HKG244: Llama Llama, Red Pajama

okay, i've got nothing about the adorable children's book, but i couldn't resist the title.

we went to lamma island (yung shue wan village) today and had a fabulous time. we had a fabulous lunch of pad thai, spaghetti, and steamed clams before we headed down to the beach. while we were at the beach, we met a fellow american who is in hong kong for just a few days before continuing on for a hiking adventure in nepal. we had a great time chatting with her and learning all about her upcoming trip as well as sharing a few tips about things to do in hong kong.

one of our favorite things about lamma is the many dogs we get to see and pet. today was no exception. we petted stray dogs, pampered pooches, and everything in between. we also went into an animal rescue organization that had many items for sale for fundraising purposes as well as a few dogs on the property. we also met several kitty cats ... all well-cared-for strays. we saw a whole litter of baby kitty cats...all plush, white marshmallow kitties. we had a ball loving on all of these animals. we found what i would think is possibly the most zen cat i have ever met. he never even opened his eyes while the kids and i were petting him. you can't get more relaxed than that!

it was a great day!

beach babes

q buried. olivia was buried as well, but i was too busy chasing q to get a pic :-( the kids also buried josh, but again, i was too busy keeping q out of too-deep water to get a pic.

kinda blurry, but a funny sign in a restroom at lamma

before we left for lamma, q insisted on closing himself into waffle's soft-sided carrier. i swear this kid is a contortionist.

HKG243: Sad Saturday

olivia very patiently waited in a long line to get her face painted, and this is the result. she literally stopped traffic when we returned to central this evening. josh told me that a woman made her husband pull the car over so that she could lean out the window and blow kisses to livie. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

q was thrilled to be spider man and even endured his mask for a long time. once it was snack time, though, the mask had to go. josh taught him how to "throw" webs yesterday, and he now does it with proficiency. i am looking forward to this one getting a lot of repeat usage once it's added to the toy bin.

today started out nice and slow. we skyped with family this morning, and then josh took the kids out to run some errands while i went out to run some other errands and do some birthday shopping for q...his 3rd birthday is next week!

this afternoon, we headed out to the bradbury school to attend their halloween carnival. the kids were super excited to wear their costumes and proudly brought along their buckets hoping to trick-or-treat. the carnival was just so-so...it was pretty well organized, but a couple of the attractions were just too small, and due to the VERY LARGE crowds, lines were long. blah-blah-blah. we also never found a place for the kids to trick-or-treat, which was a pretty big downer for them.

what really put a damper on the day, though, was that we lost our brand new, shiny, awesome camera. so, we are back to crappy cell phone camera pics. josh put a call in to the taxi dispatch office to report the camera lost, but i am guessing that our chances of getting it back are slim to none. what is it with us andersons?! first i leave my cell phone in a taxi and now this. bleh!

HKG242: Fun Friday

today was a pretty good day. quinn enjoyed his lego class and was happy and agreeable at the end of it (doesn't always happen), so we were able to get a couple errands done on the way home. luckily for us, one of the errands gave us the opportunity to pet a siberian husky puppy...he was GORGEOUS and incredibly soft. i could have buried my hands in his fur for hours. he was sweet and playful and had a great time licking quinn.

this afternoon, we got quinn's hair cut and got a couple move-related things done before we headed out for our usual evening playground outing. the kids had a great time making friends, and then we got a surprise meet up and dinner out with josh, who returned from china this afternoon.

quinn's lego class made an obstacle course today.

waffle decided to cuddle up in his soft carrier today...it's always good to know he's not too traumatized by his vet visits and/or afraid of the transport method that gets him there.

we have hit a bit of a snag with potty training in the last two days with q throwing fits about going on the potty (but being successful any time we force the issue and put him on the toilet). once we were in the apartment and planned to be there for a few hours today, i stripped him down and left him nude in hopes that he'd feel more prompted to go on the toilet. he did pretty well with the naked time though he did get creative with reassembling his outfit (that's a shirt he has on his legs) and he did make a "deposit" on the floor, but realized what was going on and got himself to the bathroom. have i mentioned how glad i will be when we reach the successful end of this particular journey?

