W has convinced me to keep our blog "public", so it will remain public for now, but the link on the above right (Photo Album) will be reserved for private pics. To those that have emailed, I will be sure to send the password to you for access when we add new pictures. If anyone else wants the password, just shoot me an email (solbergs@gmail.com). Thanks again -- we look forward to having new pics to add!
B&W
So, we are pretty tired of saying this, but we are delayed AGAIN. It looks like April 23 is the new date. Bummer!
Since our pets are about to take a backseat to two little girls, I thought I would give them the spotlight for now. We love our dogs & cat. Everyone thought we were nuts for bringing them to Hong Kong, but I don't know what I would do without them. They are always happy to see us and comfort us when we are down. I think Nelly has frightened the whole Southside at one point or another, but that's part of the fun. Enjoy the pics of Nelly, Norma & Willis.
New ceremony date of April 2, so we will travel there on April 1 and see where we go from there. It seems to be pretty set this time around. More soon!
Well the chance that we would leave tomorrow has sufficiently dwindled out. We are, in fact, DELAYED! We hate to actually say it, but did expect it.
Yuck! We will let everyone know the "new" date as soon as we are confirmed. We really hate waiting!
Well, we are mentally set to go, but are fully anticipating a delay. The families that traveled before us were planning for a G&R on Wednesday, but are still waiting for the ceremony to actually take place. They are hopeful for Monday, but it may be Tuesday before they get their babies. (Keep them in your thoughts.) All part of the ride, I guess.
My only hope is that we find out about the delay before we travel rather than after. We have the luxury of being pretty flexible with our flights, so hopefully an upfront delay doesn't affect us too much. Here's hoping to no delay. On a positive note, our agency has spoken with the DIA and there are no other bigger concerns at play. All of our paperwork & the babies paperwork has been cleared. It is simply a matter of scheduling at the provincial level (or at least that is what we can figure).
Hopefully we will know more early next week. Will keep everyone posted.
Now we are on number 5,6 carseats. Mothercare did agree to exchange my carseats after I explained to them that any mistake I made in purchasing items from them was amplified times two, given their ridiculous return policy. Trying another one now, the Maxi-Cosi Cabrio. After I made the sales lady walk it out to my car to make sure it fit, we are now carseat owners again. Someone needs to introduce Hong Kong to a "no questions asked" return policy. All this crap is made out here, so it's not like they have massive stocking issues. The problem is that all the brands are either UK, Aussie or US, which means they have to ship from there.
My other rant relating to China is the pollution it is causing in this area. The haze was awful today in Hong Kong! We are supposed to be moving out of the cooler, cloudy/hazy days into the hotter than hell, but at least clear days. I honestly don't think it is going to clear out this year. When does it end?
So everyone wants more info - quite honestly, we don't have any more info and probably won't until we are in VN. We did book our plane tickets to Hanoi yesterday so at least we are getting in the country. As for getting out of the country, we are going to wait until we know more about our schedule to book our tickets.
Here's the lowdown -- we need the girls to enter Hong Kong using US passports, not their VN passports, in order to get them HK visas that match ours. So, that means that I have to return to the US BEFORE entering Hong Kong. Yes, only 2 hours away from home, yet I have to fly around the world to enter. I guess the brightside is that we won't be jet-lagged while in VN and Wit can easily leave if needed.
What are we doing in the meantime? We are going to Ho Chi Minh City this weekend to take our mind off the wait. A little retail therapy that VN cures really well. And then we really only have 1.5 weeks until we go back to VN.
On another topic -- I think folks at Britax seriously got something wrong with their First Class car seat. It is a UK model. When it is installed rearward facing, the diagonal seat belt strap crosses right thru the place where you need to put the babies. It is by far the stupidest design I have ever seen, mainly because the seat sits so high off the car seat. We would have to unbuckle the seat every time we needed to put a baby inside. Maybe it is because the backseat of our car isn't enormous and the car seat sits really high, but they could have seriously thought about this a little more. So, I went to a friend's and tried putting it in her larger car. Same conclusion -- complete crap. The only reason I complain is that HK has this really awful return policy, where they DON'T. This is one of my biggest pet peeves about HK. You can't return anything here. If you can, you maybe have 3 days to do it and you only get store credit. Then when you argue with them (which makes me feel better), they get worried but do nothing about it. I am at war with Mothercare. Oh, and you can't try it in your car before you buy it. That is today's project -- get the car seats returned. Ughh!
We on officially on the books! We actually have 2 ceremony dates, March 23 or March 26. Apparently, the province has a lot of ceremonies to process on the 23rd, so they scheduled the 26th as an overflow date. Our agency is trying to get one firm date, but at least we are officially on the schedule now.
