We had a get together on Friday night enjoying a pot-luck dinner and games galore!

Here's the DDR video from the time San San had a sleepover...

Hamster videos

The first one is the mom and some of the babies and the second has the dad in the corner of his own cage, mom gnawing on the bars (trying to escape maybe?) and one of the more adventurous babies.

A slew of posts! That should fill everyone in on what's going on with us. Christmas, New Year's Eve and Chinese New Year were spent with friends and family with several get togethers and hot pot meals at our place and others. The kids in the photos have known each other since toddler playgroup days. The top photos from Alex's group and the bottom from Maggie's group - those girls will be 12 this year! We walked along the waterfront promenade from Deepwater Bay to Repulse Bay and back.

Melodie came to visit for two months and spent Christmas with us in Japan. Although lots of photos were taken, including many of each other, there were few of us together. Here's a goofy one at Ocean Park and another at Ocean Terminal Christmas display.

In January, Alex had to have his front bottom teeth removed since the adult ones were growing in behind the baby teeth. You can see in the photos - a double row, empty spots after extraction and a nice smile two months later. Now we're waiting for the top front to fall out.

Family Bike Ride to Tai Po

It was lovely weather a couple weekends ago so the family rented bikes and rode to Tai Po and back. We had a quick lunch and stopped at the park for a popsicle before heading back the other way to have an afternoon snack when we were done with our jaunt. It has been awhile since we did this ride and Alex managed to keep up with all of us although his bike (and tires) were smaller so he had to work harder.

Hamsters!

I finally decided to let the kids, er, I mean Maggie, get a pet so when Alex's friend's hamsters had babies, we adopted a couple. They were supposedly both females, but lo and behold, after not following my vet friend's advice of keeping them separated since they'll fight... They went and procreated! Seven babies - argh! We've consequently purchased another cage for the dad and when the mom weans the babies we should separate her from them. The timeline - Jan 20, adopt hamsters that are about 3 weeks old; Mar 4, babies, sheesh! We really need to separate them since it's so hard to tell the males from females, but hopefully we can find good homes for them so we don't have to buy more cages. Photos below: Mom and Dad nibbling carrots, newborns and 2 week old babies in the last photo.

Sorry for the lack of posts... Recently my microwave oven snapped, crackled and popped for the last time... (it was older than Alex , I believe).

I went looking around for a new machine and was tempted by one of these new-fangled steam/grill/convection/microwave things but I just didn't want to spend so much when all I really wanted was a convection microwave that would be my second cookie baking machine when my glorified toaster oven of a convection oven wasn't enough. I can only bake a 1/2 dozen standard size or a dozen 1.5 inch (barely bigger than bite-size) cookies at a time. A batch of cookies would take the better part of the afternoon.

I went to Fortress, Broadway and Tai Lin and finally, Best Denki and found prices ranged all the way up to HK$4880 - more than $600 US. I found an older model Whirlpool for less than HK$2000 and it's big enough to bake a tray of cookies, although the tray that came with the machine is round... It can also grill (broil) and the usual microwave functions: defrost, reheat, etc.

I made time to bake cookies and then some! The cookies I baked in both ovens and finished the cookie dough in record time! Then, I was craving puff pastry so made an apple tart and sausage rolls for snack time.









Alex's friend Jeremy has been staying at our place the past couple of nights due to an unexpected school suspension due to an influenza outbreak here. After SARS and with bird flu looming, the gov't didn't want to take any chances. So Primary schools and Kindergartens have been suspended until the end of the month, but not Secondary schools, so Maggie still has classes. Alex does have work to do though (actually, quite a bit) so hopefully the school year won't be extended. He's missing a total of 6 days so we have work in every subject to do. (Notice the papers on the coffee table in the photo of the boys playing Wii.) We're hoping to be back in the U.S. in mid-June.