Happy 4th of July!

We are having such a great time being home this summer! We have had our Target store fix, been overwhelmed at the grocery store with SO many choices (as we don't have all these choices in Singapore), stocking up on items we can't buy in Singapore to squeeze into our luggage for the way home, and visiting lots of friends and family. We do miss the heat and sun of Singapore though, it hasn't been really warm here--and it has rained A LOT since we arrived. And what is "warm" to New Englanders doesn't feel the same to us, amazing how quickly we got used to the real heat and humidity of Singapore. :)

We are currently in Vermont, as our tradition of 4th of July here is our absolute favorite!!! (they celebrated last night here on the 3rd) It has to be one of my favorite holidays, and the folks here in Quechee Vermont, and the Quechee Club put on an amazing fun day for all of us. There are soo many games and rides for the kids(like a carnival/fair), a DJ with fun music to dance to, a yummy yummy dinner and then AMAZING fireworks. Words cannot describe how great the show is, and a finale that would blow you away. My kids LOVE the 4th of July here in Vermont. Madeline danced most of the night, and she and Karol were a hit with all their dance moves (made the other Grandma's jealous). Grant won some really cool prizes with all the games, and had a blast with the sparklers when it finally got dark. Brian and I enjoyed relaxing, having some great summer cocktails, and visited with friends we haven't seen since last summer up here. Great time for all!!!




Happy 4th of July to all of you!!!

Back home in the USA for summer!

Madeline, Grant and I flew home to USA on Friday the 13th (ewww-i know, bad day to fly). Brian could not come with us, but will be flying over on the 26th of June. He stayed home to work and take care of Oaky the cat.

We did make it safely and had a GREAT flight! Imagine my stress level before flying....leaving on Friday the 13th, flying by MYSELF with the 2 kids, flying by myself with the 2 kids for a 21 hour flight....need I say more?? BUT, the kids were so great!! Singapore Airlines could be the best airline in the world, seriously. Every passenger has their own TV/video screen and it is filled with hundreds of movies, tv show, video games, music etc. And a section that is kids only, so Maddie and Grant had no trouble being entertained. Tons of food served to you and in the back lounge area. Games and toys provided to the kids. Amazing airline.

Madeline is old enough to really take care of herself, so she watched 5 movies (caught up on new ones we didn't see in Singapore) and did her thing. Really love that "almost" 10 yr old age for that reason, she is easy. She slept a total of about 2 1/2 hours of the trip, not much, but she didn't bother me...so that is ok. Grant on the other hand was a little bit more busy, changing his activity every 10 minutes or so. :) He played/watched TV/DS/ipod for the first 14 hours and then I made him sleep for 6 hours, and when he woke up-we only had another hour to go. Wasn't too bad-could have been a lot worse. The 21 hours went by pretty fast, thank goodness!

We arrived home at 1am and the kids were wide awake until 2am! YIKES! Karol and Jerry are here with us, and poor folks had to deal with us being jet lagged. I put the kids to bed at 2am and they slept until 5am. Hmmm. Since then, it's been 5 days, we all crash and go to bed at 8pm and then we are wide awake at 5am!! It's not fun. It's really hard to stay awake in the afternoon-the 12 hours difference is brutal. Anyway, I am sure that by this weekend we will be back on track.

We went up to Vermont the day after we arrived and went to the annual Quechee Balloon Festival. Maddie and Grant LOVE it, and we go every year. Amazing to see so many hot air balloons go up at one time. Surrounding the balloons are fun carnival/fair type activities which is fun for all. Who doesn't love a funnel cake??? :) Might be a new cure for jet lag! We stayed up for the weekend and now are back in the comfort of our house. AHHHHHHHHH. Nice to be home.

Madeline's Dance Recital 2008

Last weekend we had Madeline's dance recital, her FAVORITE time of year! :) The recital took place at the famous Raffles Hotel. An amazing theater is upstairs, didn't even know that, and it sat 350 people. Beautiful facility in such a historic location. The theme of the recital was "Uniquely Singapore" as the dance studio caters and seems to have mostly expat kids (children who are not Singaporians). Each dance had to do with famous sites, sounds, and people of Singapore. It was beautifully done and great fun to watch. The recital was broken into 2 shows, due to so many kids/classes to fit in, one show at 1pm the other at 4:30. Madeline danced in both shows, 7 dances in the first show and 5 dances in second show=lots of costume changes and lots of fun for her! :) Her dances were jazz and ballet, she did not take tap this year (not enough time in our week, she is already dancing 2 nights a week). She had such a great time, and loved every minute of it. If she could do it again, she would jump at the chance. She loves to be on stage dancing, as you all know so well. :)

Here are some photos of her in her costumes.


