Poll Time!

Well, it's time for another poll! I've been doing some research on some things that we will possibly need to buy once we move back to the US and I want to know what opinions everyone has on top load vs. front load washing machines. I had a top-load before and honestly the only two things I didn't like about it were the agitator in the middle and the fact that it couldn't hold a big comforter. There are a lot of negative reviews out there on front load which is what I thought I wanted. What do you have and what would you recommend? Vote off to the right and also leave comments or e-mail me your preferences...Call it my own "Consumer Reports" research:)

PS: For some reason I'm having trouble posting the poll - check back later to see if it's up and running if you don't see it over to the side. Feel free to leave a comment anyway!

Dragon Boats

Dragon boat races are very common in Singapore. There is usually someone in the front of the boat and the back with a team of people in the middle. One beats a drum to keep time with the oars and the other one "leads" the team. There were races going on next to Forest Adventure on Saturday so Ryan stopped to get a quick video clip. They were fun to watch and there were a lot of teams waiting their turn.

Forest Adventure and Faith Lessons

Here are the pictures from Saturday at Forest Adventure. Like I mentioned before Kaitlyn skipped right through it with Jack (look! We don't need our hands on THIS one!) while Ashton and Kenton were more fearful. We used this as a faith lesson this morning in Sunday School. We were reviewing last weeks lesson where Peter was walking on the water until he started to doubt and didn't trust Jesus. Than he began to sink. Kenton yesterday did fine as long as he listened to us coaching him to keep going and not look down. The minute he stopped listening to that encouragement and looked down he froze and couldn't take one step further. We need to trust that Jesus has our best interests at heart and He's there to pick us up if we fall!

15 feet off the ground on a tight rope!

Kaitlyn and Jack waiting for their turns to go. The little girl in pink panicked and had to wait before they could let her down. She was hugging that tree pretty hard!

Swings are hard to come by in S'pore so when we found some of course we had to stop to swing! This was after our little adventure on our way back to the car. We went to New York, New York for a yummy lunch afterwards.

Kenton loves dinosaurs and could ride one of these for a long time!

We found a park full of leaves which are the first time we have seen that many since the Fall of '07! The kids had fun playing in them.

At the end of the course the got to zip line to the finish.

This was one of the hardest since they are swinging trapeze's. Both kids did great on them!

Kenton getting better and better

Here are two video clips - one of Kaitlyn and one of Kenton working their way through the course.

Ethan Swimming

Sorry that you have to listen to Ethan screaming in this one - I recommend turning your volume down before listening:)

Swimming and Playdoh

We spent Thursday and Friday playing in the pool and with PlayDoh. Over all it was a great Spring Break:) Ready for a schedule again tomorrow, though! I've included a video below of Ethan and Lovel playing with PlayDoh.

Firefox and Spring Break Update

We switched today from Internet Explorer as our web browser to Mozilla Firefox. So far our Internet is working 100% faster than with IE. I had heard of Firefox but didn't know what it was and I certainly didn't know you could switch Internet browsers! We'll see if there are any glitches that we haven't run into yet...

We have had a good Spring Break so far! I will try to get pictures posted sometime this weekend of the past few days. We spent time swimming and playing with Playdoh. I have a cute video of Ethan and Lovel together, too.

Today we are heading to Forest Adventure. A neighbor of ours was taking her boy scout troops there and ended up with three additional spots so invited the twins. It's a lot like the "treetop" adventure that they had on Monday at Explorer Kids only much bigger and much higher. Should be fun for them and I'll try to get pictures of that as well.

I heard last night that Kansas City was in for a snow storm:( I'm heading out to the sunshine for you, Joan!

Food For Thought

Think about this the next time you go to throw out leftovers that you have deemed are not "good" anymore...

I usually go through my fridge once a week and throw away any leftovers that are older than one week. At this point I am too scared to serve them to my family due to risk of the leftovers spoiling. Our helper has been taking that food and giving them to two different friends of hers in our condo complex who aren't given enough food to eat by their employers. They are willing to eat food that we are not. I have tried to talk her out of it before thinking that maybe the food wasn't any good. She always says that it's better than nothing and that it's probably fine. Lovel told me today that they ask her if we have any leftovers that we are throwing out that they can have to eat.

