East Coast Biking

This weekend we took a cab to East Coast park. It is huge, with trails for biking, skating, walking or just laying by the ocean. It's a lot like Town Lake in Austin, just hotter and a view of the ocean and the cargo boats.

We were planning to rent a bike for Elie to begin learning, but as always Nathan wants to do everything Elie does! And so, for $6 each, we rented two 12" bikes and set out on the bike path. Although tentative at first, quickly they were getting it. They found a particularly treacherous hill and cruised up and down for the majority of the hour.

Afterwards we walked to a newly opened Indian restaurant. It was a huge and delicious, with a big cooktop in the middle of the table where they cooked skewers of meat. By the time we left, it was raining really hard - perfect weather for to get home, snuggle in and take a nap.

Phuket Phling

Well we thought we just loved Thailand for giving us pad thai (Thai Orchid in Dallas) and green curry chicken (Singha Thai in Chicago on Clark), but it's now passion at a whole new level. We just spent four days in Phuket and had a blast as a family. We booked travel on SilkAir (Singapore Air's discount airline) and arrived at the airport for our 9AM flight on the weekend with excitement!

We booked the trip with only a week's notice so we didn't know what to expect. I had used Trip Advisor for recommendations when we went to Portugal last year and relied on it for much of what we did here as well. We stayed at the Hilton Resort and from check-in (they gave Eli a teddy bear and us fruit drinks) to the shuttle drop off at the airport, we were pampered. We had a room on the top floor with beautiful views (Nathan enjoyed the feeling of freedom it gave us).

We spent mornings at the pool with a long, fast water slide for kids as well as the beach with crystal clear ocean water (not exactly the Gulf of Mexico). Eli must have slid on the that slide 30 times a day, her highlight of the trip. In the afternoons Jane and the kids took naps and I usually relaxed in the business lounge (JW Black and Chivas for free) and read. Nathan awoke early a couple of days and they served him large chocolate drinks which he could finish with one straw suck! In the early evening we went to the 'Kids Club' to play and feed the kids dinner.

EVENINGS

Each night we had a baby sitter (the hotel arranged the same woman for us each night - fees were $5 per hour for two kids) she popped in a child's DVD that the hotel provided. Jane and I took a 'tuk tuk' (open air taxi, you better hold on) and explored different areas of Phuket (local dinners, $8 hour-long Thai massages, Jane = $3 pedicure, $12 wax). The kids were always sound asleep when we came in as they had played in the sun the entire day.

CORAL ISLAND

My favorite day was when we went to the bay and rented a boat to take us to an island for an afternoon to swim and eat. It was a beautiful, wet ride and seeing nearly empty islands spotting the sea was just incredible. We had Singha to drink and fresh fish for lunch and spent the day swimming and collecting sea shells.

Not sure if we'll make it back to Phuket, Thailand again, but we are already looking for our next long weekend.

Last night we went to a family dinner at Brewerkz with the Windevers. The restuarant is a microbrew on Clark Quay (15 min walk from our house onthe SIN river) that gets packed like the SA River walk or 6th Street. We went for an early dinner with the families and Nathan and Amelia (Windever's 3 year old daughter in pink here) found a fountain and before we knew it were soaked. You can see Tony and Jane taking pictures and Kylie, Campbell (their 1 year old son) and I staying far away!

Picnic Video

Jane's father bought an RCW pocket video recorded which we are messing around with and we are posting this to see how it works/looks. We had a picnic last weekend at the Botanical Gardens and filmed this quickly.

Today is 'Good Friday' which is an official government holiday so I'm at home relaxing. I went running this morning (trying to find the right route, not sure it'll compare to Town Lake in Austin, but working on it) and am hanging out with Eli. Jane and Nathan went grocery shopping - she is teaching Helen how to cook Western food. Helen is out buying a bathing suit so she can start to go with the kids and I (and eventually take them swimming by herself at the American Club or downstairs if things go well). It was odd, she knows how to swim, but doesn't own a suit...we'll see :)

We booked a trip to Phuket, Thailand and we can't wait! We leave Sunday AM and get back Wed afternoon - 3 nights at the Hilton:

http://www.agoda.com/asia/thailand/phuket/hilton_phuket_arcadia_resort_and_spa.html

Talk to you soon!

Back to Relaxing

After a couple of weeks of business, the family is basically back to normal. My brilliant wife was smart enough to bring the kids plasma cars and hook up the TVs when we moved in so she could concentrate on getting the place in order.