HKG241: Out and About

today, i FORCED q to get out of the house. okay, i lured him out with the promise of feeding kitties. we headed over to the king george memorial park where there is a whole herd of feral cats...that we're not supposed to feed :-) this park is pretty amazing. it has a soccer pitch, a nice walking/jogging path, and a nice two-level playground.

q started out playing around with his soccer ball on the soccer pitch. he attracted the attention of an older gentleman who spent about 15 minutes playing with quinn, coaxing him into kicking the ball into the net, and cheering him on. q got one of his feet trapped in the net and wiped out pretty hard, so that ended their game and led to lunch.

i think q's in a growth spurt b/c he keeps telling me he's hungry every hour on the hour, and he keeps devouring whatever food i prepare for him. he inhaled his picnic lunch and then started telling me he was ready to go home for lunch :-)

after his picnic lunch, we played on the playground, fed a feral cat, took a restroom break (nothing like changing a poopy pullup while the pooper is standing (while q is doing great with staying dry, he is not yet staying clean)), and then walked to a nearby grocery store for some necessary provisions.

we had a great time, and q took a great nap after our outing. this afternoon wasn't quite so full of rainbows and unicorns, though. i needed to finally get some boxes to the post office, and i told the kids if they behaved, we'd go to jumpin' gym afterward. they did not behave. at all. livie, sassy pants that she is, kept asking me "did we lose our privilege yet?" i don't think i've been this eager for bed time in a while :-) they are now tucked in and it is blissfully quiet in the apartment!

oh, and a random thought about kitties. i think waffle knew we were paying attention to other kitties. the treats we took to feed the feral cats are some crunchies that my mom sent for waffle and that he turned his nose up at. as soon as we came home from our adventure, he dived into my bag and started nosing the bag of treats he had previously rejected! he then inhaled a handful of the crunchies like he'd been craving them his whole life.

q asked me to take this picture of him

i am fascinated by the root structures on a lot of the trees here. that hairy mess above q's right shoulder is part of the root system of the tree behind him as is the mess on the wall.

the text is very tiny, but i put some text to show which of the high rises is our building. i stopped to get a shot of the church and noticed our building was visible.

q asked me to take this picture, too. i was trying to snap pics of him climbing the twirly thing, but he got down and asked me to take a pic once he was at the bottom.

q enjoying his picnic lunch

fun shot of q's soccer ball in mid air

sporty q

this picture doesn't do her justice, but i couldn't get her to turn around. this little kitty had the most stunning turquoise eyes.

HKG240: Waiting Around Wednesday

q thought it prudent to perform some quality assurance on waffle's airport house. this kid definitely does not have my clausterphobia issues.

today was an odd day...it seems this is a theme for the week, eh. we started off great, skyped with my dad and got some boxes loaded up/addressed and ready to go to the post office...and then i got a call from our real estate agent telling me that they wanted to show the apartment at 2:30. it was about 10:45 at this point. q was also telling me he was hungry. so, i got a few things done, made lunch for q, got a few more things done, made lunch for me, got a few more things done, took q down to play at the playground for a while, got q down for a nap, sat down to terrorize pigs for a while, got a few more things done, woke up q, went down to get sissy from the bus, and then came back and waited. and waited. and scolded the kids away from their toys. and waited. and waited some more. no one ever showed up for this fictional showing. the apartment looks pretty darn great, though. :-) the kids start twitching when they approach the toy box, but i am not sure that's really a bad thing >:-)

late this afternoon, we headed out for sissy's flamenco class and wet market adventures, and then we met up with josh for dinner. after dinner, josh took the kids out for frozen yogurt while i got down to toys r us to get a halloween costume for q. he's going to be spiderman, and sissy's going to be a lady bug.

here's hoping tomorrow is not a repeat of today. i realize that the apartment has to be shown to be leased, but i am not a fan of being held hostage to the showings. at this point, the real estate agents do not have keys to the apartment...i hope to remedy that issue tomorrow!

oh, yeah...i promised a review of our chocolate cake from awfully chocolate...IT WAS AWESOME! it definitely wasn't as rich or sweet as cakes in the u.s., and the frosting was this delightfully light/moussey consistency, but it was scrumptious. other cakes we have gotten here taste VERY strange...they have little to no sugar in them, and the cake part tastes very different...i think maybe it's made with rice flour or something besides wheat flour. it's hard to describe.

this is the type of cake we got, chocolate-chocolate. ours does not look nearly this pretty now...it looks a little bit more like it's been mauled by a bear...or four.

