Hong Kong

Dear Family, I started the week with some more surgery. When Doctor Dan removed my stitches from my  hand a month ago, evidently he didn't get them all. So when Mom and I were at the beach last weekend, I was looking at my hand, and lo and behold another stitch had worked its way to the surface. Yikes! It was in there real good. And Mom and I couldn't get it out. So, back to Dr. Dan who broke out his head lamp, super glasses and stitch removal gear. Fifteen minutes later and I was a new man.  Wednesday night I joined the ladies and went to the Happy Valley race track in the middle of a rain storm. The chinese girl on the left lives just down the hall from us in our apartment building. She and Sister Snell (the tall Sister in the middle) have become good friends -- they are both single and enjoy getting together. She is from Mainland China and loves horse racing; so she was our guide. This is a picture of the horses on the home stretch. Very exciting! Here you can see the spect...

 Dear Family, It's been a wonderful week, partly because it's been slow and manageable. We've done the usual things, work everyday of course, an FHE evening of games with the sr. couples, an evening playing ping pong, the temple on Wednesday, a late night of work on Friday, and a day at the beach Saturday. We haven't been terribly social doing most of these things by ourself, so we've gone at our own speed which has been much less intense then some weeks. You know it's a slow week when I tell you about going to the dentist! Wednesday I finally got up the courage to find a dentist and go fix a broken tooth. I've been putting this off for a couple of months and had the usual dental anxiety going into it but to my relief, the procedure was easy, and I met the most delightful British dentist who put me together painlessly. AND, because the AC was on overdrive in their office they tucked a warm fuzzy blanket around me before they started, and I've decided tha...

 Dear kids and grandkids, Another busy week. Lots of pictures this time around. So buckle up and hang on. I'll explain as we go. First, we are in the middle of another major typhoon tonight and tomorrow. We are already at a "9" out of "10".  Very high winds, rain at over an inch an hour all through the night, flooding, mudslides, etc. This is a picture of a guy taping up signs and barring the doors with steel rods towards the bottom. Also notice the sand bags at the bottom of the doors to keep blowing rain from going in under the doors. We had to run into the office this morning (church had already been called off) before the typhoon got upgraded to an "8". Buses, trains, etc. shut down after an "8" is put up. This is Grandma in her newly acquired raincoat, braving the rain. And this is me braving the wind with my poor umbrella. It got blown every which way but still survived -- barely. But now, back in time to yesterday. We joined several ot...