Happy Birthday HEIDI!!!!!

Yesterday was Heidi's birthday. She is now 11 years old. She had to wake up early for her before school choir class. She was able to open up 2 presents before school. She got a pair of cherry earrings and a book from American Girl called "The Care and Keeping of Your Body." It is a great book for preteens to learn about how to take care of their changing bodies. She was sad to go to school but Eric told her she was so lucky because she got to have her birthday on a half day. I guess it is all in the way you look at it. After school she came home and asked me to make her macaroni and cheese. She has always loved mac and cheese and we don't have it much here in China because it is so expensive but I managed to bring some back from America at Christmas. Her friends all seemed to be busy after school and she was bummed. I asked if she wanted to go and get a foot massage and she jumped at the chance to do that. They are so cheap here in China. Only about $10 for an hour. Then we went to Johnny Moo's and got a little treat. In China we have decided on a new tradition for our family and that is that the birthday child gets to go anywhere for dinner with just mom and dad. The kids like getting to go out with just mom and dad. Heidi picked a restaurant called Latina. It is like a brazilian buffet type restaurant. We were all full when we left. Unfortunately in doing this we don't always have a birthday cake for dessert so Heidi got to blow out a candle from a cupcake that was left over after taking them to her class. She also got a few more presents. She got a panda snowglobe, some sweat pants, and some flowers. She really wanted an I-touch but we felt she really didn't need one. We did think she should get something fun so she is getting about $100 to spend at the underground fakes market in the next week. I think she was very excited about that. We all love our Heidi so much and she is such a sweet girl and so giving to all. We hope she has another great year like last year has been.

Just a few favorites of Heidi's:

color: orange

book: Maximum Ride (all of the series)

food: macaroni and cheese

vacation place: Boracay

dessert: pudding and milkshakes

good friends: Nina Ulbrich, Kristina Wang, Karli Honroth, Megan Howe, Jaden Biberston

song: Do You Know? ( the ping pong song) by Enrique Iglesias

Over and Over by Three Days Grace

teacher: Mr. Rickett

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!

This morning we had a leprechaun come to our home. He sure was tricky!!! He left shamrocks all over the apartment and gold and green confetti. He was a little nice though and also left us some green M&M's. When I woke up this morning I was shocked to see the mess everywhere and went to wake up the kids. Most of them were very excited but Eric wanted to know where he was. I said I didn't know but that he got away. He was so upset and cried and cried and cried. I really thought he would have been more excited but he wants to know when the leprechaun is coming back again so he can catch him. I told him probably not until next year. He didn't like that answer but he finally got over it. He keeps asking tons of questions on how come leprechauns are so tricky and so fast. I wish I had all the answers for him. Maybe someday!!!

Spelling Bee

The middle school at Concordia had an all school spelling bee. The first part was that every student took a written spelling test. Then they took the top 15 spellers and had another spelling bee. Meagan only missed 1 in the spelling test and was invited to join the next round of competition. Unfortunately it was the afternoon of opening night for the play "Wonderland High". She was so excited to do the play that she just didn't feel like trying too hard to win the spelling bee. She did pretty good but I know she could have won if she wasn't so anxious to get to the play. She came in 5th place I guess you could say. There were 4 other students still left in when she missed her word. The word she missed was "gnash". I know she knows it but oh well. We are still so proud of her that she got this far. Maybe in the future she will be a famous speller to go along with actress, writer, mom and anything else she puts her mind to be.

Daddy Daughter Dance

Emma had a daddy daughter masquerade ball for girl scouts. She had been waiting anxiously for weeks. She would count down the days or ask how many more days until finally the big day arrived. We were trying to figure out what dress she should wear until we picked up her new velvet dress for church from the fabric market. She thought this dress was elegant and would be the perfect dress. She got dressed in her beautiful dress and then mom did her hair in a pretty updo and even put on a little makeup. Dad got dressed in a nice suit and off they went. I asked dad if he got bored with not knowing any other dads and he said no. He just danced and twirled and danced some more with Emma. He said it was a rare occasion where all Emma wanted to do was be with dad and dance, dance, dance!! I am pretty sure Emma loved the one on one with dad being all dressed up and doing something she loves doing. (dancing) Fun was had by all and Emma came home completely exhausted. I hope she gets to have many more occasions where she feels like the princess and gets to be with her dad!!!

And The Academy Goes to......

Meagan Larson for the best Red Riding Hood and Heidi Larson for the best Rapunzel chearleader!!!!!

