survival
we are in toronto. the worst of the jetlag is over and we are doing really well.
i spent today out on the water on doug’s (FIL’s) boat, and although i did nothing, i am tired, so this long overdue post will be a short one.
HAPPY CANADA DAY.
the night before we were meant to leave hong kong, i took my suitcases down to andrea’s. we held the “semifinals” of the summer suitcase there, where i pulled out every single item i was planning on taking and determined if it had the talent or was necessary for the trip. we managed to shave down quite a few items from the kids suitcase and from my own.
while there, we got the news that a typhoon was descending upon hong kong. a typhoon eight. andrea, teacher that she is, began crossing her fingers, as if the typhoon eight signal is raised at 8am, there is no school that day.
at 11pm, the typhoon three signal was replaced by typhoon eight. by midnight the wind was really blowing. i went to sleep and rested fitfully.
by 6am, the typhoon eight was still up, and andrea, her children and mine were euphoric. andrea sent a message inviting the kids down to play if we wanted to get them out of our hair while doing last minute packing. we decided to divide and conquer, so adam came up to our place, while i took the triplets down to andrea and chad’s where we drank endless cups of tea and started mentally packing for andrea. it was a good morning. the typhoon signal was lowered to three around 11.30am.
the flight was on, but likely delayed. ths was not good news as we had a connector flight in vancouver.
we ate a final lunch with adam, pulled the luggage down to the car, loaded the car and the airport car (thank you amex) up, and headed off….goodbye 122!!
at the airport we got through no problem, and sat in the cathay airport lounge for as long as i could tolerate it. and then it was just too embarrassing to have the kids racing around while reading of delayed flights, so i took the kids fora walk while charles relaxed for a bit.
our flight was called 20 minutes late, and we sat on the ground, not moving for 90 minutes.
needless to say, we missed our vancouver connector flight.
the flight itself was good. the kids watched horton hears a who a few times, and loved it, and then slept. i watched a few bits of tv, and one of my fave movies, MARS ATTACKS. i read a bit of a new book.
welcome to vancouver.
the worst part of flying is filling in time. the kids were so tired and we had a four hour layover. we were all tired and they were truculent and we weren’t parenting to the best of our abilities. thankfully, the majority of those people will never see us again and we boarded the flight to toronto, plugged in the portable dvd players, and were off.
we landed in toronto, no problems, collected our luggage, doug and carolyn (SIL) were there ready for us, and quickly we got to doug’s place. pajamas on and were in bed within 45 minutes of our midnight arrival.
unfortunatlely, the boys awoke two hours later.
the next few hours were grim, charles got up from 2.30-4.30 and i took the 5.45-onwards crew. charles was out somewhere, and somehow the lines of communication got crossed and it was thought everyone was having dinner at doug’s place that night. i was just planning on having tortellini and sauce (both store bought thank you very much), and throwing the kids to bed, but suddenly it was a longer issue. anyway, my sil made half the dinner, i made the other half, and we sat down and i made it through the dinner. the kids weren’t so stellar. but they managed.
more soon…friday was the ball. i have been walking about 10k.
sorry for the silence, but there will be more soon. it has been full on, lots of things have been planned for me but it should be a bit quieter now. xo
