HKG285: Jacket Required

during family nap, waffle curled up on the warmest human: josh.

i'm a total wimp when it comes to cold temps. i LOVE hot weather. love it. cold? hate it. what do i classify as cold? anything below 70 degrees, really. i told you i am a wimp.

the temps here have been in the high sixties during the day and low fifties at night. this should be fine, right? when we are out and about and walking miles and miles, it's PERFECT. i swear to you, though, that it's about 40 degrees inside our apartment. even josh, our resident walking space heater, said he was cold today. i am guessing that the combination of hardwood floors and cement walls along with zero furniture or rugs is what's got this place feeling like a meat locker.

i bought sparky, our space heater, a week or so ago. thing is, if i turn him to a medium high temp AND to the highest fan speed, he starts sparking. this is not something i look for in a space heater. i had to turn sparky off last night and let him cool off for an hour...by about 1:30 in the morning, my teeth were chattering. the compromise is to turn sparky to a medium warm temp and the lowest fan speed. this produces wimpy warm air. the warm air is so wimpy that our furred family member...the one covered in fur from his nose to his toes...sleeps directly in front of the space heater. in hopes of combating the cold tonight, we got a second sparky and we have them set up at either end of a short hall that all of the bedrooms come off of. here's hoping we have toasty toes tonight!

i know that the upcoming forecast for pville includes temps about 10 degrees lower than our lows here, but our house in pville has central air, carpets and furniture, and NO SPARKS ;-0

i told you i'm a wimp.

HKG284: Fun Friday

livie is the adorable shepherd closest to the wall on the middle/right side of the pic

the kids have done remarkably well with adjusting to living with few toys, no furniture, and no TV. they each get a lot of time on the computer and nook to play games on pbskids and starfall, and we all watch a lot of random videos on youtube (duck-billed platypus, pugs, bostons, funny cat videos, a plethora of "videos" for music from the 70s (carpenters, beatles, james taylor, and so on)), so they are not exactly deprived :-) more often than not, though, they just get completely goofy as shown above. and then mean mommy has to reign in the goof because there is a high probability that the neighbors below us want to cause bodily harm due to the noise.

the temps dropped a few more degrees again. waffle decided that the weather is too chilly and he is most comfortable laying less than an inch from the space heater.

today was a day of dividing and conquering. though she is no longer enrolled at school, live was allowed to participate in her class christmas play this morning (she was the world's most adorable shepherd). josh got her off to school for that while q and i hung around the apartment and then headed out to lego class.

this afternoon, we mostly kept it pretty quiet, and then had a very simple dinner. we're not sure yet what we will do tomorrow; we are having olivia's bed picked up, but we are not sure yet what time it will be picked up. we are hoping to make one more trip out to macau this weekend to check out the portuguese history of the island, but we're not 100% sure that will be a go.

HKG283: Language Barrier

this picture doesn't do it justice because you can't taste it, but trust me, this is the world's best chocolate cupcake. the cake is moist and delicious. instead of frosting, the cake is covered in chunks of chocolate that has crisps in it.

today was a pretty good day. the kids and i headed to southorn playground to play for a bit before meeting josh for lunch. we went to pomme again so that livie could experience the world's best chocolate cupcake, and so that we could get some treats to share with her class tomorrow.

after nap, we ran into central to get some errands done. our first errand was to get some gift cards at starbucks to give to livie's teachers to say thank you. i wanted three $350 gift cards (that comes to around 45 USD). it was hectic in the starbucks (it was tea time), and quinn was being quinnado. the clerk either misheard me or misunderstood me, and i ended up with three gift cards that had only 50 HKD on them...that's around 6 USD...barely enough for one cup of coffee. so, tomorrow, josh and olivia will go back to starbucks to get REAL gift cards. i should have ignored the line of nine people behind me and my crazy son doing crazy things and just gotten the cards corrected when we were there, but honestly, i did not have the energy for it.

this evening was quiet...just a quick dinner of yummy leftovers and one more piece of furniture going to a new home.

i worked on purging the kitchen cabinets today, and spending so much time in the kitchen made me really miss the fishies. i didn't really realize how much time i spent looking at them and talking to them (i know) whenever i was in there doing chores/mundane stuff. it was lonely in there today...no one was begging me to feed them or splashing around.

