Pre-Christmas at Willy's

While traveling in Asia can be very affordable, it's not so affordable when you multiply the travel times six. You might get affordable flights but not affordable hotels, so it takes a bit of fancy planning.

New Zealand was the preferred destination for this Christmas break. Everyone agreed. Forrest would be home from Laos and it was going to be great. BUT, New Zealand at Christmas is NOT off-season. It is very much high-season and crazy expensive. Not in the Holcombe budget.

Instead, we found Willy's Beach Hotel in Boracay, Philippines. Definitely in the Holcombe budget. We were all hopeful 😬

And, yes, Boracay is beautiful. I loved having everyone together. Ellis and Forrest were back together attached at the hip, literally.

Caving somewhere near Boracay

These seats were shaped like hands. This just makes me smile.

Forrest - 27ft jump into the sea

It looks easy until you stand on the edge of that piece of board

Ellis' jump - 21ft into the sea

Triple jump

Mom's jump - 21ft

Taylor's jump - 15 ft

Claire's jump - 9 ft

We would see these beautiful sand sculptures each day and watch the artists sit by and wait for someone to pay for a picture to be taken (the artist takes your money and then uses your phone to take the photo).

So, Forrest and Ellis, being the little boys they are, decided to build their own. It was much harder than they expected.

 

Sailing on rough seas while sitting on fishing line and holding on to each other was an adventure. 

It's not a holiday until somebody ends up in the local clinic. After our high dives, Taylor got a nasty ear infection. We tried to remedy the ear from what we brought along, but she was in loads of pain (not evident in the photo) so we made the visit. When we saw the doctor he asked about the pain. I told him I tried a few remedies at the hotel by being Dr Google (trying to make a joke) and he said, "Oh, you're a doctor." YES.

Yes, I brought the Christmas sunglasses.  We would be back in Hong Kong before Christmas, but I was in the spirit (Claire was not).

This is not funny to anyone else, but for us, it was priceless. Forrest is so Type A and never forgets anything. Actually, we look to him to keep everyone in check. But, this time, we got off the bus at the airport and he didn't have his backpack. To his credit, he was helping us with all the luggage AND he noticed really quickly that he didn't have his bag, AND he was mortified that HE had forgotten. So, he ran after the bus while we went on ahead. I think Ellis got the most joy out of this moment.

Forrest has plans to get a tattoo someday, but it has true meaning, as usual for him. He wants to have the heartbeat line of the first person he saves with CPR. 

While on the beach, Forrest had a henna tattoo of a basic heartbeat line, as a test. Jeff and I thought we would be funny and get the henna tattoo across our wrists (starting on one wrist and ending on the other) as if we had one heartbeat. This really embarrasses our children.