Meagan and Heidi have been practicing for the middle school play "Wonderland High" since November. They have had a blast learning their lines and acting. It all came to a great finish last Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the Rittman Center in their school. There were 2 plays. The first one was called "The Phantom Tollbooth" and the second was an original play written by a few teachers called "Wonderland High". As you can tell both my girls were in "Wonderland High." It is a story where Snow White is the most popular girl in school and has always been Homecoming Queen ( she has her cheerleader friends, and the freshman are her dwarves) but Cinderella's friends (Red Riding Hood (Meagan) and Jack) nominate her. Snow is upset and tries to use Charming's magic mirror to help her cheat when they find out the mirror has been stolen by the 3Pigs from the rival school. The 3 pigs scare the whole school and nobody wants to get Charmings mirror but there is always the hero. The Big Bad Wolf (who is good) goes to get the mirror. (Red has a crush on Big Bad) Meanwhile Snow tries to be nice and helpful like Cinderella always is to win the crown. The night of the big dance and nobody is excited to dance and Heidi (one of the cheerleaders) says her "famous" or the director's favorite line "I can't cheer tomorrow, What's the point." When all of a sudden Big Bad comes back with the mirror. They announce that there is a tie in the vote for Homecoming Queen and try to figure out who didn't vote. It was Big Bad. Snow assumes she won when Big Bad takes off his mask and reveals he his Jack and votes for Cinderella. Red gets mad at Big Bad/Jack and then realizes she likes Jack after all. Snow is upset and tells all her minnions (the cheerleaders, the dwarves and Charming) to follow her. They all refuse and say that she is not nice. Then as she is getting ready to leave. Cinderella tells her to stay because she is just like the rest of them now. Snow asks what that means and Cinderella tells her she is a "Loser". The cheerleaders end the show with one final cheer and the rest of the yells that everyone lives "Happily Ever After!" And that is the end. It was a great play and my girls were AWESOME!!!!!! Meagan and all her friends were in the plays together. (From left to right: Esther McLachlin, Meagan, Brooke Embley and Hannah Searcy.)

Now Meagan gets to practice for the High School Musical production of The Sound Of Music. Another 2 more months of not seeing Meagan while she is rehearsing to be a Nun. Oh well, I think she is great and I'm glad she loves doing this.

How Sweet!!!

Yesterday we had District Conference for our church and so had to leave for church at 8:30 in the morning. Poor Meagan had to leave at 7am to get to her youth meeting, what a trooper. Meagan and Heidi didn't get home until 11:30pm the night before because of their cast party and finishing the play. So we were all real tired. After conference I told the kids we would have a relaxing Sunday and take naps or watch movies as a family. Before we took a nap I told the kids we had to clean up the apartment real quick. They didn't complain and I went to help Eric get changed. After a few minutes they told me I wasn't aloud to leave Eric's room. I got a little suspicious but obeyed. When they finally let me out 20 minutes this is what I saw. A beautiful, cleaned up apartment, even the dishes were done. I forgot to take a picture of that. Then I said "Let's have a family meeting in my room." I proceeded to go to my room and was surprised with all the little lovenotes left all over it.( the little purple sticky notes) I LOVE my kids. They are truly wonderful and AWESOME!!!! I am so blessed to have them for eternity along with their great dad!!!!

And now for something completely different...

Hi there. Guest blogger here again. Guess what!? I worked so hard lately that I was awarded an all expenses paid trip to Singapore. Cool or what? Actually, I’ve “won” about 25 of these now so it’s not quite so exciting anymore. Also notice that I said “trip” and not “vacation.” EXCEPT…

… occasionally I get to spend the weekend in Singapore, which gives me a chance to get out and do something besides work for a bit. So now I’m proud to present my amazing journey along the South Ridges of Singapore. This is a hike that I wanted to take with the family when we all came in August, but we didn’t get to it.

The journey began (as most journeys in Singapore do) with a walk to the MRT station (subway). Singapore is a night town, so Saturday morning is usually pretty dead. Unlike the USA, where we send out the Jehovah’s Witnesses to pester you, Singapore sends out its school kids in uniforms asking you to put coins in cans. I don’t know what they’re saving money for but it must be really expensive because they’ve been out every Saturday morning for at least 11 years now. These nice girls were kind enough to let me capture the moment.

So I got into one subway, then switched to another and wound up in the very back car. Did you know subways have rear windows? This one does. Previously I’ve only looked out the side windows up subways, so I decided to seize the moment and looked out the back window. And I gotta say, it’s pretty black back there. Occasionally a blueish light would show up and fade into the distance, but that was about it. You’ll notice there’s no picture of this part of the journey. In fact, right then I decided to coin a new phrase: 

“That was more exciting than looking out the rear window of a subway.”

I’ll let you decide when would be an appropriate time to use it.

OK, so I didn’t know a lot about the South Ridges hike other than I was supposed to go to the Harborfront Station and go out exit “D.” And sure enough, there’s a sign pointing you towards something that sounds very refreshing on a hot day on the equator: “Henderson Waves.”

The first part of the trail is called the Marang Trail, which basically goes up a hill using a lot of steps.

When I got to the top, I discovered that I’d been here before. This is Mount Faber, which has a cable car that goes to Sentosa Island. I bought some water, dodged a lot of senior citizens in a tour group, and discovered the “magical yellow feet” that are supposed to guide you along the Southern Ridges hike. As you can see in the picture, I was faced with a daunting choice—300 meters or 700 meters? Hmm, let’s see, lots of time, no kids… what the heck. 700 it is.

And thus I went up, up, to the top. I think Dr. Seuss must not have visited Singapore after he went to Yangshuo or Mount Faber would have made it into one of his books. It’s just rife with possibilities:

“Up, up, up to the top of Mount Faber,
Where he blew his bloo-gloobler to annoy every neighbor.”

