Our Full, Fun February!!

This is the best thing that happened all month.......the birth of our 22nd grandchild!!  

Little (or big  9 pound 2 oz) Cora Frances Towers was born February 20th. 

She is the 6th child and 4th daughter of Tyler and Jamie!

How we wish we could hug her!

Welcome to our family, Baby Cora! 

NOTICE FROM THE EDITOR:

It appears from this blog that we seldom do church work, but what we do on weekdays we usually don't take pictures of.  

So just know that we DO work, but we take MORE pictures of our play time!

Gong Hey Fat Choy!

Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year has been crazy!

Red lanterns, orchids, Mandarin orange trees of all shapes and sizes, bright yellow mums and blossoming cherry trees have decorated every home, business and park. 

 It is beautiful everywhere you look!

It's the year of the monkey so they pop up everywhere!

On a beautiful sunny day we went down to the promenade to watch them practice for the parade which was going to be the next night.  These people are trying to maneuver this giant puppet.  During the parade, he was all lit up inside with blue lights and called the "Gentle Giant of Light". It was my favorite part. 

 The picture just doesn't do it justice!

 We were invited to a New Year dinner party by the Area Presidency.

Of course we had the required group picture taken.  This is the Asia Area Presidency and wives, all of us Area Missionaries who work in the Wan Chai building,

 the temple president and wife and the Hong Kong Mission senior couples.

After dinner we went out on President and Sister Funk's balcony and watched the fireworks.

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The Super Bowl was a fun occasion for us.  Unbeknownst to Americans, the rest of the world doesn't give a hoot about football!  While the Super Bowl was going on, we got boat racing and bull riding on our TV!  But that was no problem for us!  We got a little of the 1st quarter while skyping with Kim and Tim, some of the 2nd quarter while visiting with Geoff and Jolene, Evan and Kelli and families in Ohio, and during the last half, Ben just sat the computer right in front of the TV and dad watched the rest of the game with the Salt Lake Families and half the neighborhood.  

Luckily, Kristin sent pictures! 

Since we were too far away to participate in the Towers Family tradition of  making secret Valentines for each other, we decided to do it with our families here in Hong Kong.  

 It was lots of fun and exciting to make something for someone else and there were lots of happy tears and hugs when the Valentines were given!  These Sisters need that extra love!

This is Sister Lyrma holding her very first Valentine from her real sister, Novalyn in the blue.  Lyrma has been bringing Novalyn to church each week in hopes that she will want to become a member.  They are both domestic helpers, but Novalyn just arrived in Hong Kong.

 Guess who drew MY name!  I love my Valentine and of course I agreed to be his!

Sister Remy made me a Valentine when she drew my name on Saturday.  I really love her!

Thursday Family Relief Society Presidency gave all of us a Valentine Surprise!

This bouquet is made out of strong smelling soap carved into roses!  

My eyes were watering!

We and Scott and Karen Smith were invited to go to Disneyland with some of our friends and some Sisters in our Wednesday family.  

Scott loves taking selfies on the MTR.

Meet our friends Quentin and Angela Lee.  He plays the part of Scar at the Disneyland production of Lion King.  They attend Wednesday family when he has to work on Sunday.  This picture was taken when he ran over to have lunch with us between performances.

 They generously treated Analyn, Marjory and May Ann to a day at Disneyland and we just went along for the fun of it!

It was one of the coldest days we've had here in HK, but we had fun anyway!

We really enjoy working and playing with Karen and Scott Smith, our counterparts in the branch.

Buzz Lightyear was on hand so we stopped for a photo op.

Whoa...this was weird!

The props and scenery for Lion King are amazing!  We loved it!

Here's Quentin doing his thing as Scar!

Sunny, clear days are rare, so on this one we rode up to the Peak on the top front seat of a double decker bus.  It was a real trip!  The view at the top was magnificent!  Coming down we hiked the Old Peak Road.  It was super steep and my legs were totally rubber when we got to the bottom!

We sometimes find time to play games on weekends with our friends. 

 One night Sister Orton made this delicious Swedish cake for dessert!

Judy, Matthew and Natalie Staples came to visit for a few hours.  It was great to see them, but not nearly long enough!  We took them for a ride on the Ding Ding.

And to the Lantern Festival.

This lady is writing Chinese characters with white sand on a piece of plastic tarp. This picture shows less than a third of what she had already done.

Karen had a turkey breast in her freezer, so we decided to have Thanksgiving Dinner in February! Turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, yams, fresh veggies, rolls, Jello salad, and pumpkin cake!   What a treat!

The fun just never ends when Sister Smith is busy thinking up things to do!  Here we are having a posh lunch at the Hopewell Center.... a revolving restaurant 60 floors up!

Broom Hockey was the sport of choice at Family Home Evening one Tuesday.

 Our Wednesday Family Sisters went crazy making cakes for dinner.  They had never used an oven before so it was a learning experience for them.  They turned out great!

