Pic 1 support crew in action

Pic 2 lion rock mountain

Pic 3 Needle hill

Pic 4 food

Pic 5 Me taking a picture op to catch a few zzz's

A little longer than 2 weeks

So I know that it has taken me a little longer than 2 weeks and I could give a hundred reasons why, but i won't...so sorry that I broke my promise, there were a few circumstances that limited me from updating our blog.  Anyways, I will try to catch up from where we left off...

The trailwalker.  One word: OUCH.  It took us 35.5 hours to finish but by they end all we wanted to do was finish.  It was the hardest event that i had ever done.  Only 3 of us finished, one had to drop out after 10 hours because of the heat and dehydration, it was a dead 30 degrees that day, and a Hong Kong 30 degrees is not the equivalent of a Canadian 30 degrees, you need to add 5-10 degrees to account for the humidity.  The no sleeping is what killed me, so eventually we did end up stopping 2 times for a 15 minute nap.  Let me tell you rocky ground and picnic benches were the most comfortable beds in the world!  What kept us alive, our amazing support team, including occasionally Kylie, Jocelyn, Harmony, Adam and Liz and ALWAYS David Henzie.  It was so great to see them along route offering us encouragement, food, massages (it was any wonder they were even willing to get close to us in spite of our stench), ice buckets for our feet, change of clothes and a surprise frappuccino visit.  Food never tasted so good and sleep never felt so good.  So after a long 35.5 hours we crossed the finish line, by that point nobody had a camera and nobody cared, Ryan and I said see ya later Gary and he said bye and we all went home for some sleep, the finish was very anti-climatic but nobody even cared anymore.  We joke that we still finished with 4 team members though as (for those of you who don't know) I was walking for 2.  Anyways one last plea for some donations as we have still not met our minimum donation amount which we need to do if any of us crazies ever want to do that torturous event again.

Our new place.  We love.  The location is beautiful and we are right by so many things we love to do and for probably the first time in Hong Kong, Hunter can run around freely and not get in everybody's way or get lost in a crowd.  It's very child and family oriented.

Last bit of excitement...MOM and DAD are here. I am very excited and we are having a good time so far.  Saturday we hung out around here and set up Christmas decorations, sunday we just went to church and then for lunch and looked around a mall for awhile and yesterday we did some errands and went for a bbq on the beach, it was a beautiful evening and we had almost the entire beach to ourselves.  Anyways, this post is slowing quickly as monkey face is awake and he is slowing progress considerably.  Okay keep in touch all!

The chart posted above is the elevation chart from the trailwalker, some were interested in knowing what the elevations were, we never get high high above sea level but we begin at sea level and there are A LOT of ups and downs.

Okay quick post just cuz i know it's been more than 2 weeks. We have now moved into our new place and i think it will be great...i just want to get a few things to organize a bit better. About 2 days before the move our computer shut down so i am sitting at a coffee shop hoping hunter can entertain himself for 5 minutes so i can give a quick update. We like our new neighbourhood. Things are pretty accessible...i.e. my fave coffee shop a 5 minute walk and it even has toys for the kids. It is very kid oriented in that way...maybe the only place in Hong Kong that is. So I thnk that will be nice...as it is more expat focused i am hoping to meet some more stay at home moms once things get settled.
Our Trailwalker is this Friday...hard to believe it came this fast! I feel disorganized for that cuz you need a bit of cooridnating on a 30 some hour hike and i feel like we haven't gotten around to organizing that yet. Hopefully it goes okay, no matter what it will be an experience. Donations are open until Dec. hint hint. Plus my parents are coming the end of Nov. so if anybody wishes to send a cheque to them they can bring it! Okay sorry I had to do it but we really need to raise money!
Ryan is busy busy at school too. He has report cards due Monday...with the weekend being a write off he has to get them done before. Then he is at grade 4-6 camp Mon-Wed. Then he has a Sports Day that needs to be planned and organized for Friday...whooh...pretty soon things will slow down.
My parents will be here Nov. 28 and I am getting very excited for that!!!
Hunter is 2...good days and bad days. He's cute cuz I found a Whinnie the Pooh costume on Halloween at Toys R Us for him...well once he saw it and put it on i couldn't say no. So he was all proud to be Whinnie on Halloween then when we moved the first thing i did with him was take him to the Halloween Party at our clubhouse so now every night he thinks there is a "party at his new house" and asks to go to a party. It's pretty cute. okay i will not push my luck with his good behaviour and sign out.
Take care all of you!

It's Sunday night and I just relaxing and getting ready for a busy week of school and basketball. My team has a game on Monday and one on Tuesday. I invited a local girls school over to our school for Tuesdays game. Apparently this school is "the" girls basketball school in Hong Kong. We are a very young team of mostly grade 10's and 11's and our best player, our best defender and two other potential starters won't be playing so it should be interesting...

We had a good weekend. Church was good this morning and then we went out for lunch at our favorite Mongolian restaurant for lunch.  This evening we started packing because we are moving in two weeks. 

Yesterday Jill and I took Hunter for a relatively short hike to a place where you can jump off cliffs into a really deep pool of water.  As I'm sure you can see in the pictures it is quite beautiful.  We were the only people there and we were lucky to find it. There happened to be a few people just leaving the spot when we went by and they gave us directions otherwise we never would have found it.

