HKG275: It's Never Simple

poofy thomas....see below for more information about poofy thomas.

WARNING: whining straight ahead

today was insane. i learned, at around one this morning, that i needed to print out another set of shipping labels for our shipment back to the states. we gave away our printer. josh absconded with my jump drive. there is NO fedexKinkos, PackNMail, or UPS store here. in fact, it's pretty darn hard to figure out who offers digital printing services and where. there are kodak store everywhere, but they print only photos.

i found a listing for a store that actually has a web site (my ranting about web sites for businesses in HK will have to wait for another day) AND an upload option, so i hurriedly placed a request. the store requires a 24-hour turn for digital printing. so, i went to japan home with q and bought some writable DVDs. my computer tried for more than an hour to format the damn DVD (in the end, it took my computer 3 hours to inform me it could not format the DVD). so then i pinged josh to see if anyone is in the HK office today (he's in GZ)...nope. he suggests i use the SD card in the (new) camera though...presto-whamo, i have a way to get the document to someone who can print it.

q and i head down to the store that has a web site; it's in sheung wan, which is a hop, skip, and a jump from our apartment. along the way, i pass two or three stores that i pass all the time...they have stacks and stacks and stacks of loose paper (not neatly stacked) in their windows...one is an art/framing shop, one looks to be a stationary store, and the third one also looks to be a stationary store...until i look at the sign that is 10 feet straight up over my head....IT'S A DIGITAL PRINTING STORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they seem to specialize in cool stuff like photos, cards, and calendars, but they are able to print my labels. wooooooooooooo hooooooooooo. (note...i did not find this store when searching online for digital printing services in the central district of hong kong.)

the shipment was scheduled to be picked up sometime between 1 and 7 p.m. q and i get home at 12:50, and there's a love note from UPS on my door. they were here and gone. i have to reschedule. i hurriedly get q some lunch, and then use a link our mover sent me to reschedule another pickup.

the doorbell rings a little after five, and in walks two UPS guys. they look at my smallest bin and ask if this is the shipment. i look at them like they have three heads, and then gesture to the entire room full of rubbermaid containers and tell them that THIS is the shipment. one young man immediately gets on the phone and confers with his office. after about 5 minutes of back and forth, he gets approval to pick up our shipment. then he rejects my shipping labels...the ones that were so hard to print...the ones that have an RFID and barcode on them that ensure they are shipped together. he, instead, gives me one air bill for all 14 boxes. i made an error on it (entered my home addy in texas instead of the customs point in nevada), and there was some alarm, so i just asked them to come back another day. there was also some extreme confusion about payment. the UPS service here does not accept credit cards from non account holders, so the fact that i had prepaid our mover in the u.s. with a credit card was causing confusion.

the long and short of it is that our apartment still looks like a rubbermaid hatchery. i hope this stuff ships soon, because the natives are restless and keep trying to break into the bins. i already found one liberated toy...poofy thomas....a.k.a. poopy thomas according to q (he can't pronounce his letter f very well).

HKG274: Public Transpo FAIL

today, q and i had the opportunity to have lunch out....with real, live people! the kind-hearted mom i was talking to during the party livie attended on sunday invited me and q to meet up with her and two of her friends for lunch.

we had a great time, but the lunch ran a tiny bit late. i thought "no problem, i'll catch a cab back into central in time to meet livie's afternoon bus." i was in TST. for the life of me, i can NEVER get a cab to take me cross harbor (i have tried and failed at least five times).

for whatever reason, traffic was heavy this afternoon, and it took almost 10 minutes to find an empty cab. i found one, told him i needed to go cross harbor, and he gave me an emphatic "NO!" at this point, it was clear i was not going to get back to central in time to meet livie's bus, so i called the school and asked them to keep her there/not let her get on the bus. thank god i had that option.

q and i ended up taking the MTR, which was always an option (and a cheap one)...but it's pretty slow to get through the train station, get through the turnstiles, and get on a train...which is why i was trying to catch a cab to begin with.

livie survived her extended day, though she was sad and scared, which broke my heart. we made a special deal out of it...walked to a cool park near livie's school, went for ice cream, went to another park, and then stopped off at one of our favorite minimarts to get some fresh fruit and other necessities.

it was a pretty great day barring the 30 minutes of stress around being late to get livie. tomorrow, all of our goods begin their journey back to texas!

kids climbing at the first park

q is right in the midst of the I DO IT MYSELF phase, and here he is trying to get himself situated on the swing.

while i was working on packing slips and reorganizing the bins tonight (a couple were not completely full, so i had to rearrange/repack (if the bins are not packed super tightly, stuff breaks)), i moved this cushion to the top of a crate. waffle hopped up there as fast as he could and then gave me his regal "you put this here for me, right?!" look.

comatose q. he fell asleep on the train. standing up. he got a lot of giggles from a lot of people around us. he slept through three stops on the train, me carrying him through the turnstiles (which we barely fit through), through the train station, for the entire duration of a 30-minute wait in a taxi queue, in the taxi, and up and down the stairs at livie's school. he did not wake up until she came out of her classroom. i wish i could sleep like that!