 Saturday Family planned a Lipsync and Aerobic Dance Battle for FamilyHome Evening!

We have so much fun at our activities!

I have some new piano students!  They are quick learners! 

As a parting shot, David wanted me to include this. 

 It seems that there is nothing you can't get here in Hong Kong!

Back to normal after the Holidays........

It was a peaceful January as we settled down to do normal things after such a crazy December.

 Having a baptism for these two friends, Jessa and Lea, was a great way to start the year!  I wish you could have heard their testimonies about how they tried to hide from the missionaries, but finally realized they needed to listen.  They said how thankful they were that God didn't give up on them.



I'm including this picture of Wednesday family so you can meet Quentin and Angela Lee, the newest addition to our group.  He is the tall (6'7") black man in the middle and she is in front of him.  He plays the part of Scar in the Hong Kong Disneyland production of Lion King and she teaches acting and dance. It has been awesome having them join us with their great singing voices and fun laughter.



Sister Noravee, standing next to me holding a paper, is the one who made the pretty red heart pillows for me and Sister Smith.  Mine is already in my office so it's not in the picture.
They were embroidered with "HAPPY THURSDAY FAMILY LOVES YOU!".



These girls are all named Joy.  The middle one is in Wednesday Family. Her name is perfect for her!  She has the most beautiful smile!   The one on the left is going to baptized in March and the other one is in Saturday Family. You just can't have too much JOY!



Elders Mangrobang and Ferrar taught us how to speak some Cantonese.  Since the Sisters work for Chinese families they wanted to know things like how to ask their "little bosses" (the children of the big bosses), "What's your problem?" and "How much does this cost?" for when they have to go shopping.  You can see from the reaction of Sister Susan that they were having fun!



We love to celebrate birthdays!  The Family members make it a big deal for all their friends.  It is a really special time and a great way to help each Sister feel important!  This is Sister Leah and this picture was on her Facebook post.  David found the hat someone gave him on his birthday and bestowed it on Leah.  She loved it!  She wore it while she taught the Relief Society lesson.


Here we are on Skype joining the family in singing Happy Birthday to Eliza!  I just LOVE Skype!......AND visiting with our family almost every week!


We celebrated another wedding of a girl who investigated the church because she had met a man online who is a member.  She was baptized recently and moved into our branch just in time to have President Smith perform their marriage.  He came to Hong Kong from Australia for the wedding and her parents and son came over from the Philippines.  We are always so nervous about these online romances and marriages between cultures!  There is such a huge learning curve.  We wish them the best and hope they both adjust.  David told this guy he hopes he likes rice!  He said he'd rather have "Barby"......meaning BBQ.



I bet you have never heard of a Service Project like this one.  We participated in a District "SOS.....Service on the Sabbath" and did soap cycling.  An NGO here collects used soap bars from all the hotels, scrapes off all the grunge and brand names and then gives the soap to orphanages or homeless people.  We did it in the parking garage of our building so the lights were weird.  All the helpers got to take home as much soap as they could carry.



After a warmer than normal December we had the coldest recorded January in 60 years in Hong Kong!  It even snowed in the mountains.  David bought a down jacket and we wrapped up in scarves, hats and gloves.  Since there is no central heat in our apartment or the church, it was pretty nippy! We have been making good use of our little space heaters.  We moved Sacrament Meeting into the Relief Society room so we could at least heat it up a little.  There was no hope of heating in the chapel. This picture was in the newspaper, but must have been taken up near the Chinese border.

Months ago we planned a little weekend get-away to Macau.  We decided to go in January when it wasn't so hot.  Well....it wasn't hot!!  It was FREEZING cold!  It was so cold that we didn't even leave the hotel except to go across the street to the "Dancing Water Show".  We didn't do any sightseeing, but that turned out OK because the #1 thing to see in Macau is the Venetian Hotel and that is where we were staying!  It is huge!  Even after 2 days we didn't see everything there! Unfortunately, they don't have central heating either, so we kept our coats on even inside the building.

We got a "special invitation" to have a free souvenir photo taken at the Water Show.  When we picked it up afterwards, this is what we got!! 

 Were we ever excited about that!!

 

 Our room was lovely and we enjoyed having room service for breakfast complete with a linen tablecloth, napkins and fresh flowers brought by a very proper waiter named Alvin.

Everything is decorated up for Chinese New Year next month.  It is the year of the Monkey!

We have some pretty fancy cars in our apartment parking lot.  this red Maserati looks good to me!

Can you tell it was a windy day?

In light of the fact that we have three wonderful grandchildren and their parents coming for a visit soon, I decided to order a cheese sandwich at Tim's Kitchen to see what it was like.  I wanted to be able to tell the kids about it in case it sounded good to them.  Well......it was just what it said..... a cheese sandwich..... two pieces of white bread, no crusts, with a piece of processed cheese in the middle!  That's it!  Maybe it will appeal to someone....who knows?

David says the picture just doesn't do it justice!

That's all folks!