Last Day of School

Today was the last day of school and was very bittersweet; looking forward to new experiences and saying goodbye to special friends. Kenton and his friend Jack walked to school together for the last time.

Kaitlyn and her good friend Sophie

Getting ready to head out to the door for the last day of First Grade! So hard to believe that they are ready for Second Grade and that they are 7!! Where does the time go? (Ethan obviously isn't included in what I just said!)

Kait and Sophie watch as the buses leave. Sophie is also leaving SAS and heading to Austin, TX. She and Kaitlyn had one last play date before we all head out.

Kaitlyn and Sophia getting one last ice cream from the ice cream man who sits outside the back gate. When we first moved here the twins were asking for ice cream every day after school so I quickly made the rule that no ice cream until Fridays and ONLY if they didn't throw tantrums on me walking to and from school. For only S$1.00 you get some good ice cream!

Buses lined up and ready to leave. I have posted a video below of this final farewell - it was fun!

Kenton saying good-bye to Mrs. Coole

Looking at the playground, covered playground (underneath circle building), and the rooftop playground. Behind me is the back gate where a guard stands to let you in and out.

The primary division of SAS

In front of SAS - the administration offices

Kate is one of Ethan's playgroup friends. She loves wearing her winter hat so much that they have a picture of her on the beach in the sand with it on! So cute!

Jack, Kenton, and Charan enjoying "stoplights" after the pizza and fruit.

Tyler, Ryan, Kenton, Charan, and John-Paul

Gracie, Kaitlyn, Orla, and ? (need to ask Kait!) The PTA sponsored pizza party on the last day of school for the primary students is always a hit!

Kenton's class on the last day of first grade

**WARNING** Turn your speakers down before starting this clip as it's quite loud! As the first buses start leaving SAS they all start blaring their horns while the spectators all clap and cheer until the last bus is gone. All the teachers are lined up along with parents and students and wave at the kids on the buses until the last bus is gone. It may sound like chaos to the untrained ear but to a sentimental mom who's not ready to let go it was quite emotional! Enjoy!

MRT Mishap

I guess I get to leave Singapore with a bang! I had lunch this morning at DeliFrance at Causeway Point Mall with a friend, Julie and then hopped on the MRT to find some answers to our Lovel dilemma. Not too far into the trip I closed my eyes for a few minutes - and opened them an hour later to find myself in a stopped and deserted train at the end of the line! I had missed my stop by about 4 stops so instead of going back on the next train I decided to find a cab instead. I was a little miffed that no one including the conductor bothered to wake me up. When I woke up he was well on his way out the door! I guess I'm officially a "local" to be able to sleep on the MRT!!!

On a different note things are moving along for our move. After spending a relaxing day on Sunday (church, naps, and pool) we hit the ground running this morning. I worked on paperwork before heading to lunch with Julie. After the hour long MRT ride I spent another 45 minutes at the Ministry of Manpower finding out how Ryan can cancel Lovel's work pass. (She's in Singapore under my name so we were concerned he wouldn't be able to cancel her pass.) Then I headed in a taxi over to Paragon shopping center on Orchard Road, picked up Melissa T, headed home, dropped off things, and walked down to school to pick up the twins. The evening has been spent sorting things for the movers and getting our air shipment ready. They come Wednesday morning to pack that up.

Since apparently I am tired, I'm heading to bed! Good Night!

Phuket

Finally I have the pictures ready to post of Phuket. Click HERE to view the slideshow. Please note that since I haven't had a lot of time there may be misspellings, blurry pictures, and a few doubles.

Enjoy!

First Goodbye's

I'm trying something a little different. I've had much trouble uploading pictures lately so I'm going to post a link to Picasa. It's the user, not the software!

A few weeks ago we said our first goodbye to Brian and Fay and their two children. When we finally left that evening everyone was sad on the way back home. We've really enjoyed getting to know them and are going to miss them! We're working on getting them to move to Chicago:) To see pictures of our last evening together click here. (Then you will need to click on the collage to view it bigger.)

I'm STILL working on our Phuket pictures and hopefully will have them available soon to post. I also need to get around to posting pictures of the twins from wacky hair day at school a few weeks back.

