Halloween!

Ok, I'm doing something a little different this time with the ole' blog. I actually have 2 other blogs coming- one about our first visitors here, Doug and Alyscia Popeney, and another on Sophie's class trip to the zoo.
However, I want to get our Halloween pics out there now so people can experience it in realtime. :)

So, I was actually surprised to learn how many countries celebrate Halloween and the differing ways they celebrate it. For instance, the UK will dress up on the day and trick-or-treat, but people don't decorate their houses or make a thing of it. China doesn't celebrate it outside of where the expats live.
I, on the other hand, love Halloween. :) I pay no mind at all to the dark side of this holiday and instead choose to see it as a fun, family-oriented time with pumpkins and dressing up and candy. :)
I was even able to find a mini pumpkin patch and scraped together a few costumes for us- well, most of us. They simply don't make costumes Ben's size here. :)

We found our pumpkins at an international school fair. The Shanghai American School held a fair on the Saturday, Oct. 20th and we had heard rumors that there would be a small pumpkin patch. So, it gave us a fun day of kiddie games and blow-up jumpy things and, pumpkins!

Here's Soph in the pumpkin patch. I think these are actually pie pumpkins as they were very small, very hard, weird seeds (couldn't roast them), and they rotted in about 5 days. :) That could just be the humidity and heat here, though.

So, the day after we got our pumpkins we invited a bunch of friends over for an All-American pumpkin carving party. I think we blew the minds of our Aussie and English friends! A first-time experience for many of them. :)

Here is Sophia and Mia planning out what their pumpkins will look like. The thing on Soph's cheek is a butterfly temporary tattoo that she had received at the school fair the day before. I thought I'd put that in here bc I know all the grandmas would be wondering...

Anywho, here's what Sophie wanted hers to look like-

While Ben was cleaning out pumpkins, I got some Riley Lawler snuggle time (our newest addition to the group!)

Everyone working feverishly on their children's pumpkins. This is what happens when you have 4 families with 10 kids under age 9 and no safety pumpkin-carving knife thingys. :)

Our friend, Laura, took this great pic of our beauty. Oh, she is just too cute!! (That would be what Grandma Donna is saying as she looks at this picture- guarantee it!!)

Here's the lovely Hattie Stirling and her beautiful kitty pumpkin-

Ta da!! Sophie's pumpkin is done! Well done, daddy, looks just like the picture she drew. :)

Ollie Stirling and Mia Lawler with their masterpieces-

Isaac Lawler with his pumpkin, and a great face! He is our resident cheeky monkey. :)

The kids with their pumpkins on our balcony. Great fun!! (Just wanted to point out that we're all pretty much in shorts and t-shirts. Just sayin'... :)

The VPs. Coop was NOT impressed. :)

After pizza and pop the kids hunkered down to watch the classic Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin, a Halloween tradition in our family. Some of our friends from other countries had seen it, some had never even heard of it. :) I should have done the donut-eatting contest... shoot!

The pumpkins all lit up and pretty (and small!)

Earlier in the day, while Coop was napping, Sophie decided she wanted to make daddy a Halloween card for some reason. Gotta love spelling phonetically. :)

And the inside!! On the left is a house where 3 of us are asleep in our beds and Cooper is outside playing. Hmm... hope this isn't a premonition... :)

 

 

Ok, on to the big night. The Shanghai Racquet Club held a big extravaganza on Sunday the 28th to celebrate Halloween for all foreign families. Don't get excited- it wasn't free- it was actually super expensive, but worth it for the one-time experience. :)

 

They started the afternoon off with games and crafts for all the kids. They made mummy-pops, glued construction paper onto mandarin oranges to make them pumpkins, made bat bracelets and more.

