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.

Recent pics

This was from today - Reister has gotten more and more into playing with Mason

Our househelper gave Mason this big dog and he loves it - he will ride it, hug it, roll around on it...

Mason enjoyed spaghetti this night :)

Mason's First Birthday

Here are the pictures from Mason's birthday - When I load the pictures, they load backwards and then I can't rearrange them (I used to be able to, but now...any tips from other blogger users?)
We had three local families, a foreign family whose youngest is about Mason's age, and a couple of single foreign friends come and eat taco salad and cake. I made the taco salad fixings (except the yummy chips that we bought at Peter's Tex Mex) and the cake (from a box). It was a fun evening and as you can tell, Mason thoroughly enjoyed his cupcake. We bought him three gifts from a website in our country that sells pretty much everything, including american brand toys. One toy was from us, and the other two were from his grandparents (both sides). He enjoyed his Playskool walker thingy, and two Little People sets. We are so blessed to have such a sweet, cute boy in our family. He has become very affectionate in the last week and we love it! He's saying new words left and right and can even hold up one finger to tell you hold old he is. I'll try to post more pictures soon - there are a lot of cute ones!

Wanted: email addresses

Hi everyone - I am in need of your email address! Our newer Dell laptop's harddrive failed last month and we lost all our emails and email addresses that were on there. I may still have your's saved on our old laptop, but just in case, would you please shoot me an email with your current email address so that you can receive our email updates? If we've only met once or twice can you please remind me where you live and how we met?
Thanks!
micahandmichelle@pobox.com

June 1st Children's Day

Reister's preschool had a performance on Childrens Day.
I can't change the order of the pictures for some reason, so they are backwards (starting at the end of the morning) Micah took all the pictures with his long lens on his Nikon DSLR D70.

During his class' performance, he was at the back and turned around backwards. You can see the teacher really was the performance - the kids were just not that into it.

When he finally got turned around, he started getting unhappy and could see me on the side.

Eventually he got up and started walking towards the edge.

So I went and sat with him to get him to at least stay on stage with his class for the whole song.

Reister wasn't quite sure what to think of his hat

Here's another class and their performance

Reister was waiting on the side of the stage, watching the activities

More of the waiting and watching

Girls AND boys got makeup before the perfomance


It was fun to go and be a part of the excitement at his school for Children's day, but after his class' performance we headed home - it was a hot day.

Chocolate Cake Fan

Reister enjoyed the chocolate cake a friend got me - so much that I caught him eating the icing off the edge with his mouth. Here he is looking a little... uh... well, he looks like he just got caught, I think.

Beautiful Scenery

Micah took this on one of his recent trips out...

Isn't that a beautiful little village?

Cool!

For those of you who live in Asia, this is probably cool to you too. Otherwise, you're thinking I'm crazy! There are several McDonalds in the city we live in, but almost all of them are part of a shopping center or another building with other stores or shops surrounding it. Micah and I were out for the morning by ourselves (without the boys) and saw this free standing McDonalds and were reminded of America! We had to stop and eat lunch! Unfortunately there was not a play area to bring the boys back to. The crazy thing was it was right in the middle of a hi-tech office park similar to the DELL area of Round Rock/Austin. So many workers wearing their ID badges around their necks were coming in to eat - even some from other countries like Pakistan. I almost felt like we were almost in America! Even the humid heat reminded me of Austin as we got back in the car to go home. :)

Mason is 11 months

Mason is actually almost 11 1/2 months. I can't believe he's almost ONE YEAR OLD! Can you tell how blond and how curly his hair is? You might also be able to see that his right eye still turns in - sometimes it's worse than others. He still wears a patch over his left eye for 30 minutes a day. We return to the doctor in July and he'll get a more intensive exam.
Some tidbits about Mason:
* He eats some homemade baby food but mostly finger food (whatever we're eating, broken into small pieces) three meals a day
* He nurses three times a day (when he wakes up, before his afternoon nap, and before he goes to sleep at night)
* He takes two naps a day - the morning one from about 9-10am (I have to wake him up sometimes to make sure he will still take his afternoon nap) and the afternoon one from about 1:30 - 3:30 or 4
* He sleeps through the night just great - from about 8pm - 6:30am (but he usually plays in his crib till at least 7am when I go into feed him)
* He can crawl really fast, pull up on anything (including a wall) and cruise around. But he is still not walking and doesn't seek like he's very close to walking (He's never taken a step on his own or even stood on his own)
* He can say Dada, Mama, ball ("baah"), bye-bye
* He can wave bye-bye and really likes to say it and wave when he realizes someone is leaving
* He likes to clap his hands a lot (we say "Huan-yin, huan-yin" and he claps - that's what the locals say to teach babies to clap, it means "Welcome, Welcome")
* He is pretty much a happy baby. He loves to be held or carried but also doesn't mind playing by himself or riding in the stroller. He gets really excited when he sees dogs!
* He adores his big brother and loves almost any attention from him. He still doesn't complain when Reister takes toys away from him (I'm sure that will change soon)
I could probably write a lot more, but he's actually waking up from his afternoon nap!
We love our Mason Turner!

