First Day of School

School started up for Aaron on Wednesday.  He was very excited to be starting in kindergarten.  Betsy was really excited to have some quiet around the house.  Danny, not so excited as he had to go back to work!  But then again, Danny IS excited about his new math courses for his Master's degree.  So, it is a good August.  We are all enjoying the closer proximity to school, only about 20 minutes on average to get to school! (Instead of 50 minutes last year).

"Where's Aaron?"

  To introduce our new space to all of you, we decided to play a little game called "Where's Aaron?"  Enjoy these fun pictures from around our home.

Picture 1:  The Living Room

Here you see our new, and much smaller living room.  We are not exactly sure why there is a big hole in the coffee table, but we thought of some ideas.

 Picture 2:  Aaron's Room

Now that Aaron has a big-boy-bed, he has more space to lose toys under it.  And he has more space to keep all his buddies on it!

Picture 3:  Aaron's Room

The other side of Aaron's room is a wardrobe with a full length mirror.  Lots of space and funny faces!

Picture 4:  The Storage Room

Yes, our storage space has been reduced by over half.  However, God gave us wisdom to use the space available.  Yeah, it is very full!!

Picture 5: The Kitchen

Mommy is very happy with the new kitchen space.  It is small, but the overhead space is more clear than the old kitchen.  She doesn't feel like she has to duck under the drying rack to wash the dishes.  Another plus:  Piped in gas for hot water at the tap!!!  That includes the shower as well!!!!  No more flipping switches and heating dishwater in the tea kettle!!!!!!  Yeah, this makes her very happy!!!  Can you see Aaron?  He is there!

 Picture 6:  The Kitchen

The stove top is a bit of a puzzle.  Mommy is guessing that maids like to stirfry more on their level.  So even though the counter tops are low, the range is even lower!  But Mommy is using every bit of the high space for storing the appliances!  Also, the kitchen can be closed off from the rest of the house, which can be air-conditioned!  Mommy discovered a very important reason to close the kitchen doors:  The clothes dryer.  She ran it twice in one day (Wah!! Soooo hot lah!!!)  Yeah, that is a last resort.  Expensive too!

 Picture 7:  The Dining Room

Family meals are much more efficient now that we have a proper dining room.  What you can't see is the cabinets and counter top Marvin.  Setting the table is a breeze.  Having the extra table will be handy when we have guests.  Can you see Aaron?

Picture 8:  The Master Bedroom

Here we have the room with the "Man-eating Bed".  Yup, most of the room is the bed.  It is almost like everything else is an afterthought.  But we also have a big wardrobe like Aaron's, and at last we have a working air-con unit.  Yeah, they fixed it yesterday!!!  Nighttime is quite comfy-cozy.

Picture 9:  The Study/Guest Room

This is the best angle for the study.  It has so much space for computers (yahoo!) and even scrapbooking (wahoo!!!)  Are you a scrapper?  I am going to be again!!  Gigi, can you see a bit of the Narnia poster?  It looks so cool in this room!!!  Oh yeah, the red rolling chair is cool too (a gift from the previous tenets).  Out of the frame is (you guessed it) another big wardrobe.  No more clothes on a little flimsy rack!!

Intermission Story:

  The view from our windows has been most extraordinary!  The first day we came to view the place, rented at the time by some friends of ours, Paula, wife and mom, showed us this beautiful, scenic, open, grassy park.  The prospect was gorgeous (a little Jane Austin there)!  We seemed miles from the nearest apartment buildings.  What a lovely view each morning.  Paula said, "This whole area is slated for development.  We've enjoyed the view the whole time we've lived here.  I can't imagine that they would start developing for several years."

  Each time we came to see the place, meet the landlord, check on furnishings, etc., we enjoyed our grassy park.  Even the landlord proudly claimed this unique claim upon rare open spaces.

