Christmas Stay-Cation (Part two!)

That other post was getting too long so here's part two:

Some other fun things we did included:

ICE SKATING! I took all 5 of my kiddos to the ice rink for some good old fashioned ice skating! I was surprised that all 4 of the "big kids" LOVED IT!!! Especially...JACK!

He doesn't look happy in this photo...this is actually his sad lip...but he was a happy boy on the ice! He skated around all by himself with one of those metal bars that you can push around for beginners. He skated the entire two hours without any breaks! We went skating with several other families and my cute friend Emily watched Skylar for me and loaned me her skates so that I could skate around a bit with Jack. He surprised me the most because he's my kid who loves to sit home and play the Wii but I guess skating is one of his passions now!

Sammy & Bailey were in heaven over the Christmas break because they had so much time to hang out with their friends! Both girls had a game night at our house with their friends who were in town. Sammy's friends had fun dressing Skylar up as a princess. Here she is donning all her jewels:


These are some of Sammy's good friends:
Holly (from Colorado), Ashlyn (Danville, CA), Jessica & Amanda (Utah) and Morgan (Indiana).



Bailey also had a game night at our house one night. Her friends played Dance Party 2 on the Wii the entire time!!!

We also went to the Singapore Science Museum with friends:




We hiked the TREETOP WALK at MacRitchie Reservoir. This is an 11 km hike that is very famous in Singapore. It's not an easy hike for a four and a half year old. So here are some of the kids faces before the hike when they heard they'd be hiking 11 km's in the heat, with only our family, no friends along to make it more fun, etc!


We took a shortcut so that we were able to cut off 2.6km's of the hike by having Mike drop us off as close to the trail as possible and then park the car and walk to catch up with us. We had a great time and Jack walked the entire way without ever asking to be carried!
We were harassed by monkeys along the way!
There is a very cool bridge to cross suspended by metal cables up in the air. It is a free-standing suspension bridge spanning Bukit Peirce and Bukit Kalang, the two highest points in MacRitchie.

At 25m above the ground, the walkway gives you a closer look at the canopy, where all the action takes place. Here, you also have a better view of some forest birds; Colugos (flying lemurs) and Long-tailed macaques (monkeys); view trees from an entirely different angle and enjoy a panoramic view of Upper Peirce Reservoir. Some 80 species of birds and 18 rare trees have been spotted in the forest.





Notice the monkey behind Carson:


Here's Jack at the end of the hike. He's touching all the Touch-Me-Nots and watching them fold up!




Here's some of us again toward the end of the hike. Everyone looks pretty hot but happy!

Here's one of the monkeys...ready to harrass us!


Everytime we stopped walking and tried to take out a snack a monkey would hear us and show up out of nowhere to try and get his share! I'll never forget Bailey's face as we were walking down some stairs. She yelled, "dad, turn around!" and her face had a look of terror just like as if in a horror movie! Mike turned around to see a monkey following us and ready to pounce. He hit it with a plastic bag of water bottles and that kept him away from us for the rest of the hike!

Carson and Jack made Gingerbread Trains and decorated them: They were fun to make and delicious to eat!!!

Daynes Family

Here's the latest photos of the Daynes Fam. We had them taken at the Chinese Gardens...about 15 minutes drive from where we live. We saw 2 huge monitor lizards cruising around while at our photo shoot.

Luckily, you can't tell how much we were sweating from these photos. However, I think our hair tells all. I blow-dried straight my hair, Sammy & Bailey's hair right before we left the house to take the photos...so you can tell what the humidity does to our hair by looking at these photos!!!










(This monitor lizard had something stuck in its mouth.)



This is Jack-Jack. He's 4 years old. If you're trying to find this guy around our house you would look first by the computer, the Wii or an i-phone. He is all about electronics and loves figuring out how things work. He also really likes airplanes and anything construction-related.






This is Carson. He's 7 years old. If you're trying to find this guy you would just follow the noise of a ball bouncing or being thrown against a wall. His hands are always full b/c he's holding a basketball or football. You could also look outside by the basketball hoop. He could be there shooting baskets while also occasionally jumping into the pool. He is probably in the pool bugging Bailey and her friends which is one of his very favorite pasttimes.

He could also be up at SAS watching one of the high school football games or basketball games. Ask him what the score was of a game in the past two years or so and he will most likely tell you who was playing, what the score was and definitely who won.