Jazz costume, she was a black orchid (orchids being Singapore's flower)




Maddie and her friend Katie, who was a Big Spender tapper from Orchard Road (like 5th avenue in NYC)



Maddie in another jazz costume to the theme Formula 1-as Singapore is hosting the first night Formula 1 street race this September..and YES Brian already bought tickets. He liked this dance the best of Maddie's! :)



Her ballet costume, she was a spider from the Singapore Zoo category.




Her last costume was a Singapore police costume for a jazz number. The singapore police wear camo here, so it was a cute girly version for the dance. :)

A photographer took some amazing photos during the rehearsal and show, and I will post a few of my favorites later (I know...boring....but I just love seeing her dancing and doing what she loves the most!!)

Grant's afterschool Mandarin class

Grant has been taking an extra hour of Mandarin each week afterschool at SAS (Singapore American School). Parents were invited to observe and see a little show yesterday. I was so impressed with the way the class was run, so fun and so amazing how much the kindergartners have leaned this year. The teacher, Mr. Pearson only speaks to the kids in Mandarin-no english is spoken, and I was so amazed that they knew what he was saying and telling them to do. So very cool. They are like little sponges, and Grant has learned soo much. Enjoy this short video of him answering a question (i have no idea what he is saying, but so cute to hear him speaking in Mandarin). :)

Here is a song they sung....so cute.

Early Birthday Party for Madeline!

Maddie's birthday isn't until August, but we decided to throw her an early birthday party here since we won't be here in Singapore for her real birthday. She invited 13 of her friends to come join her for a "Birthday Dance Party". surprise surprise! :)

We rented out her dance studio for the night, and hired one of their teachers (also a senior at the Singapore American School, and the captain of their dance team). She taught the girls a fun dance for an hour-these girls were amazing and learned it so quickly! Then we had some fun games, like "name that tune" and a Karaoke/dance contest by teams. The girls broke up into teams and had 10 minutes to come up with a short dance and karaoke routine to "Like Whoa" by Ally and AJ. SO CUTE! The girls were so creative and fun! Took videos of all of it and burned them onto disks for each girl as a Thank you!

Madeline had a great time, and loved doing her two favorite things--dancing and being with her friends! :) Happy EARLY EARLY birthday to her!




(the Superstar sunglasses were not for the drama...she actually has a very red swollen eye right now from an infection/stye-so her friend Katie let her borrow them for the night to hide her eye for the night. Thanks Katie!)

Earthquake in China

Brian has experienced his first earthquake today in China and he is happy to say he is ok, but was a very scary experience. He is in Suzhou this week on his normal visit to the Teradyne office and suppliers out there.

He called me as they were emergency evacuating the building, he was in the stairwell filled with people. He was clearly worried and scared but was trying to stay calm. He said "There is an earthquake right now, we are evacuating." He explained that he was in a conference room and suddenly felt the room moving and swaying. He said that the stairwell was even worse swaying and moving as they were trying to get down the NUMEROUS floors to GET OUT of the building. Very scary!!! He said he felt the quake for almost 6 minutes as they were navigating the numerous stairs all crammed in together. They found an empty field not too far from the building and waited for an hour to get news of what to do. The field was filled with tons of people from other nearby buildings and no one really knew what to do.

I turned on CNN when he first called and there was nothing on about the earthquake and then suddenly there was breaking news. I was able to fill Brian in on the location of the epicenter and the fact that it was 7.8! We hung up and I waited to hear back.

Later he called back and said that they waited about 2 hours and then decided to quickly go back in the building collect their items and then everyone was sent home until further notice. The aftershocks were starting and they were pretty strong at 5.5. They are not sure that their building is safe to return to, as it seemed that they felt it more than some of the neighboring buildings. Maybe a poorer quality building?? They will have to get someone to evaluate the building to make sure it is structurally sound.

