Happy May

It was a long weekend here for labor day, and I can't believe we are in May.  I also finally feel caught up on my posts, for the most part.  

Michael has been in the U.S. for a little over a week now, and it feels very quiet without him, especially at night, but our days are plenty busy and he will be back before we know it (before end of this month).  The kids have enjoyed facetiming with him over breakfast, and now all want to go to the U.S....

We went to the Tung Chung cable car and explored the Big Buddha on Saturday morning.  We were so lucky that the weather cooperated, and despite some light drizzles when we started off we got lots of sun when we got on the cable car and up to the Buddha.

Can you see the Buddha in the background?  Our first glimpse!

Turns out Lola and Teo are the climbers in the family - the two headed up at a scamper and were pretty far ahead, pretty fast.  I stayed with Al and immediately after the first set of stairs he was not having it.  He was hot, begged to be carried, whined and, at one point half way up, straight up cried.  But then with encouragement as I urged him to look down and check his progress, he perked up considerably and zoomed up the last half.

My super cranky super sweaty little champion:

After exploring the Big Buddha we had a quick picnic lunch and then headed back to the (completely artificial) village.  As a bonus we got to see some of the wild cattle that Lantau is famous for.

We then boarded our cable car again, for the no less thrilling journey back to Tung Chung.

When we came home Lola was inspired:

We also went to our neighbor's house to play, and I went to try hotpot at Happy Lamb with some girlfriends (soooo yum)! 

On Sunday we took advantage of the suddenly very nice weather to go to the beach.  Can't take this for granted!  

We also did a fun cooking competition where Lola wanted to taste test the final product, be the judge, and declare the winner.  She was trying to give me tips for what she was looking for, so I would win.  But Julie won instead. Even my daughter recognizes I have no culinary prowess.

A culmination of my, Lola's, Julie's, Al's and Teo's creations:

As a side note, Lola has been really into the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West" (from which we have the famous Monkey King and his sidekick the Pig) and her favorite character, bemusingly enough, is a small child who wears red, has a red dot on his forehead, little to no hair and is slightly evil.  I give you:

Then on Monday we went to a mermaids and pirates party at our friend's new village house (they just moved) out in Clearwater Bay.  This is village living!  Hard to believe what a contrast their day to day experience is like compared to ours.  We needed GPS coordinates to get to their house, coupled with annotated pictures.  That's how confusing it was.

The kids had a lot of fun - there was a bouncy castle, face painting, balloons, a pinata, a cotton candy machine...the surrounding nearly wild terrain meant there were lots of plants and veggies, like a mango tree, lemon tree, tomatoes, peppers and chili peppers, and wild amaranth.