February {Month in Review}

I cannot believe that February is coming to a close, and yet, with it's 28 days, February always does seem to be a month that flies by.

As I've been making little (and big) changes to our blog recently, I've also been thinking about changes in what and how often I post. Since this blog is purely a personal blog about what God is doing in our little family, I know there will be dry times when I am not motivated to post or time is better spent on other things. Thankfully, there are also times when the opposite is true! I thought that a good way to balance that would be to do a {month in review} post just to highlight what has happened in the past month.

I've also decided not to post my gratitude journal weekly, but I wanted to find a way to include part of my gratitude list into my blog posts. So as I review a month in the life of our family, I think that's also the perfect time to share with you how God has been blessing me during that month.

So, February for the Kinne's looked something like this...

We experienced our first Chinese New Year. The "Year of the Rabbit" began at the beginning of February, and Brendan had a few days off work so we enjoyed some nice time together as a family. As the month progressed, we realized that Chinese New Year is actually celebrated for about 2 weeks. The decorations around Hong Kong were amazing. I was a little sad to see them taken down but it freed up LOTS of space...I couldn't believe the transformation in our local grocery store - I actually didn't feel claustrophobic while shopping in there!




During Chinese New Year, Charlotte received some lai see. These are red envelopes which are given to children, unmarried juniors, service people, and employees. We thought it was quite sweet when a lady on a bus gave a 'red packet' to Charlotte because Charlotte had been friendly to her. We equated the red packet tradition as similar to giving a generous tip at Christmas to your postman, newspaper carrier, hair stylist, etc.




During Chinese New Year the weather was great, but then we hit a spell of cold, wet weekends that didn't offer us much in the way of exploring Hong Kong. But last Saturday that changed and the weather was clear and warmer. We found ourselves hiking up the Peak with some friends. Yep, Brendan pushed Charlotte up the paved trail in her stroller! Too bad we weren't prepared with her jogging stroller. Instead she was in her lightweight umbrella stroller and it wasn't intended for use on a rugged, although paved, trail. Oh well! We were excited to get outside and see some new areas of Hong Kong, and now we're really motivated to set out exploring more outdoor areas around Hong Kong - hopefully we'll have that to share with you next month!

And what about our little family? How are we all growing together?

Charlotte is now 16 months old which means she is constantly testing us to see if we really are in charge or if we'll finally give in and let her run the house! :) As trying as this is, we know that if we stay the course of disciplining our child it will reap rewards for her and us later in life. Her language has finally taken off a little bit in the past week or so. So while "bow", "ball", "bowl", "box", and many other "B" words sound like the same word out of Charlotte's mouth, she is intentional about giving them a name rather than pointing and grunting (which was driving me crazy!). She also demands Brendan and I to sing nursery rhymes to her and her absolute favorite books right now are Mother Goose by Gyo Fujikawa (this book has the BEST illustrations!) and Dr. Suess' ABC's (which Charlotte will bring to us and say "A, B, D!").

"Not Getting What I Want" Face

God has also opened up a new level of communication between Brendan and I that has been very exciting for me! We often find ourselves discussing something we've been reading or listening to (Brendan has an hour or so everyday to listen to podcasts while he commutes to work) which in turn leads to us figuring out that it applies to our life today too. I have been reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and sharing with Brendan some of what sticks out to me. He was excited one day when one of the podcasts he listens to was interviewing the author of this biography about the book! Brendan is not a big reader, but to listen to some of what the book was about was a great way for him to then be able to discuss it with me.

The other book I have been reading this month is One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Finding her blog a year ago is what lead me to begin my gratitude journal. I am only five chapters into the book but it is definitely helping me better understand my need for expressing gratitude to God and the role my gratitude journal plays in that. I highly recommend you pick this book up!

I hope you can rejoice in some of my gratitude over the past month:

624. an afternoon with new friends getting a foot massage
625. long holiday due to Chinese New Year
629. Pizza Express on the promenade at Stanley - yum!
630. blond-haired, blue-eyed girl in her red Chinese outfit
633. American friends coming over for lunch and games
634. online grocery shopping and delivery
635. routines developing
637. homemade cookies from friends - when you don't have an oven to make your own
642. making Valentine's Day cards with Charlotte
643. the Spirit giving me insight into my husband's heart/emotions/response

Blessings!

