Hong Kong Disney

The focus of our trip to Hong Kong was for Ceiba to get to experience Disney in it's entirety and enjoy it completely. We knew with a sibling on the way, and the two of them being almost 4 years apart, by the time Baby is ready to enjoy Disney, Ceiba probably would be out of the "prime" time to experience it for herself. And... a trip is always an easy thing to persuade anyone in our family to do.

We stayed at the Disneyland Resort so that she could visit with the characters, see the fireworks from our balcony and be just a shuttle trip away from the park for naps or weather diversions. The plan was to get up in time for a nice breakfast, get to the park around opening time (10AM), enjoy a few hours, go back to the room for a nap, back to the park, have lunch/dinner, play and catch the castle lighting and the fireworks at night before heading back to the room to see Mickey for bedtime.

Ceiba decided NO WAY were we leaving each day once we arrived at the park, so we ditched the naps in the room and opted for naps on Papa's shoulder instead. Once asleep, Chris or I would plop in a chair holding Ceiba, while the other tooled around freely for a little while.

Everything worked out great! We caught the parade both days (GREAT!), fireworks and saw all the rides, except the ones she was to small for. Most rides (Buzz Lightyear's Blaster, Teacups, carousel) were visited MANY times throughout the 2 days at the park. 

 

We also attended as many of the Meet & Greet sessions with characters as we could. At first, the costumes were a little scary to Ceiba, but Papa had a talk with her, and she warmed right up and then loved them the rest of the visit. Belle was her favorite! All the princesses were so good at talking to her. Surprisingly, only about 20-30% of the visitors were children. Most of the lines to visit the characters were grown-ups. So between our being caucasian and American, and Ceiba's unusual features for the area, I think more tourists took pictures of us than we took of ourselves. 

 

  

We saw the Golden Mickeys show (twice) and the Lion King show, which Ceiba sang & danced along with and just LOVED. It was a nice rest for Chris's and my feet too. And no Disney trip would be complete without a new princess dress! It was a unanimous "Belle". A few poses around the resort, so when she's 16 we can remember when she was sweet, ha ha.

 Our last day was beautiful and sunny, so we strolled through the hedge maze and walked along the shoreline at the resort and pier. I think all of us could easily have been persuaded to stay another week. When we put Ceiba in bed at home in Dhaka that first night back, she said "I want to go back to the hotel". 

 

Us too honey, us too...

Hong Kong- Day 1& 2 (downtown)

We returned this week from 5 wonderful days in Hong Kong! All of us loved it! Our flight into HKG landed in the wee hours of the morning, so we paid the hotel for another day just to be able to crawl into a bed for a few hours before touring around. And of course, the only room available so early in the day was the penthouse, the most expensive room... go figure. But we thoroughly enjoyed our room, it was 2 floors with a spiral staircase to the bedroom. Our view was spectacular, so much so that we slept with the blinds open all night just to look out the windowed whole wall any time throughout the night when we woke up. For my pregnant, didn't-have-my-body-pillow-self, that was several views during the night.

(above: left- Chris & Ceiba at the zoo, right- daytime view from our room)

(below: Ceiba's reaction to Chris telling her to look like she's falling out the window)

Once we got up, we ventured down the hill to the Hong Kong Zoo and Botanical Gardens, where we tooled around for a nice, brisk afternoon. The temperatures were in the 60s, with mist on and off the first 2 days, while we were in the city on Hong Kong Island, near the Central MTR stop. We all slept well from having almost a week of cool, clean air to breath (a luxury we do NOT experience at home in Dhaka).

I'll break up Hong Kong Island from our days at Disney, as there are lots of photos to upload. I'm behind on postings, so should have several posts to put up this week, if the upload speed cooperates.

(above: l to r : Causeway Bay shopping and tram toy shop)

(below: left- Causeway Bay, right- night view from our room)

(above: Peak Tram, Ceiba enjoying cocoa at the top of the tram, Mama/Ceiba celebrating baby's year of the rabbit)

(below: Chris & Ceiba at top of Peak, Peak view of port, Mama & Ceiba looking around)

 (above: all at Victoria Peak top)

(below: Victoria Peak, our night view, Times Square mall)

Pics of Disney to come!!

Last Minute Get Away!!!

Nothing like winging it last minute before a 5 day weekend.

HINT:

 +  

=

We had said we'd stick around for the long weekend, but...

there is a certain little girl who will pee her pants when she sees her Disney friends.

And we just can't pass that up :)

Plus, I heard money grows on trees, and I've got a green thumb, so ?

Well, won't hold my breath on that idea.

She's only young once and will be jockeying for attention in a few months, 

so we're gonna try to give her a special trip to remember!

