Hey all!
OK, once again I’ve neglected to update this blog for a very long time, so I thought it would be a good time now to let you all know how we have been doing. Since we do have so much to cover, I thought it best to break this blog update into 2 parts!
Well summer is well underway and the weather has been great! Debby and the new baby to be are doing well, she’s past 7 months now and feeling big as a bus! Actually, she mentioned that she feels smaller this time around than with Hadrian. This baby moves like crazy though, he or she must be a gymnast doing back flips inside her belly!!!
Debby’s feeling a lot better now than in her 1st trimester, but she’s still been having a more difficult time of it than in her first pregnancy. Hopefully difficult pregnancy = easy baby!!! We are very excited though and just started to prepare the new baby’s room, along with making some changes to Hadrian’s room. He’s been very eager to receive his new “big boy” bed. We’ve decided to move him out of his crib and into a bed before the new baby arrives, so that he doesn’t think we’re booting him out of the crib in favor of the new little one! So far the transition has been good, he doesn’t seem to miss the crib that much and has only fallen out of bed twice to date! Those were actually kind of scary, hearing a loud thud and crying in the middle of the night, but he quickly got over it. Even though we installed a baby gate which is supposed to prevent him from falling out, he still managed to do it! So now we placed a few pillow on the ground to hopefully soften the blow!!!
Speaking of the little guy, Hadrian’s doing very well. He is speaking up a storm in both English and Cantonese and he’s comprehension is really impressive! He recently started the “why” phase, constantly asking us what’s this and why’s that. He’s also kind of started his terrible twos, although we really can’t complain because he’s actually quite good. But he is starting to push his boundaries and trying to be more defiant at times. We also just celebrated his 2 year birthday on July 20th. Hard to believe it’s already been 2 years! I remember just like yesterday starting up this blog before Hadrian was even born. How time flies!! But things with him are great and we’re very proud of him. He also seems to be very excited about having a baby brother or sister, although I don’t think he quite understands what to expect yet!
Before I go further, I forgot to give you some details of our family vacation to Hawaii back in May. Debby, Hadrian and I, along Debby’s parents all went together and we had a great time! We started by flying to the island of Oahu and stayed in a hotel in Waikiki (Honolulu) for 4 days. Waikiki was awesome, I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the city. It’s a bit more busy and city-like than some of the other Hawaiian destinations, but we really enjoyed it. We did some shopping (hit the local Walmart!), ate some good food, visited some local sites, it was fun! We also visited the Polynesian Cultural Center and joined in a Lu’au there which was really cool. The place is like a cultural experience blended with a theme park, kind of a weird concept but it was actually very cool!! We also went to the awesome Hanauma Bay, where they have world-class snorkeling and a beautiful beach.
Then we embarked on a 10-day cruise which toured through the Hawaiian Islands before sailing back to Vancouver. That was a very nice experience too! We’ve been on several cruises before, and this was not the best in terms of the ship itself or the food, but it was still a lot of fun, especially since it was Hadrian’s first! He had a blast!! He was probably the most popular little guy there, with all the female staff fawning over him. During one of the formal evenings, he even started dancing in the middle of the atrium dance floor in front of a couple hundred people and received a huge ovation for it!!! That’s my boy, stardom is in his future! It was great for us too, very relaxing and it was nice to have Debby’s parents there to help take Hadrian some of the time so we could go off and do stuff or rest up a bit.
The first stop the cruise made was on the island of Maui, where we actually docked overnight so we had almost two full days there. Maui was beautiful, the beaches and the scenery there were terrific. It is much more laid back than Honolulu and has a smaller town feeling to it. We arrived in Lahaina, then we went on a tour and visited Iao Valley, with spectacular views of the tropical mountainside. We visited a farm with everything from pineapple to avocado to sugar cane to tropical flowers. It was pretty cool. The next day we went to fantastic beach with nice size waves near all the resort hotels and we went to the old whalers’ village. After that, the next two days were spent at the Big Island at the cities of Kailua-Kona and Hilo, on opposite sides of the island. Kailua-Kona is on the sunny, dry side of the island and Hilo on the wet, tropical side. Apparently it only rains about 10 inches per year in Kailua… and we showed up on a day it was pouring rain!! So what did we do, we went to Walmart!!! Actually that was the cheapest place to find souvenirs, especially the world famous Kona coffee (which I gotta say is awesome!) In Hilo we rented a car and drove to the Volcano National Park. We also went to a black sand beach which was interesting (kind of looks like dirty sand!)
So after all that, we got to relax on the ship for 6 days as it sailed all the way back to Vancouver. It was kind of weird, because every other day we had to put our watched ahead an hour and every day it got colder and rainier outside. I have to say, 6 days straight at sea was a bit too much, by the last couple of days we didn’t have much left to do (except for eating!) But it was still nice and we were glad to have experienced it. One absolutely spectacular moment was the evening before our last island visit, sailing around the Big Island toward Hilo. At around 11 pm that night we sailed by the active volcano and saw the lava flows. It was amazing, especially at night, the lava was bright orange-red and the ship actually went within a few hundred feet of the flow. That was definitely a sight worth seeing!
So wrapping up, here are some photos of Hawaii for your enjoyment and we’ll see you again shortly for part 2!
Danny, Debby (+1) and Hadrian.
