It was the first time I was exposed to death of someone close to me. I am truly grateful. Because I KNOW, grandpa left peacefully and is resting in God’s arms. As my family and relatives gathered around the casket and said their last words, it felt a bit strange to me because I knew it was not him in front of us. He was watching us from heaven. Nevertheless, I felt the unity of love amongst each one of us in that tiny room. I’m sure “I love  you” were the words that we all wanted to say. I felt a strong connection between grandpa and I as we are now connected in Christ. I whispered a little “thank you” in my heart because I wanted to thank him for accepting Jesus’ salvation so I did not have to say the final goodbye to him. If not, I would have been heart broken.

Farewell grandpa, only for now.

I am feeling hungry the first time in over two weeks. It’s a sin! That we kept complaining and despising the food that made us full. That’s how we spent our days in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Eating. Eating. And eating. Today, first day after coming back, I eat like I normally do before our trip. But my stomach is not happy anymore after being served eight meals a day in the past couple weeks. And I finally figured out the problem – there is no food in my fridge. I guess it’s time to visit Costco. Right now.

We are so excited to come back to this place we call – home.  I used to walk fast like these Hong Kong folks; listening to stories of people sitting behind me on the bus; running and pushing people so I could get on the MTR subway train. That was sixteen years ago. All these things feel strange to me now.

Without knowing, we’ve been here for a week. Shopping til I drop, eating six meals a day, listening to childhood stories told by grandma, reunion with friends… are we in heaven or what?

We spent our first three days in Hong Kong fighting jet lag.  Ricky and I were so tired that our heads felt floaty as we were walking on the streets.  Our jet lag symptoms were like being sea sick. Really.

A scene on the bus at 11 am the day after we arrived …

This famous old-fashioned soft served frozen yogurt woke me up. So good…

The four of us are leaving for Hong Kong tonight to attend my grandpa’s funeral. It’s not hard to imagine how exhausting it is to travel with two little kiddos. Just the thought of keeping Christian on a 15-hour flight frightens me.

We will get to visit Taiwan towards the end of our journey. I may need to be away from my blog for a while since I will have very limited internet access. I will return all emails when I get back in the last week of January, or sooner if you’re lucky. Peace out!

One of the most enjoyable moments of parenthood is when you can get a good laugh from watching the silly acts of your kids. Yesterday, I made Annabelle and Christian share a bowl of raisins. They needed to take turns and get only one at a time. After about ten seconds, Christian started putting a big handful of them into his mouth. Then Annabelle said in her complaining voice, “He’s a fish.” Of course I was not smart enough to understand that.

But Ricky was. “You mean he’s sel-FISH?”

“Yeah, he’s SELFISH.”

Then I heard myself laughing so hard that, honestly, it took me over 22 tries to get the following shot of Mr. Fish’s pinky toe poking out. I need someone to teach me how to efficiently focus on a tiny but fast-moving object when I cannot stop my own crack-up.