This is Bailey. She's 10 years old. If you want to find her just call one of her 500 friends and they can tell you where she is. Most likely she can be found in our pool with at least 2 other friends. She could also be outside organizing a Capture the Flag game for all the neighbor kids for after dark.

If you can't find her in one of those places then she's probably trying out a new hairstyle or planning out her outfit for the next free dress day. She might also be listening to Taylor Swift or singing Justin Bieber songs with her girlfriends.

The last few places to look would be on a soccer pitch, softball field or in one of the SAS pools. This girl gets a ton of exercise and socializing while out playing one of her favorite sports.




This is Sammy. She's 13 years old. She can be found at the library or on her bed reading a book. The book she can be found reading is definitely from the Fantasy genre. It is most likely Percy Jackson related. Or if it's really late at night she may be sneaking a little Book of Mormon reading in before midnight (her beehive class has a goal of reading the Book of Mormon every day!)

If she's not reading a book then she's probably on the computer looking up information on Percy Jackson books or Percy Jackson movies. The music playing in the background would definitely be Taylor Swift, as Sammy is a big fan of hers and knows the words to every one of her songs.




Lastly, this is Mike and I. If you're looking for one of us we're probably asleep because we're so exhausted from running after these 5 all day. Mike is dreaming about when he can play golf next and I'm dreaming about relaxing on a beach in Maui.

Mike could also be found planning an amazing activity for our ward, stressing about work-related issues in China, coaching one of our kids sports teams or doing P90X.

I might be found taking care of Skylar, checking e-mail (never-ending), blogging, planning an activity for my activity-day girls or going on a walk with one of my girlfriends.

That's our fam in a big ole' nutshell! Now I don't have to do a Christmas card letter!





BTW, Skylar is almost 4 months old. She can be found sleeping, rolling from her back to her front, slobbering everywhere or receiving kisses and hugs from her older brothers and sisters!

You had a bad day...

These are the many faces and personalities of our guy Jack-Jack lately.

In fact, I had a terrible day with him the other day and I need to write it somewhere before I forget. I am writing about this so that I can read it on other bad days and remember that I actually survived worse days!

It was a typical Friday (Nov. 19). I was running from place to place trying to be Supermom. I stopped by Bailey's 5th grade classroom for a U.N. Day lunch. (Bailey wanted Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars so I dropped them off at her classroom.) Next there was am assembly for UN Day so I decided to head down to the pre-school to pick up Jack a little early so he could attend the assembly with me and watch Bailey. (FYI, I also had cute little Skylar with me, 3 months old now.)

When I was picking up Jack his teacher happened to tell me that he'd been a bit of a "Class Clown" the past couple of days and not really behaving too well during Circle Time. This was the first time I'd ever gotten a negative report about Jack from another adult.

I thought about this information as I walked with Jack and Skylar back down to the intermediate school to see Bailey's assembly. My friend Jocelyn saved me some seats in the assembly so I was able to sit with Jack on my lap and Skylar next to me in her stroller.

It didn't take long before I realized that I'd made a mistake in bringing Jack to Bailey's assembly. He was disruptive from the get-go. I made an even bigger mistake of promising a friend that I would videotape the assembly since she couldn't attend herself.

Skylar began crying in the assembly and I knew she was hungry, Jack was acting up and messing around so I knew I had to take some action. So, I took both kids out into the hallway. Jack laid his body down on the ground and the vice-principal of the intermediate school offered to hold Skylar. I let him hold her while I tried talking to Jack. By this point he was flat on his stomach in the middle of the hallway, making whining noises. Nice. His teacher, Ms. Nancy, actually walked by and tried to speak to him and all he would respond with were some kind of whining noises that can be heard all too well by human ears.

I talked to Jack and he finally told me that he would be good if we went back into the assembly...the one that I was supposed to be videotaping. Unfortunately as soon as we went back in, Jack started messing around; climbing on the bleachers and talking loudly so we were back out in the hallway in another 3 minutes.

This time I put Jack at the top of some stairs and told him he needed to take a time out. Then a friend of mine took Skylar into a music classroom and so I decided to take that free moment to sneak back into the assembly and videotape the last segment. This would turn out to be a bad move on my part.

