Baby Wong (Caleb Wong & Caris Wong & Chloe Wong)

For those of you who don’t know, we are in Belize.  You may even know that we missed our plane Saturday morning, in case my poem/rhyme didn’t make sense.  Here’s a photo journal if we have the photos.

We were suppose to catch the 7am connecting flight to Dallas Saturday morning.  However due to poor planning, we barely missed the flight.  The next flight to Belize is the red-eye flight connecting in Miami.  We were always curious to see how our kids would handle the red-eye flight.  Looks like we get to find out.

The kids had fun at night at the airport.  We had to keep them up for the 9:25pm red-eye flight.  They were barely holding up.  When we get on the plane, Caris falls asleep in my arms rather quickly.  It is hard to hold her the whole time for almost five hours. Caleb, however, does not do so well.  The T.V. is on the whole time during the flight, and Caleb cannot peel his eyes off the television.  He’s captivated by it.  He only sleeps for 2 hours.  And the one rule we have with Caleb that we forgot about…  don’t mess with his sleep.

We have a five hour layover in Miami, so we’re hoping Caleb and Caris would just sleep at the airport. Caris does alright, although it is difficult for her to go and stay asleep.  Caleb, again, has trouble. It doesn’t help that there are birds flying INSIDE the airport.  But he just can’t sleep well outside his dark room.

<— See the birds?

Both kids are awake on the Miami to Belize flight.  It’s morning time for them even though they only got a fraction of the sleep they normally get.  And they’re hungry and it’s breakfast time.  And it’s only a 2 hour flight.  No point trying 2 hours to get Caleb to sleep for 5 minutes.  Caris still tries to find time to get some sleep whenever she can though.

The flight to Belize is not the final destination though.  Oh no.  We still have to fly to Ambergris Caye.  Big planes are not needed.  In fact big planes won’t fit on that airport.

I know some might be scared of these little airplanes.  But they are fun and exhilarating.  The trip doesn’t end there though.  A boat ride to the resort, and we should finally get there.

Now it’s time to lounge around.  It’s been a long trip to get here.

And it’s hot!

Very hot!

But we’re here.  And sometimes we just need to chill and zone out.  Guess what we’re doing here.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

We rented a golf cart the other day.  On our way back to our resort from town, this guy stops us in the road.  This guy happens to be one of those timeshare recruiter guys who offers you something in order to hear their spiel to buy a timeshare.  Normally they give you free breakfast or lunch or even cash.  We got $100 cash last time we were here.  This was different though.  Instead, he handed us this scratch off card like a lottery ticket.

Yvonne scratches her ticket gets one palm tree and 2 big X’s on her ticket.  I scratch off my ticket and I got three palm trees.  This is good, right?

Well, everyone is a winner here at Village Reef.  That single palm tree gets you $25 or something.  I don’t know the exact prize.  But the real winner here is the three palm trees.  We take a look at the back and that’s the big prize!  There are three possible prizes.  A) Caribbean vacation.  B) $1000 HP Laptop.  C) $700 US cash.  I want the cash.

However the choice is not ours to make.  There’s a “void if remove” part on the ticket will reveal what we actually won.  However, we’ll have to go through the timeshare spiel in order to claim our prize.

The next morning we go back to there to claim our free breakfast and big prize.  We meet up with Laura (who by the way was 100x better than the Williamsburg spiel-er).  We were not interested, and went on to collect our prize.  Guess what we got.

I could use a laptop or sell it.  The cash works even better.  But when are we going to be able to go on another vacation in the next 12 months?  Worst off it’s not redeemable for cash and non-transferable (unless authorized, whatever that means).  Hopefully we can sell this or give it away.  The place was nice though.

No Nexus One for me yet.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Yay, we got our suitcase yesterday night around 6:30 or 7PM.  The right one this time!  It came fresh off of a flight from Philly.  I guess our suitcase wanted to enjoy a longer layover than us.  

Yay!  Just got a call… they say they’re delivering our lost suitcase in an hour.  Praise God! 