Party Pics

Jack and Lisa - good local friends

Our househelper, Mrs. Liu, and Mason (she stopped by for a few minutes at the end because in the afternoons she works in the same yard the pool was in)

Jane and Simon, good local friends - there son is in Reister's preschool class

Our neighbor, Michaela and Reister.

Heather, Cindi and Ann serving up cake

My friends Scott & Debbie gave me a six pack of Dr. Peppers so I was enjoying one... but Mason REALLY wanted a taste! (he didn't get one!)

Reister loved having other kids around The kids on the left are the kids of some fellow Aggies that also live here. The boy on the right is in Reister's class at preschool.

With a plate of cake - I had made a favorite recipe to bring and enjoy (butterscotch chocolate cake) and my friend Heather brought an apple cake as well

30th

I turned 30 yesterday and it was a wonderful day thanks to my awesome husband!


He took us to breakfast at Peter's Tex Mex - I had the chicken biscuit, Micah had the breakfast burrito and the boys split an omelette. Yumm! We retook this picture but believe it or not, it was worse than the first.
Micah and I were able to go work out after this while the boys stayed at home with our househelper. That was really fun. I've been trying to work out more lately at the same gym Micah has been going to that is really close to where we live.
We had planned to go to a nearby pool if the weather was nice. I was totally surprised when we arrived there yesterday afternoon and a whole group of our friends were already there waiting on us to surprise me. Micah did an AWESOME job of keeping it from me and inviting a lot of special people to come. I'll post more pictures in my next post. I could and should write a whole long post about the party but because of my two boys that I need to go keep up with I'll wrap it up for now. Thanks to Micah for making it a really really special day!

How do I know you?

You may have noticed on the right side of my blog I have a "Live Feed" that shows where the people are who are looking at my blog. Have you noticed there are people ALL over the US and world? I have! And although I do have quite a few friends spread out over the world, there are places that I did not know I knew anyone ... Some places I have a hunch who you might be or how you might have come across my blog but others I just have NO IDEA! If you are looking at my blog because I'm a friend of a mutual friend or something, I'd love to hear from you and know who you are. It would also help me not to be so mystified as to why there are so many random hits on my blog! Just leave a comment if you don't mind. If I know you or are related to you, don't worry about commenting unless you just want to.

Mason's eyes - recent trip to HK

Mason and I went to Hong Kong this past Sunday and got back last night. We went for his second visit to the pediatric ophthalmologist. Basically he's still got the problem, (right eye crossing most of the time) but it is a little better. It's hard to tell whether the glasses and patching thirty minutes a day are going to "solve" the problem and the doctor said there is still a good chance he'll need surgery. This particular doctor prefers to wait until the child is 18 months to do the surgery. We will most likely go back in two months and at that time Mason will need to have a deeper examination of his eyes which will require him to be sedated as well as to have had special prescription eye drops started three days before. We got the drops this time so we'll be able to give them to Mason ourselves before heading to HK.

Here are a couple pictures from our trip

In the airport on the way there, Mason got some attention from this man waving his boarding pass around for Mason to play with

Here is the very nice doctor that is seeing Mason for his eye problem. Dr. Christopher Yu (speaks perfect English and is a member of the American Board of Pediatric Ophthalmologists)

In Hong Kong, we traveled everywhere by the subway system called the "MTR" - it's really awesome except for the places that don't have elevators or escalators up to ground level when you're carrying a stroller. At least Mason only weighs around 8.2kgs (around 18 pounds)

In the aiport on the way back, Mason was a hit in the waiting area by our gate. This mom REALLY wanted a picture of Mason with her son, but her son was not about to sit by Mason by himself (is he that scary looking?! :) ) So finally she asked if she could hold Mason with her son to get the picture.

It was a quick trip but went pretty smoothly. I didn't take the stroller last time but I am SO glad I did this time. It totally saved my back!

Please continue to lift up Mason and his eyes. We know Father will continue to glorify Himself through this.

Open House at Reister's School

Last Wednesday was "Open House" at Reister's preschool - parents were invited to come for the morning to see what a typical morning is like. Micah went for about 30 minutes and I stayed the whole time. Here's the basic order of things (I may have forgotten something since it's been a week already):

8:30-9 Students arrive

Morning exercises / dancing

Potty

Snack (Reister is pouring milk - it's part of the curriculum for the students to learn basic skills like that)

Storytime activity

Potty

Craft

Playground

Potty
Song and Dance Time

11:30am Lunch

Then they have naptime, but for students that only stay half day like Reister, parents come to pick up the kids after lunch