Our US adventure...

Panorama Pictures in Hong Kong

2009-07-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

The two pictures below are panoramic shots of Stanley and Kowloon - taken from different points. Sadly the Kowloon shot did not turn out the way I would have liked, but you get the idea of the skyline.

Hong Kong's Tallest Building - FOR NOW!

2009-07-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

The IFC (International Financial Centre) building in Hong Kong is the largest building today in Hong Kong. They are building a NEW building on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, it is almost complete - and will be taller.

Check out the family standing in front of the building.

Hong Kong - World Record Poster

2009-07-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

This poster is entirely made from Stamps! You can see the Guiness Book of Records certificate displayed next to the poster, which shows how big the poster is. It is pretty impressive.

It is located in the main Hong Kong Post Office in Central.

Hong Kong - Stanley

2009-07-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

After we arranged our Visa process we were free for a few days before our Passports were returned to us.

We did some tourist activities - including heading to Stanley Market, and below are some pictures of the Stanley area.

Stuck in Japan overnight...

2009-07-25T10:12:00.000-07:00

On our trip to Hong Kong in order to renew our Visa's, we were unfortunately "stuck" in Japan overnight due to our connecting flight being cancelled. We stayed overnight in a nice hotel close to the Narita airport in Japan - about 1-2 hours drive from Tokyo. We did not go very far, actually pretty much stayed in the Hotel, here are some pictures of the garden area of the hotel, Cynfor and Jessie taking a look around.

Cynfor's BIG Match

2009-07-23T21:56:00.000-07:00

Cynfor was lucky enough to be able to play at 1/2 time of the Timbers game. The Timbers are the local Soccer team for Portland, who are headnig for a position in the national league in the USA. It is becoming a big following in Portland, and the crowd that night was very big - around 10,000 or more people.

Cynfor and his team THUSC Iron - were very happy being able to play on the field in front of such a large crowd. Here are some pictures from that evening.

A hike in the park

2009-06-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

We went for a walk at a park nearby our house, here are a couple of shots of the walk, and some things we saw along the way. Forrest Park is the national park, there are quite a lot of walk-ways set out. We chose to take a walk to see the area.

Cynfor and Jessie's Piano Recital

2009-06-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday night was Cynfor and Jessie's Piano recital. Here are a couple of pictures of the event. They both performed well, and we had a good night.

Our new visitors/guests...

2009-06-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

We have a bird-house, that we have had in the garden since we moved into the house. It looks like now we should call it our "bee house" - being that a set of bumble bee's have taken up residence. I am not charging them rent, but I am wondering if we should start to.

From what we have read on the internet, they will not stay long, so we are not bothered by them, if they don't bother us - otherwise we will most likely have to work out how to get rid of them.

2009 Ceramic Fair

2009-04-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

We headed out to a ceramic fair in Portland this weekend. There was some lovely work being shown, which you could also buy - BUT Cynfor and Jessie were more interested in trying to make their own stuff - as you can see in the pictures below.

2009 Flute Recital

2009-04-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

Cynfor and Jessie's flute recital was on April 17th, 2009. Both of them played very well. Below are the pictures of the whole group who played, and Cynfor and Jessie with their flute teacher. At the bottom - check out the size of the flute that Jessie is standing "under." Yes - this is a flute, and the flute teacher demonstrated it at the recital. It is a "contra bass" flute - and the sound is two octaves lower than a normal flute. Very lovely sound, but apparently takes a lot more effort to play to make the sound come out - a lot of hard blowing!

Cynfor and Jessie playing Piano

2009-04-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Cynfor and Jessie were invited to help thank the volunteers at the school at their "Volunteer Luncheon." Both of them played piano as part of a mini concert to thank the volunteers.

Tara's birthday trip...

2009-04-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

We headed north to Washington State, to a place called Great Wolf Lodge. It is just outside of the city of Olympia the capitol of Washington.

The whole family enjoyed the time we had there, swimming in the pools, going down the huge water slides, getting water dumped on us from a 1000 gallon bucket from on top of a play structure. Anyhow, here are some pictures of the trip to share.

Trip to the Coast

2009-04-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

Although it was cold, it was great to see the sun shining across the Oregon Coast, which is pretty spectacular. Here are some pictures of our day trip to the coast.

Spring 2009

2009-03-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

Spring is here, and so we would thought we would show a few pictures of the lovely flowering tree out the front of our house.