Anyway, at the top I found--what else?--a Merlion. This is Singapore after all. I got this shot of the Mt. Faber merlion in the front and the giant Sentosa merlion off in the distance.

Coming down from Mt. Faber, I noticed a side path with benches that dove down below the road I was on. Now, the view from where I was standing was just barely high enough to see over the trees down to the ocean, so I wondered what else you could see from down there.

Yup, trees.

I’d been hiking for an hour now, and look! The Henderson Waves!

But any hopes of a cool, refreshing stroll through the surf were quickly dashed. Apparently the Henderson Waves is just a wave-shaped footbridge. Oh well. It looked neat anyway.

Along the way you can cool off in the shade of the “waves.”

After the waves, the next stop was called Telok Blangah Hill Park with the “hilltop walk.” It was here that I noticed one of Singapore’s most famous qualities began to shine through—warning signs. You may have heard about the standard ones—no spitting, no chewing gum, no littering, etc., but these were starting to get even more entertaining.

Isn’t it refreshing to just come out and say what you mean? With pictures too! Note that this isn’t even a poor translation with Chinese above it—this is English only, the official language of Singapore.

At this point the magical yellow feet failed me and let me off the correct path and down a hill to a “fish pond.” I use that phrase loosely—I saw two little bitty fish in thing that is smaller than the neighbor’s swimming pool and only about 18 inches deep.

Nevertheless, someone decided it was still necessary to warn you…

After I hiked back up the hill to the main path, I found another very interesting sign:

Fair enough. But now look where it’s located:

“Hey dear, look! It’s a narrow road in the middle of a park, with a pedestrian crosswalk and no hoses in sight! Let’s stop and wash the car!”

This park had a nice garden area to climb.

I went to the top, checked out the view, and then on the way down the back side I almost stepped on a neon green piece of plastic cord, but it suddenly flipped around and slithered into the bushes. I had no idea real animals could be that brightly colored. This isn’t my picture but this is what it looked like:

Now I came to my favorite part of the hike: the “Forest Walk.” It’s basically a ½ mile long, clean, flat metal sky path through the tops of the trees. Now THIS is what I call tax dollars well spent (Singaporean’s tax dollars, anyway). Well done, Singapore National Parks.  

However, the path is not quite as safe as I was led to believe, as evidenced by the series of warnings for this section.

Now, I’m not 100% positive where one’s volume knob is, and I did encounter a few people on the path who needed to be turned down a bit, but in the interest of misunderstandings and staying out of jail, I decided to not take any chances. “Really, officer, I was just trying to turn her volume down.”

The forest walk also had a couple of banana trees with more than a couple of bananas growing on it.

Sadly, the Forest Walk had to come to an end, at the Alexandra Arch. Apparently it is lit up at night with multicolored LED’s, but for me it just marked the end of the cool metal skyway and the last swallow of my first water bottle.

And as I left the bridge I was reminded of a few more things not to do.

Here’s a map of my walk so far. I’ve come from the top left corner, all the way to the “you are here” bubble. It’s 11:00 on the equator and time to go find a new water bottle.

But first, a quick stroll through the very short “Floral Walk” before reaching Hort Park.

Success!!  They sell water here!  Hort Park is kind of like a public botanical garden, but sponsored by commercial landscaping firms who manage a small section of the park and proudly display their contact information if you like what you see. Nice idea, but unfortunately 90% of people in Singapore don’t have a yard. I was amazed how many landscaping companies there were. Hort Park also has a nice grassy area and a really cool geometric monkey bar toy thing.

I finally found some cool looking flowers I’d never seen before.

These are an interesting concept—“anti-greenhouses.” Basically they suck moisture and energy from the tropical climate in order to create a cool climate inside, so that temperate foliage can grow.

Now exiting Hort Park, and entering the aptly named “Kent Ridge Park.” I don’t know who Kent is, but you definitely have to start hiking up a ridge as soon as you enter. And look—I think I see another walk through the trees!

It’s called the “Canopy Walk,” which you are free to enjoy… with yet another volley of warnings.

The Canopy Walk wasn’t quite as long or nifty as the Forest Walk, but I still liked it a lot. I was almost halfway through my second water bottle by this time.

Upon exiting the Canopy Walk, I was greeted by the beauty of the central area of Kent Ridge Park. And what says “peaceful harmony with nature in the park” better than the turret of a Singapore Army tank pointed straight at your head?

And the “Do not feed the monkeys” sign is now an entire comic strip.

Almost at the end of my journey, I went down some jungle stairs to an area with a REAL pond. There were quite a few butterflies in the area, but since my oldest daughter Meagan was not with me, they resisted their natural urges to attack and kill, and I was quite safe.

Oh yeah. No swimming either.

At the end of Kent Ridge Park, I arrived at something called “Science Park,” but things suddenly weren’t looking very park-y anymore, so I hopped on the nearest bus, then the MRT, and went back to the hotel.

Four hours, 5 miles, and two bottles of water since the start of my journey, I was ready for a shower and some rest. But all in all, it was definitely more exciting than looking out the rear window of a subway.