I feel so guilty that we take having food so much for granted that we overcook (and have too much for one meal) or under-eat our leftovers (because I tend to say that I don't want the same thing two meals in a row.) I went through my cupboards this morning and gave Lovel some things that have been sitting there for awhile that I will probably never actually use (I had Joan send me some Healthy Choice meals that I ended up not liking and therefore not using) to pass along to her friends so that they can have something made "fresh" instead of leftovers.

The world isn't fair, is it?

Explorer Kids

This week is Spring Break so I'm trying to do a few fun things with the twins since we decided not to go anywhere. I figured that all we really need is a pool and tropical weather, both of which we have right here in Singapore:) Monday we went to Explorer Kids with our friends Melissa and Jack. It's a big indoor kids play place with a climbing wall, ball pit, and huge climbing structure (think McDonald's play land but MUCH bigger!) It was nice because even Ethan could run around and Melissa and I could sit and talk without needing to do much for the kids.

Kenton on the climbing wall
The three older kids went on a "tree tops" adventure - kind of like Ryan's experience a few weeks ago in Malaysia only this one is only five feet off the ground instead of 50!!

Kaitlyn on the climbing wall

Kaitlyn doing the course. She ran into the same problem here that we did a few weeks ago at the waterpark of not being tall enough when everyone else is. I talked the lady into letting her go (she is older than Kenton after all!) and she was the least scared of the three!

Ethan favorite part was the ball pit. The balls were clear with lights underneath that would change their colors - pretty neat! He spent much time jumping off the side into the balls and than would roll around like a pig in the mud:)

Kenton, Kaitlyn, and Jack

Playing chutes and ladders

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Ryan and I ended the day with a quick trip furniture shopping for a teak dining table and chairs. We are going back sometime later this week with pictures of what color our china hutch is back home so that they can match the table and chairs as best they can. It should be delivered within a week or so and I will post pictures then.

Sungei Buloh

Sunday afternoon we decided to visit the Sungei Buloh Reserve to do the mangrove boardwalk. This is a boardwalk that takes you out into the mangroves where you can view the plants and animals that thrive in this ecosystem. The first walk we did was a short 30 minute walk at about 5 feet above the mud flats of the mangroves (the tide was out.) We saw birds, crabs, mudskippers (see below), and monitor lizards.

Ready to start our tour of the mangroves!

This is what the mangroves look like when the tide it out. A lot of mud!

If you look really close at the middle of the little puddle you will see a Giant Mudskipper. These are fish that can crawl around on land! They use their front two fins to move around and were fascinating to watch.

If you click on this picture and enlarge it you can see a crab with red claws. There were literally hundreds of these all over in the mud!

Look at the huge tree to the back of the picture.

There was an option for an hour to two hour long hike. At the beginning of that trail we saw this sign! We didn't stay long on this trail as the kids were getting tired and we were a little worried about Ethan off-roading and becoming croc food so we turned back. We saw lots of monitor lizards though so it was worth the effort.

There were monitor lizards all over the place at the reserve. Kaitlyn told me, "Look, Mom. One got out!" She wasn't too thrilled when I informed her that this was the "wild" and that these weren't caged! The picture doesn't do the size justice - Ethan could have easily sat on its back and taken a ride. They were a good 5 feet in length.

After a long afternoon we decided to take a bus back home. The 295 would take us all the way to Causeway Point where we decided to have supper at Burger King. From there it is a short 15 minute walk home.

While we were waiting at the bus stop Ethan was playing around with Kaitlyn's hat from San Diego. Right as the bus pulled up he threw it over a railing and down into a ravine. Kaitlyn was devastated and Ryan started to climb up and over after it but I was afraid we'd miss the bus. It only came every 30 minutes and there wasn't much shade where we were sitting. I felt bad for her so we've promised her a new one. Here is one last picture of the hat!!