Last Saturday (despite delayed flights, a 5-hour wait in Atlanta, and a last minute change in our destination airport), we arrived at our resort in Williamsburg, VA in the wee hours of the night. 

7 days later…

after enjoying Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg…

swimming nearly every day…

Caleb dealing with an incessant chesty cough (bad Virginia allergies?)…

Caris catching roseola…

Mommy (with Caris strapped on her chest) slipping on water in the Philadelphia airport…

Running through the Philadelphia airport barely making our transfer to L.A…

Arriving in LAX one suitcase short…

Coming home to cats that appeared to have never left our 100 degree bedroom (how much fur can 2 cats shed in a week?… a lot!)…

Yes, we are home.  Pictures and vacation stories to come if we have time.

We’re going to Williamsburg tomorrow for a week. Chris checked into our flights. We have 5 or so hours going to Atlanta, and then we fly into Richmond. Chris just told me that the flight is completely full. He couldn’t even find 3 seats together for our family. Oh my. This could be quite interesting. We were really hoping for an open seat so that we wouldn’t have to hold Caris in our laps the whole time. Now, we’ll just have to see if we can even sit together so that Chris and I can help each other out during the flight. Hmm, 2 children and 2 adults in a 20 square foot area for 5+ hours. The 1 hour car ride after the flights is starting to sound comfy to me.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Yes, yes… I know… we really are behind in our blogging.  We still haven’t finished blogging about our Hawaii trip. 

Our Hawaii Alarm Clock
I forgot to blog about one story while we on the Big Island with Stan, Bel, & baby Noah.  It’s memorable.  While we were in Hawaii, Caleb was our 6:30AM alarm clock.  No matter how late we put him to bed, no matter how many times he would wake up at night, he ALWAYS woke up at 6:30.  On our last Big Island day, Caleb woke up at 7:30AM.  When we saw the clock, Chris & I cheerfully got out of bed and praised our boy for sleeping in.  The pool opens at 7:30AM, so we decided to go swimming.  On our way to the pool, I pointed out to Chris that it’s a gloomy/cloudy day since it was still a bit dark for 7:30.  We get to the pool.  It’s locked, but somebody’s inside cleaning.  He tells us to come back when the pool is open.  We tell him that the pool is supposed to open at 7:30.  He looks at us and says something like, “It’s 7:30 already?  Oh no!!  I’m running late.”  Then he looks at a pool clock and tells us that it’s only 6:45.  What?!!!  We still have no idea how our bedside clock got changed.  It was right when we put Caleb to bed.  Oh well. 

Our Flight Home
We were running really late to the airport, so Stan & Bel came to help us return our rental car and get checked in quickly.  Our flight was with ATA.  Stan knew one of the ATA worker guys.  He was one of Stan’s high school friends.  Stan tried pulling some strings to get us ahead in this long, long slow line (since we were already late).  He found out from his friend that our flight was canceled (though nobody else in the line knew that yet as the flight was only announced as being delayed).  We got pulled out of the line with our luggage.  His friend got us onto the next American Airlines flight back to LAX.  Yay!  Go Stan.  It’s nice to have our Hawaiian connection.  Only a few were given tickets onto this AA flight.  Most had to wait until the next departing ATA flight (I think that was in the middle of the night or the next day).  And out of the ones who received AA tickets, we were the only ones who had our luggage.  You know why?  Because the Wong family was running really late and hadn’t checked in to our original flight like everyone else already had. 

Yes, Caleb and I got chosen to be personally security checked.  I guess we just look that dangerous. 

Caleb slept for only 30 minutes on this plane ride home.  He really had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.  We tried to make him as comfy as we could, but it was one fussy plane ride home.

Daddy even tried to help Caleb with his ear pressure by enticing him with a pacifier. 

We got back from Hawaii on Friday, 3/14/08.  We needed that whole weekend to unpack and decompress from our vacation before Chris went back to work on Monday.  Here’s Caleb helping us unpack.

Yesterday, I discovered that ATA filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 3rd and ended all of their passenger services to Hawaii.  Good thing this happened after our trip to Hawaii.  We probably couldn’t have afforded to pay for another set of airline tickets.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

We just spent the last 3 days on the Big Island with Bel, Stan, & baby Noah.  Here are some highlights and funny moments.