For the Zaxby's Fan

If you've lived in the Carolinas - or, heck, even driven through - you've probably seen and maybe eaten at a Zaxby's. If you've never even heard of Zaxby's and therefore don't know how yummy their dipping sauce is, then just trust me on this and try the following recipe.

I love perusing blogs and other recipe websites like AllRecipes.com and MyRecipes.com for new recipes to try. Not long ago, I stumbled upon a recipe for a Zaxby's-style chicken finger dipping sauce. Yummm!

Brendan and I really enjoyed Zaxby's when we lived in North Carolina, and we really liked the sorta spicy sauce, so I figured I would give the recipe a try. We LOVED it, so I thought I'd share it with you! Here goes...

Homemade Zaxby's Dipping Sauce

• 1/2 cup mayo
• 1/4 ketchup
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp. Worchestershire sauce
• black pepper

Mix first 4 ingredients together. Sprinkle on a layer of black pepper, then stir into mixture. Repeat. (I'm a black pepper lover so this makes me happy!) Let sauce chill for at least 2 hours. (This is SO important. I tasted the sauce right after I mixed it together and was NOT impressed. However, when we pulled it out to eat with dinner, it was really amazing...like I licked the bowl clean kind of amazing!)

Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

The Rain in Spain...oh wait, we're in Hong Kong now!

For the past week that's really felt like forever, it has been cold and rainy. During Chinese New Year the weather was beautiful and we were so spoiled. We had great ideas of going on outings to explore Hong Kong on the weekends, but there's not a whole lot to do when it's raining, so our plans changed.

Last weekend, we did venure out in the rain simply because we were all going a little stir crazy. But the only thing to do in Hong Kong when the weather's bad is shop...because Hong Kong is like one big shopping mall!

We live on Hong Kong Island, but decided to venture across the harbor to Kowloon to go to the appropriately named, MegaBox.



We had no other goal for shopping but to eat at IKEA for lunch...such yummy Swedish meatballs!

When we made it back to our apartment, some friends stopped by for games. We taught them (and Charlotte) how to play Skip-Bo.







These are the most exciting things we've found to do in Hong Kong when it rains - go shopping and play games.

Do you have any fun rainy day activities?

Be Blessed (Guest Post by Brendan)

If any of you know me (Brendan) well enough, you know that I struggle with the English language. I attempt to use "big" words when I do not even know the meaning, and that leads to it being out of context for the subject I am speaking of - or even better I may use the word correctly but it doesn't fit into the sentence very well as every other word would not score anything in a Scrabble game. I could blame this on a multitude of things, but I blame it on myself and my loathing of reading. It never really matter the type of book or what the cause was for, I have NEVER liked to read. Pizza Hut read-a-thons when I was a kid - I cheated to get the pizza at the end of the week. Book reports at any level of schooling - tried to rewrite the wording from the inside flap to pass as my own. Spanish class - what a joke - and we paid for that during our time in Spain.

So after traveling half way around the world and being in a location that readily has English available for me to read - my interest has sparked for Chinese. Not speaking it, as I have already learned my lesson with Spanish, but rather in reading it! It has to be one of the most foreign languages to that of English, but I am drawn to it by the numerous symbols that people tell me really do mean something. In my line of work there are a number of Chinese documents that pass through my desk and though I am years and years away from reading at a sufficient level, I still like to scan through to the document and look for the basic characters that I do know - mainly that an upside down Y is "people" and numbers 1,2,3 are horizontal lines that match their respective quantity. A couple other characters I can take a guess out and then after that I attempt to make it up based on what the symbol looks like. There is no alphabet to start with and I would guess that actually taking on the (insert big word here) would be way to much for me, especially because I have already admitted my loathing for reading. The only hope I have is that Chinese is made of pictures (characters) and I love looking at pictures to learn what they are about.