 

Here's a shot of the family at the beginning of the night. I'm a fairy godmother, Soph's a witch, Coop's a giraffe (he would NOT wear the head piece- can't blame him :), and Ben, well, Ben has  pumpkin hat. Soph decided all the dads should have pumpkin hats bc none of them had costumes. :)

Sophie with Aubrey- our little witches. :)

We were actually able to do a few crafts with Cooper. He seemed fairly interested in most of it and really not overwhelmed at all. Here Ben is helping him make a pumpkin necklace out of felt and beads. Patrick is next to him helping his son, Quinny. Aubrey's next to them and Soph next to her.

Ben and Coop checking out the scene-

Here Sophie is making a cat out of a sucker with her friend, Carys.

 

 Before the glue was even dry she asked if she could eat it. :)

Soph's day was made perfect by the discovery of a cotton candy machine. :)

A view of the craft/game room-

Soph with the orange she transformed into a pumpkin :)

The nice thing about the pumpkin hats was that it made the guys really easy to find! Here's Ben Lawler and Matt Stirling being good sports. :)

Following in the footsteps of his big sister, Coop wanted to eat his sucker before I had even helped him fully mummify it. :)

Ben helping Soph make her bat bracelet-

Ta da! She loved it!

Here's Carys with one of her cutie pie little brothers, Lucas. Boy, the Scottish make cute kids! :)

The Winkler family- Aubrey was a witch, Colin a firefighter, and Quentin a pirate. They all have whistles in their mouth. Yes, they seriously gave every kid a whistle. Seriously. Every. Kid.

Sophie and Isaac working hard on their ghosts-

Soph and her bud, Hattie-

Momma and Sophia-

Me and Ben-

I wish this picture was a bit closer so you can see all the great costumes! Pirates and witches and SpiderMan and BatMan and more. Great fun!

Hats off to the boys ;) Patrick, Matt, Ben, Ben and Theo

Sally has this amazing effect on babies...

A bit of dinner before trick-or-treating. Pizza, fruit and soda. They tried to give the kids regular Coke and I almost threw the pitcher back at the woman. Seriously...

And we're off! There were groups of 10 kids created and 1 parent could go with each child, if desired. Each group was led by a person from the racquet club. There needed to be quite a bit of organization as there are 24 buildings with no less than 5 floors in each and not everyone was handing out candy. People had signed up in advance to hand out candy and each group was assigned to certain buildings and apartments. Quite the process! In the end I bet we only went to about 10-15 apartments but it took us 45 minutes!

Trick-or-treating, Shanghai style!

Another view- the lady in the red was our guide. She actually had the nerve to ask each place for candy for herself as well!

The end of the night, back home, candy assessed (only took about 3 minutes as there isn't much!), a quick family pic and it's off for baths and bed.

Even though we dearly missed being with our friends and family back home, I think we managed to put together a pretty fun holiday. :)

 

Ok, Hong Kong- Part 3. Last one, I swear!

Ok, so the almost 700 pictures became too much for just 2 blogs, so here we are, number 3, the last one on Hong Kong, I swear. We saw a lot of stuff, ok?? :)

Alright, we left off at the end of day 4 with the amazing firework display.
Day 5 was left a bit open for exploring the city and seeing some things we hadn't yet. So, we decided to hop on a tour bus and have a look around.

Thankfully, it was a gorgeous day and we were able to get on the open top of the tour bus. Unfortunately, Soph and Coop were not too thrilled with riding a bus around. While Ben and I were trying to listen to the tour, they were whining and being restless. At least we tried!

Here's Cooper not feeling it... :)

Some of the amazing views of downtown Hong Kong-

Our view from the top of the bus-

A few stops in, we got off to go check out a really old church and then ended up missing the bus bc we couldn't find a bathroom!! So, we had some ice cream and hung out for 30 minutes while awaiting the next bus. It wasn't all easy and sunshiny like I'm describing it, but we got through it.

Down many alleys you could see makeshift shops set up selling anything from food to clothes.

