Hong Kong Trip -- Surprise Boodle Fight

Ben and I agree that the most influential part of our visit was meeting the sisters in Mum and Dad's branch -- the Peninsula 2nd branch.  This is a very unique branch because it has 8 men and 97 sisters.  Most of the men are called to be in the ward so that there is priesthood leadership.  The sisters are all domestic workers who come to Hong Kong from other countries (mostly the Philippines and Indonesia) to earn more money than they could back home.  They use the money to support their families far away.  Many of them are married with husbands and children.  All of them leave for years at a time.  I met one sister who had been away from home for 20 years.  To say that Ben and I were in awe when we met these sisters is an understatement.

The day after we arrived in Hong Kong was a national holiday, so by law all of these sisters had the day off.  Whenever this happens they typically have ward activities since they are each other's family away from home.  They told us we would be hiking a waterfall and to only bring rice and drink.  It took us a while to get up to the beautiful mountains in the New Territories (all of our transportation on the trip was public transportation), and once we arrived we found the sisters hard at work grilling food.

A while before Ben and I left for Hong Kong, the sisters wanted to put on a "boodle fight" for Mum and Dad as a wedding anniversary gift.  A boodle fight is a traditional Filipino feast where banana leaves are spread over a table like a table cloth, and all the food is laid out artistically on top of it.  Then everyone sits down and eats with their hands.  Mum asked the sisters if they would wait to do the boodle fight until Ben and I were visiting.  They agreed.  But then right before we left we found out that President Russell M. Nelson would be visiting Hong Kong when we were and that he would be having a fireside during the time the boodle fight was scheduled.  Obviously we were excited about being able to listen to President Nelson, but we were disappointed about missing the boodle fight.

So when we showed up for the branch activity and they started putting banana leaves down on the table, and then rice, and then noodles and vegetables, and then meat, we started getting suspicious.  Sure enough, they had all come together to surprise us with a boodle fight!  It was awesome!

One of my favorite parts of the trip was meeting all the senior missionary couples that work with Mum and Dad in the Area office. The Chamberlains also attended the boodle fight and they are a riot.

Rice, noodles, purple sweet potatoes, corn, cucumbers, sausages, squid balls, okra, fish, pork, chicken wings, and hard boiled eggs.

They also made a chocolate cake for Mum and Dad.  I can't really emphasize enough how much these sisters love Mum and Dad and vice versa.  So many of them came up to me to tell me that Mum and Dad are like their second set of parents.

One of the serious learning curve I had to go through as the cliche American tourist was learning what different cultures consider to be dessert.  In Hong Kong, a lot of treats are made up out of black sesame seeds or red beans.  The Filipino sisters consider bread and butter to be dessert.  They also topped it with egg salad.

Before our hike, the sisters encouraged me to go use the bathroom with them.  "We brought toilet paper so you should come with us," they said. I came to learn that not all public restrooms provide toilet paper, although most do.  I also came to learn that a lot of public restrooms have squat toilets. I was happy to be able to say that  I had experienced it once, but unfortunately that wasn't my only experience having to use a squat toilet on the trip.  :)

I also came to realize on the trip that many women in Hong Kong opt not to use toilet seats, and instead use regular toilets as squat toilets.

You're welcome for that little tidbit of information. :)

Bridal Pool was crowded that day since it was a holiday.  We got to see people of all nationalities and religions.

I thought Americans were terrible with the numbers of selfies taken.  Americans can't even compare to Asians.  They seem to take all of their electronic devices everywhere and always have a selfie stick on hand.

The boodle fight was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.  I am so grateful the sisters surprised us with it!

Hong Kong Trip -- The First Night

Before Mum and Dad were even called to their mission, Ben and I had strongly hoped that we would be able to visit them whether they stayed stateside or went international.  When they received their call to Hong Kong you can imagine how excited we were.  My parents were kind enough to offer to watch the kids and told us to spend no less than 2 weeks in Hong Kong so that we could really experience it.  I didn't feel comfortable being away from the kids for so long and Ben couldn't take that much time off from work, so we settled on 11 days.

On October 19th, we took off.  I had researched and researched for months the best and cheapest way to fly to Hong Kong.  I discovered a particular flight that I really wanted to get on, but it was really expensive. But then one day the price dropped almost 50% and Ben and I immediately booked tickets.  It was the cheapest and fastest way to Hong Kong -- only 19 hours of travel.  Not bad for a 12 hour time difference.

We survived the trip and we were so excited to meet up with Mum and Dad in the airport.  We took a shuttle and MTR to Hom Hung and walked the rest of the way to their apartment.  We had a quick meal of Chinese foods I've been waiting for months to try.

