Outings with Tammy

While Tammy was here we took turns with the adults going out since we discovered it wasn't so pleasant with the kids unless we were at McDonalds or Burger King. Who wants to come all the way to Singapore where they are well known for their food and go to MD or BK. Tammy and I went to a conveyor belt Sushi bar. They are constantly making fresh sushi and putting it on colored plates which are priced according to their color. So you watch as they go by and decide what you want. It was fun and we tried quite a bit. We actually went there the first day that both boys were in school(that's why we have Collin). This was nice because we were there early enough that the lunch crowd hadn't gotten there yet so we felt comfortable calling over the waiter and asking him what everything was whenever we had questions. I like sushi but I am actually a little shy as to what I have. I am actually not big on the raw fish kind (contrary to what many believe sushi doesn't have to be raw fish). It is fun going out with Tam because we are very similar in our taste and adventure.
On our evening out we went to this Moroccan restaurant(the weird looking things are hanging lights). We forgot our camera so we took pictures during another outing during the day time. I was sad because the ambiance was awesome. It would have been an awesome place for a romantic date, Tammy was the perfect date and well behaved.The food was also great. They also had something that looked similar to what you see the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland smoking. It smelt really good, kind of fruity but we didn't try it, we weren't that adventurous. The one thing we were disappointed about was you didn't sit on the floor and eat with your hands like we had seen in the movies (Sabrina and Along came Polly were the specific movies we remembered, both meals were dates). I had always envisioned my first Moroccan meal without silverware or chairs but it was a great experience anyway.
While Tam was here we wanted her to experience things besides the temporary housing. Tys took her to Little China and I took her to Little India. While in little India we did go to a wet market. This is where locals buy and sell things usually a little cheaper. This is also where you can buy very fresh food, both produce and meat. We felt uncomfortable taking pictures. It was very raw, as you walked through very narrow walk ways you could easily get sprayed with who knows what (pig, poultry, beef or fish blood and guts) as they hacked away at the meats. It was disgusting, it smelled bad and overall something I'll never forget. We both loved it!! This is another reason I could really travel with Tammy. We just felt like we got to experience Real things not just the tourist scene (note:even though it is very fresh I don't know if I could ever buy meat in this fashion). We also happened to find what we felt was similar to almost a huge garage sale. Some people were selling goods like purses, wallet, jewelry and electronics. But then some were selling used shoes, clothes, appliances. We found it funny the graveyard of random remotes, how many does he really sale? there is a picture in the upper left corner of the collage. The Indians are very into their gods and can create some very detailed buildings for worship which are quite amazing. I also have a few pictures of those. I just like the stair case on a building so that is just a random picture in my collage. Basically I just really enjoyed touring with Tam. I hope she comes back before we leave so we can do more traveling together. We all love her.

The Night Safari

So I think this is the only family pictures we have right now. I wish we were still living close to my friend Jessica because she has such a good way with the boys when she was taking our pictures. Anyway Tammy was still here when we went to the Night Safari so she took this picture for us.
We ate at Bongo Burgers while entertained by fire dancing. It was awesome and you didn't even have to pay to get to that point so you could just come for dinner and entertainment (I have a video clip later in this post). We ended up getting a family annual membership to the night safari, zoo, and a bird park.
The boys had fun posing with the alligator. We were able to see the animals in there more natural nocturnal state. We went in the bat area and they where flying all around you and they were eating fruit and fight each other for it. We also say many other animals. We will probably go again so might might post more about it later. They don't let you take any flash photography for the animals sake so no pics of real animals. Something else I remember is that they had really cool bathrooms. I didn't get pictures but I'll try to remember for next time. They had normal bathroom stalls and sinks but at the same time it was "outside" with cool plants and water falling. That is something that is so cool here is the foliage. You drive down the free way and there are all kinds of green tropical plants and trees everywhere.

Here are the fire dancing I was talking about, the boys really loved it. Hopefully they won't get any crazy ideas from it.

One of the cool things about the zoo and night safari (they are located at the same place) is that they are both less than 10 minutes from our house.

