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!