A Little Taste

Although I would much rather have been celebrating my Granddad's life and reminiscing with all of my family in Texas on Saturday, we did the next best thing here in Waterloo.  I spent a lot of Sunday afternoon going through old pictures and papers and sharing them with my children.  They have loved it and it has meant so much to me.  Today Nathan has a copy of the paper that my dad wrote about my great-grandfather in 1970 at school with him to share with his class.  Their unit of inquiry at the moment is explorers and we thought a pioneer like Nathan's great-great-grandfather might qualify.  If nothing else, it makes some interesting reading for the boys in the class.  (He also shared a funny story about YehYeh, Memaw and some thieving monkeys in Bali...I'll have to share that one another time, though).
I know I've covered ad nauseum how important photo labeling and organization to me is, but after a trip like the one we took to Hong Kong it is even more important.  We met so many people and keeping the names and faces straight in the pictures is not something I mastered after just one meeting.  This project will require more than just me.  Actually meeting so many and seeing Hong Kong for the first time has encouraged us to try and make sure our children know their family and the stories that go with them.  There is a really great article written about the kids' great-great grandmother in a Reader's Digest from 1973.  My husband swears he had no knowledge of this article until after we were married and someone gave us a copy.  While we were in Hong Kong another family member was passing around another article written about "Hong Kong Old Mary" in the Saturday Evening Post in 1944.  I shared some of the story from the Reader's Digest with the kids one afternoon after we got back, but they are still a little young to understand all of it.  They really like pictures to go with the stories and I hope that when we are back in San Antonio next month, we are able to find time to go through pictures with them and show them some more videos.
Along with our current fascination with our family history, we have begun to fill in a family tree online.  So fun!  We had some software for making a family tree when we first got married and worked on it for a while, but now we are putting it all onto this website and if we get really organized can e-mail it out to others to help fill it in along with us. 

So I know I have gotten a bit distracted from posting about our last big trip and before I know it we'll be taking our next big trip, but I sincerely, sincerely want to get some more Hong Kong posts in here somehow some way!  A certain almost five-year-old's birthday has crept up on me and we're all in the midst of balancing the abundance of Thanksgiving celebrations that seem to happen here on top of the childrens' social lives and normal stuff. 
As we were discussing a possible Christmas card photo shoot somewhere locally, our old friend Mannekin Pis came up and we were reminded that even all the way over in Hong Kong we were not far from  the famous Belgian boy.  Our son found this lovely item in an oh-so-conveniently placed "gumball machine" (Is that the best name for these things? All I know is that nothing more annoying exists in the world of parents...) and called us over excitedly.  We were waiting to catch the ferry and had just enough time for a quick photo.

Somewhere along the lines of translation he became "Pee Boy" and he is considered worthy enough to be a "charm"  not just once, but twice apparently. Oh and what we wouldn't give for a translation of that speech bubble!  We did not buy one, but were excited for the little taste of our home away from home while being even further away from home. 

(My goal is to actually go through and find all of the food photos for a post about the real little tastes in Hong Kong...here's to good intentions!)