  This is absolutely true.  The day, I mean the absolute DAY we moved our furniture in, a construction crew walled off the entire space and began loud, obnoxious, heinous, assaults on that fine park.  And they mounted this attack right under our window!!  Oh, the humanity of it all.  But there is a silver lining.  Aaron has always been fascinated with giant machines.  His view has expanded greatly in the last few weeks.  Even Danny has had a touch of nostalgia.  Today, these fine wielders of expansion and destruction began cutting down almost all of the evenly spaced trees.  Chainsaws can certainly bring back memories for one who grew up in Roseburg, OR.

  Without further ado, our final shots for today:

Picture 1: The Leaning Tree

The tree in the middle is not reaching for sunlight.  It is falling.  Another one bites the dust (or turf as the case may be).

Picture 2:  Construction Orange

The excavators greet us each morning at about 8 am.  They take a break for lunch for an hour in the middle of the day, then they rest for the night at about 6:30 pm.  There is also construction blue and a lovely sea green as well. 

Picture 3:  It Used to Be Green

We think this is a washing station for vehicles exiting the site.  They dug a huge hole, let it rain for a day, dropped bricks into the pool (huh??) and put a grate over the top.  All I have to say is they better not be breeding mozzies!  This is a dengue free zone!!!! 

Picture 4:  All is not Lost

The good news is that there are plenty of great playgrounds in our new neighborhood.  Our little monkey loves flitting from one to the other.  You can see the MRT tracks in the background.  More good news, we are very close to Clementi MRT.  Yeah, that is important.  Green line!!  Gets us a lot closer to everything!  Less waiting for buses and trains!!  Only 3 bus stops to school.  About 15 minutes, with the wait!!!  Or Danny can walk it in 25 minutes.  That is about as long as it used to take him to ride a bike.

Closing Argument:

  Okay, so I guess since we just had devotions with Aaron, and it talked about not hating, but loving your brother, I better not start an argument now.  In short, we are blessed beyond measure at the grace God has poured out on us repeatedly.  Here He has once again shown His provision by providing us just the home we need, at just the right time, and gave us a Christian landlord as well.  What an honor it is to serve the Most High God!!  Thank you all for your prayers and support!

My camera has video!

This is a video I had Daddy take on my camera a couple weeks ago.

Aaron is 5!

We are back!  Our site is going to have some alterations in how we work.  We've added a new editor!  Aaron celebrated his 5th birthday in February and received his own camera.  He's been having lots of fun with it and will begin to have his own pictures to post and talk about.  Here are a few of our pictures from the past months.

Aaron's birthday 

I wrapped a huge box.with a small box

 

with a picture inside.

The next day we all went and picked out his camera.

It has been fun having Aaron at school with me.  He spends a couple afternoons with me in my classroom after school, it's fun to be able to see a bit more of him during the day. Another fun thing came with spirit week.  This year one of the days was twin day.  We had fun being twins!

Sorry about the pictures, something got messed up when they posted.  They are rotated on our computer!

I got a camera for my birthday!

This is a picture of the building outside our window.

This is in my bedroom when my bed is made really good. Look at the funny snow globe on the shelf.

My tower with Pooh on top and Fuzzy Wuzzy beside it. It's funny because I took a picture with my garbage can too.

I took a picture of my airplane and my American flag and the picture I drew at school, it's a picture of me. I laid down on the paper and my art teacher drew around me.

I took a picture of me and Mommy together on Daddy and Mommy's bed.

I love you everybody!

An Exciting Summer

It is hard to believe how fast time can fly by. This past summer has been full of wonderful adventures and we plan to fill you in on some of the details over the next few days. Today Aaron and I are going to share some of the excitement in his life.

On August 4th, I took Aaron to celebrate the coming change in his life as he goes from a little boy to a school boy. We had some other guys come to help mark the occasion with us. Between games I gave Aaron this name tag for his school bag and talked with Aaron about the significance of growing up into a young boy. I told him how Betsy and I had chosen his name because we hoped he would be a light to those around him.
He's only four and a half years old, but I think he kind of understood what was happening, and hopefully this will be a time he will look back at in the future as we continue to mark his journey to manhood with little ceremonies.