HKG273: Tiny James

as we work on packing up our stuff to ship to texas, we also are putting aside special/favorite toys for the kids to continue playing with here and to take on the plane with them. one of q's special toys is tiny james.

tiny james came with a set we got from the b family...the set is part of a book with a foldout poster of a track and 10 or so tiny versions of thomas and friends. james and henry have been q's favorites. unfortunately, henry relocated himself to a shuttle bus at chimelong resort in GZ. james has been here the whole time, but gets misplaced often. he got misplaced last night.

josh and i tore apart several toy bins looking for him...no luck. this morning, q starts telling me how tiny james is going on the plane with him....cue another hour spent tearing the bins up looking for tiny james. right before we left for gymnastics, i took q to the potty, and when he was done, i moved the foot stool so he could was his hands. i happened to pick up the foot stool instead of sliding it. guess who was underneath it??? TINY JAMES. the foot stool has a hole in the top of it, and i guess q slipped tiny james through that hole sometime last night between dinner and bed time because i know he was playing with tiny james right before dinner. i have never been so glad to find a toy.

HKG271 & HKG272: Weekend Roundup

rubbermaid threw up in our apartment

we had a great weekend. on saturday, we headed over to the stanley markets to look around and get some special jeans for the kids. livie has outgrown the style, and we could not find any for her, but we found another thomas pair for q. we also got some yummy lunch and dessert/coffee before heading back to central. one fun thing we saw while in stanley was fresh christmas trees! they smelled SOOOOOOOOOO good! we spent the rest of saturday packing and our apartment now looks like rubbermaid threw up in here :-)

today, livie and i headed to the aberdeen marina club for a birthday party for one of her classmates. the club has a multi-level indoor play area that was FANTASTIC. the bug had a great time, and i enjoyed talking with another mother from class. while we were out, josh and q had a little male bonding time and ran errands. josh also organized our rubbermaid collection so that our apartment no longer resembles an obstacle course.

tomorrow, it's back to our regular weekly happenings. the big event for this week is that our household goods will be shipping on wednesday, and wednesday is livie's last day of school here in hong kong.

HKG270: The Mook & A Belated Birthday

my family has created a new definition for the term "mook." instead of it meaning an incompetent person, in our house, it refers to the barnes and noble e-reader/tablet, the nook color. quinn is the one that dubbed the nook "the mook." it cracks me up every time i hear him say it, and now it's stuck in my head.

my nook color is not really mine anymore. it's community property. i have found so many games and apps for the kids as well as interactive books, there's just no way i can keep it to myself. we are looking around for another tablet or refurbished nook to add to our collection simply because our upcoming 14-hour flight will be brutal if we have to add in arguments over whose turn it is with the nook :-)

the nook is on my mind today because it was a great tool this morning. today, i had a parent-teacher conference at livie's school, and livie had a school holiday, so that left josh with the task of wrangling both kids while trying to work. add in the nook, and presto whamo, the kiddos are managed. if we put one on my computer with some games/clips and the other on the nook, they are quietly entertained AND learning something. the conference went great; i learned all sorts of things about livie's progress at school. afterward, we all took q to his lego class and then stopped for lunch at a new restaurant, which turned out to serve DELICIOUS food!

q's teacher very patiently switched up the day's program to let q build this train station and track instead of moving forward with the day's plan...due to quinn being super cranky and uncooperative at the start of class. for whatever reason, q was fighting his lego class REALLY hard this morning, and while josh and another teacher were trying to calm him down, i was chatting with another teacher who revealed to me that this behavior happens very week. q cops an attitude, refusing to build according to the class theme, hollers for me, and then tries to get out of the classroom. this pains me. my inner child is still SUPER scarred from the insane issues we had with him in preschool during the fall of 2010 (after repeated issues and being asked to remove him from class for being a challenge/disruptive, we ended up pulling him out entirely only two months after he started). because he does not cry when i take him to lego class (usually), i assumed he was doing better with handling a class without me. i was wrong. i worry that this will be an ongoing issue, and i am rethinking my plan to keep him out of any kind of preschool until fall of 2012...am thinking about trying to get him into a program in january instead. i can't see how another eight months without learning how to cope in a class setting will help him....now to find the right program for him. while he's a sweetie and ridiculously funny, q could never be accused of being an easy kid, and finding the right program for him will be a challenge.

this afternoon, we worked on packing/purging, listened to some christmas music, and had leftovers and fresh-baked cookies for dinner. tomorrow marks the start of one of our last two full weekends in hong kong, so we are working hard on our todo list for what we want to do. though we've been a few times, we will probably head out to stanley to do a little clothes shopping for the kids and their friends. there is a style of kids' blue jeans we have found here and never seen anywhere else...they are regular jeans but with jogging pants material at the waist...super comfy AND great for people who are potty training. they also come with all sorts of popular characters on them. since we know the kids like these and we can't find them at home, we are going to stock up on them now. FUN FUN!

