Success!

With daily persistence on Steph's part and a few phone call on Dad Berg's part, we were finally issued our building permit today!! Yay!

We are Land Owners

We closed on our land today! We now officially own 4 acres of land! Soon to be the home of "Outfield Farms"!

Sugar Bear's First Swim Lesson

I had my first swim lesson, and it was awesome! I'm now just like Michael Phelps, minus the medals, hashish, and skill.

Steph captured the ACTION on our new video camera, and yours truly also created his first "video film" of the 21st century!

Vancouver Olympics

Train ride to Vancouver. Most of the tracks are along Puget Sound, so it makes for a very pretty ride during the day (which may be the only redeeming thing about the train!). We actually saw a number of eagles out feeding in the water in a couple of different spots - very cool!

Finally at the hockey game!

Chris remembered his binoculars and said he could see the whole game great!

Switzerland wins in a 2-1 shoot-out after no score in sudden "victory" overtime. (We decided with a motto of "with glowing hearts" they couldn't call it sudden death!) You can sort of see from the picture that the skinny displays around the stadium showed the country's flag waving - it was cool looking!

The Olympic rings illuminated out in the harbor.

The Olympic cauldron.
You'll have to excuse my face at it was POURING down rain and we were soaked and cold! :)

Thought we'd take the bobsled out for a try!

Chris got to ride in the front seat of one of the trains we took around Vancouver. He was SO EXCITED that he got to look through the train operator's window as we went! The lady sitting next to me whispered to me that all men act like they are 6, even her 50 year old husband!

Where's the Baby???

The car seat/stroller (or, should I use the official name: travel system) came this morning and I put it together in the "nursery", but it appears they forgot to send the baby along with it!! Who do you suppose I contact about this??? :)

Applied for Permit

We applied for building permit today! Hopefully in 10-12 weeks (yes, that long!) we'll have it!

I think he LOVES Chicken

The first time I roasted a chicken, MacGyver stood in the kitchen crying the entire time we ate dinner. This time, he tried a new approach....

He sat and STARED at Chris' plate for a long time!

When sitting got to be too tiring, he had to lay down!

Hong Kong - Day 12: Repulse Bay, Light Show, Night Market

We had a good, relaxing last day in Hong Kong.

We slept in and then went straight to lunch (well, I went to breakfast, and Chris went straight to lunch!). We went to the Italian restaurant in our hotel - it was delicious! They had an "appetizer" bar that would have been enough food for lunch - different types of fish, salads, meats and a chef was making fresh mozzarella right there. The mozzarella was awesome! I got lobster pasta and Chris got some sole. This video is terribly embarrassing, but I laughed hystarically when I just watched it, so I have to post it. Yes, they give you a bib to wear when you eat pasta! And, in my defense, I thought Chris was taking picture - I didn't realize this was a whole video!

This was dessert - apple fritters and ice cream. We each got this much! It was way too much, but you have to finish dessert! :)

We then hit the beach. We were there for about an hour - Chris swam the ENTIRE time! (Thanks to Mel again for the tripod - we got this picture!)

This is the whole beach at Repulse Bay. Chris swam the entire length of the beach. He told me he was going to swim along the shore, but I was in shock when I went to find him and he was at one end! For someone who claims to not know how to swim, he sure likes the water and can make it back and forth OK!

We had to go back and get foot massages one more time - it was another relaxing foot rub. Chris' lady was a little to fast and strong this time and he had to tell her to be more gentle! :) I think he relaxed after that!

We then headed to Indian food for dinner - it was a different restaurant than the first one, but same owners. It was very good! There was even live Indian music...eventually (they had a rough time getting started)!

Every night they have a 15 minute laser light show over the harbor. We hadn't seen that yet since the best viewing is on the opposite side of the harbor than our hotel. We were on the right side of the harbor tonight, so we checked it out.

We finished the night at the Temple Street Night Market. I got a bracelet and necklace, but no one else wanted to bargain much with me, so that was it. I laughed when I read the books and the descriptions of the markets always said they sold x, y, z and "junk". I now know what they mean by junk - stupid plastic trinkets, every type of key chain you can imagine, power strips, calculators, safety pins, super annoying door bells....It was fun to walk through, but not too much stuff that was interesting. I must have some sort of habit from work of attempting to speak Spanish when I hear a foreign language, because when I was talking to 2 different vendors and they asked me something I said "Si". The first guy had no idea, but I couldn't stop laughing after I said it!

