With her Japanese family

It was way too short but it was very nice to be back there over the weekend. We spent Friday just relaxing at home. On Saturday and Sunday we did some intensive shopping. It is bad to have just girls getting together. We kept on going!

On Sunday night everyone came around and had a family dinner (unfortunately Goichi had to work).



Rua (1)  was very keen on Ashley and she was being a big sister to her:



Yosuke was still amazed by her hair!



The biggest cousin and the littlest:

I was very glad everyone got to cuddle Ashley and see her growing.



A big typhoon was approaching Osaka that evening. The rain and the wind got very strong. So everyone went home quite early. I cannot recall the last time we had such a big storm hitting our area.  Luckily it passed during the night and by the time we had to be at the airport we had a blue sky and no wind so didn't affect our flight at all.

I wish we could have stayed there longer. It was very short but I was very happy to be back and show off my daughter to my family.

Girls weekend

I had to take this opportunity. Merryn and Dennis were in Singapore and Matthew was on leave for 5 days. Ashley and I decided to have a girls weekend away in Osaka.

The flight over there was very easy. I only had one child! who sits nicely in the buggy. When we got to the airport we found out (I should have checked before we left home, never mind...) our plane was delayed for 2 hours.

It didn't bother me much. I just went to the lounge and had some supper and a cup of tea while I watched a couple of TV dramas on my phone.





It was a good flight, we had pretty much the entire business class to ourselves.



And my girl knows how to behave - she went to sleep just after takeoff then stayed asleep in her little bassinet until we landed in KIX.



And woke up very cheerful :)



I wish traveling is this easy all the time...

LEGO School

This morning Oliver had a very special treat. Going out with just ME to LEGO School!



My friend Nicola asked me if Oliver would be interested in coming along to a school holiday program offered at one of the educational institutes in Siglap (which is 5 min bus ride from our condo). A 75min LEGO Robotics Workshop for only $20 on street deals - Oh YES please!

Nicola's older children Annabel and TJ went with Oliver. I was very happy they were there just in case Oliver needed some extra help.

We got to the workshop, Oliver looked a little bit nervous:









The class was very small, only 10 children or so. And there were 3 friendly looking teenagers there to help the kids. Us mothers weren't too sure how they would run it or what they were going to build etc but said bye bye to the kids and off we went for breakfast and coffee at Starbucks.

Nicola's youngest, Aisla was fast asleep in her buggy so we had kids-free conversation for over an hour. Without being interrupted you can talk so much! It was just lovely :)



When we went back to collect the kids, Oliver was very happy, he made a moving monkey but told me he found it a little difficult to find the pieces because there were so many in the bucket. But he really enjoyed it and asked me if he was going back there again tomorrow too :)

It must have been a great morning for him. He wanted to his LEGOs out this afternoon and spent quite a long time playing with them.

They are here!

Merryn and Dennis arrived yesterday evening. They will be here for just over 2 weeks. The boys were so excited to see them so soon after our holiday in NZ.

They want a nice relaxing holiday but I have a suspicion - Oliver's want to do with M&D list is quite long!

Yay for Japan

Congratulations Tokyo for getting the 2020 Olympics!

I actually worked in the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics for an American TV company.  7 more years  - I wonder if we will be back in Japan and the kids are old enough for me to work in the Olympics again. That will be very cool...

Very social weekend

Thursday was the last day of term for Singapore schools and the kids are now on school break for 10 days.  It gets very social in the condo during the school holidays. We were invited to a BBQ on Friday by our usual BBQ crew (this was already our third BBQ since we got back from Bali!) with some fab food.

The boys enjoyed swimming, scootering and running around with their friends. The turn out was great, there were 12 kids altogether aging from 0-10 years and all played very nicely :)

Us adults also enjoyed catching up with our friends and meeting some new ones too! It felt like we are finally back in Singapore properly.



The big boys drinking continued at the bar in the condo (Yes we now have a bar on the property!)  after the BBQ pit closed and had more fun time catching up.

With having only the morning to recover from a rather late night, on Saturday afternoon we had people over to watch the All Blacks game.









Then in the evening we had dinner with Stefan and Su who we haven't seen for a long while. They brought some yummy Italian takeaways for us.





And this morning we had a lovely walk on the ECP and had some breakfast with Stefan.



Our never ending socialising continued on to the afternoon. We were meeting up with friends at the pool. I knew 4 other families would be there for an afternoon swim but didn't know they were having a little surprise for us!

Naz kindly baked a delicious cake for Ashley's 4th month birthday.



I loved the very girly details:



Ashley with Naz (Ashley was very sleepy...)



The kids were there to celebrate and helped Ashley demolish the yummy cake. Unfortunately she was very very tired and didn't last long...



And fell asleep...



I love this great community we have and things can just happen within the condo in walking distance.
Bring it on school holidays!

School run

This is how we do school runs now. No need for driving cars like we did in Brunei, we just put the kids in the buggy and walk or jog when we are running late :)

Ashley:



Luca:



Ready for the pick up!

Time with Luca

Oliver is back at his Singapore kindy and I only have Luca and Ashley at home in the mornings.  Luca has enrolled into the same kindy as Oliver, but he cannot start until January.

It is kind of good for him to have him and mummy time back. Ashley sleeps 9-11ish so I can pay attention to him and be involved in his fun-play.

Like - feeding his elephant. "Mummy elephant eat fish and chips (Luca)"



Or - "Mummy my baby pooed, tissue please"



And when Ashley wakes up from the morning nap they have a little chat.



I need to make the most of our precious time together, only 4 months to go until he starts (no no I am not counting down because I cannot wait to get rid of him!).

Sunflowers

When Matthew went on his flight to Osaka he got this photo to show the boys. They are finally flowering!

Dolphin lagoon

It has been a while since we visited the aquarium. To make the most of our annual pass and something cool to do in the middle of the day we hopped in a taxi and went to Sentosa for the afternoon.

It is good to see the place is always in progress, when we first went there only a half was really open and the marine life they promised wasn't really there.

This time we saw this leafy seahorse for the first time. They were floating around and if you didn't see close enough you would have thought there were nothing in the tank.



This was Ashley's first visit to the aquarium. The fish were like a moving mobile and she loved it.



This is what she was looking at for over 15min.







Luca was very keen to catch this yellow stingray:



Oliver knew exactly where to have a picnic - our favourite part of the aquarium - Open Ocean.



Unfortunately the great big window was not as clean as when we last visited. But it was still a nice break place for the boys to have some snack and for me to feed Ashley.





We found this giant fish which loved following Luca, or Luca following the fish?





Just before we were coming out to the shark exhibits close to the exit we found this new display - Dolphin Lagoon:



I have seen dolphins before but only in shows or off a boat in the sea so this was the first time for me to see them underwater. It was rather relaxing to watch them. I still don't think the lagoon was big enough tho.



Oliver will be on his term break from next week so I am sure we will be back there for another cool afternoon.