On the way home we were walking by a ditch and I happened to take a look into the ditch like I always do (checking for snakes). I thought I saw something poking up and when I went to look closer a HUGE snake took off trying to get away. Hunter and I (he was on my back) went chasing after it and Jill managed to get the camera out in time to get a picture.  If the ditch wasn't quite deep I would have been running for my life in the other direction but I felt pretty safe knowing it couldn't (at least I think it couldn't) get out of the ditch. I am terrified of snakes so whenever we're out in the country I'm always looking for them. We figure it must have been at least 7 feet long and judging by the color, size and dot on the back of the head I think it was some type of cobra. If there are any snake experts out there who can identify it in the picture let me know...

So here's a quick update on what we've done the past week.  Hmmm...not that thrilling really.  On Saturday night Ryan and I went with our team to do a hike.  It was tough we started at about 4p.m. and ended up in a taxi at 1:30 a.m.  I was thankful to get out for a hike at last though as Gary's wife Marg offered to watch Hunter.  I think Hunter had fun there.  

We didn't do a Thanksgiving dinner as I was too tired the next day to do something like that and the thought of cooking a Turkey just was not appetizing to me.  On Monday though I cooked a pumpkin crisp which was good though, and it was enough, Thanksgiving just isn't the same with only 3 people present.  

Wednesday I met my friend Melissa in Sai Kung and Hunter and her daughter Isabella played together at the playground.  

We finally had some visitors other than our family come see us.  Ryan's friend from high school Lyndsey and her husband Jimmy (whose family lives in Hong Kong) came over for dinner Thursday night.

Tonight Ryan and I went to play basketball against the under 16 boys basketball team...which was interesting...it's still good to get on the court and run.  Tomorrow we are venturing out on a hike again (probably only 4 hours is our estimate).  Only a few more to go so I am really hoping to get to attend this one too, childcare is still undetermined however. Other than that we don't really have plans this weekend; maybe we'll get some packing done!!  

I don't know if we have any recent pics downloaded to our computer yet so I am just posting a few random ones that don't have anything to do with this entry.  Just a little "rocking out" as Hunter calls it...he loves his "tee-car"

DISNEYLAND!!  That was the big adventure of our week, we spent Sunday night at Disneyland.  It was fun for all, I don't know who has more fun there Hunter or us.  Ryan and I love the shows and Hunter loves the characters.  I can't describe the look on his face when he gets to play with Mickey and Pooh and all the others it's so fun to watch.  The characters are really good at their jobs too because they really put in the extra effort to pay a lot of attention to the little ones. 

Other stuff we did this past week was went to the most amazing restaurant for the greatest egyptian food ever.  We drove over to the island so for those of you who know Hong Kong can imagine what that was like; we actually did very well though, I drove and Ryan navigated and we made it relatively easily.  But we paid almost as much for tunnel fees and parking as we did on the meal; oh well that was our holiday.  

Saturday we went to Kylie and Jocelyn's to watch the Rider game and went for lunch at friends' house then went to try to find some movies in Mong Kok. 

And that was a week.  We did far less work and far more relaxing than we intended but that's the way holidays go.  

Here's my mom story for the week:  The other night Hunter was being just a hyper goofball and I asked him, "Where did you come from?!" and he got the super intense look in his eyes that he does sometimes which forces him to get right in your face, nose to nose, look you straight in the eyes and he answers me, "Tanana (translation, Canada)"  I laughed pretty hard because he is getting pretty clever these days.  Anyways that's all for now.  Hope you are all taking care of yourselves!

Picture #1- Hunter running around the hotel, striking a pose and calling out "DIZZYLAN!" (disneyland)

      #2-Goofy hanging out in the lobby of the hotel

      #3-cute little robes and slippers they have in the hotel room

      #4-Hunter in his High School Musical debut, heading straight for girl on the stage.

      #5- Flirting with Minnie.

 

Last nights hike was one filled with lots of interesting creatures...Even the smallest animals creep you out when you've been hiking for seven hours in the dark. Today we're planning on relaxing and going over to an Egyptian cafe on Hong Kong Island for lunch. Not much else going...

Hunter and I are having a night at home together as Jill is out hiking tonight.  Since we can't leave Hunter at home by himself she usually stays at home while I go hiking with our trailwalker team and then she goes hiking with a different team on a different day.  I drove her up Golden Hill road to the top of a mountain so she could catch up with Mike and Mark tonight for their hike.  I think they are planning on going for about 30 km so they'll be back sometime after midnight. The road up the mountain was literally covered with herds of monkeys! I don't know if a group of monkeys is a herd but thats the only way I can describe it.  There must have been thousands of monkeys running around on the road. Some of them wouldn't even move for the car so I had to carefully maneuver my way through. Hunter enjoyed seeing all the monkeys!

Last Saturday night I went for a good hike with David and Adam. I don't know how far we went but it took us about 6.5 hours. We got a little bit lost when we decided to take an unknown road down the mountain instead of sticking to our original plan. We ended up in some village that only had one road going to it and unfortunately the only road in was the one we had walked down for 20 minutes. Luckily we found a path that did take us down the mountain and back to civilization and we had pizza hut waiting for us back at our place. It's really quiet ad beautiful up on the mountains at night.

We don't have school for the next seven days so we 're going to stay at Disneyland on Sunday night. Hunter is very excited about staying there overnight with "Jeff Wiggle." I don't know why but he's convinced Jeff from with wiggles will be staying with us at Disneyland too.

I've added some hiking pictures and a picture of the monkeys I took with my phone.