As you can see… she picked up where she left off at the club in SLC and then slept on me all the way to San Fran. However, in San Francisco, what we were doing kicked in and she started enjoying the trip. The second picture is at my traditional lunch spot for the trip… Firewood Pizza next to the gate we fly out of.
The flight was… well for lack of better words… LONG. But we watched movies, played games and enjoyed as much as we could.
Being Valentines… we thought the picture with the Diet Coke said it all…
We arrived in Manila at 11:10pm and took the trek to the pick up area and to meet Alson and Myla. Kiana chose to ride.
I’ve found that the best way to not have jet lag is to exercise and force yourself to stay awake that first day. So off to the badminton courts we went as soon as work ended the first day.
Kiana didn’t think my man cave was very cool… so she helped me pick out some new furniture. I didn’t have a night stand, coffee table… or anything. Wala… Jane the Bird Nester Jr. made my room perfect… no frills… but completely functional.
I’ve always loved that the room gets pitch black whether night or day and I crank the air conditioner to a frigid 60 degrees and hide in my comforter. It must have sat well with Bear because she’d get up at noon every day.
Kiana didn’t care for my typical breakfast (boiled eggs, boiled banana and coffee). But she thought it was sure cute that Mom (my Filipino mom :)) would bring me boiled eggs and boiled banana in the mornings.
She also loved hanging out with Amiel (Alson and Myla’s 5 year old son) when I’d go play basketball. They didn’t understand a word each other said… but it was a fun time for Bear because she’d also get to play video games with Myla. Their game of the time is Dynomite on Yahoo and of course they’d Farmville each other (“Myla… can you give me a turkey?” “Sure, can you give me three barrels of wheat.”).
This is Ron and Sheryl’s son Rouri who was a constant buddy of Kiana’s as well. I think he loved showing off his English… which is EXCELLENT… and might have had a small crush on Bear.
On Valentine’s weekend it was our goal to spend it at a nice beach… we tried and tried to book something but everything was sold out. So we went to Manila instead. We stayed at the Shangri-La on our local rate (thanks to my Philippines DL). It was a blast… we ate well, exercised, swam, laid out and read. This is a picture below from the Shang.
The end came too soon… we stayed at a what was supposed to be a nice hotel on the way out… NEVER AGAIN THERE. We had a full on flood on the 26th floor. I don’t know where the water goes in that situation but we had several inches of water in our room. We also had ants… dreaded Filipino ants… on the 26th floor. Those are some determined suckers. We moved rooms 4 times over the 2 days.
We did see lots of fun movies… we had to match the movie-going that Mom did at home. We also found
a new DVD vendor from whom we bought… oh… about… 20 (still in the theater) movies. 🙂 I’m pretty sure Kiana watched them all…
It was a great trip… a father could not ask for a better one on one experience with his baby girl. We had some great, in depth talks on this trip and became closer buddies. And all of this in the name of WORK.
Thanks for going with me Bearzy… looking forward to our next adventure already.
(sorry for the lack of pictures… we had taken a bunch on Kiana’s camera but I just can’t get them off it for the life of me!)
Okay, I love that Dusty does these great posts about the trips he does with your kids! How cute is that? I know some of my greatest moments growing up were one-on-one time with my Dad. Kiana will cherish these memories!
Wow! That is really special. I think one on one interaction with your kids is so important. You are an awesome daddy Dusty 🙂