Hong Kong - Day 11: Hong Kong Disneyland

M-I-C-K....
That's about how big Hong Kong Disneyland is!

They have their own line off one of the subway lines. We had to transfer 2 times to get there, so it took about 1 hour. Disneyland is quite a bit outside of the downtown city of Hong Kong.

On the Disneyland Line, they even had Mickey's as the holders if you're standing!

And Mickey shaped windows!

The entrance Mickey - it was cool because it is "Haunted Disneyland" right now and this Mickey's yellow/orange part of his face was out of mini-pumpkins!

OF COURSE we had to start off our day with Mickey waffles! I do think the pancakes are more fun, but maybe Disneyland Anaheim is the only place that has them???

I learned that Chris is a bad driver - very jerky and doesn't really drive straight (unfortunately, I chose to ride with him!) :)

He doesn't drive the UFO any better - still quite jerky!

They had a whole area where a bunch of characters were out and you could get pictures...

We felt bad for Goofy because no one was waiting to have their picture with him! I think Chris is trying to stick his teeth out like Goofy's...

This was probably the least tasty option for lunch, but I HAD to get it! Chris got sushi, noodles, soup and pork dumplings.

There was a lot to imitate today....He even got me in on it!

Chris is holding up all of tomorrow! He's strong!

We took a break mid-day from Disneyland and headed 1 stop further down the subway to Ngong Pong. They have a gondola that takes you 3 miles up the mountain. Chris was SO BRAVE riding in the gondola!

Besides the views, the main attraction at the top of the mountain was the huge Buddha statue that is at the top of these stairs.
Carrie - please tell Joyceee that there are 256 stairs!

I have never seen Chris want to leave somewhere as much as he did the top of this mountain. He was SO PARANOID from the ride up! This was the first smile out of him...when we paid for the roundtrip gondola ride, I'm fairly certain it didn't mean to take the bus back down the hill... :)

While on the bus, I had to question if the gondola took us to the top of the mountain or over to India! We had to stop for these cows!

Back at Disneyland, we went to the SCARIEST place ever! The Disneyland haunted house. I didn't quite understand what it meant by haunted house. I thought it was the ride at Disneyland/Disney World through the haunted mansion. No, this was a HAUNTED HOUSE where the people jump out and scare you!!! I HATE THOSE THINGS!!!!!!!!! Chris and I discovered that as scared and paranoid as he is about heights, I am at haunted houses!

James - I have nominated you and Chris to take any kids that want to go to a haunted house. I am fairly certain that if I even dropped them off that they would come out and find me in my car and scare the crap out of me! Have I mentioned that I HATE HAUNTED HOUSES??? It was awful! What made it worse was that it was so dark and Chris couldn't really see, so I could only partially hide behind him because I had to tell him how to go!

Disney's margarita - a Lime Freeze. It was needed after the gondola and the haunted house! They were super good! There wasn't anything "Mickey" at dinner, so I wasn't able to made a day out of it - we did have some very good soup, fried rice and beef and noodles!

Apparently Chris passed some bad gas?

The Halloween Haunted parade. A couple of times they turned the lights off and the floats glowed - that was the best part of the parade!

We did find some Mickey desserts. Dessert was VERY difficult to find, if you can believe it! There was 1 ice cream stand we saw early in the day and it was closed at 8 pm! All Chris wanted was ice cream and/or french fries and this is what he came up with after an extensive search: cheesecake and tiramisu!

Disneyland was fun - it's hard to not have fun there! Although, they make it pretty difficult at this one. It is SO SMALL! They sell 2 day passes and I can't imagine going back for a 2nd day. The only "grown-up" ride was Space Mountain. Even for kids, there were very few rides. Chris read that they were running short on money or something when they were building it (in 2005) and the decided to downsize. I think it was a very bad idea - there is no reason to come here multiple times! And, I imagine there are very few people with annual passes - especially since it is out of the way to get to! It was Disneyland and I can't complain - there is something about it that always makes it happy and fun!

PS - Happy Birthday, Pops!