The next thing that happened was my friend Jocelyn told me that Jack was at the bottom of the stairs and was hysterical. I ran down as fast as I could and found Jack's principal trying to hold him as he was having the biggest tantrum I have EVER seen from this boy and quite possibly the worst tantrum I've seen from any of my kids. The interesting part was that he was having it for the principal and a whole bunch of teachers who had gathered around and were trying to help. Usually my kids save this kind of behavior for me.

I grabbed Jack and took him to a private spot where he continued to freak out. I tried settling him down but he got away from me and began running as fast as he could toward the intermediate school. I caught up with him and strapped him into Skylar's stroller. He did not settle down until we were at home snuggling on the couch.

I'm still trying to put the pieces of this mental puzzle together and try to figure out why Jack had such a major breakdown. The only things I can come up with is that he had been up too late at night the past few nights (a big problem in our house!), he also mentioned that he was swinging on the tire swing that day at school and he got "tire sickness" (that is how he worded it so I think he means he got dizzy) and the biggest one that may have tipped him off is that because he couldn't see me or Skylar he may have thought that we left without him.

The whole experience was just so weird and so out of character for Jack that it left me feeling completely drained. I seriously felt like I'd just run a marathon after this whole experience. Well, at least a half marathon. I felt so helpless and stressed and confused and worried about what in the world was going on in this little boy's head? Was it a delayed reaction to the birth of Skylar? What? Had I not been giving him enough attention lately?

After going through this whole scenario with Jack's teacher and his principal after the whole ordeal I really appreciated the advice from both of them...don't make too big a deal about this...he just had a bad day. We all have them and we probably want to react the way Jack did but we can't...he reacted the way a 4 year old knows how to react. He just had a bad day.

Halloween 2010

This year was not our typical crazy Singapore Halloween...it was crazy times two! Since Halloween was going to be on a Sunday this year we tried to celebrate it on Saturday instead of Sunday but because Halloween is such an extravaganza in our neighborhood here you really can't avoid it...so it became 2 days of Halloween instead of 1. Also, if you count the kids dressing up for school on Friday and having all of their Halloween parties at school it really was 3 days of Halloween!!! 3x the costume wearing, 3x the junk food and 3x the candy!!!

So Saturday night 18 families from our church, who also live in our neighborhood, had trick-or-treating. We had our friends, The Dimonds and Blake & Jane Moore, over for dinner, then we headed out with a list of addresses and trick-or-treated to the 18 houses participating. As we walked around many families came out of their houses with confused looks on their faces asking if trick-or-treating had been changed from Sunday to Saturday. We replied that it was still on for Sunday it's just that we were getting a head start!



So here we are Saturday getting ready to head out...Mike is a horse-head, Becky is a Wal-Mart greeter, Sammy is Anabeth (from her fave book series, Percy Jackson), Bailey is a hippie, Carson is a football player and Jack is a soccer player.

These pics are of Mike and Blake Moore heading out with the boys...








This is 3 of the cute Dimond girls with baby Skylar and their friend Maddie Mitchell. Tiffany was dressed as a mutilated doll...



At the end of the trick-or-treating we all met up at our friends the Southwicks house for homemade root beer and donuts. There is a Dunkin Donuts here in Singapore now so my friend Jocelyn went downtown earlier that day and picked up 20 dozen for our group! There was also an outdoor movie projected up on the Southwicks house for the little kids and a Capture the Flag game on our street for the 'tween crowd. The teens all snuck over to a friend's house to watch a movie on their own.
It was a great night.
Then on Sunday...it was a mad dash to get home from church, get our cars moved out of the way for the trick-or-treaters, scarf down some leftover pumpkin soup and chili from the night before and get the 2,000 plus pieces of candy out for the approaching trick-or-treaters.


The great thing about celebrating Halloween 3 days in a row is that you can choose to be something different every day. The first day Jack was Dash from The Incredibles, the second day he was a soccer player for FC Barcelona, and the third day he was Jack Daynes who didn't feel like wearing a costume at all!

This is Carson, passing out candy to the trick-or-treaters on Sunday. He is ready to play the game of football!





These 2 have a special bond. Not just as a football player and leopard...Carson has been the most excited about Skylar being born and still gives her the most attention of any of her siblings. They are good buddies already!



I think Sky was getting a bit hot in her costume at this point and tired of thousands of people staring at her!



(Jack loves Skylar too!)



