Hong Kong and Home

We have as much wanderlust as practically anyone. And yet, there's nothing like taking care of your new baby daughter for two weeks in China to really, really, REALLY make you miss home. Thankfully, that's exactly where we are now as this is posted.

On Thursday we packed to leave. Marc & Malia had one last adventure to the Sun Yat-Sen memorial before we all headed to the U.S. Consulate to pick up Malia's passport & Visa and head to the station for the train ride to Hong Kong. The trip lasted about 2 hours.

Wow. Hong Kong. We only got to spend an evening there, and vowed to return one day. Marc has always thought of Hong Kong as the "perfect city" (dense not sprawl, tall not wide, foreign yet english, and Texas temperatures), and it did not disappoint. The transportation system makes you simply envious. This is how you build a city.

We taxi'ed to the airport Marriott, checked in, and then headed out via subway to Hong Kong island for a quick tram trip up to the top of Victoria Peak for dinner & views. Before leaving for China, Marc had mentioned how Victoria Peak would be the "end" of the trip for him. So our subway ride back to the hotel was technically the beginning of the journey home.

And yes, a short beginning. Friday was a 24 hour day with a shuttle, two very long flights (HK - San Fran - Austin), and unfortunately zero hours of sleep for the parents. Both of us went from "not tired" to "too painful to sleep" somewhere off the west coast. Malia, however, did fine.........sleeping, eating, and more or less respectful to her fellow travelers. The 12 hour nightmare flight from HK to San Francisco was not nearly as bad as we feared.

It's Saturday, and we have more or less recovered from the trip. Family greeted us with excitement at the airport. We are so thankful to the grandparents for their help back home while we spent 17 days on the other side of the globe completing our family.

More than anything, we are just thrilled with how Alex has taken to Malia. It's like a big brother "switch" has been flipped, and he is showing an intense interest not frequently seen before. We are thankful for this, as we intentionally titled this blog as "a little sister for Alex" and have been hoping that a sibling would benefit him just as much as parents for Malia and a daughter for us.

More posts will come as Malia goes through the surgery process and as we enjoy special events with friends and family. But they will be less frequent.

Now comes the fun part. Raising our daughter to work hard and enjoy life in Austin, TX. Hope you enjoyed our China story. We certainly did.