned - it did warm up during the day!) ball play area - there were tons of nerf like balls that you could put into holes and then shoot them out all over the place. Quite fun for the kids and a neat place to rest for couple minutes. It was very loud, though!

There was a raft ride on the rafts pictured below. Reister and I waited almost 30 minutes to ride it. Everyone else bought 75 cent rain ponchos to wear but we were wearing sandals and it was pretty hot outside so I thought we'd just get a little wet, right? Wrong, we got SOAKED! Reister was not a big fan. We changed him into his swim suit and let him go shirtless the rest of the time. I just walked around wet - but actually it did keep me cool!

Just part of the park...

Reister and Micah went on a small roller coaster while Mason and I fed these goldfish.

Then we all joined up and Reister got to feed them some too.

Then we all rode on the big Ferris wheel



Afterwards we ate at the McDonalds at the gate (there was also a KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks!!) Inside the boys were swarmed again. Amazingly, there was a little boy with the exact same shirt as Reister. Reister's was given to him in the states so i wondered where the boy had gotten his - turns out his aunt that lives in California had mailed it to him. ha!

It was a very fun day. We actually got year long passes (for us, the boys are free) for $50 a piece! So we'll be able to go often and there is even a water park section that opens this week.
It was a very happy and special birthday. Although I miss our families in Texas and would have loved to have celebrated with them, it was still a special memory to have made here!