(It's Hong Kong!)

Bambina Update - 22ish Weeks

THAR SHE  BLOWS!!!!

Hee hee hee. Had our doctor's visit this week, and all is well. 

The belly and the number on the scale continue to grow, luckily the former more than the later :)

(Pic taken at 21 weeks)

Feeling good and nesting!

School Project

Hard to believe that in preK3 there would be a homework assignment. A few weeks ago, Ceiba's teacher sent home a large posterboard to be completed a week later with a project "All About Me". It happened to be the week Chris was out of town for work (need to post pics!), so Mama got to do some homework. We rounded up fun photos, made lists of likes, used lots of stickers of Ceiba's favorite princesses (the new love) and added all sorts of fun items to her board. She colored an Ariel page for the middle of the poster and colored on the board in a designated area with her favorite color red. We had a good time creating her first school project.

On our designated day and time, Chris and I went to school with Ceiba's project, so that she could present to her teachers and classmates her "All About Me" board. I always love to see all the little ones scramble and say "Ceiba, your mommy and daddy are here!". It was fun to go through the morning carpet-time, hellos and get started routine for the day. Kudos to the teacher for having each presenter use a shiny magic wand to help in their presentation; that sealed the deal for Ceiba.

Here are a few pics. She did a great job of talking about her board and herself with VERY little help from us. There was even a question and answer session at the end from the kids, which mostly turned into each little girl raising her hand, being called upon and saying "Ariel is my favorite too" or "I like Jasmine". Too cute!

The Last Melon

Ok, so if you aren't a Dreamworks/Disney/Pixar person, you may not get my humor. We are a family of movie line quoters, so these things pop in my head all the time.

Or alternatively titled, The Last HHE.

So we arrived in October, the first week. Most of our household effects were here in good time, with the exception of the items from our apartment in Washington D.C. (those not in the airfreight). We were overweight, mainly because all of our items went from IL to DC to FL to DC and then had to be hand sorted by me... in a dark warehouse... in July... while boxed or wrapped in paper. It was a bit of a crapshoot- lamp/but no shade, Christmas/but no favorite snowmen, yard tools/but no yard. You get the picture. So we went overweight. We paid the cashier at post within a week of arriving, but then began the tug of war between post and DC on whom would be responsible to get the final shipment moving.

It sat until almost December before it shipped out...........

 So that brings us to last week, when the final shipment arrived full of mostly food, toiletries, clothes and Ceiba's Christmas presents. Now we are happy and bursting at the seams.

I tend to be a bit of a planner...and anal retentive... and an over packer... and a pantry hoarder. (No input from family and friends :) thank you). So we have enough razor blades (bought 45 packs on Ebay in DC), Bath and Body (hit the semi-annual sale before to left), lady items (now only need about 1/2 the supply due to the bambina coming), and and and. But my OCD self feels cozy and warm now that we're surrounded by "stuff".

You never know what you might need.... Well, if we do - we've got it!

Our little sprout

Love that she enjoys gardening, like her mama :)
I can't water a plant without Ceiba grabbing her little watering can to help me. 

 Do we usually have water everywhere, muddy toes and water the ceramic elephant?....

yes, but that's part of the fun :)

Mein Brewmaster

Most people probably don't think of Bangladesh as a Muslim country, due to it's closeness to India, but it is. Yes, there are Hindi as well as other religions here, but Muslim accounts for 90% of the population's religion. And actually, Bangladesh is the 4th largest Muslim population in the world (so says Wikipedia).

With that being the case, it is illegal to buy alcohol here (other than the rubbing kind). We do have a commissary, where wine, beer & spirits may be purchased, but the selection is somewhat small and not always the most fresh.

So being as mein spouse is what you might call a bit of a beer connoisseur, we hauled his brewing goodies to Dhaka. He ordered a few new kits from a great brewing supplier in the US, Midwest Supplies, and today he was all things beer in the kitchen.

Our house has smelled like a brewery all afternoon! All brewed, stirred, cooled and tucked into its little closet to age for 4 weeks and then into the bottles to sit for another 3-4 weeks before the taste test can commence.

I can't tell you the first thing about brewing beer. Oh, but just ask Chris, and he'll get on his soapbox about what a difficult process it is here in Bangladesh. He can go into detail about the problems here distilling water, having to sanitize 3 times, gas pressure being uneven from city making a "hard boil" difficult, airbourne pollutants, lack of availability of proper equipment and supplies (note handmade Bangladesh pot), general contamination probability to the wort. It's complex people!

Guess hailing from the land of Anheuser-Busch and living in Wisconsin for a few years has not helped the addiction. He is a Bangladesh beer pioneer... and training our daughter to follow in his footsteps!