The persimmons were really good.  They look just like an orange tomato on the outside but are a really sweet and delicious fruit.

Steamed buns are a really common food here.  The inside is usually stuffed with some kind of paste.  This was stuffed with lotus seed paste.  It tasted somewhat similar to peanut butter, but sweeter.

These are sapodillas.  They taste like a mixture of melon and cucumber, but a little crunchier.

After we ate, Ben and I needed to stretch our legs, because, hello, 19 hours of traveling. We walked all through the streets and into different stores.  I enjoyed looking at the different products in the stores.

Black fungus.  Fungus is sold everywhere.  It really made me curious and I did get to try some, but that's in a different blog post.  All I can say is, don't knock it 'til you try it.   :) 

Mum and Dad treated us to coconut buns which are a regular bun filled with a delicious coconut paste.

There are randomly placed shrines on the city sidewalks.  You know you're getting close to one when you smell the smoke from their burning incense.

The market is several levels tall.  They sell vegetables, meat (both live and dead), and clothing all within feet of each other.  The wet market is given its name because of the live animals.  The floor is wet from blood, fish juice, and other things you can imagine that come from live animals -- as well as the water they use to spray the floors clean. The smell was not my favorite but not too terrible. 

Live fish

 Crabs

Live frogs

Lobster

After we left the market we walked back towards Mum and Dad's apartment.  They live right on Victoria Harbor which is absolutely beautiful.

Ben and I had been up for about 30 hours at this point and we were fighting some pretty serious jet lag. Mum took this picture of us on the bus on the drive home.

One of Hong Kong's versions of Neapolitan ice cream is vanilla, purple sweet potato, and black sesame seed flavored.  The purple sweet potato was okay but he black sesame seed was really good.  It had an aftertaste similar to chocolate.

And then we finally went to bed.

Thad's Wrist

Ben and I have always made fun of ourselves because typically when you have kids it's the kids who  have to go to the ER or urgent care.  In our family, it's always been Ben and me who rack up all the medical bills.  In other words, Ben and I are the kids in the family.

Until yesterday.

To put this honestly, Skyler sort of "accidentally" (*shakes head*) pushed Thad off of the trampoline when Thad was trying to get off.  Fortunately, for the last couple of months Thad has started speaking much better, so after trying to console him through his, "He hurt me!  Oww, it hurts!" we knew something was wrong.  When he refused apple pie, I knew it must be bad (this kid is seriously obsessed with apples).  So I ran him over to the Urgent Care down the street.  

A few x-rays, a bag of goldfish from the nurses, and temporary cast and sling later, we were told that he had a fractured wrist and that he would have to see a orthopedist today.  He was asked if he wanted a blue or a red cast and Thad pointed to the red and said, "Blue!"  (I love him.  A lot).

The doctor told us that the younger you are the faster you heal, and Thad only needs his cast for 2-3 weeks.  Suh-weet.  And can I say what a champ he is?  All my other kids have hated any kind of doctor checkup at this age.  Thad handles them all without tears, even when they're twisting his fractured wrist around to pinpoint his pain.

He's been acting normally since they put it on.  When he was supposed to be eating lunch on the deck he decided to play peekaboo with Ella instead.  That seems pretty normal to me.  :)

So lady-like.

If anything, I think Thad loves his cast.  It's rock hard and he's already using it as a weapon.  Honestly, I say good for him -- except for when I'm trying to buckle him into his booster.  That's not so fun.

Now let's pray the rest of the week goes smoothly while Ben's out of town.  I woke up with pink eye this morning, too, and could easily see something happening to us each day, simply because Ben is out of town.  Isn't that how life works?

This post will make you itchy.

(Ella is our only picky eater.  Ben and I can do nothing to convince her to eat her food, but Lily often steps in and "shares" both of their plates.  They eat from the same spoon and everything.  If it gets Ella to eat, I don't really care.)

Back in May, I clearly remember Lily coming into my bathroom to get her hair blow dried.  We had just gone to the pool and came home to shower.  After I dried it I was curling it with my straightener when I saw it: a louse.

Basically, I freaked out.

At first I was in denial, but then when I saw 3 more, I knew she definitely had lice.  We treated her right away and then looked through everyone else's hair.  Ella was by far the worst.  She had over 20 lice in her hair and countless nits.  The only reason why I didn't see them before was because they blended in so easily with her blond hair.  We didn't find any lice in my hair, but we did find nits.  Everybody was treated.  But then the real work began.  We had to wash all the bedding, clothes, towels, and their favorite stuffed animals.  We vacuumed and and cleaned the brushes.  We spent hours going through everyone's hair each day.  I thought we had done well and that we wouldn't see another louse or nit again.