It is fun to see him growing and to hear evidence of what he is learning. A couple nights ago I had a sleepover in his room, I brought a couple mattresses in and slept on the floor in his room. It was fun. The next day at nap time he decided to sleep on my bed. I asked if he was pretending he was a Daddy in his little boys room. Then I asked if he wanted to be a Dad when he grew up. He said, "Yeah, I think so. When I'm older I'll ask God what He wants me to be and then I'll be what He says." AMEN!

Here are a few pictures of the bowling adventure:

Here is Aaron practicing his writing on a new drawing pad he just received (not sure why it is rotated, but couldn't get it to rotate back, oh well!). He can't wait for school to start in just 7 days!

China Trip

We have finally recovered from our week in China.  Everyone is healthy again.  All of our things are unpacked.  All of the laundry is finished.  Here are some pictures from our lovely week. 

 

No sooner had we cleared Chinese immigration, then one of our students climbed aboard his suitcase and took a snooze.

 

 

Here is the city we visited.  It is extremely large.  In the three years we’ve gone, we still have not seen even half of it.

 

 

 

The Mandarin teacher at ICS has a home near this lake.  It is the biggest lake in the area, and if someone took all of Singapore and plopped it in this lake, the entire country would be submerged and barely make a dent in the whole size of the lake.

 

 

 

It seems that this fresh water has an abundance of seaweed.  These people are harvesting it and there were miles of it piled all along the shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our first real cultural experience was a Minority Village, displaying all the variety and color of the local indigenous tribes.  There are over 50 tribes just in the province we visited.

 

There were statues, mock villages, elephant shows, horseback riding and so much more to experience.  Aaron especially liked climbing on everything he could.

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

Warning signs were courteous enough to have English translations.  We got the gist of it.

 

 

All the villages looked so different.  Some were merely huts on stilts.  This village was magnificent in its stone heights.

 

 

 

 

Betsy has always considered herself lucky anytime she can be on a horse.

 

 

  

Our second day started with the work we went to accomplish.  We went to a local university and taught English classes using fun activities.  The idea is that the students would be out of their normal routines and have a chance to practice English with English speakers.  Here are the basketball students.  Most of the Chinese students have played basketball before, so they were quite competent.

 

Here is one of the students I enjoyed getting to know.

 

 

 

Dodgeball was a totally new experience for most of the Chinese.  Some were a bit fearful to attempt something so new.  It didn’t take them long to join when they watched their schoolmates take to the sport with much enthusiasm.

Our students also taught card games and Pictionary.  Everyone from ICS did a great job and made good friends.

 

 

 

Aaron spent his days learning new Chinese words like ni hao (hello), zai jian (goodbye), and bu yao (I don’t want).  That last one was his favorite because every Chinese student who saw him wanted to touch, hold, pick up, and get a picture with him.  After a while he just wanted to be left alone so he could explore the area in peace.  We taught him “bu yao” in hopes that it would help fend off his admirers.  Sometimes it worked.  He also found new ways to entertain himself.  In the picture above, one of the ICS students is helping him discover wind force and gravity.  Specifically how much fun it is to blow an empty water bottle off another.  Betsy and Aaron also took an afternoon to explore a park in the university.  The flowers and walkways were amazing!

 

 

 

 

The new university library.

 

 

 

  Another beautiful sunset over the city.  This shot was from our hotel room.

 

 

 

 

On our last day we went on quite a hike.  We climbed hundreds of steps up the side of a cliff.  Every so often there were shrines and temples built onto the steep hills honoring various Taoist deities.  The views of the lake and city below were awe-inspiring.  There were two goals.  The first goal was to hoof our way to an archway called  the Dragon Gate.  The engineering needed to carve the gate and the steps to get there boggled the mind.  You can see it below.

 

The Dragon Gate:

 

The last goal was to make it to the top of the cliff and the last of the “endless” staircase.  Here are Danny and Aaron triumphant at the very top.  Shortness of breath and keeping up with Aaron were the greatest enemies we had to conquer.  Singapore is basically sea level.  This part of China is thousands of feet above sea level.  Whew!!  We made it!!!

 

 

 

 

There are many more pictures we could post.  But we hope this gives you a taste of our journey.  God was very good to us and gave us many opportunities to live His love.