Take the title of this post - Be Blessed. The Chinese word for "blessed" is made up of four characters which describe the original blessedness of man. Wait, the original blessedness of which man - who could that even be referring to? Per the picture inserted below - one man in a garden, with the Divine!





I was shocked to learn the meaning of these characters. How is it possible? Adam was this man, created in the image of God and intended to enjoy an intimate relationship with Him - as a Christian this is an image of true blessedness, but to find it in a Chinese character has interested me greatly.

Through the past two weeks and our first Chinese New Year in Hong Kong, we experienced a lot of Chinese culture. This time of year is very important to them and many of the celebrations are in direct conflict with our beliefs. This new Chinese character that I learned was throughout the city on decorations and being shared amongst the people - though often times not based on the original intention of what it means to be Blessed.

DIY Blog Makeover

Did you notice something different with our blog today?!

About a year ago, I became a blog follower and not just a blog writer. Since then I have seen SO many different blog designs - super-duper custom designs; simple & sleek photo blogs; and fancy scrapbook-style blogs - to name a few. To be honest, there were times when I did covet other people's blog designs, but then I got over my blog-design envy and realized I just wanted to improve the look of our blog and make it a better reflection of who we are and what our blog is about.

I know very little about blog design, but thankfully there are many people out there who know MUCH more than I do and have crafted nifty little tutorials to teach others how to do different design elements. So, I'm just getting started on my do-it-yourself blog makeover. My first project was our new blog header - tutorial found here.

My parents blessed Brendan and I with an awesome DSLR camera for a joint birthday gift recently, and we wanted to find ways to use our pictures on the blog. My desire is to update our header regularly with a new design and, more importantly, new pictures.

You'll also probably see on-going little changes around the blog. We hope these changes make our blog easier to read and more fun to follow along on our God adventures!

The Best Fireworks We Never Saw

Hong Kong sits on a harbour - Victoria Harbor. Every night they have a light show in the harbour (which my sister-in-law, Erin, and I thought was nothing special) and HUGE fireworks displays on New Year's Eve and Chinese New Year.

We've heard that the fireworks for Chinese New Year actually out-do the ones done for "normal" New Year. Brendan and I thought we'd try to see the fireworks for Chinese New Year since they were scheduled for 8pm on Friday after New Year.

But...after Charlotte was not-at-all happy with the loud drums at the dragon dance, we decided that 23 minutes worth of extremely loud fireworks probably wasn't the best idea. Our apartment faces the opposite direction of the fireworks display, and we are on the eastern side of HKG island which is further away from the central part where the fireworks would take place...but Brendan ventured down the the 47th floor viewing deck to see if he could catch a glimpse of anything. He reported that nothing could be seen since a large hill was blocking the view.

Maybe we'll try to go down to the action and watch the fireworks next year. For now, we can enjoy some YouTube footage. Below is a clip of just the finale (~3 mins).

Our 1st Chinese New Year

Last week marked the beginning of the new lunar year, so we had the chance to experience our first Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.

My opinion is that the very best part of Chinese New Year is that last Thursday and Friday were public holidays! Yay! So, we had a nice long weekend with Brendan at home.

Our apartment complex has a large parking garage downstairs where they held a Chinese New Year festival with dragon dance (and other traditional blessing ceremonies that we are not at all familiar with). Since it was so close, we thought we might as well go down and check it out.

A sweet lady who Brendan works with blessed Charlotte with an adorable Chinese outfit, so we got Charlotte dressed up...

Then went downstairs to pose with the CNY decorations...

Then, to the parking garage for the festivities...

Some kind of blessing of the apartment building
was happening here

Dragon dancers getting ready

The group then proceeded to each tower to bless
each one for the coming year

We also found out that Charlotte has hit an age where loud noises and strange people dancing around in costume scare her...go figure! :) This was her response to our CNY experience...

There is much much more we would love to share with you all about Chinese New Year but will have to wait for future posts (which we really want to get around to doing!). Very intricate tradition is wrapped up in CNY that we only scratched the surface of this year.

It is by far the most unique cultural experience we've had in our past year living abroad.