Aiden's party (invite)

Aiden's party was, I thought, a bit of a dog-show; so we were managing children, (18 of them) - whew.  I wasn't in the mood to take pics of the little buggers by the time it was in full swing - so the best I can do here is the invite, and its evolution - colours by Aiden - text by dad (though not really my choice of title - sounded like a Hugh Heffner bash - but Aiden and Ange were hung up on the Easter thing, and there was nothing that could be done.

One by Ange

Earlier months of this year

This is a catch up blog post - my apologies - I've done next to nothing for a good while - so these are the things that I snapped but hadn't yet posted (I thought they should be b/w to give them that historic look).

  We set out to climb High Junk Peak one lovely spring morning - here are the boys at the start of the path - lovely speckled light coming through the forest canopy.


In the pic below, Ange and Ev coming up to the saddle. [Grr - I have no idea how to get this formatting to work properly - so the writing might not exactly be where it should - punishment for the backlog hey].

Below that, Ev on the bench at the top of the saddle, looking over HK Island   

   

Ev and I take a break half way up. Huff and puff man - from the trees in the background I've been lugging the not so little dude.

The top of High Junk Peak, at the trig beacon. The air is good and chewy. If you look carefully next to Ange, you can see an island in the sea.

Aiden at the temple in Po Toi O

One morning we took a walk from our place to Po Toi O (about an hour).  On the way we stopped to watch a flock of radio controlled aeroplanes - loved this pic of Ev (who loved the planes).

I did a kitchen photo shoot for Ian who has a kitchen business starting - this was one of them - tough things to photograph, you wouldn't think so, but they are.

Another tricky thing - Jordan doing hand-stands.  Jordan went through a stage of doing at least a thousand handstands a day - any place.  In the first attempt (tricky of course because you are not looking through the camera) I managed to get myself more than her. 

This turned out best - nice grubby little kickers there Jord :-).  The pic below is completely unco-operative - so it's caption comes here - Ev, delighting in the Spring's first beach visit - nice chilly water - not to be deterred.

Desat portraits in front of the speckled wall

I've been massively preoccupied by this challenging job - but at last have got it together to do some pics - upredictably they are of ... the boys; in this case some desaturated portraits - hope you like them (of course I've long since given up the volcanic rages so tempting as a result of not being able to get them to align properly, so ...)

Mattahorn flyby in helicopter

Reproduced Mu Tian Yu Great Wall photo

Josh and Mia on The Great Wall

Impossible to comprehend the scale of this thing until you walk on it (Josh and Mia the only two people visible on it grinding their way up in the pic above give some idea of the dimensions) - gruelling stuff - distances and gradients are massively deceptive - dispite the temperature, a chilly -4 degrees ambient with a wicked wind driving the experienced way down - we ended up wanting to strip down to shirt-sleeves - which Mia did for a while (brrrr) - and on this section we were reduced to using all fours. 

Apparently the whole project was started by the Chinese in the 7th Century BC, with different dynasties keeping the project rolling through the centuries (an amazing comittment).  Josh read that the wall as a whole is over 6000kms long (Hong Kong to South Africa is 10000kms - so quite a feat). 

We had walked from beyond the point visible in the top right of this pic).

The pic below is taken from the top of the furthest tower we were willing to climb to (a "new" one, built in 1400) and there was an old Chinese battleaxe selling Snickers bars, bottles of water, Coke, (as well as Chinese Red Bull and beer for the clinically insane) at exorbitant prices (three chocolate bars, a coke, and two bottles of water = RMB135 (R150) - which we were more than happy to pay, particularly since lugging them up there seemed to make the price fair) - but everything turned out to be frozen solid.  Frozen Snickers taste great however.

On the way back to the cable way that mercifully takes you up to the wall the sun was behind us so the lovely muted winter colours were easier to capture.  Nice pic of Josh and Mia below - close to the last tower before the cable-way (and I think pretty exhausted).

The final pic below is of the landscape around - super rugged and forbidding.  People who wanted to pick fights with the Chinese would have had to cross these mountains first, before arriving at the fortifications themselves.  Apparently with some of the Chinese emperors you did this very much at your peril, because some of them were fond of sending their captured enemies off to the wall to work until they died; then their bodies were dumped into the wall itself and built over - so while you are cussing away as you slave along it, you can be mindful of the souls of the departed who built it smiling up at you enjoying the last laugh. In the top right is an old piece of the wall, that at some point was abandoned and a new section was built around. 

Camping at Mils beach

It's been an age - but all work and no play...  Yesterday was a public holiday in Hong Kong, and after lunch we packed up (an unbelievable amount of stuff) and went camping on mils beach for the night with Tracy and Simon and the Overtons and the Manns - it was very cool - and I think the boys had a great time.  Last time we went we got absolutely grazed by mozzies - so this time awnings and mozzie nets instead of tents - which worked really well.  The boys were up at 6am and into castle mode on a tide swept beach - we managed to set up in a tiny corner that remained dry following an unusually high tide - a relief that.  Hope you are having a good time - looking forward to seeing you in October - hoping that you're still on for Hong Kong in Dec - if so I wanted to chat dates with you and will wizz you a text tomorrow.

Ev gets down to business in the late afternoon sun

Getting things organised at dusk - the boys get ring side seats for Simon's fire - very exciting stuff for them.

6-odd am - beautiful morning - in their pj's the boys are back at it, Ange chats to Courtney, Allie and Jordan

Close shave with the tide - the only part of the beach that was not underwater in the night was where we'd set up.  High tide was at midnight - not a nice thing to be dealing with at that point.

Allie and Jordan contemplate the little stream and lagoon at the back of the beach - I liked it for its lovely green colour.