Just Stuff

Well in my attempts the first week in the house I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner. I roasted a chicken. I bought this and it was prepackaged. I saw the head but the feet were a surprise. I used a Pampered chef fluted stone pan which I had done in the states to roast this chicken. I did have to cut off the head and feet which wasn't to bad. It was cleaned out in the inside so I was able to slide the empty cavity over the post that creates the hole in the center of the cake. Roasted the chicken and all the fat drain to the bottom of the pan. We had a salad, green beans and backed potatoes finally my first good "normal" meal. It is hard not to eat out when you can get a good meal from the locals for less than (us dollars) 2.50 for their chicken and rice dish to about $6 at the most for more complex dishes (these are at the local food courts, not full on restaurants where you sit and get served). My favorites at my local mall are the pad thai or the green coconut curry with chicken both cost about 2.45 US$ each but a soda cost almost a dollar and they don't have free refills.

Here is a gecko on the celling in the kitchen. The first time I saw one I was doing dishes late at night and it was a black one. It raced out from under a towel and crawled up the wall it just startled me so bad. You see them quite ofter in the house probably at least once a week. They are good to have around because they eat bugs, especially mosquitos which can carry Dun gee Fever. Most cases around here it is the kind were you have extreme flu like symptoms. I here it is extremely painful to, all the way to the bones.
This is the only picture I have of Anna our helper. One of the boys took it so it isn't the best. She comes and helps me clean once a week. She is awesome!!! She is fast and very efficient. She can't understand why I don't have a live in helper. Since I have 3 kids and a whole house to run and take care of. I told it is very common in the states. Here you can't "cheat" on cleaning though. You really have to clean your house good because of bugs, mildew and other things. That means mopping at least once a week (the whole house, thats 3500 sqare feet and 3 flights of stairs, I was doing good to get the kitchen and entry done once a month) and deep cleaning bathrooms at least once a week (remember I have 5 now). So I do really need help. I posted earlier about this but here are some pictures. You have to switch on every outlet you use.
Here is the light switch and the switch to turn of on the hot water for the kitchen and the dishwasher. The dishwasher is outside the kitchen door which is a pain. I ended up buying a basket to keep in the kitchen and fill then carry the basket to the dishwasher once it gets full.
This is the front of our house the tree is in the middle of our "plot" (we have a green awning and our neighbors have a glass or plastic awning over our doorstep). we have very small garbage cans but they pick up the trash everyday. Our neighbors are Chinese you can kind of see their "worshiping thing" (it is horrible but I don't know what it is called). They burn ensense and leave offerings of stacks of oranges almost every day. They have so many potted plants that they have their garbage cans on our land. It's a little annoying when you have such little land. It was dirt but we just had someone put down sod for us and thats when we really noticed how much junk they had on our side. The guy that did our sod just drives around with a truck full of plants to see if anyone wants to buy anything. We bought a bunch of plants including orchids (purple and white), a lime tree and few other plants. He planted the plants we wanted planted for free and came back the next day with sod that we had asked about and some other "filler plants" like Mexican heather. They are very happy tho please you here, customer service is awesome. Something they always say is "can, can, can" as the shake their head yes.

Groceries

Here they have what they call provisioners, ours is named Richard (almost everyone has an english and native name and they usually use their english name). He calls me every morning to see if I need any groceries and then will deliver them to me later that afternoon. If it is on the island they usually can find it. This is a good resource because who wants to spend all day looking for tortillas or tartar sauce. I try to do most of my shopping myself still so I still get the benefits of walking to the grocery store, seeing what is available and getting a little more exercise. Surprisingly things don't cost much more through Richard, maybe 20-80 cents which is nothing if you take into account gas and time. They do import Dr. Pepper so we still have that bad habit in the house. But this is one of the things I keep stocked by Richard so I'm not carrying 12 packs home from the grocery store. It is funny because they open the box and put an imported sticker on each can put them back in the box and then tape it back up. I guess that is what you call job security.

THE HOUSE

I will post pictures of the house a little later we are still unpacking boxes and we don't even want to discuss what the guest bedroom looks like. I think I need someone to plan a trip out here soon to get me moving on that one. Any takers?

Staying Busy

Besides trying to adjust to cooking, cleaning and getting around and finding things there is a lot to do around here. There is a lot of groups through church and schools. I have found it it fulfilling enough to just do stuff with people from church so far. I have done exciercise (they meet for weight training on Mondays and ultimate frisbee on thursdays), Scripture study on Tuesdays, which usually includes some outing afterwards like lunch or to checking out a place of interest. Playgroup is on Wed (I currently have Anna come clean on Wed since Collin is a little young for play group still). Thursday I am taking a quilting class (I'm not actually sewing right now I decided to just watch and gain the knowlegde for right now). Here is the blog she has for the class if you want to check it out. http://kellyslearntoquilt.blogspot.com/ She is teaching us how to draft and do things I didn't know quilter did, Hello geometry. It always changes but there is usually something going on Fridays. We have soccer pratice and a game following practice on Saturday and try to do anything else that needs to be done (things like buy a vacumm). Sunday is Church and then we start the week all over again. Tyson doesn't usually get home till after 5:30 at the earliest and last night was a late night of around 9 so we don't do a ton in the evenings. Tyson thinks time goes by faster in Asia I'm starting to agree.

