Sevark Central

We celebrated Cindy's 49th birthday today with all the family over for one of her favorite dinners -- home-made noodles and mashed potatoes.  That was always one of her favorite Sunday dinners...especially when Grandma Porter made it!  So we had it in honor of her birthday today.  In previous years we had been taking the family out to dinner at one of her favorite restaurants, but time as gone by and our family continues to get larger and larger, we have realized that it no longer works logistically or financially!  :-)  So now we have large family gatherings and enjoy one of her favorite meals.  Lexine asked me if I wanted to say anything about Cindy before we began, but all I could say is "this is one of her favorite meals, and if I say anything else I'll cry".  I could speak volumes about the wonderful wife and mother she was if I could contain my emotions when talking about her.  She made such a great impact on me and the kids lives and we'll forever love and remember her.  Another tradition we've enjoyed is giving the kids still at home a small gift from her -- which both Garrett & Caleb chose $15 cash this time for things they wanted to buy.  Just a special way to remember and honor her on her birthday.  Happy Birthday Cindy -- I'm sure you're laughing at how old we're all getting while you're forever 39.  :-) 

As I mentioned previously, as I get older and older, my greatest joys in life come from spending time with Lexine and my family and that was my favorite birthday present today above all.  But on this birthday I also got another special birthday present from Kami & Lexine -- they got me a Bike Trailer for toting around the grandkids.  I had been wanting to find one for quite a while now that Sadie & James are getting older.  Last night I had been looking at one online and Lexine noticed and texted Kami.  It turned out that Kami had been talking to that same seller as well and immediately told her, "There's someone name Toby texting you too and he's my dad and we're wanting to get that for him for his birthday".  They played along and texted me back that someone else was looking at it so they couldn't sell it to me.  So it was my surprise tonight to have Kami & Tim and Lexine give my that as my birthday gift.  But best of all (other than my hot fritos from Caleb :) was just sitting there with most of our kids and even having Noah be able to call from his mission to spend my birthday with...I sure love you guys.

For Spring Break we ask Caleb & Jonah what they wanted to do, which they replied Hong Kong...so since this was a little more expensive of a trip than usual, and not one that we would traditionally do as a family, we told them that we had enough points for the hotel & flights, if they paid the rest which would be about $300 -- we did this also so that we couldn't later be accused of taking them on a trip that nobody else got to do since they had to pay for it. The joys of parent hood and trying to keep everyone happy. :-)  We left Sunday morning very, very early...up at 2:30am to leave by 3am and catch our 5:20am flight first to Dallas, then go directly to the gate and get on our 16 hour flight to Hong Kong.  Wow was that a long journey, but a good experience for these boys who will be leaving to the mission field soon or within another year.


We left on Sunday and arrived on Monday afternoon...and from here I will copy Lexine's Instagram posts.

Hong Kong shenanigans. First couple pictures of us exploring the area around our hotel and trying to stay awake.😴Tuesday we tried out the Metro and walked around the city. We had an interesting experience at the Hong Kong temple. We stopped by to find out when the boys could do baptism. We planned to come back later after we had changed our clothes to church clothes. But they told us to come in right then and do them. We felt a little awkward being in the temple in jeans and T-shirt’s, but they told us it happens all the time and they rather have us in the temple. 😬We also met another girl there from Utah. Her family just moved to China and she was there with her grandma. They were doing a temple trip. Their first stop was Hong Kong and then they were flying to Taiwan that day to go to the temple there. It was a great experience. We had lunch at McDonalds and then came back for a nice nap.





Disneyland Hong Kong💜Today was the perfect day to go. Overcast and not very crowded. We basically walked on all the rides and rode some of them multiple times. It’s a lot smaller than California Disneyland, so we were able to finish the whole park in 4 hours. It was fun to have the boys experience this Disneyland and see some of the different rides they have. Loved all the different character Easter eggs too. Wonder if Disneyland in the states does this?








Thursday our good friend Moria came over from Shenzhen to spend the day with us. She took us to get real Chinese food. The boys were pretty good sports and tried a few different things.😂 She then took us shopping in Mong Kok. We got caught in a down pour, so while we waited Moria went and got us these super yummy creamy coconut drinks!🥥We took the ferry across to the island. After shopping and walking around Hong Kong we stopped for dinner. Moria really wanted to get us Hot Pot, but once we suggested Shake Shack she changed her mind. She heard that is was really famous and wanted to try it. Haha! 😅The boys were pretty happy about that. At the end of the day we took the Metro all the way to the end of the line to the China border. We wanted to show the boys the border and that there is a wall there. We had an awesome day with Moria.