Doing Great!

We are just plugging along. Sorry for no updates lately. Summer is our busiest times so I've been working like crazy and Cassie and Maleah have been playing like crazy. I'm always happy when they come and visit. Maleah is growing so fast. She is fearless. As you can see from the video she loves jumping off of tall things. I even got her to turn around and just fall back and I would catch her. All the things that other kids her age fear, she loves. She loves swimming by herself, riding the rides at Disneyland, playing hide-and-seek in the dark, and jumping over tall buildings in a single bound. We love her.

Hi everyone! It's a Boy!

In the Chinese language when you take the word for girl 女 and you add the character for boy 子, you get the character for good 好. It makes sense, right? When a family has a daughter and a son it is considered lucky. We are very lucky! We are excited to announce that we will be having a little baby boy in November. We made the announcement a while ago on our Facebook pages but quickly realized that not everyone is on Facebook, so we wanted to post here as well.

We are all so excited. Maleah is so cute. We have decided to go through the public hospitals, but in order to know the sex of the baby we had to go to a private doctor. Cassie and Maleah made the trek on their own since I had to work. Maleah knows that she has to be a helper to her mom so she is always so patient at the doctors office and listens well. When Cassie was getting the ultra sound, Maleah was up on the bed with Cassie and she got so excited when she could see the baby. "Baby! Oooh Mom! Baby!" She is doing pretty well with the whole concept of the baby being inside Mommy's tummy. Then she saw and recognized the hand (we don't have to worry about counting the fingers on this one) "Hand Mom, Hi Baby, Hand!" It is so cute! The first thing she told me when I got home was, "Baby hand Dad!" She is really going to be the best big sister. For example- The other day at church Maleah heard the baby behind us start crying. She got very concerned and started saying "Ooh Mom, Tissue. Baby cry!" We were sitting close to the back and it was a ways to the door with a lot people to walk through. It didn't stop Maleah, she hoped down, informed us she was going to get some tissue and then started walking towards the door. At that point where she knew that if she took another step she couldn't see us anymore she looked at us, looked at all the people sitting on the bench, and then I could see in her eyes that leap of faith where she took a deep breath and plunged into the unknown. I was so proud of my brave little daughter. When Cassie went after her she found Maleah distracted by the water dispenser. She was getting paper cups and attempting to fill them up. I wonder what her plan was to get the tissue for the crying baby, but I'm sure she would have found the solution. We love that girl!

We also love our little boy who is growing so fast in that tummy. We will be pulling out the ball gloves, basketballs and soccer cleats. We are having a boy and we are so blessed!

Playing Catch-up

So we are playing catch-up on the blog. We have been doing a lot of fun things and going a hundred miles an hour all at the same time. I spend a lot of time at work building up the business, so the time we do spend together is important to us. Dinner is one of those times. One night we had a picnic on the living room floor. Maleah loved it! The next night really got into it and cooked crab. Cassie picked some winners from the fishy guys selling seafood from their boats on the pier. Then Dad got to come home and cook the little guys. (Maleah started to get attached to the little fellas but she was okay with us cooking them and really loved the meat.) The picture above shows Maleah and I getting an up-close look at the crab. You can't see the crab very well but you can definitely see my leopard spotted slippers that I wear all around the house.

During the Tin Hau Festival they built this massive building completely out of bamboo, ties, and tin for the roof. It was so big. It took them about a week and a half to build it so they could perform Chinese opera for 4 days and then they took it back down. It probably held over 1000 people. It was such an amazing structure.

Yesterday Cassie and Maleah decided to have a fun day together at Disneyland. They went on so many rides, by time I got home from work Maleah was down for the count and Cassie was fighting to stay awake to visit. Maleah got to meet Tigger, one of her favorite Winnie the Pooh characters. Both Cassie and Maleah loved the Lion King show! Cassie loved it so much she became emotional watching the inspirational story of Simba. (It also could just be the pregnancy hormones.) Stay tuned for our Dragon Boat Festival update!!

Hong Kong Disneyland!

Once upon a time...
Maleah wasn't exactly sure what Disneyland was but she could tell that it was something exciting. The second we boarded the Disney train, custom designed with Mickey shaped windows and handles to hold on to, she knew that it was a magical place. We are firm believers that dreams really do come true, and today we stepped into a world that our little princess knew nothing about and will now dream about for a long time.

We are getting pretty used to Maleah being a celebrity. It still bothers us when people touch her face, but the random pictures and people always trying to talk to her is just an everyday thing to us. Not that I'm saying we have the most beautiful girl in the world, (which would be a valid claim) but YOU bring your blue eyed curly haired child over here and see if you like people asking to take pictures with your kid like they were one of the Disney characters. It wouldn't stop the whole day... (We did like the Disney cast member helping us with this shot though:)

We hyped up the excitement as much as we could before we got there, but we may have over done it, because the second we got off the train Maleah started running around saying, "Oh Wow! Oh Wow!" to the pathway and the park benches leading up to the park. She was so excited she had to climb on this bench. I assured her that the best was yet to come!

I remember looking at a picture of me as a child trying to pull out the sword from the stone, and that has always been one of my favorite things about Disneyland. I felt it only appropriate to pass that on to my children by having Maleah give it a tug. Her first ride was Winne the Pooh. She wasn't sure what to think at first. She wasn't crying like the other children her age, but she was very serious trying to take everything in. After her second ride she was set. Every ride after that was a blast and she loved it! The 3D movie did cause her to jump a bit but she handled everything like a champ.

Seeing so much joy on your child's face really makes being a dad the best job in the whole world. We had a great time celebrating our birthdays a week early with our beautiful little girl. We even treated ourselves to a nice restaurant in the park where they served us things we wouldn't usually get, like roast duck, chilled jellyfish, and Chinese flat mushrooms. The food was great, the atmosphere perfect with the parade going by and the company was one of a kind. We played up until the very end. Luckily for us Maleah fell asleep an hour before the fireworks which gave us the opportunity to find the perfect spot and just rest while we waited for the grand finale of our day.

...and they lived happily ever after, The End.

Sunny Days

Finding Starfish on the beach!

This is another great lesson we learned at Noah's Ark...How to write on the walls!

Staying cool in the mist!

Maleah was so excited to see her best friend Graham! All morning she was yelling "Gaam! Gaam!"

It was Labor Day yesterday here in Hong Kong. Putting in 10-12 hours a day opening up our new Center the girls and I were due for some fun time. We were up (thanks to Maleah) by 6 Saturday morning. We had a bowl of cold cereal, (which is really a treat for us since both milk and cereal is expensive.) cleaned up a bit, and went up on the roof because it was so beautiful and Skyped grandma and grandpa. We were ready for the day by 9:30! It was awesome! The Jazz were playing game 6 Saturday morning for us so we had to watch. Now when I say watch, we actually don't see the game. I pull up the ESPN Gamecast which instantly writes out who shot the ball, who fouled, and so on. Then I find a radio station that broadcast the game online. (this week it was small town Salina Utah) Cassie will even cuddle up and watch the little blue or green ball bounce around the animated basketball court. It was the perfect start to the perfect day. (I guess almost perfect...I really wanted the Thunder to beat the Lakers and force a game 7) We then went with or great friends the Carlsons to Noah's Ark. Cassie is sure it isn't the real one! Inside they tried to brainwash us about Global Warming and things, but overall it was a great experience. The kids had fun and that's the important part. We ended the day at pretty good Japanese restaurant. The sushi and fried shrimp were great.
Sunday was another beautiful day. Church was great and we found starfish at the beach! Now we are going to have breakfast for dinner! I love it! What a great weekend!