How quickly time flies by.
Veronique is already 6 months old at a healthy 8kg (the weight Jack-Jack was at around 10.5 months of age), and she is certainly very keen to explore the world - sitting up and crawling at before 6 months, and now she's even interested to see the world from a new perspective by practicing standing up while holding on to things, the first stages of cruising and walking.
Jack-Jack is also developing into a fun age. His language skills is going through explosive growth, being able to speak and reason in full sentences, and able to switch back and forth between English and Mandarin, although his Chinese is still much better than his English, reflecting on how we have been trying to speak Chinese to him most of the time. The tantrums have subsided a little, and it seems that he's slowly taking in our reasonings. It's amazing to think what we are doing are shaping the lives of these two little creatures, and what a rewarding experience that is.
This year is our year to settle into our lives as a family of four, and travel around before our moves into NZ by the end of this year. We already spent 3 weeks in Hokkaido, Japan in June, and another 3 weeks in Taiwan seeing family and friends. The Japan road trip was a great holiday for us - escaping the summer heat in HK and Taiwan, enjoying the fresh and amazing produce/food in Hokkaido, and relaxing in the onsen all around Hokkaido (well, relaxing in a relative sense, it is certainly hard to really have a tranquil onsen experience with two kids). It was also great to see family in Taiwan, given us a little break from the constant child care as my aunt and dad takes over the role of playing with Jack-Jack and Mic and I can have a little time to ourselves. On our 13th wedding anniversary we were able to have a little coffee date on Yung Kang Street and have a little chat without the constant interruption of kids.
Our next trip is 6 weeks in Mauritius to attend mic's cousin's wedding, and then another 2 month trip to the US for another two weddings of my cousins. We often reflect on how meaningful our lives are now being able to spend time on what really matters in our lives and how extremely lucky we are to have come to the realization of what we want. It is certainly not a conventional life, but the direction just seems right as things fall into place so effortlessly. Our December trip to NZ will be for three months of househunting, and hopefully settling on a future home of ours. And a friend whom we have only met twice had so generously offered their home for us to stay until we find our own. The NZ dollar has also continue to fall against the dollar making economical savings to our move later this year. I jokingly said Veronique's arrival, thus delaying our move, had already proved to be providing us with our 2015 expense funds because she saved us so much money by delaying our currency exchange. God will provide, and he certainly does.
2015, a year of living out of our suitcase (or half a year since its only from June onwards), mentally saying goodbye to the HK home which we have set up for ourselves.
Onwards.