So Brian is now safe and sound in his hotel, but he was very nervous about any more possible after shocks. He will most likely be working out of the hotel until he leaves on Friday.

Please keep all those families and people in China in your thoughts...this was a big one.

Snorkeling around Phuket Thailand

One of the days we were in Phuket, we booked an all day excursion on a speedboat to take us to surrounding islands to snorkel and explore.

Our tour started bright and early at 8am and we didn't get back until 6pm.



We had purchased little snorkel sets for the kids before we took this vacation, crossing fingers that Grant and Maddie would actually participate. They practiced in our pool at home, so they knew how to use them...and that was the best thing we could have done.


Upon arrival at the first island, they both jumped right in!!

Madeline is currently studying oceans in her 4th grade class, so she was so excited to be swimming in a coral reef.

I could hear both Grant and Maddie squealing through their snorkels at each cool fish they saw.



We saw some amazing islands, one of them had Viking Cave located on Ko Phi Phi Leh Island. It is currently under renovation/restoration, but inside the cave are prehistoric murals of Chinese sea going junks and misc. figures.

We also went to the beautiful beach where they filmed the movie "The Beach" with cutie Leonardo DiCaprio. We were told that it is ranked as one of the 5 most beautiful beaches in the world. It was fabulous.

Ko Mai Phai (Bamboo Island) is where we had lunch and the kids really enjoyed collecting coral and shells. The collection that they came home with is pretty amazing.


Off of Bamboo Island, the reefs were really close. So close that the fish come up to the beach to swim with the people. We were told that the fish LOVE fruit and were given watermelon to feed them. Here are the kids feeding the fish. Grant's little fingers was "nibbled" on a few times and he thought it was the coolest thing.


Our tour guide James, from Laguna Tours, was so great. Here he is greeting us with fresh fruit as we board the boat going to our next stop.

The other highlight was the stop at Monkey Beach, located on Phi Phi Leh. It is exactly as they call it, an island that is inhabited by lots and lots of MONKEYS!
James recognized one and called it by name as we docked. He took out bananas for us all to feed them.


We had such a fun time, and look forward to snorkeling on our next trip. We were so happy that the kids loved it as much as we did. 4 stops to snorkel, saw 6 different amazing islands surrounding Phuket, all in all...A GREAT DAY! Here is the last photo of the day, the kids with "Spiderman" one of the crew from our boat.

A great way to start the day in Phuket....

Every morning we were delighted to see the star "residents" at Laguna Beach Resort and Spa...2 sister elephants, one is 6 yrs old an the other is only 2.


They came to breakfast each day so we could feed them bananas.


The kids were free to have rides and they were walked all around the resort and pool area.




One afternoon, the baby one (her name was Sara -pronounced Zara) needed a water break, so Maddie and her handler took her for a walk to get a drink. Maddie walked the elephant like she was a puppy.





Sara was very friendly and had a very funny personality. She would try to take cameras, food, anything you had in your hands. She also loved to give wet elephant kisses to anyone she could get to. Maddie was lucky enough to get a good wet one on her shoulder...






The last day we were there, we found the 2 sisters on the beach so the kids wanted some last pictures with them.



I am a true elephant lover, have loved them since I was little-so this was truly a highlight from our vacation. More fun photos to come in the next post. We spent a day snorkeling all around islands in Thailand. Will post photos from that adventure tomorrow.

Our trip to Phuket...

Well, I took 254 photos...and now the problem is which ones to post??? I certainly won't bore you with all of them (even though they are all great).

Our trip to Phuket was FABULOUS! The weather was amazing, warm but with a wonderful constant breeze (and less humid than Singapore). The Thai people are so very friendly. The food was amazing and tasty (Madeline did have to eat a lot of pasta with butter due to the amount of things cooked with nuts, but she didn't complain a bit). The beaches were undisturbed and beautiful, and went on and on.

We stayed at the Laguna Beach Resort and Spa on the island of Phuket. It was great and so very family friendly. With 3 fabulous pools, with slides and a lazy river like a water park. They had a lot of really cool things for the kids to see and do.

Hotel view from one of the pools.

We spent time with monkeys, elephants, and lots of fish.....that coming up in my next post.