(Sammy & Carson's pumpkins)



(Close-up of Sammy's pumpkin...it was very cool until the Singapore weather took over! By the time I took this photo mold had already overcome her castle and it was starting to crumble.)



(Bailey & Jack's pumpkins)

Happy Halloween everyone! We had a great time and with all the candy donations we received (from friends) plus what we passed out we figured that we gave out about 3,000 pieces of candy this year in 2 hours! This was our 6th Halloween in Singapore and every year the number of trick-or-treaters has increased!!!

Can somebody please push the pause button?

Skylar is 3 months old now! She can now roll over from her front to her back...I saw her do it with my own eyes twice yesterday. My response to that was...No! Don't roll over! No! No! NOOOOOOOOO!
Why this weird reaction you might be wondering...it's just that it's all moving way too fast! I want to savor every minute of this little baby and she's already growing up on me and hitting her benchmarks way before I want her to. Her arms and legs are flailing around constantly now and I miss the snuggly little baby that just curled her body up into a little ball.
It's so funny how you really do change as a mom from your first baby to your last. I know with Sammy I was celebrating when she first rolled over and couldn't wait to see her get to her next important milestone. However, with this baby I just want to push a pause button and keep her as a little newborn forever...

Monkey On The Loose!!!

There is a monkey on the loose in our neighborhood! He showed up here a month ago and has decided that he's going to call the Woodlands his home. (Our neighborhood is almost all foreigners and families with children who attend the Singapore American School.)

I took some photos of the monkey one day as I was walking back from dropping Jack off at preschool. He was just hanging out by the back gate of the school acting like he owned the place. I think he's going to stay for a long time. We have really good garbage in our neighborhood so why leave? He doesn't even have any other monkeys to compete with for food. There are many homes in our neighborhood that have banana trees, pineapple trees, mango trees and papaya trees in their gardens so I think he's here to stay!

Monkey and I are on a first name basis and I've proudly nick-named him "Monk!"

As you can imagine from a bunch of tai-tai's, that don't have much to do with their time here in Singapore, the American mom community is up in arms about the monkey! The principals at the school have sent the parents e-mails asking them to talk to their children about what to do if they see the monkey at school. The school has also called "Animal Control" here but they've been told that they won't come out to get the monkey unless they catch it first. That's hilarious...you should see the cage the security guards at the school have set up a trap to try to catch the monkey. It's just a small cage with a few grapes and a piece of melon sitting inside it...Monk is way too smart for that!






Everyone was worried about what Monk would do on Halloween night with 10,000 trick-or-treaters walking around the Woodlands with bags of candy. He was spotted over at my friend's house that day so she just got out her hose and sprayed him...I think he got the message not to mess with her!

I don't really mind the monkey in the neighborhood. He's never done anything to me and it's kind of a fun reminder that we do live in a tropical place. Now if this was a snake hanging around...that would be entirely different...

Skylar's Baby Blessing

Skylar had her baby blessing last Sunday, August 29. We had it that day since Mike would be traveling the next few Sundays. There were actually 3 babies blessed that day in our ward. All of them were very nice blessings.

Mike blessed her and talked a little about the traits of her grandma Cecil, whom she gets her middle name from. Mike and I wanted to name her after my mom but had disagreeing opinions on the actual name. So, we ended up compromising on a name that is a variation of Cecil...Cecily. Mike really liked Cece but I thought that it sounded like too much of a nickname rather than a "real" name.

Skylar wore the same dress that Bailey was blessed in...10 years later. I got this dress as a gift from my good friend Ali Thomander, who got it while on her mission in Belgium 17 years ago! What a cute friend to give such a thoughtful gift way back then! Thank you Ali!!! It is still beautiful.

As you can see, Skylar was the perfect angel on her blessing day and slept like a perfect angel though the entire blessing.



This is my good friend Catherine Barlow's baby boy Matthew. We decided to take a photo with the 2 babies together so we can show it to everyone on their wedding day...at their arranged marriage! :)



This was my good friend Catherine's last Sunday at church before moving back to the U.S. so we took a couple of photos out in front of the church on Sunday. She is one of my favorite peeps in Singapore so I wanted a photo with her and, of course, my other favorite girlies in Singapore!!! She's the kind of friend that makes living far from home not so bad. She's super fun and I look forward to seeing her every summer on our home leaves.