On our way home from supper we walked through an HDB compound and let the kids play at the park there for a few minutes.

After playing we headed home. Ryan and I walked on a sidewalk while the three kids went up a short little hill and walked in the grass. When they came down from there we noticed Ethan was missing one of his shoes. We all looked for awhile for it but it was almost dark and the shoe was brown. I sent Lovel back in the morning and she couldn't find it either. Ryan and I went back one more time Monday evening to look and right as we were giving up Ryan noticed it tucked away by a tree root.

Kaitlyn's Tiger Research

Click on the link below to hear Kaitlyn's presentation on tigers. This is the animal she has spent time researching in class!

http://www.sas.edu.sg/gallery/08-09/Q3/PS/1st/mmorton/animal_movies/slides/Kaitlyn%20Tiger.html

Kenton's Zoo Trip

Trip number two to the zoo wasn't too bad - I had three little boys this time who spent much time reading all the facts at each exhibit. Our agenda was to find the animal each had researched the week before in class and take their picture by it. We also had a five page scavenger hunt to fill out which we only got about 1/2 done since we took so much time at each exhibit. While Kaitlyn's group yesterday chose to attend the Splash Safari, Kenton's group decided on The Rainforest Fights Back so I felt like I wasn't doing the exact same thing two days in a row. Ethan stayed home today:) Once again I saw an animal there that I've never seen before - the komodo dragon - which one of the boys had researched. I also saw a snake climbing straight up a wall which was very disconcerting. I would like to believe that they can't do that!!! This means they have access to areas that I didn't realize...

Kenton doing his part for the scavenger hunt
Kenton, Tyler, and Declan

Tyler by the komodo dragon

Kenton in front of a tortoise which was what he researched last week

Anaconda heading straight up a wall! This thing stretched out was about 6 feet long. There was another snake already up on top of the wall which is probably why this one was heading there. The snake is the fat, shiny thing in the picture - the other is a vine.

All three boys back on the bus after a long, FUN day at the zoo! Kenton had the choice of staying the rest of the day and watching a movie with his class or coming home with me. Guess which one my "home body" picked?

I had another go at the flower I photographed yesterday. This one turned out much sharper and I am happier with the picture:)

Kaitlyn's Zoo Trip

Today Ethan and I met Kaitlyn's class at the zoo for a field trip. She was with her fifth grade "study buddy" that they meet with once a week and had to research two different animals. She picked the proboscis monkey and polar bear. Every time we've visited the zoo here I've seen something new that I've never seen here before - today it was the snake exhibit. It was pretty cool because several of them were actually moving around which it seems you don't usually get to see. Ethan had fun running away the whole 4 hours and sometimes had 10 fifth and first graders chasing after him...I'm sure that he thoroughly enjoyed all that attention. I had a conversation tonight with Ethan about what all he saw at the zoo:

Me: "Did you have fun at the zoo?"

Ethan: "Yea! I did!"

Me: "You got to see monkeys and fish..."

Ethan: "Yea! And Zebras"

Me: "Yep, you got to see zebras!"

Ethan: "And giraffes!"

Me: Yep, you saw giraffes too! And you saw a kangaroo and you pulled his tail!"

Ethan: "Yea! I did! And dinosaur!"

Me: "Wait, you didn't see any dinosaurs today! There aren't dinosaurs at the zoo!"


I found the following flower which I have never seen before but my picture turned out a little fuzzy - that could be due to the fact that Ethan chose to take off running right as I was taking the picture. It was on a tree that also had coconuts and is the size of my hand.

I told Ethan to go up and pet the kangaroo so I could take a picture...he ran up and pulled it's tail! Good thing the kangaroo was pretty much ignoring all the kids surrounding it. By the way, I've always thought kangaroos were taller than me but the biggest one there maybe comes up to my shoulders.
Ethan and his fan club.

Ethan made a friend with a stuffed orangutan...he even rubbed his blankie on the animal's face...

Kaitlyn and her study buddy Katie

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Tomorrow I get to do it all over again with Kenton's class...!