Soph and Momma soaking up some rays-

The last time I saw Hollywood, it was in the sunny streets of LA and the place was full of expensive everything. It's a bit different in Hong Kong, however... :)

This is Hollywood Road in Hong Kong. :)

After walking around a while, exploring the streets and buying some things (Christmas ornaments from a streetside vendor and a hair decoration that Soph uses as a magic wand), we were hungry and needed a rest. Everything looked very Chinesey and we knew the kids were going to melt soon. We came across this coffee shop we weren't familiar with, but thought we'd try it out. Hen Hao (very good)!! Paninis and smoothies and yogurts. Just what we needed. Thank you, Lord!

From there we hopped back on the bus and made our way home. A short swim later and we were back up in the room having some down time. I happened to look out the hotel window and looked down to see oe of the tour buses we had been on that day so I thought I'd get an arial view of it.

I can't remember what we did for dinner that night but afterwards we headed out to the pier for our nighttime ferry cruise. Our friends, the Lawlers, had suggested we try out the Aqua Luna to show us the Hong Kong skyline. It's an old boat that was refurbished- it looks like a pirate ship so Sophie was so excited to go on it!

Oh man, this picture isn't as good as I'd hoped. This was a picture of the boat we went on. They had the sails lit up with red lights to make it look even cooler. :)

This was on the top of the ship. They had these big couch-type areas where we could hang out and look at the skyline. They were playing this very relaxing music and it was warm outside. Just perfect

Cooper was not interested in the view at first (hence Dora) but Sophie loved exploring the boat.

Soph and I with the Hong Kong skyline-

Some views of the skyline-

 Man, these are darker than I'd hoped. Another skyline view-

One more. I actually think I like the Hong Kong skyline better than the Shanghai one....

Vander Ploeg family pic!

The boat dropped us off on the mainland, Kowloon, bc we wanted to see the light show set to music that we'd heard about. What an epic fail! We waited for 30 minutes (a lot with tiny kids), and then this super cheesy music came on and a few buildings lit up and that was it. Booo...

So, bc it was such a disappointment we hopped on a transport ferry and made our way back home. This is known as the Star Ferry and is the main mode of transportation from Hong Kong Island to the mainland for workers going from one place to the other. Very cheap and did the job!
We found out that night that the night before (the night of the fireworks) there had been a massive ferry crash on the south side of Hong Kong island. It was the worst ferry crash there in something like 40 years. Many people died, including some children. It was a very big story there and was really sad as the boat that sank had been rented out by a company and had it's workers and their families on it celebrating the festival.

Another late night and we were heading home the next day after seeing the Big Buddha. So busy!

So, the next morning we grabbed some coffeeshop breakfast and headed into downtown. We were able to get our luggage checked into our flight early there and then took a highspeed train to the airport. From there we took a taxi to the bottom of the big buddha mountain where we were going to take a tram to the top. But, the line was long and our time was short so we hopped on a bus that took us to the top. Yup, that's a train, taxi, and bus so far. And we're not done yet with today's travels, my friends...

Here's the big buddha from a distance-

At the bottom- 300 steps to the top, baby. Oy. Off we go...

Almost to the top- this thing was huge!

At the top- the view of the surrounding mountains. So pretty!

After walking around the statue and looking around, we were all really hot! Nothing ice cream can't fix...

On the way down we needed a rest so we thought we'd take a picture of our little man with his 'big buddha' belly. :)

This was taken from over by the monastery looking across the grounds.

So, we ended up having a bit of extra time so we thought we'd take the arial tram back down over the mountains. The kids (and us) loved it!

Part of the journey on the tram.

Once the tram ride was done, it was another taxi ride to the airport and then the flight home. Once we got home we took a quick ride around in the tuk tuk just so we could say that in 24 hours we rode a boat, a taxi, a train, a bus, an arial tram, a plane and a tuk tuk. Ha! The only thing missing was like a camel or something. :) Hee hee. We're dorks. :)

Whew! I am exhausted!!! So that was Hong Kong. 6 packed days and we loved all of it. It was so much further ahead than Shanghai in terms of the developing world. English was even a common language there and all the food was so great. If any of you get a chance, I would definitely visit there!