Am back...

I am back from Camp Eden, nicely rested and charged to move forward again, well slowly anyway... have been a bit tardy with the blogsite both the one's on the boy's and the one for my granddad... I managed to read alot, sleep alot, have many nice therapies like SCENAR and acupuncture and they also gave us the chance to zip line down or jump off poles on to a trapeze thing or leap off a 30m (100 foot) tree. Which was quite fun and we had a nice group of people.

So here are some pictures, nate and a friend helping with me collecting a mixed compost from the wired area for the tumbler bin and ike who bumped his head and then took a nap.

The other two pics were taken by loren when I was gone.

The first thing the boys said to me when I got back was, mom I want a haircut... to #1... so am afraid they look like little monks again. I need to improve my hair cutting technique, I missed lots of spots.

Our garage sale weekend

Lilin came to join our garage sale... both families netted about 300 bucks... that sure feels like alot of work for little gains!! I think I am going to pass the rest onto the orphanage.

I gave a presentation to nate's school on Friday to build the children's garden... I met one of the board members. I am quite pleased that a number of teachers have volunteered, now to get their emails and to get stuff moving. Last tuesday I built 3 compost wire areas and now they are starting to fill up.

I have trying to buy a compost thermometer to show the kids how hot the heaps can get, maybe I will swipe the nurses one and see if that works??!!

Here are the boys baking Chocolate Chip cookies... they turned out really GOOOD!

Adam and family in town

Loren's buddy from canada (well they have moved to HK), Adam and Pascale and their brood, were in town over the weekend, there were 5 kids running about, somehow with girls though it seemed alot more civilised. The girls would sit down and draw or do stickers.... Their son, Jackson has very similar mannerisms to Nate, which is strange as they had never met before... is it a boy thing? and it looks like Nate won't outgrow that in a year!!!

We took them to the east coast park for seafood dinner, luckily there was quite a big field and the kids all went off together to play, while we attacked the chilli crab.

On Sunday while nate was in jewish school, I took ike to jonas' house and while he made a puzzle all by himself, I helped Sage make her polar bear a winter coat. Ahhhh.... so nice these arts and crafts. I bought some writing books for Ike yesterday and he is happily doing page after page after page.

I have now booked the kids school holidays in July in China... we are off to Guilin, Lilin and her kids are joining too, so is porpor. Loren takes them to Bali in August when I need to be in Guiyang.

Ike last year

Since I seem to be uploading video's quite successfully I thought I'd try some older clip, have not been taking too many video clips cos its sometimes really hard to upload.

Nate lost his first tooth!

Can't believe his first tooth has popped out... it has been loose for a month but I thought kids lose teeth closer to age 7? Nate was quite happy at his $2 fm the tooth fairy until he realised it does not get him any star wars figurines. He is fast figuring out its more like $1,000 that he needs.

He's been asking me about multiplication and he does addition and subtraction quite well already. Not sure how yet to get him on the chinese multiplication tables which are rhyme like and so alot easier to remember.

I got Ike some triangle pencils and some japanese make pencil grippers.... need to get his pencil grip fixed.... he switches hands when he gets tired... so he may be ambidextrous.

Beijing look see

Loren and I headed up to Beijing to take a look at homes and schools... the weather was a bit strange, they hit a cold spell again.

We saw a very very very very good small school, it was lovely, the headmistress is caucasian woman who speaks perfect chinese. The school is structured such that half the day they do montesorri style English classes, they had their own planners to plan what they need to learn and the "western environment" for school was done in the more creative settings of group tables, mix work groups etc. The kids also get their own mini PC. The Chinese side they have classes where they are lined up in rows, math is taught in chinese (as it is the best language to learn the basics of math esp. multiplication) and they get about an hour's worth of homework in Grade 1.

The school can take in local chinese students and the kids fm this school also have successfully transitioned back into public schools. We got all the right answers we wanted to hear like "no sweets policy" as that just made the kids more wired, why do that in a learning environment. The mix of two systems was like giving exposure to the kids to the "real world" and the more airy fairy environment. They were also building their own vegetable gardens. On top of all that they had a "virtues in us" program as well, where they have 19 core virtues that are universal and are taught to the kids, teachers and parents.

The row of school buses are is from the large large international school, that has around 2,000 kids.

We visited some homes as well.... most places are western like compounds, none as big as dainfern, this one was built in the chinese style which I thought was quite neat.

This big wall of gold and clear boxes is actually the check in counter of our hotel, its a wall of chinese medicine drawers, I should have taken more photos as the hotel is just a green box of varying shades from the outside and quite funky inside.

KL Apr 2010 school break

The boys had a week off last week and yesterday as it was labour day, they are back in school today (YAY!).

Loren and I zipped up to Beijing to take a look at schools and homes, will do that as next posting. On Weds I had 2 meetings and then we drove up to KL for a short trip. As the boys napped in the car, they did not sleep till quite late and then as weiwei wakes up early... they woke up early too!

Here is a large train set that Shook Fun built in the living room. She is enjoying her second childhood trying to better her train track designs every time. The boys brought all their wooden trains down to give to their cousins as they have now progressed to Star Wars Lego. The four cousins played really nicely on that big big track, each taking a certain corner.

There is a picture of a nice rainbow from terry's house and the school is where Han goes to. The boys in the pool with about 9 coconuts that dehdeh plucked from the dwarf coconut trees. After tossing them around in the pool, they got opened for a drink and snack of coconut water and fruit.

On the way back we head to Port Dickson (the KL-lites beach area, an hour from KL) with Ter and the family (they stayed on the night) and we continued back to Singapore. The picture of the windy road and the picturesque scene is us finding our way back to the Highway, it was a really nice drive and made me feel like this year driving up the western side of Malaysia in a few days (instead of 4 hours) making our way up slowly to KL....