HKG282: Ten Day Forecast

bug got this shot of us all hanging out in our empty living room

today marks ten days until we move. we can now look at the 10-day forecast for pville, and it means something. today was also the day waffle had to get his health screening and certificate for travel...this had to be done no more than ten days before he travels.

waffle survived his trip to the vet, i survived the kids and cat at the vet, and we all survived sending our beloved fishies to live with a new family. the are all set up in their new house, and their new mommy reports that they are very active and fun to watch. we showed their new family how to pet them, and we warned them that everyone in the tank is basically a dog with fins and will beg for food CONSTANTLY!

we have now gotten rid of 3/4 of our furniture and have plans for the remaining items to find new homes by monday. we have an appointment with our landlord to finalize paperwork, and then we're just about done...just have to pack up the suitcases and our beloved waffle kitty.

the last few days have been a bit crazy AND i have come down with ANOTHER cold, so tomorrow is going to be a very quiet day. we have a few small errands to run, but we will mostly keep it very low key.

HKG281: Fun Tuesday

on the way to the post office, we stopped to admire this christmas tree.

during quiet time today, livie decided to read to waffle. he loved it.

today was a pretty great day. we didn't do too much in the morning...went out for a run to the sheung wan post office and then to a favorite pet store to stock up on waffle's stinky fish treats. in the afternoon, we had a BALL. we met up with two of livie's school friends (brothers) at playtown candyland for a couple hours of crazy fun, and then we were invited back to their house for dinner and playtime. it was an awesome day! that is the absolute most fun we have had since the b family returned to the states.

HKG280: Mommy Goes All MacGyver

photographer's self portrait

q doing a forward roll with coach bill ...it's taken some doing, but q has finally mastered the forward roll without looking like he's breaking his own neck.

my cute little monkey hangin' from a bar

me and q headed off to some gymnastc adventure

today was a pretty low key day. the kids each had their final gymnastics class at the YWCA, and we had a park playdate in the evening. livie took on the role of photographer for q's gymnastics class, and she did a great job.

the big excitement of the day came at bath time. i let q play with one of waffle's toy balls in the tub. and then i removed the drain plug. and then i couldn't figure out why q was losing his doo-doo. um. yeah. the ball got sucked into the bath-water-is-draining vortex.

i got the kids dried and dressed and then left them to play while i tried to figure out how to get the ball out of the drain. i have had to use a pair of kitchen tongs to retrieve various and sundry items from the bathtub drain, but nothing as rolly as a ball. after some pondering, i decided to tape together two chopsticks, put a big sticky mass of tape on one end of them, and grab the ball. this worked except that the tape wasn't sticky enough and the ball kept falling back in each time i got it 3/4 of the way up. i then switched to veet leg wax strips. those suckers are STICKY. i fgured they'd do the trick. they did, except that the ball kept getting stuck at the very top/opening of the drain. so, i had to use the chopsticks, wax strip, and a fork to leverage/pull the ball out. the ball is now in the trash, and i plan to hide the rest of waffle's toy balls so that this doesn't happen again. i honestly do not know how it hasn't happened sooner considering that waffle loves nothing more than to throw his toys in the tub and bat/chase them around the slippery surface.

HKG279: Cupcake Sunday

mmmm! fundamiddle cupcake!

now that the temps have dropped, i am waffle kitty's space-heater-human. the minute i sit down, he curls up in my lap. i love it!

q's developed a habit of biting his lower lip and now has a nasty-looking rash to show for it. we are keeping a close eye on the rash...worried about it being impetigo, which can develop after strep/scarlet fever.

today was a nice, slow, low key day. we just putzed around the apartment for the morning. josh got a wild hair and baked up a box of fundamiddles cupcakes that my mom sent. they were delish...a little too delish.

late in the morning, josh took the kids on an errand and to have lunch while i did my own thing...ate lunch, played on the 'puter, straightened the house, and then went out to run some errands.

this evening has been more of the same...nice and low key!