HKG239: Totally Random Tuesday

today has been an odd day. it started out with josh having to dismantle quinn's bed. the long story is this...when i was moving q's bed into sissy's room for jeanette's visit, i broke the bed a little bit. when josh moved the bed back into q's room after jeanette's visit, he broke the bed a little bit more. last night, while cuddling quinn and getting him tucked in for bed, josh broke the bed completely. it was safe enough to let q sleep there for the night, but needed to be dismantled before nap today. i told q he was going to have a camping adventure for his nap...he protested a bit with "wha you do to mah bed, mommy?!" complete with angry eyebrows, but he settled down quickly.

before nap, we had a pretty quiet morning with a small side of adventure. i had a hell of a time convincing my homeboy (as in never wants to leave home) quinn to get out of the house. i had to lure him out with the promise of a hot dog bun (this is a bun baked around a hotdog...local cheap delicacy) and a chocolate milk. we needed to get to the pet store to pick up what we are calling waffle's airport house...his travel carrier.

speaking of waffle, we learn something new about our sweet kitty every day. the latest revelation is that he loathes a child-free house. in the wake of our recent vacation, he has decided that when there are no kids visible, he must cry at the top of his lungs while pacing the house. he does this for at least 10 minutes after i put q down for his nap. he also cries at the top of his lungs when we leave the apartment...we can hear him from the elevator lobby. another random thing we've recently learned about waffle is that he looks a LOT like a japanese bobtail. after some wikipedia-ing, we've come to the conclusion that waffle must have a good bit of this breed in him as his features and disposition match the description of this breed very well...all except one point. waffle does NOT have a soft, tonal voice. the only tone he knows is LOUD AS HELL :-) he does talk constantly, though, which is typical of the japanese bobtail. and, of course, he has his very special tail that has intrigued us from the moment we met him.

waffle's not-so-distant relative, the japanese bobtail

okay, back to the adventure of getting out of the house...we did finally get out and accomplish all of our missions. along the way, we also acquired a ben 10 toy and a chocolate cake. random, yes? we keep walking by this place called awfully chocolate. it has bars on the window, and the interior is stark white. it looks like jail for chocolate. it just begs to be explored. due to language barrier, i ended up with an entire small cake rather than a single serving of cake, but it was still fun to explore. cake here is WEIRD...so, i will have to repost about our adventures in eating it tomorrow since we are saving it for dessert after dinner tonight.

waffle checking out his airport house with help from the kids. they crammed every single last one of his toys in there with him, and he thought that was pretty awesome. he tolerated this game for a good 10 minutes before he decided to get the heck out of dodge.

the last BIG adventure from today is livie's first loose tooth and my surprise reaction to it. as i have mentioned before, livie has been OBSESSED with losing teeth...to the point of crying when she hears her friends have lost teeth. she's been less focused on this lately. today, she gets off the bus and tells me a little about her day, calmly moseys on into the building, cheerfully shares elevator button duties with quinn, and THEN announces to me that she has a loose tooth. she tells us this all the time, so i blithely stick my finger in her mouth to feel this "loose" tooth, and then i nearly vomit. it turns out that loose teeth make me queasy. she, in fact, has a very loose tooth. i bet it will be out in a few weeks. livie told me she accidentally hit her tooth really hard with her cup at school, and that's how it became so loose.

late this afternoon, we are off to the post office to mail the first of a series of boxes home to texas as well as some postcards to friends back home. the post office always brings out the absolute worst in my kids, and i am seriously contemplating lollipop bribery...then again, we will be there right before dinner, so prolly not.

HKG238: Addictions

today was a pretty slow day with the kids... gymnastics class, school, gymnastics class, store, park, home, playground, done. it was a good day, just not a super exciting one.

what's exciting to me today? my new addiction to angry birds. it's bad. it's very, very bad. i had not played this game until last week when i downloaded it onto my nook for our trip to beijing. actually, i didn't even play it then...the kids had the nook during our trip, so i actually didn't start playing the game until a few days ago. wow. i am REALLY bad at video games, and this one is no exception, but i am addicted nonetheless.

my other addiction right now is seaweed. really. seaweed. i am trying a low carb diet right now, and i needed another alternative for the typical snack. i have been loosely following the diabetic diet i was on at the end of my pregnancy with quinn, and i remember that my snacks were typically nuts, cheese, fresh raw veggies, nutbutter, olives, or small amounts of fruit. i also remember craving salty, chip-like snacks, and that's what the seaweed replaces for me now. it is delicious...if i am not careful about portioning out a serving, i can easily eat an entire package. YUM.