My birthday/our annivesarry

For our anniversary (12 years ago Aug 30th who would of thought I would be sitting in my p.j.s in Singapore blogging) we ended up go to dinner the night before with a coworker of Tyson in town from the states kid-free. For my birthday a few girls from church took me to lunch at a Subway that is located at the high school campus. In the US it may sound cheezy and cheap but here it was really nice to have such a normal American meal once in a while. The sandwiches taste exactly the same and they had the same cookies also which were really good. I also got a pedicure and someone watched Collin while the other boys were in school. A friend also brought me a bunch of orchids which were really pretty. The boys bought it a cake at the mall, I guess when you spend that much on a cake they give you candles also. I turned 32 so they had 3 large candles and 2 small. It was a chocolate mouse cake. Not only did it look good but it tasted good. Their pastries always look really nice or fancy around here but sometimes they are dry or somewhat disappointing. They also bought me a necklace from a nice jewelry store where they give you water just from walking in, it might have been that they could tell the boys were ex pact and expected they to drop down a lot lot of cash. All in all it was a good day but like all of our holiday and celebrations have been this past year, almost an after thought. I hope we can enjoy our future celebrations better, ie getting ready for the holidays and not just celebrating the day of in stress and caous. Note Hayden is wearing his Soccer jearsy. It cost $110 for soccer here but it included short, shorts, socks and soccerball.

The kids settling in

Collin is almost 4 months now and grabbing things including his toes. I think this is so cute. I don't think he truly knows what he is doing yet or can really control himself either. He is really fun right now, smiling all the time and giggling and giving a few belly laugh with a little extra work on our part.
We got him a bumbo chair (through craiglist, they have craiglist here also but the pickings are slim). He likes it and get exciting but most of the time he is in it, it results in major spit up. I don't know if he is using his stomach muscles, or he get overly excited. Does anyone else have this problem? I also wanted to share some of the sleeping positions I have caught Collin in. Babies are so cute when they are sleeping.

Hayden is playing soccer now. I haven't gotten the camera there yet maybe this week. He has really gotten into it this year. Last week he even blocked a goal really well one handed and made it bounce off the back of the goal. I was a bad mom and talking rather than paying attention. I did have many of the other parents comment and tell me about it though so it must have been impressive. Maybe our couch potato has hope. He does walk to and from school each day so that is good to. His eating hasn't changed to much like I was hoping they would. Unfortunately we have a McDonalds to close and convenient. They only have 2 drive throughs here in singapore but they do deliver. At this point I refuse to go that far and hope my children never find out about this option. We are usually there about once a week at the locatin in our nearest mall (about 5 minutes). He is doing great in school and loving it. He has an awesome teacher. Here is a link that his teacher post pictures from school and I think the kids will create some type of web page later this year. http://pseagle.sas.edu.sg/twilliams/

Ashton still has his issues. If he were to just go to bed I think that would help out everyone in the household. I did get a sleeping book to help us out (I'll try to post more about that later). We have started speech therapy someone comes to the house every Monday he has had only 2 sessions but he has done pretty well. He does really well at school also and loves it. His teacher is smitten by him. He gives her "cuddles" all day long (I love listening to her Australian accent). She is a great personality match for him it is awesome because she is a good balance of tolerating his activity and roughness (running into her for a tackle hug) and yet she is good at telling him when it is too rough or inappropriate to do things. We are still trying to work on his aggressiveness with Collin, although sometimes he can be so sweet. They really enjoy doing pick-a-boo with him right now. Ashton doesn't start soccer until November but he will probably be great at it and love it, he can't wait.

Vacation

We have planned our first vacation to Hong Kong Disneyland for Oct 7th. There is a holiday here so the kids have over a week off at school. We will fly home on the 12th. I hope it is fun and the kids appreciate it. I think my generation was the start of a really spoiled generation and our kids' generation is much worse. When we went to Sea world a while ago all the kids wanted was treats and stuff from the gift shop. Who cares about the huge whale jumping out of the water. We could have gone to the mall for so much cheaper.