We had a couple of birthday's last week (Nathan and Jane) and celebrated at a friend's house (Kathleen from Atlanta / Wayne from Papa New Guinea) with a couple families. Jane's close friend from SMU, Allison, is an incredible cook (used to have her own bakery in Germany) and baked cupcakes and a cake. She and her husband have been so generous with their time and friendship that we just feel so lucky to have connected.

The kids are really enjoying their school, especially taking the bus. The teachers have a little diary they write in every few days and send home so you can read an update. It is a change from when we Jane did the drop off/pick up as there were frequent in-person interactions.

Now updates are through a journal that is kept for each child and calls over the phone. Here are the kids when they left this morning for the bus - Eli loves her Spurs dress and there won't be many more opportunities for her to wear it as she is growing out of it. I don't want my daughter walking around wearing those revealing clothes! Speaking of...I follow the Spurs at work on ESPN.com as the games update real-time on the internet while I'm at work. I really miss going to the games with my dad...trade offs.

Back to the kids...one of the things we found out from school is that Nathan started going potty on the potty. We've been working on it for a couple of weeks and he is doing pretty well - 1 Skittle for going #1 and 2 Skittles for going #2. You can see how much he is enjoying it.

Everyone is settling in to our new accommodations. We love the central location. I walk home from work a couple of times a week - it's a $5 cab ride to the American Club (our second home) - we walk to the grocery store (the same distance from our house on Mesa to the Randall's). The furniture Jane ordered is starting to come in and everything I've seen is beautiful. She ordered a bunk bed for the kids from IKEA and that came tonight. It was a surprise and they saw it when they came home from Eli's ballet. Kathleen from Atlanta owns the ballet studio and it's great that Jane gets to see her a couple of times a week as well.

The biggest edition to our home however is our fifth family member, Helen! She is 29 years old from the Philippines and has lived in Singapore for the past 4 years. She moved in a few days ago and has already transformed our lifestyle with her cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, etc. Jane and I are able to spend so much more time with the kids before and after school as well as with each other at night. She has Sunday off from noon - 7PM each week and I think we'll miss her just in that short amount of time.

Now that we are in more of a routine, we have time to write and talk to all our friends and family who we miss dearly. I couple of house keeping items:

Jane Cell = (65) 9337 3798 (she learned how to text, so ping her)
Marc Cell = (65) 9337 3433 (I'm shutting off my US phone next week, so this and home are the numbers to call me on).

To dial "011 65 9337 ____". To text, type "+659337____"

We already booked our trip home to the US in Dec/Jan for ~30 days (Chicago, Indianapolis, San Antonio & Austin)!!! We had to do it far in advance to get business class tickets using AA miles (now we are officially out of miles as it cost us 440,000, but well worth it). We have started the internet search for our first trip here - likely a 3 night vacation to Thailand. It is moderately priced $200 per plane ticket and $200/night for a hotel for the 4 of us - we just need to finalize and pull the trigger.

Please call us at home and we'll talk to you soon!

We're Still Here

We have been in the middle of our second move, from Great World City, to our permanent residence at Leonie Tower (15th floor).

http://www.homecrawler.com.sg/condo/name/Leonie_Tower.html

It has been a bit crazy with repacking, moving and now unpacking. The things we've been working on are:
1) picking temporary furniture (our place is totally empty except the 8 suitcase we brought and our air shipment, so we have a few pieces of furniture now)
2) picking permanent furniture (our sea shipment will arrive in ~15 days and we are also ordering some things here...mostly living room stuff as it is large and our stuff from home wasn't big enough)
3) choosing a maid - interviews done, paperwork signed, she should move in next Thursday
4) more electrical issues - it took us 2 hours to figure out how to get hot water. I have burned out 2 phones and my favorite atomic alarm clock from Austin. ARG!!!
5) Hooking up the computer - got the home desktop from the seashipment and phone up and running (have I said how incredible Vonage is). NO MORE EXCUSES FOR JANE NOT WRITING OR POSTING ANYMORE!!!
6) Buying and hooking up DVD player for kids playroom (~$70 US) and stereo/DVD combo for living room (~$270).

We realize we had a honeymoon at Great World City and now we are back in the trenches for anouther week until the maid arrives and we get another pair of hands.

Talk to you soon!