We celebrated our anniversary with an Italian dinner out, so I changed the photo at the top of the blog. Decided to stick around a little bit before we travel for the summer, so we could see friends; some who are staying and some who will travel themselves. We've had both kids' friends over to hang out at our place, some sleepovers, a movie, a little shopping, eating out, swimming and soccer. Managed to get a some snapshots...

Amazingly, the boys didn't play Brawl, but tried DDR
and then Mario Kart. They took turns with the others...

Went to dinner at a favorite noodle and dumpling place.

With Alex gone at a sleepover, Maggie and I had to stand to have sushi on a Saturday evening, but we found a seat at Honeymoon Dessert for mango sago, yum!

Finished the school year with a trip to the bowling alley and Butterfly Beach - too bad the Thunderstorm warning was hoisted otherwise the kids would have kept happily playing in the rain... Also some photos of in class ESLR certificates as well as parent helper awards.

Can you see the spider?

Paul with view of CB Country Club golf course

What you can see on a clear day: Nine Pin Group, Steep Island, Shek Mei Tau, Po Keng Teng, Waglan Island, CB Golf and CC, Tung Lung Chau, Po Toi O, Beaufort Island, Clearwater Bay, Tin Ha Shan

On a not so clear day, you can see faintly Nine Pin Group and Steep Island

Serious "fighting kite" flyers - I think they use a fine wire to fly their kites with the object of slicing opponents lines so they lose their kites...

Kites flying high

On most Fridays after school, Alex and friends have been gathering to play soccer at Ryan's house. Alex doesn't play much, but on this particular day he did and then invited some of them over after to hang out longer and have dinner. Here are some photos of the boys playing a soccer card game and playing on the jungle gym. I was trying to reprise an old picture from when Alex, Ryan and Hugh were in preschool... I scanned it since it was from a film camera, imagine that!




Timothy, Andrew, Sung Min


Hugh, Alex, Ryan






Kaito, Hugh, Sung Min, Alex



There has been beautiful spring weather lately, perfect for bike-riding. One day, we rode along the river to Shatin town center and had a nice pizza lunch in a little village surrounded by the shopping mall and apartment buildings.

I was trying to clean up my computer - tells you how this rainy afternoon was spent - and found this old photo I put on the original webpage I started when Maggie was young. Click here to have a look.


Been reflecting on how computer savvy kids are now when we didn't use computers until college - remember Unix? I hated going to the labs to use the school's computers so I finally took out a student loan and bought a Mac for over $2,000. (Before that I had an old Brother word processor/typewriter that used thermal transfer cartridges. It had a tiny litle screen that held a few lines of text that I could edit before printing.) I forgot exactly which Mac I got, SE, maybe. Paul had an older Mac that he had to keep swapping 3.5" disks to run or store anything on. We also had those noisy old dot matix printers that took all night to print long college papers.

It's not really a computer, but I'll include it in my computer history. We had a Magnavox Odyssey2 that my parents bought because of the keyboard (for educational games) when we wanted an Atari, instead. Here's a video someone put on You Tube of one of my favorite games - Pick Axe Pete!



I'll end this reminiscing with one more old photo of Alex on my Dad's old manual typewriter. Melodie and I got to type our papers on it when we didn't write them out by hand. Need finger strength to type!

During the kids spring break we decided to go check out the Venetian Macau. We stayed a couple of nights and enjoyed the Cirque du Soleil Zaia as part of our package.

The suite had a partially canopied bed for us and the kids had the sofa bed in the sunken living room.



We marveled at the fresco on the ceiling above the casino and mall.


We ate Fatburger, pho, fajitas, and ramen at the food court. Notice the blue sky - too bad the actual weather outside was rainy since there were lots of outdoor swimming pools and a nice looking mini-golf area we could have used.

We walked around browsing the shops along the canals, rode the gondola and had "That's Amore" sung to us. (Yes, Alex got the hat.)


Alex also got to try some interactive soccer games at the Manchester United Experience store.



We also left the kids at Qube play area for a couple of hours. They enjoyed the slides the most.

Maggie is 13 - a teenager! We celebrated by going to dinner at Dan Ryan's with Grandma and Grandpa as well as school friends.

The weather was beautiful during CNY break so we took advantage and went outside. We wanted to bike around Tai Mei Tuk, but couldn't find parking near where we wanted to rent bikes so we kept driving and decided to go on a hike instead. We drove to Nam Chung and went up from the end of the Wilson Trail to a pavilion with a view of China after walking by old villages and birds enjoying the muddy marshy area. After, we walked back down the way we came and drove back to have an alfresco lunch, lucky to find a spot right in front of the restaurant!

This village looked pretty empty...


Trying to be the letter H on the helicopter landing pad.


Which way to go?


The island in Starling Inlet behind Paul and Alex is a spoonbill habitat and you can see a bit of Sha Tau Kok, China behind that. There's a retired aircraft carrier that has been turned into a museum there. Look for the photos of the view from the pavilion in the slideshow below or check out the photos on their own in the album on Picasa click here





More photos here: Part of Wilson Trail Stage 10