Tardy me

I have been a bit tardy in taking pictures of the boys... my handphone camera has more images of land where the school is looking to start a garden for the kids and so I have been busy figuring out how the garden could look like. I just want to move ahead but I wonder if at the schools pace we are going to get anything done at all?

Here is an image of the compost heap I started at vini's place 6 months ago, she filled it and recently opened it and voila, lovely lovely compost, so I am going to try and do that at the school.

I spoke to Nate's chinese teacher today and am quite pleased with his progress. Next year (if he stays in this school), he can go to the advanced chinese class. He has also been taking on a new attitude to learning to write chinese characters and for english he is starting to put alphabets together for words, his memory works in his favour and can do tang poems as well, though i need to start him on several new ones.

The responses I heard from the PTA basically summarizes that if your child gets into the advanced chinese stream, they will follow the Beijing curriculum and they will have homework but all China parents are happy with their children's progress in that stream. The mid and lower streams... the parents are not too pleased that the children cannot work towards getting into the higher stream. Some parents do not want homework for their kids and it was nice hearing other parents say, if you want your child to learn chinese, there is no other way. The school juggles alot for the kids and maybe at the expense of other areas, like a healthier canteen.

Ike also has a good memory and can do the poems but because it seems the second child syndrome is already setting in. He wants to not compete in the area where Nate is better in. Hmmm....

Boys at the zoo

Here are pictures of the boys at the zoo. Ike has alot more dexterity these days and does not bump into things as much anymore. He is good at building lego spaceships and has decided to pass all his thomas the train wooden set to his cousin Weiwei. Ike is also very much into puzzles and can build the 24 piece ones without much of an issue. The jump to 40 or 50 pieces is harder but he even at least attempts the 100+ pieces when nate tries to put a puzzle together.

I am quite happy that they play quite nicely together, minimum fights.

Universal Studios

Loren got the last flight out of Helsinki on Thursday before the big shut down of airports.... his flights this week were all cancelled so he decided to take the boys with Uncle Peter to the newly opened Universal Studios theme park.

He wanted it as a surprise so the boys dressed in school uniform and headed to school... only to be surprised! Unfortunately Ike woke up from his nap saying where is his surprise, which he equates with a present...

Happy Birthday Dada...

Loren is 40!

Here is what the boys made for him, nate's has star wars characters in his "card". The boys got dada a lego yoda key chain...

Nate's first love note?

So we found this in Nate's bag... a note he says is from Kara...

I love Nate
Nate loves me too
When he is on holiday I miss Nate....

Topic of Food in Nate's class

Nate's class is now dealing with the topic of food. His teacher says he like everything star wars or rather every conversation out of his mouth is about star wars. So we made some Star Wars Space Balls (tahini balls) as a healthy snack for his friends tomorrow.

Here is another thing they made for dinner - green eggs, ie ground spinach and then in made into scrambled eggs. It was quite yummy, I wonder how much spinach went down this way?

Sunkist orange smile!

Ikey is in lurve...

ok so this is not the best picture of ike and the title of this blog... here I am pulling out the chewing gum he decided to stuff up his nose!

So today as we waited for Nate at his soccer practice, this little girl named olivia came by and gave ike one of her longan. He peeled his and she struggled with hers. He gave her his peeled one and then proceeded to peel the one she had difficulty with. She then skipped off and he diligently peeled it then looked around for her, saw her across the room, placed the longan in the middle of his palm and walked slowly to her presenting it to her (not sure about the cleanliness of his palm...) and how come I don't get peeled longans???

They then hung out on a ramp sitting next to each other talking about stuff 3 year olds say to each other...

Met his mom and I told her my son my be in love with olivia, she says, "I too am in love with Ike"....

We got home and they seemed to be on some turbo stuff as they were bouncing off the walls with Uncle Peter as I ran out for an afternoon meeting. Caught Uncle Peter snoozing on the sofa after I put them to bed.

Bubbi should be halfway back to Montreal by now...

Normal weekend....

as usual a birthday part, though this one was out in Pasir Ris and is part of Gallop Stables, it reminded me of some of the outdoor places in South Africa but here one must not forget the insect repellant. Nate is on the tree with his friends.

Nate on date with gf to disney on ice.

Pistol, who is getting fatter (lower metabolism?) or just not chased by bullet so much. He is blooming, well he now runs and skids around without fear that a bigger dog sees him as a darting rabbit. Loren had an early birthday treat at Mortons and the two dogs got big bones, boy were they happy.

Here is Scully and that other monster... was at the opening of Pixars 20 year anniversary at the science center.

Back in Singapore

The trouble with so many gadgets are that I don't know which gadget I have used to take pictures... we spent 4 days in seminyak by the beach before heading to ubud. In seminyak ike got pulled in by a big wave and he emerged with an earful of sand. It started hurting him a few days later and yesterday I took him to the ENT specialist here who said he saw many cases after the tsunami, so we now have to put eardrops into his ear till the clump falls out.

In seminyak the boys got to swim, we had our own cook, we went to tanah lot which is now a huge tourist area, traffic jams abound... and the boys also got to go to the amusement park and waterbom parks. Ike liked the roller coaster and was so tired at the bumper cars he almost fell asleep there. At the waterbom park, he was brave enough to take the slides down including one where he had to lie on a mat and head down by himself... he seemed a bit dazed at the end but went for it again.

Ike and his henna tattoo, which he showed everyone in school...

Bali still uses alot of organic material like the bamboo for construction and plates made of leaves...

Bali Spirit Festival

is an annual event of yoga and music, the boys got to stay up late to listen to music, nate won this goodie bag of "balloons" (condoms) from dart throwing.

In the day time we had loads of yoga classes while porpor and bubby took the boys to the zoo...

Bali - Ubud

This is one of the best parts of Bali, being able to take a walk not through the main roads but through the back trails where the locals will cut through the padi fields. This one is a more popular one tho I have been on lesser ones. We took the boys and luckily halfway there was an organic place to stop for some food and drink.

Loads of adventures on this part, including a swarm of dragonflies, nate accidently stepping into the padi field and losing his shoe, rice at different stages of maturation (must be genetic mutation seeds, gone are the days of all green planting and all yellow harvesting seasons). The boys got to climb up a tower made of bamboo... see cows, ducks and chickens.