A few months prior, I had a really strong feeling that we should get to the temple. With that in mind, I had been watching fares to Hong Kong. It looked like 4th of July weekend (not a holiday here of course!) was the best option, so we booked it and got ready for a temple and Hong Kong weekend!It was awesome!
Hong Kong is a 4 hour flight. Not nothing, but not too bad. We were actually supposed to fly out on Friday afternoon at the end of the work day. But, the airline called us the night before and told us our flight was canceled. We had the option of flying out super early on Friday morning instead. The really early part was a little painful, but we made it work!
We stayed in temple housing on Friday night. It was great to be right there by the temple. And, it's the boys most favorite part because there are bunk beds! There was a great playground right next to the church, so it was ideal for us entertaining the boys while we switched off going to the temple.
The boys had new superhero action figures that were quite the hit all throughout the trip. :-) I also loved taking these playground pictures so much. In Pennington, I had hundreds of pictures of the boys on playgrounds. Because that's not as prominent a feature of Singapore, and because the boys are older now and in school, I don't get as many of these playground moments!
Mike took some calls and got a work day in on Friday. Between Friday evening and Saturday morning, we were able to soak in the temple. Lovely! It was also so special for us to visit the Hong Kong temple since we had gone there in 2007 when we were recently married. There was something so amazing about going again and bringing our whole family this time. Really neat!
Here are me and Mike visiting the temple in 2007 before any kiddos. Mike had just had a butcher of a hair cut in Vietnam. He's sporting the suit he had made there, and wore the same tie to the temple this time. What do you think? We're not too, too much worse for the wear after 8 years!!!
We packed up around lunch time and headed to the W for their Saturday brunch. I had gotten some recommendations from foodie friends for great eats in Hong Kong with Mike's birthday in mind. We made it a birthday weekend celebration and ate our way through Hong Kong! The brunch was yummy. The funniest part was our cute David, after stuffing himself, fell asleep mid-bite! Everyone thought it was hysterical!
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| Peking Duck! |
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| This buffet may have been too fancy for our kids! But, we enjoyed it! |
After that, we settled into our hotel on Hong Kong island. We explored the neighborhood a bit, found a playground for the boys, and finally headed up to Victoria Peak. The views were great, and the boys liked it a lot! Mike and I loved it because we had visited there back in 2007, pre-kids. On that visit, we had a really funny mistake. We had taken a bus to Victoria Peak from Stanley Market. We got off the bus, ran over next to some trash dumpsters behind a building and saw the view for a minute. Then we thought we had better get in line for the vehicular before it got too late. We waited in line for a half hour or 45 minutes and excitedly got on the vehicular to go and see the peak. And...we started going down. And...we kept going down! Somehow we hadn't realized that this was it - this WAS the peak. We hadn't even enjoyed it and just waited in line to leave! I was so disappointed that night! This time we were sure to enjoy the views before going down on the vehicular!!!
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| Me feeling sad as we rode the vehicular down in 2007 after our mishap! |
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| Much happier this time! :-) |
Sunday morning we headed to church at the downtown chapel. Afterwards we had dim sum at Maxim's Palace - a famous dim sum place in Hong Kong. It was DIVINE! Probably one of the best meals of our lives! It's classic dim sum style where they come around with carts and you choose what you'd like to eat. The boys thought that was quite fun, and we all enjoyed ourselves. Happy Birthday to Mike!!!
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| Mmmm...these pork buns were literally to die for! |
On the way out of town, we went to the flower market, the bird market, and the goldfish market in Mong Kok. It was quite hot and we were a bit tired, but it was really fun! The boys especially loved the bird market.
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| The boys have a book from Gogo about an African Grey, so they were very excited to see this guy at the bird market! |
That was it! Such a fun weekend trip, and fun chance to spoil Daddy as we went! :-)
