Kiwis, Hong Kongers, & Us

Here are our friends we met in Hong Kong last weekend.

Kiwis (Brenda, Amber, Richard & Jonathan)

Hong Kongers (Peter & Anita)

Us

We really enjoyed our time in Hong Kong. Peter and Anita, upon hearing we would have one less day than we thought in Hong Kong, took us on a single day's grand tour of Hong Kong like no other. We ate wonderful home town food, with chopsticks of course, and took a ferry from Kowloon, the part of Hong Kong where we were staying, to Hong Kong Island in order to visit the Peak and truly see the town. We made it back to the Kowloon side just in time for the nightly 8 pm laser show which involves at least a dozen buildings in a coordinated masterpiece set to music on our side.

On Sunday, we met up with my friends the Leotas, who just happened to be visiting parents/grandparents in Hong Kong for the first time in four years. They are from New Zealand in case the Kiwi reference got past you. We attended the Hong Kong Church of Christ, which was a very lively and uplifting experience. Then we went out for lunch and did a little shopping but no buying.

So this week, I arrived back in the US late Monday night. Isa, the girls, and Zoz (Marie-Josee, Isa's mother) finally arrived last night (Friday night). My week spent waiting was rather eventful. Tuesday was the inauguration. What a party. Wednesday, I found out that my manager, and my manager's manager's manager were getting laid off in the first wave of Bank Of America's promised 30,000 over the next three years. My manager's manager used to be my manager and is again now. Thursday, news broke that the CEO of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, had been a bad boy. BOA just acquired/saved Merrill in Q4 of 2008. Mr. Thain spent $1.2 million to redecorate his office last year, and he authorized and paid $4 billion in bonuses in December, during a quarter in which Merrill lost $15 billion, so that BOA would not be able to put a stop to it which they would have had the bonuses been scheduled for January which is the customary timing for such disbursements. So Mr. Thain also got laid off.

Friday, the weary travelers arrived, altogether, but their bags, thanks to some changes in the flights they took as opposed to the flights they were scheduled to take, came at all different times. One came on the flight before theirs. Two came on the flight after theirs (which was their originally scheduled flight). The last came on the flight after theirs but then got loaded back onto the next flight to Chicago. So we arranged first for it to be delivered when it arrived, at midnight or so, and then reconsidered and requested that it be delivered this morning after 8. Instead, we got a call at 2:30 am and it was delivered then. This was among Julia waking up to vomit earlier than that, and then to eat cereal later than that. Eleven hours of jetlag is no picnic. I managed to stay in bed until 10 am, though, somehow, and woke up to home made waffles, so I can't complain. Tonight, Julia and Josee fell asleep before dinner was ready at 7 pm or so.

We finally got our pictures on the PC after these many months, so we'll try to post some more of the best of those in the near future.

Alive and Thriving

David Allen Harrison is not the kind of name you want to try to track down on the internet. When his AOL address, MTMDavid@aol.com (MTM = Marvin The Martian), went defunct about 9 years ago, I lost touch with him, a former college roommate. At the time I last saw him, in 1998, he was about to get married.

I went to great lengths to try to connect with him again, even signing up at Classmates.com for his high school class with the name Marvin Martian. No luck.

Well, this spring, after I had given up, another former college roommate of both Dave's and mine at different times managed to track Dave down via Linked In, the social network for career professionals. So we found out that he was living in Beaverton, OR. Isabelle and the kids and I were already planning to visit my sister Courtney in Cottage Grove, so we worked in a visit with Dave and his family. Yesterday he and his wife Cindy celebrated their tenth anniversary, and their five-year-old twins, Leah and Samantha, start kindergarten today.

We just got back from the trip yesterday. Here are some photos.

Chloe and Julia on the beach

Us at Crater Lake

Aunt Courtney and Her Nieces

Girls And More Girls

You may have seen one of my earliest posts about how everyone we know is having girls right now. It almost turned out to be all girls again this round, with our friend Patty giving birth to their second girl, Junia, a couple of weeks ago. But, Bret came through for the guys and little David arrived back before Chloe. With his two big sisters and all these girls surrounding him, he'll need an extra dose of Dad's roughing and tumbling to stand up to it all. Praise God for these little miracles, who somehow make all our pain and struggles disappear.

Today, Grandma B. arrived from Nebraska, and this evening, my old roommate Tom and his parents will join us for dinner. Tom is a good friend, and if you're interested, you may hear him on the radio every Sunday afternoon from 2:30 to 3:00 on 770 AM in St. Louis. I listened long enough last week to hear his co-DJ make an appeal to find Tom a date for some upcoming event, and I let Tom know that we were listening. So this week, Tom dropped our names on the air by way of sending us a greeting! Very amusing and rather exciting.

Merry Christmas!

Our wish to all our friends and family is for you to have a blessed celebration of our Savior's birth, and high hopes for a happy new year.

Thankfulness

How can we learn to really appreciate what we have? How easy it is to fall into the trap that the Pharisee did in the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.

Isabelle's and Medge's brothers and Medge's husband now find themselves unemployed indefinitely from their profession as pig farmers due to the arrival in Mauritius of African Swine Fever. I still have my job.

Some friends of ours who used to go to church with us have a precious son who suffers from a multitude of food allergies which prevent even the occasional experience of normalcy that most of us enjoy. Julia caught a bug and threw up before bedtime Monday night, and although Isabelle had to get up with her once an hour that night, by the time I got back home Tuesday she was her adorable old self.

My cousins' cousins, two out of the three boys in their family, find themselves forever changed due to a car accident that left the younger one paralyzed from the waist down, and the middle one learning to swallow, talk and eat again after having brain surgery to remove a tumor. Their ages added together amount to my age, and I can't even imagine their plight.

A long-time friend of mine, at this time last year, suffered a miscarriage in the ninth month of her pregnancy. We await Chloe, with great anticipation, having been told by our doctor that Isabelle's pregnancy so far, is "perfect."

Another long-time friend of mine nearly died due to a heart defect combined with a virus that attacked his heart. I remain in sloppy shape, relying on walking to the bus and back after ten years of relying mainly on walking my dog a mile each night before bedtime.

Earlier this year, we bid a final farewell to a husband and father in our congregation who succumbed to colon cancer, after two years of fighting and living like he was dying. His wife and four children somehow continue to endure. Her neighbor and sister in Christ and three young children lost their husband and father to a psychotic meltdown almost five years ago. She ministers to the new widow and her new husband ministers to those who are addicted to anything or anyone besides Jesus.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot. I am thanking when I should be confessing. Please forgive me.

Posting: How Often and How Much

OK, so here I go for another posting. I am sure that one per day will not be our long term pace. As I watch my friends' blogs, I know the usual pace is about 1-5 per week. Here are some friends' blogs:

• Alisa & Frederic
• Lee & Stephanie
• Joe & Laura

These are also at the bottom of our church web site, which will soon be going through a renaissance as our current provider is closing up shop.

We also have some photos out on flickr but I haven't figured out how to manage all of those yet. To those of you who saw our photos when they were on Yahoo, sorry! Flickr doesn't just let you make all your photos public.

We welcome your musings! Please feel free to post a reply.