Sammy's reaction

It's so great to have a child who is babysitting age now. She can totally help me with all of the other kids. I am so lucky. Here she is reacting to my 3 hours of misery...

Boys who think they're funny...and they are!

So, I think I started putting my boys to bed at about 8pm but at 11pm they were still getting out of their beds every 3 minutes and running around like wild animals. It is the life of a mother with a 2 1/2 year old. We're on Christmas break so any schedule that was ever in place is totally gone. So, one day he naps, the next day he doesn't, and then there's the days that he naps that he then has enough energy to stay up until midnight. Apparently, today was one of those days where the nap just recharged his batteries so that he can stay up and drive his mother crazy. Where is the dad, you ask? Seoul first and then onto Atlanta to see the latest Monster Truck show.
Yes, for those of you who haven't heard...Feld Entertainment has bought Monster Trucks! And guess who is going to single-handedly (I kid you not) bring these beautiful monsters to Asia? That's the latest dream of none other than Michael W. Daynes so look for future blog posts of where and when "The Grave Digger" and all of his bad to the bone friends are and when they are headed to a town near you or...me.
Back to the naughty boys...I did have a good laugh (and had to bust out the camera) when I saw Jack & Carson run and hide as I came up the stairs for the 50th time to put them back in their beds. Pretty good hiding spot...

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow (In Singapore???)

Every year in Singapore this mostly Muslim/Buddhist country decks out its downtown area for Christmas! It's great for us Americans (who actually celebrate Christmas) to add to our Christmas spirit. One of our traditions is to visit the SNOW. It's just bubbles coming out of machines but it really looks like the real stuff...especially in the photos. Just reach back into your memory bank for that old Brady Bunch episode where Marsha or Peter or one of the kids adds too much laundry detergent and the entire basement fills with bubbles...that's exactly what the Singapore snow is like!

Carson and Jack; supermodels

Dec. 17

The week before Christmas is crazy but I managed to "fit in" a modeling session for Carson and Jack on the beach in Singapore somehow.  My friend Sarah is a magazine editor so she set it all up.  You have to check out the photos of the perfect "family" Carson took the pictures with...the "dad" was from Spain and "mom" was from Australia.  The "sister" was my friend Jocelyn's daughter (she is Bailey's B.F.F. and moved back to the U.S. a couple of days after the photos were taken - we're all sad about that.)

Bailey & Wesley

Carson Halloween

This is Cars' at his school Halloween party - he was lovin' acting like a Wildcat all day.  He's so obsessed with High School Musical.  We can thank his sisters for that!

Halloween

Halloween in Singapore is different than the Halloweens I had as a kid.  When I was a kid my mom made us wear a turtleneck, jacket and leggings of some sort under our costume.  We had to roll out the door to go trick-or treating.  That made sense though - it was cold and damp on Halloween nights in Seattle!  In Singapore it is damp but that's only b/c you're sweating a river the second you walk outside in your costume.

This year was one of our best of the 4 Halloweens we've celebrated in Singapore now.  The first year we had just moved in a couple of weeks before Halloween and we heard that we needed a lot of candy.  So, we bought 1,000 pieces.  It was gone so fast that the second year we had about 1,500 pieces.  You get the pattern...this year we had 3,000 pieces ready to go.  Luckily for us Mike's company provided the candy this year.  The cases of lollipops with princess bookmarks attached to them were a big hit.  

We also had a huge Princess Sign in front of our house with Snow White, Cinderella & Belle on it advertising the 3 Classic Fairy Tales Live show that is coming to Singapore Nov.18-23.

  

We all had fun.  We had the same 3 families over for dinner as last year with the same menu: Pumkin, Chicken Noodle and Tortilla Soups.  Eating hot soup before trick-or-treating in Singapore is kind of pointless but I turn the air-cons on full blast so we feel a little bit of a chill as we slurp and it reminds me a little bit of those cold, fall nights in Seattle.

When everyone was tired of the crowds they headed back to our house for swimming and sorting through the candy.  There's a lot of sorting to do - what are people thinking giving out cough drops?  Mike jumped off of the second level of our house into the pool with his costume on which all of our guests enjoyed.  It was reminiscent of last Christmas Eve when Santa fell off his sleigh into our pool.