Jessie's 10th Birthday

2009-03-01T20:12:00.000-08:00

Today was Jessie's 10th Birthday Party. She had 10 of her friends, and we all went to a "ceramics painting" store so the girls could all paint their own ceramic figurine, jewelery holder, vase, etc. Jessie also was able to paint a dinner plate, which we put a happy birthday jessie with all of her friends signing the plate on the outside. She can use the plate to eat off, or she can hold onto it and hang it on the wall as a decoration. She has not decided yet. We will not see the finished works until next week.

She also worked hard on Saturday making the cup-cakes for the day. She chose to have those instead of a full cake - much easier to hand out than slices of a full cake! They were a hit, with most of the girls wanting to eat two!

Sick Kids...

2009-02-08T14:20:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately Darren came home sick on Monday night from work, only to infect Cynfor on Saturday, then Jessie on Sunday. Here are the "sick kids" hanging out watching the Basketball all "rugged up." As you can see by the photographs below, they are still pretty high spirited, but both not feeling fantastic.

Girl Scout "sock puppet show"

2009-02-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

Jessie's Girl Scout troup had a "sock puppet show" on Wednesday. Some of the show pictures are below.

Aussie day 2009

2009-01-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

Because of the time zone differences between the USA and Australia - Australia day was actually happening when we celebrated at Jake and Jenny's house on Sunday. As you can see - several of us got right into the spirit. Jessie's flag actually ended up being hung on the outside of the house after she paraded around the house a little. (Jake and Darren in the background getting the pole ready)

Chinese New Year - 2009

2009-01-24T20:00:00.000-08:00

We celebrated Chinese New Year's eve with Jake and Rachel at Wong's King restaurant in South East Portland. As you can see, we had a good spread of food - some was new to Rachel, who had not experienced an Chinese New Year meal quite like this before.

We had a great night out with both of them, and enjoyed the food as a group.

Out trip to the OHSU tram

2009-01-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

OHSU (Oregon Health and Sciences University) stands on the top of the hill a little to the South of downtown Portland. At the base of the hill is a tram which has now been operational for just over 2 years - it was opened not long after we first moved over in August 2006. We thought that being that it was such a lovely day, we would go an take a ride on the tram to the top. As you can see by the photographs below, it is a pretty amazing view on a great day.

The day was very cold, but the view was spectacular. The large mountain with the pointy peak is Mount Hood - the largest peak in Oregon, the mountain missing its top off to the left is Mount St Helens, which lost its top back in 1980.

Zoo Lights - 2008

2008-12-28T18:00:00.000-08:00

After the snow had settled down a little, we took the kids - with Mick and Simone - to the "Zoo Lights" at the Oregon Zoo. It was a nice display, some of the animals were around to look at, we rode on the train (not pictured below) - and had a great time. You can see that by the picture of Molly below eating popcorn!

Christmas 2008

2008-12-25T18:00:00.000-08:00

Well, albeit a little later than anticipated, here are some pictures of our Christmas here in the USA in 2008. We had a lovely day, as you can see by the pictures the kids got a good number of gifts, and we even had some snow (check Tara standing out in it to prove it!)

The bottom picture was to show you a combination of the snow out of the window, and Tara and Jessie enjoying watching the Wii being played.

Best wishes to everyone for Christmas 2008

2008-12-24T09:01:00.000-08:00

For everyone who regularly visits our blog to catch up with what we are doing, we wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas, and all the best for 2009. It does look like we will have a white Christmas here, which will be our first at our home - so we are looking forward to it.

What a night - snow, ice, ice then snow again...

2008-12-21T17:52:00.000-08:00

Well, over 1 week after it started, the snow and ice is still coming. The amount of snow that came last night was around 7 inches (depending on the news service, and where you measured it). When we went out of the house today, we found that there was a layer of around 1/8th of an inch of ice on top of the snow.

Cynfor, Jessie and myself wandered out for a walk (very crunchy) - looking around the area for how things had survived the night with the cold. (It got to a low of around -6C)

This afternoon it started raining again (what they call ice rain - which is basically small water drops that have turned to ice before they hit the ground.) It did not take long before it started snowing again. We look to have had approximately another inch, and they are predicting more again tonight and tomorrow.

Tara's work have closed for tomorrow due to the conditions. Lucky for Jessie, Cynfor and myself - we are already on our holidays. So looks like another family day at home.

There are more pictures that we have added to the album from the note we posted yesterday. I have put a couple of pictures here of Cynfor and Jessie and their ice.