• We explored a lava tube and lots of lava rocks. The volcano here is currently active, so we were trying to go visit the site where you can see lava going into the ocean.  Well, let’s just say the boys were navigating and we found ourselves at a totally different spot.  But I must say, where we went was nice too… and probably heaps safer for the babies.  We saw the area of the last most recent lava activity (about 5 years ago).  Caleb was so fussy after not getting any naps and being in a car all day.  He wouldn’t be soothed in our arms.  Finally I had to nurse him while we walked to the lava site.  It was like carrying a sack of potatoes on a hike.   And, baby Caleb decided to have another poop explosion… this time all over mommy’s shirt and pants and the Ergo baby carrier.  It was quite impressive.

• On our trip, Caleb found himself a new toy… baby Noah who lays there like non-moving target.  Poor Noah.  Just wait ’til Noah can roll and crawl well.  He’ll be chasing after you, Caleb.

• Caleb fell asleep on the beach.  I put him down in his tent… and he stayed asleep!!!  well, it was for only 25 minutes, but it’s a first for him to go to sleep with lights and sounds without much of a fight.

• We wanted to visit a macadamia nut farm.  Stan found one on the internet.  We went there and found this house on a farm.  Very interesting.  Nobody else was there.  We got a nice personal tour of the mac nut trees, kona coffee beans, & avocado & banana trees.  We learned that bananas were originally eaten on the Island by only males.  Females would be killed if they ate this food associated with male fertility.  We found big spiders there.  Chris liked them a lot!  He wanted to take one home with us.

• Chris looks mighty cute taking care of 2 munchkins.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

[Video updated in last post.  Go watch it]

For those of you who don’t know, we’re in Hawaii now.  Before we came on the trip, we decided that we’re not going to have Caleb on his set sleeping schedule, seeing how it’s 2 hours earlier here, and if we ever want to do anything at night, he has to break his sleep routine.  And I must say it has not been as bad as I expected.  Still it hasn’t been good.

The plane ride was good.  Caleb slept for a little over an hour during the 5+ hour flight.  He played most of the time.  We made sure to bring lots of toys.

Caleb usually goes to sleep around 6-7pm and wakes up around 6am at home.  So here in Hawaii, that means he wants to sleep at 4-5 and wake up at 4am.  Not so good for him.  Not so good for us.  Since we’re changing his sleeping pattern anyways, we decided to keep him up the first night.  He went to sleep at 8:30pm local time the first night (that’s 10:30pm for him at home).  He was dead tired, and slept pretty well…  He only woke up once, but of course he woke up for good at 4:45am.  That’s a little tad early for us.  Again he slept at 8:30pm tonight. (He just woke up crying now at 10:52pm).  Hopefully he’ll have a good night the rest of the night.  Please God.  We like sleep.  We really do.

Even though Caleb still isn’t sleeping well, he’s trying.  He’s getting sleep wherever he can and without our help.  Much better than we thought he would do. 

Even when he’s not getting enough sleep, Caleb has been good for much of the last 2 days.  He’s usually terribly grumpy.  But he can just sit in the stroller for long periods and not say much at all.  What a trooper.

Of course, Caleb’s schedule isn’t the only one that is messed up.  Today we ate lunch at 3pm, not cause we weren’t hungry.  I wanted Hawaiian food.  But I couldn’t find any place that would be satisfactory for me.  What kept us from dying was eating sundaes and fruit and yogurt parfaits and McDs.  And of course our favorite, Peeps.

We did drove a lot today.  I, of course, was navigating, so that never turns out well, hence the 3pm lunch.  We finally found some authentic Hawaiian food at Wolf Gang Pucks.  Well not so much authentic, but it was still good nonetheless. 

We spent much of the day in Waikiki.  I finally got my Hawaiian food for dinner at 9:30pm.  Yum.

Other than that, we haven’t done too much.  Our condo is right next to the ocean.  We’re at the non-touristy side of the island.  The view is beautiful.

Must sleep now.  So tired.  Yawn.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite