The Hills Are Alive...

Sammy tried out for the Middle School Musical this year. It's going to be The Sound Of Music!!! She put on her audition form that she wanted to be one of the Von Trapp children.

Her dream has come true! She is going to be Louisa, second daughter of Captain Von Trapp!

Can't you just see Sammy playing her? She is so excited!!!

We are all looking forward to the perfomances on Feb. 24, 25 & 26!

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things...

Wish everyone could see her in this...especially Kelly since she's such a big Sound of Music fan. We'll have to buy an extra DVD of the performance just for her!

The most expensive Christmas Tree ever!

The Christmas season was so busy this year! We were too busy with a million other things that had a deadline of Dec. 25; since blogging has no deadline it was pushed back to January...Anyway, now that I have a little bit of time to play catch-up here's our family picking out the most expensive Christmas tree ever in the history of the Daynes family...and quite possibly the history of the world!

My brother paid a big $24 for his tree in L.A. this year. Our tree was well into the $200's. I know that it was brought over on a ship from the U.S. and it's the real deal and all...but ouch!






Sammy ran into her principal at the nursery when we were picking out our tree. She was just SO embarassed!



Tying our new baby on the car to bring her home where she will live for her short 3 week life with us!

Actually, she was a great tree. Everyone who walked into our house this Christmas season loved the fresh smell of pine which wafted immediately up their noses. It is a smell you never get in this part of the world! It will be sad to tell her goodbye.

Turkey Day

Thanksgiving Day was pretty much the usual: Tukey Bowl in the morning, lots of cooking and real turkey in the afternoon with friends. It was a great day!


Here's Carson at the Turkey Bowl. This boy has a temper. He was mad b/c he hadn't scored a touchdown yet so he was off pouting on the sideline...



Jack wasn't interested in playing football but he did have a lot of fun on the sidelines making funny faces...





Carson got his long anticipated touchdown on this play so he was happy again...




Sammy wanted to go down to the squishy courts now to play some basketball. As if we weren't all sweaty enough already...






It didn't take Bailey long to invite a friend over for a swim...



After the play in the morning we went over to the Robison's place for Thanksgiving dinner. Here's Jack hanging on the couch with his girlfriend Kosette...they are looking just a little too comfy together! Before long someone might have to intervene there and say something like, oh, I don't know..."Let's be for sitting up!"



After dinner we played my annual "Turkey Dare" Game which I made up last year. This is how you play: You get a picture of a turkey randomly and on the back there's a dare which you must complete...if you dare! So, it might say something like, "Stick a piece of corn up your nose" or "drink the rest of the gravy." This year Mike got the dare, "Kiss Ruby the dog on the lips!" Here's a photo of 3 people who went together on a dare and just took their dare up to the next level: The dare was, "Sing a Christmas song." They got together and sang with some dancing and bell jingling. It was pretty funny...you pretty much had to be there to fully appreciate it!"



Another fun Thanksgiving was had by all!!! Jonna cooked a 20 pound turkey which was very delish. I made some rolls, sour cream apple pie, creamed corn, mashed 'taters and stuffing. Now the countdown for Christmas is on!!!

The beach in Singapore!!!

Tanjong Beach, Sentosa - Saturday, November 21, 2009

You'd think that because we live at 1 degree north of the equator that we'd go to the beach all the time. This is not the case because Singapore's beaches are not very good. However, there's a place here called Sentosa (it's kinda the Disneyland of Singapore) where the beaches are pretty nice. So, on Saturday we went to our ward beach party there. Mike planned this whole party since he's our ward activities committee leader and he always makes everything fun so we knew that it had to be good. As expected, it was really fun!

One of the activities he planned was a Body Building competition. Here's Carson showing off his muscles in the competition. So as not to keep you in suspense I'll tell you now that Carson was the first place winner of the body building competition! He got a nice gold medal for that too.



Jack was the third place winner of the body building competition. Just look at that six pack!







Here's Sammy having a swim in the water at the beach...



This photo shows the kids from our ward playing some relay games in the sand. You can see Mike and Sammy standing there watching and I am in the background with a red rash guard.



The last photo is of Bailey and her friend Madyson goofing around with Madyson's dad.



There was also a swim competition for the adults which Mike and I participated in. We had to run into the water, swim over to a small island, run and touch a big rock and swim back to the other side. I swallowed lots of warm, salty water...yummy!

It's the rainy season from now until January so the rain came down really hard 3 different times while we were there. Some people took shelter in a covered area nearby and some just kept on playing on the beach like it was no big deal. You really can't let the rain stop you from doing anything because it rains pretty much everyday! The rain was actually nice because it was not so sweltering HOT like it usually is here.

Sammy went to a Fear Factor birthday party before the beach party so she had 2 fun parties in one day!

We saw the new roller coaster that is being built next door to Sentosa; where the new Universal Studios site is. That opens up in 2010 so that will bring a lot more tourism to Singapore.

We love you Singapore, lah!

Halloween 2009

The rainy season hit Singapore hard this week. We've had hard core thunderstorms with lightning and massive amounts of rain the past few days. Halloween looked like it could be a complete washout but somehow the lightning and thunder remained just in the distance of our "Little America" on Halloween night. It was a great sidekick for the vampires and werewolves out but not the little ones who were a little scared. It did rain for a bit but not hard enough to keep the hard core trick-or-treaters (like Bailey) indoors.

We continued our tradition of inviting several families over for soups, cornbread and pies. Somehow the number of families about doubles on Halloween night though. We had over 20 people in our small living room at one point while 20 people were in the pool or the pool area.

Mike and Rich jumped off of the roof into the pool for an added surprise this year to the existing craziness. Bobbing for apples was especially fun as everyone seemed to really get into it this year with their whole bodies. We also had homemade root beer which was so yummy it will definitely be a new tradition for Hallow's Eve!

We also invited Marnelie's boyfriend over and got to meet him for the first time. He and Marnelie had a great time passing out the candy to all of our trick-or-treaters.


Carson with some homemade root beer!




Yeehaw...it's cowgirl Bailey!!! And I had to get some shots of the kids sorting through their loot and making trades.



Yummylicious Luke Skywalker!



Luke Skywalker with girlfriend Tinkerbell.




Marnelie with her boyfriend Nassir and friend Paz. They passed out candy to the 2,000 trick-or-treaters who came to our door between 6-8pm Halloween night.


Mike and buddy Rich in a bobbing for apples race.




Sammy with 2 of her bestest friends - Sophie & Natasha.


The Daynes Fam...yee-haw, meow-meow, and May The Force Be With You!!!


Obi One Kenobi and Cowgirl; Luke Skywalker and Tink.



Cowgirl Bailey with her friends Sophie and Kierica.


Carson was an awesome Yoda. He was totally in character as a 500 year old creature. He even had Mike bring him back a walking stick from Indonesia. This was an important part of his costume (to him). He also refused to use a light saber unless it was green.


Jack Sparrow and Obi One.


Sammy Cat - three years running!


Obi One, Luke Skywalker and Master Yoda.


School Halloween Parties.

Spotlight on Bailey

This is Cowgirl Bailey at a daddy/daughter event for Activity Days at our church. Guess who her "dad" was? ....me (mom). Dad was in Rome on a business trip so I was lucky enough to be the substitute dad!

Bailey has a fun teacher this year! She is doing great in school and is involved in the following activities after school:

Monday - gymnastics, soccer practice
Tuesday - piano lessons, fighting fish (swim team)
Wednesday - Fighting Fish, achievement days at church
Thursday - Irish Dance
Friday - Fighting Fish
Saturday - soccer game and sometimes swim meet

She's trying out for the select soccer team tomorrow and if she makes it on the team I'm not quite sure where she's going to squeeze in her practices and games. Maybe we need an 8th day of the week...we can call it "Bayday." Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Bayday, Friday, Saturday. It fits in there perfectly!

Bailey was also very proud when she became a member of the marathon club at school recently. She was required to run 26 miles in one month. So, for a month she ran one mile per evening or morning before school to accomplish this goal. She did it! She got a t-shirt and will have her photo in the school magazine.









It was UN (United Nations) Day on Friday. All the kids are supposed to dress up in costumes from their home country. Bailey's class sang 2 songs in the assembly and they are both tear jerkers! I'll attach them to this. I always cry at UN Day b/c the kids are singing about peace, harmony, why can't the whole world just get along and love each other, etc. It's so true!









Today is Saturday so Bailey's soccer game was at 8:30a.m. as usual. It was so hot & humid all of us spectators were dying of heat exhaustion. The players seemed fine just a bit sweatier than usual. Bailey got kicked in the knee by a player on the opposing team so she had some tears and was carried off the field by her coach. She wanted to play again soon after but couldn't put much weight on her leg so she finished the game at goalie. She didn't let any goals in although she was only playing at about 75%. They tied 1-1 against the toughest team in the league.

After the soccer game we walked down to another area of the school to get our pumpkins from the "pumpkin patch". It's not as dreamy getting our pumpkins from the "squishy court" at S.A.S. as it was in Connecticut. In CT we'd go for a hay ride, pick a pumpkin from the field still attached to the ground, pick apples, drink hot apple cider and breathe the crisp autumn air. In Singapore we pick out a pumpkin quickly before we collapse from heat exhaustion and then we pay way too much for it, we also have snowcones to drink and then we take our pumpkin home to the air conditioned house to that is doesn't get moldy before Halloween. What a contrast!

Here's a few photos from the pumpkin patch. Guess you can tell who doesn't mind getting their picture taken!














Bailey is a great organizer which is great! She got her bedroom all nice and organized recently and it looks so nice.

Bailey's nicknames are still "Bails" and "The Bail Monster." She is a sweetie pie with zillions of friends and always has a smile and hug for everyone.