random catchup : while we were on our cruise last week, we missed our waffle kitty's birthday. he turned one year old on 18 november. our kitten is now a cat, and it shows. he now sleeps when we sleep instead of doing the la fu 500 over and under and around our bed while we try to sleep. he's also GROWN by leaps and bounds. he's probably grown several inches in length and height, and he has certainly put on some kitty pounds. i love a chubby kitty, and while he's nowhere near chubby yet, he is getting more plush :-) josh tells me i should limit waffle's stinky fish treats, but i am a sucker for waffle's cute little begging face and meows.

here, livie's showing us how she can hold waffle "correctly." she constantly wants to pick him up, and i have been trying to teach her to pick him up under his arms and butt and to hold him close...she's not really getting it. poor waffle. looking at him in livie's arms REALLY brings home how much he's grown. he's HUGE in her arms!

HKG269: Thanksgiving

we have much to be thankful for today, but at the very top of our list is the opportunity to go home in a few weeks. we also are thankful for having had this amazing opportunity in hong kong.

today was a pretty great day, but it definitely did NOT feel like thanksgiving. we are very seriously missing our family and friends today. last year, we went down to boerne to share thanksgiving with my mom, dad, and siblings. it was pretty awesome...this year was pretty lonely. i am so glad we will be home for christmas...i am not sure i could take two major holidays being so lonely.

this morning, q and i putzed around the apartment for a while, and then caught a bus into wanchai to play at the southorn playground and have lunch with josh. q had a great time playing; together we found a very interesting bug, and then q practiced his climbing and jumping skills. i practiced letting go of his hands and not panicking/envisioning ambulance rides.

when josh go to the park, he snuck up on q and called his name quietly...the exuberant sprint and leap into josh's arms brought a smile to many faces. we had some delicious sandwhiches and lemonade at a french patisserie called pomme, and then followed that up with the world's most AMAZING chocolate cupcake. the kids and i will be meeting up with josh there again before we leave hong kong...livie needs to experience that cupcake!

this afternoon, the kids and i headed out to find some fixin's for a semi-traditional thanksgiving dinner. i was specifically looking for ham, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin puree. i knew i could find all of these ingredients at a store that is a little far away, but i didn't want to deal with the delay of trying to get a cab so late in the day (this would mean standing around for 30 to 45 minutes in hopes of getting a cab not to mention the actual travel time and time to shop). since i chickened out, i decided to head to the next level down international store.

on the way there, we ran into josh! this was perfect...he agreed to take the kids to the shake-shake bridge playground so i could shop in peace. unfortunately, my choice to go to the lower level international store meant that i did not find any of the t-day goodies i was looking for, so i improvised a non-standard t-day menu : chicken fried chicken, cheesey mashed taters, green beans with bacon, biscuits, and home-made cream gravy. it was delicious! it annoys me that it took me an hour and 45 minutes to cook it all (including having to stop and wash dishes/do the cooking in rounds), but it was soooooooooooooo worth it. i am desperately craving pumpkin bread, so i am planning to go find the ingredients and make that sometime this weekend.

blurry but delicious non-standard thanksgiving dinner

q and his 'bots having a chat while we wait for sissy's bus. q is all boy all the time, but he also has this soft side to him. he cuddles these robots and makes them hold hands. he also regularly gives me a 'bot to cuddle and care for while he cuddles and cares for the other.

goofy children wrestling

really cool bug q and i found at the park. my blurry cell phone pic doesn't do it justice. look closely...he has fuzzy "ears" sticking up, and his wings are completely transparent.

q looking adorable despite the fact that he is mid burp

q burps. he's super proud of his talent.

HKG268: Homebodies

the kids and i ran into these two boys and their auntie at the zoo park. livie takes gymnastics with the bigger boy while q and the smaller boy play together in the lobby (while we wait for sissy). the four of them had a BALL getting into all sorts of mischief at the park, and when it was time to leave, they walked four-wide holding hands.

my two goofballs...q dog piled sissy in the egg chair, but i was not fast enough with the camera...just caught them as q was finally getting off of his poor sister.

for the last couple of days, q and i have been keeping a very low profile while the bug is at school. we are enjoying being back in our own space, playing with our toys, and catching up on stuff around the house. it has taken me two days to catch up on laundry...really. the washer has been running non-stop since sunday night, and both bathrooms have looked like clothing stores with all the clothes hanging up to dry. i am finally done with all of the vacation laundry AND regular laundry build up, and i just have to say AGAIN how much i cannot wait to get back to my super-capacity third-hand whirlpool washer back home. i live for the opportunity to wash more than 3 bath towels at a time ;-p

our household goods will begin their journey back to texas next wednesday, so when i am not tackling piles of laundry, i am purging and packing. it's not exciting work, but the reason for it sure is!!

i think that tomorrow we will force ourselves out of the house. we need to head down to the american store to get some t-day provisions. it's going to be a sad and lonely t-day, but our consolation is that we will be home just in time for christmas!!!