Wrong.

3 weeks later we started over.  I can say this -- since then we've never seen another louse, but we have seen plenty of nits and nits can't come from nothing.  We did everything all over again.

And then again 3 weeks later.

And then again 3 weeks later.

And again and again.... until last month.

Each time we rediscovered nits in someone hair (and when I say "someone" I mean one of us girls because we were the only 3 who went through this) we would step up our game a little more -- try a different lice treatment, put the helmets in the freezer, treat the mattresses and booster seats, etc.  I feel like every time I discovered it, I gave almost 2 whole days of my life to treating them.

Then a cover story in our local news was how NC was suffering from lice that couldn't be killed by lice shampoos like Rid or Nix.  So the next time (our hopefully final time) we discovered nits, I decided not to use chemicals but to go the mayo route.  Lily, Ella, and I had mayo hair in shower caps overnight and boy was that a terrible night.  I will never do that again.  Next time I'll do it during the day.  Just FYI, mayo melting down your face and drenching your pillow while you're trying to sleep is really gross.

We also started putting tea tree oil in our shampoo and conditioner, because I'm willing to try anything and the preventative lice shampoos didn't work.  I have kept a record of every time we discovered nits and it was every 3 weeks on the nose.  We are 5 weeks out and I think it's finally safe to say that we are done.

So here is my advice on lice should you ever need it.  I truly hope you don't.

• The first time you find lice/nits, go crazy and treat absolutely everything.  It will be well spent time to get rid of it your first round.  Lice shampoo and sprays are expensive and buying them every 3 weeks can add up -- especially when your 3 year-old is a toddler Rapunzel and needs her own bottle.  If you think you've been thorough enough, you haven't been thorough enough.
• Don't be that person who passes it around.  Don't take this lightly because this isn't a disease or sickness.  If we wouldn't have found lice in the first place, we would be a couple hundred bucks richer and I would have had many more sane days instead of days doing laundry from morning until night.

A year ago I was at a baby shower when we played "Would You Rather."  The question they asked me was whether I would rather deal with lice or stomach flu.  I answered lice.  Now I can say that I would gladly change my answer to stomach flu.  

And to make Ben's family laugh, I think this year on our Thanksgiving thankful chart, we will be writing about how grateful we are not to have lice.  :)

General Conference and Hurricane Joaquin

North Carolina has been killed by rain for the past week and a half.  I think we've probably only seen a couple of hours of real sunshine in that time.  While most locals have been going crazy, I have been loving it.  This is my favorite weather, and to have a full week and a half of it -- BLISS!  When the rain started, I remember excitedly putting the kids into bed, jumping into my jammies, cracking open my window, and getting into bed with a good book.

Since we started school in August, we have been studying all kinds of different weather.  I'm letting the kids choose what they want to be taught in science and weather was at the top of their list.  I was really glad because a lot of weather terrifies them and with our studies we have been able to better understand the importance of extreme weather and help calm their fears.  We had just finished up our unit on weather when they announced that Hurricane Joaquin could possibly be hitting us.  It was fate.  The kids and I have tracked the hurricane and we measured the rain we received.  Every few hours we would go out to check the bowl.  Then when the bowl was filled in 12 hours I put the mason jar out.  (Note that the bowl is no longer filled.  Let's just say Thad decided not to stay on the porch once when I was measuring the mason jar.)

On Thursday and Friday we weren't sure where the hurricane was headed, but as time passed it became clear that it would go back out towards the Atlantic so we wouldn't get a direct hit.  We are so grateful because we needed power to watch conference this weekend.  Since conference doesn't start here until noon, I woke up on Saturday morning and told Ben right away that I wanted to go to the farmers' market, buy a bunch of apples, and can more applesauce.  We had been debating all week about peeling apples during the first session of conference but we weren't sure if it was a good idea.  You can imagine that Farmers' Market + Hurricane = disaster, but I thought about it and realized that we wouldn't be fighting a big crowd and we could easily get our apples.  $35 and 2 bushels later, we went home and pulled the table in front of the TV, and peeled and chopped away while listening to conference.  And voila!  We ended up with 27 jars of applesauce and 1/2 a bushel of fresh galas left for eating.  It's amazing how much faster and easier this process has gone with Ben doing half the work than when I did it by myself a few years ago!

Conference has been so uplifting.  I have been particularly touched by Elder Nelson and Elder Holland's talks so far.  I can't wait to finish this session!