Emily Le Ireland

Friday afternoon, to her great surprise, Huyen gave birth to a baby girl. The great surprise being that she came four weeks early. David and Huyen went in for a regular checkup on Friday morning to see if the baby had turned, otherwise she would be a breach and they would have to do a C-section. Except after the ultrasound the doctor was concerned that there wasn't any fluid in the amniotic sac, which can be dangerous. So the delivery schedule was moved up to that afternoon, and at 5:40 David & Huyen were parents. We showed up at the hospital at 5:45 and about 20 minutes later they brought Emily out and put her in an incubator. We were behind the glass but David got to be right there. So we got to see her when she was only about 30 minutes old. Huyen didn't even get to see her for more than a couple minutes for a few hours after that. We stopped by the next day to bring Huyen some home cookin', good Vietnamese food that Dung cooked up. Emily's all wrapped up like a burrito now and we couldn't see too much of her, but she's got all the parts in the right places and a good head of hair to boot.

Ko Man Nok

Another weekend away last week but a little closer to home, the island of Ko Man Nok. It's just a couple hours south but not well known. It's a tiny little island, only one little resort on it with room for about 60 people. We found a trail and walked around the island in about 20 minutes. Right at the spit there's an excellent beach with little salas scattered around. The salas are perfect, little houses set up very comfortably for 2-3 people with pillows to lie back on and watch the ocean. Not much to do on the island but with about 16 of us we ended up playing poker all night the two nights we were there. During the day it was just hang out and relax, throwing the frisbee, baseball and swimming around.

Big 40

Yes, August 3 was the big day. Four decades. In the end nothing changes of course, just a new set of numbers. But Dung put together a great party that made it a lot easier to cross the threshold into the 40s. And once again we made it a late night. Mike Riley got the above caricature made, pretty dang good, I thought. It's supposed to be Dung in the background but the artist didn't seem to know what Vietnamese looked like so just did her as Chinese. The Ambassador part was a nice touch....

Hong Kong weekend

A few weeks back we went off to Hong Kong for a long weekend to surprise Liza on her birthday. Five of us flew in on Friday night, met Liza and Peter at the MTR station, got a good surprise out of Liza, then went out late. Saturday night was the latest night of all, out til 0500 at the Lan Kwai Fong festival. They basically blocked off a street for a few blocks and made it into a big block party. But we ended up just staying at one place (but wandered around the street, too). And then all of a sudden it was almost 5:00, the latest we've been out in quite a while. Credit where credit is due for Liza who's got a two month old, and even more for Peter who had to take care of her while Liza was out partying.