We're home!

Family,

We arrived safely today from Hong Kong. Courtney and children picked us up. We check 5 bags (including the huge packed jar from Beijing) and carried on the rest. We needed two carts to haul all our luggage. Only one bag didn't make it with us and it has been found and will be delivered to our home this afternoon.

We left Hong Kong on Tuesday, Oct 30, 2007 at 12:30 and flew east through the rest of a day, a night and another morning over the international date line, arriving after a stop in SFO at PDX at 1 PM on Tuesday - the "same" day.

The house is beautiful and clean - Bryce cleaned all the carpets while we were gone! And Courtney and Bryce cleaned counter surfaces in the kitchen. We really have a wonderful home and it was such a pleasure to come home to this special place. Colors in the trees are vibrant now and were a pleasant splash to the senses. I fired up the spa, turned on the water heater in our west bedroom wing and we unpacked our Chinese jar and placed it on the fireplace threshhold where it looks great.

The grandchildren are playing in the house and sound happy. They were glad to see us.

Thank you, Mark and Elaine, for everything. It was a magical visit and vacation.

Here's a last word at about the photos I have sent to the flickr site to help you get the most of it. I like to go there the simple way to me -

1. just go to www.pixtonfamily.com and then click on one of the pictures. It will take you to the latest photos uploaded on the flickr site.
2. Regardless of which photos you initially see, click on the blue text to the right of the screen that says "tompixton's photostream". That will take you to a group of photos with the separate "albums" shown on the right of the screen.
3. Choose which group ("album") of photos to see by clicking on the album you want.
4. You will then see all the photos in that album grouped on the right and the first one in the set shown larger on the left.
5. You can look at individual photos by clicking on them - the title of the photo (if I had time to make one) will be at the top of the photo. However, I think the best way to look at the photos is:
6. click on "view as slideshow" . That will show the photos the largest and will move you through them pretty quickly. You can move your curser over the arrows to the right and left of the photo to move along or go back faster. Also
7. move the curse to the middle of the photo - over an "i" watermark and click it. That will reveal the title of the photo, which otherwise doesn't appear in the slideshow.
8. Lastly, another tip. You can press F-11 and the photo will displayed over the full screen. Press F-11 again return to normal display.

There. I hope that makes the photos more enjoyable and you can get as much of a kick out of them as I do.

love,

Dad