Ryan and I have slowly been checking off our "to do" list! Most of the paperwork is done - for now - and I've been working on sorting and packing up a few things like toys, books, and linens. I need the moving company to bring more packing paper and boxes so I'm at a stand still on that for now. We also purchased tickets for my parents to meet us out in LA - plans changed and the kids and I will be spending the night in a hotel because there isn't a Southwest flight out the same evening that we get in from Singapore. So my parents were willing to come out and meet us to help with the rest of the flight back the next day. I made 48 cupcakes today (but still need to frost them) for the twins' parties at school tomorrow. Then Saturday we have their birthday party at our pool from 3 - 5. It's kind of a going away party/birthday party. Tomorrow evening I'm going with a few of my friends for a little farewell get together. Sunday is a free day before another busy week begins.

I can NOT believe that we are down to 5 days of school left and 11 days until we leave here for good.

The Chicken or the Egg?

Here is a video of Kenton's turtle research project.

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Kenton asked me after school today:

"Mom, which came first the chicken or the egg?"

ME:

"UMMM, the egg."

Kenton:

"Nope. The chicken."

ME:

"How do you know that?"

Kenton:

"Well, God made the chicken and then the chicken laid eggs."

Ryan was able to knock buying a car off my to-do list - we got the same van we had before moving here except it's a little newer and a different color - silver. We were happy with it so decided to stick with the tried and true:)

We also put in an offer on a house. It's a short sale which means it will take awhile for the bank to approve our offer and then to close on the house. There is another offer on the table for it as well which means it could fall through if the bank accepts the other offer. We don't want to get into a bidding war so if the other party raises their offer above ours we are back to looking again. We figure that we have time so are not going to rush into anything. We will be in temporary housing in Schaumburg for the first two months that we are back home and then may have to move to a rental place if the paperwork is still being processed for the house and we can't close.

Ryan also brought back my new cell phone. I was planning on sticking with the phone I had before but since I'm switching cell phone providers I had to get a different phone. So we're trying something new - we are not going to get a home phone and just use cell phones. We had talked about doing this a few years ago but were too nervous. This seemed like a good time to make the switch and by the time we actually get to move into a house we will know if it was a good choice or not! I've been busy putting all my contacts into the phone so that I'm ready to go when we land in the US:) I will get my new number out to family/friends as soon as I get a new one assigned. When I ordered the phone I told them which area code I wanted but for some reason they gave me a KC one instead - maybe it's a sign!

I'm heading to lay down - I have had a headache for the past few hours and am hoping I'm not getting strep. Ethan fell asleep on the chair and it's only 5pm so I hope he isn't getting it either!

Moving Update

What laundry day at the Weiss's looks like!

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Sorry to leave you all hanging by not posting another update! I still plan on posting pictures from our Thailand trip but since we took so many I'm working on a slide show with captions to post. We had a wonderful time there and it was very relaxing - just what the doctor ordered as it's been hectic since then!

I spent the first few days this week tracking down a few things that family requested us to bring back and now I'm glad to say that we are officially done purchasing things here other then food! Ryan's back in the US this week meeting his new co-workers, looking for a house, buying a car, and picking up my cell phone that I pre-ordered. I figured that was easier then dragging three kids out cell phone shopping! I knew what I wanted anyway so it was just a matter of ordering it.

As far as a house I will keep you posted! There has been a lot of looking at places and back and forth about where to live, which house to put an offer in on, that I haven't really written about it. Sometimes our decision has changed daily about what to do so I don't want to publicly say anything until we've put in an offer. That could happen tomorrow so stayed tuned - like I said things can change:)

Today is a huge paperwork day for me - I'm taking care of looking into cancelling Lovel's work pass so she can move on to Norway, filling out shipping insurance paperwork (in case they damage or lose our shipment), filling out the billion documents that they need in order to process our move, and cleaning out Kenton's room and the office. I've done these two rooms recently so it's just a matter of making sure it's all organized before they come in to pack us up. That way it should make unpacking a little bit easier.

Tomorrow we have student-led conferences and my last shift at the PTA Sales office. Saturday is the last of the twins' baseball/softball games followed by a little awards ceremony and then I can relax the rest of the day:) I'm always all for relaxing! Sunday is another day of no plans before another busy, busy week begins!