Christmas

We have had a busy and fun holiday season. It is over now and I need to relate the highlights of the month, but it seemed like only a week ago that I was setting up the tree and decorations while the kids were dancing around the house in such excitement. We have much to be grateful as we celebrate the birth of Christ and the close of an eventful year.

Maggie was in a Christmas play at the school, acting the part of an elf. I must admit she made a beautiful little elf, looking far older than her 8 years with stage makeup on. She is also pictured below with some friends in the ward, Caitlin and Lily Sloan, who came up to the school to see the performance.

Xander had a music concert with all the Kindergarten classes at SAS. His class performed the song "Santa Lucia" about the Swedish tradition of lighting candles at Christmastime. I guess it was fitting since our boy is more Swedish than anything else.

Gingerbread Houses for Activity Days with the girls .

Grandpa and Grandma Gordhamer came shortly after the school holiday began to celebrate Christmas with us (and to do a visa run for their mission in East Malaysia.) As is our tradition, we headed down to the busy Orchard Road to see the Christmas lights and get ice cream. Trying to keep up with 5 busy kids took all 4 of us adults. Fortunately, no one was lost for too long.

On Christmas Eve we went to an ice skating rink in a local mall not to far from our house. The kids were all excited to really go ice skating. The biggest challenge was coming up with enough warm clothes. Xander has church pants on, Ella is wearing PJ's, Abigail and Maggie pulled out their single pair of jeans and only sweatshirt. As you can see, Joseph didn't even try to wear something warm--a true Minnesotan.

Later that evening on Christmas Eve, we had our traditional Bethlehem dinner of lamb, lentil soup, olives, goat cheese, grapes, hummus and such. We try to make the night a time to think about Christ and his life. It is something the kids really look forward to each year. After dinner we had a small program reading the nativity story in Luke, singing carols, and then listening to Abigail and Maggie perform O Come All Ye Faithful on the cello and Silent Night on the harp.

Santa came through again this year and left lots of good things for the kids. We had a fun and lazy Christmas morning opening gifts and relaxing, followed by a Christmas dinner with Cami and her family (I wish I had a picture of that--oops.)

Last child in our family and the last one to celebrate a birthday each year, but certainly not least, Juliet turned 1 on December 26. She has lots of older siblings who love her and wanted to help out on her birthday. Her cake is individual cupcakes in the shape of a "1" in case you can't tell.

Ella Marie Birthday

Ella Marie turned 3 on November 30th. She was greatly anticipating her birthday for some time. I would often hear her singing at night in her bed "Happy Birthday." It is such fun when the kids get old enough to really understand holidays. Ella Marie is such a fun and special girl in our family, full of energy and life. She loves horses (seems to be a common thing in our family,) princesses and pink. She calls her dad "sweetie pie." And she wakes up every morning at 6:45. That's a new thing to adapt to as all my other kids have been big sleepers. I love my little girl and am grateful that she is in our family. She and I have one thing in common: we are both child #4 in our families.

Because she loves princesses so much, I had a fun time making her a castle cake to go along with the princess themed presents she got this year. It isn't perfect, but I was pretty impressed with what I was able to do a brief youtube tutorial on cake making.

Halloween

We had a great Halloween this year that started out at the school pumpkin patch on a Saturday morning after Abigail's soccer game. The kids always look forward to finding that perfect pumpkin, the Indian corn, and the gourds. (And I have no idea why this is underlining or how to make it stop.)




The following pictures were taken at school on the Friday before Halloween. They had a costume parade around the school followed by games and festive food.

Pictures taken before we left for our ward Hallow treat-or-treating and lawn party on Saturday night (October 30th.) Definitely not as much candy this year (as the kids only went to the houses in the American neighborhood of church members) but that is fine with mom and dad.

We were gathering outside for pictures and I didn't dress Juliet up. Feeling kind of guilty, I ran back inside and came up with this costume using some scrap fabric and an extra headband. Getting her to keep her headband on was certainly the biggest trick of the night.

My babies

People often tell me my babies all look the same. So I came up with this idea to put them all side by side for a comparison. I can tell them apart (at least at this point) can you? (And they are not in order!) Putting this blog together was fun and kind of interesting because first, I had to find baby pictures of the kids all at a similar age with a similar expression; and second, it gave me a chance to really study my babies to find these similarities and differences. Now if I put them all in black and white, and you could not use color of clothes and eyes to help, it might be even more tricky.

Busy Bodies

We have been staying busy keeping up with all the kids and their activities. Shortly after the big kids started school, Ella started preschool at a smaller school located conveniently in our neighborhood. She loves school and has a lot of fun. This picture was taken on "fancy dress day." She calls all her church dresses "princess dresses" and loves wears this dress-up crown almost daily. She also loves pink. Of all the girls (so far) she is the most "girly."

Abigail is probably the busiest of all, mostly because she has the most homework on top of her other activities. She started cello this year at school in the stings ensemble and we enlisted a private instructor for her in the evenings during the week. This picture was taken at her first school concert. (She is the one second in on the right.) Abigail is also playing another year of soccer.

Maggie started harp lessons. This decision was kind of a gamble because it involved purchasing a harp which is quite significant. We needed to find something unique to suit such a unique girl. We found a wonderful teacher here from Scotland and she had a few trial lessons which went really well. Both the girls have a good foundation in piano and so it has been smooth transferring to another instrument. So far, she still loves it and hugs the harp every night before she goes to bed.

Xander is mostly just getting used to a long school day. It starts at 6:30am when he wakes up to get dressed and eat breakfast before the bus comes at 7:00. Kindergarten here is a full 7 hour day. He does have an after school swimming class once a week. Below he is pictured in is USA costume on UN day. While the school is the Singapore American School, there are lots of different nationalities represented and it is fun to see them all portrayed on UN day.

I am still involved in the Achievement/Activity Day program for the 8-11 year old girls in the church. Our group has grown significantly now with some 28 girls total. I get to work with Abigail and Maggie, which I enjoy, planning meaningful activities to help the girls achieve goals and learn new skills. We recently had a Garden Party themed evening talent show with such a fun variety of talents from singing, to instruments, art displays and dance.

Staycation

staycation, noun \ˈstā-ˈkā-shən\: a vacation spent at home or nearby. First known use: 2005

I just thought I would clarify that staycation is actually a word in the Merriam-Webster's dictionary. It is also what we had over fall break last week. Packing up the kids and going off somewhere exotic has become a lot of work now that we have added Juliet to our bunch; and there is so much to do around Singapore that we haven't gotten to with our busy schedules that it just made sense to vacation in the comfort of our very own home. (Not to mention a whole lot cheaper.)

On Friday, we headed to Sentosa, an island just off the Southern coast of Singapore accessible by car. We went to Underwater World to visit the marine animals and see the dolphin show. Ella probably had the most fun, especially with all the "hands on" exhibits where she got to reach into tanks and touch stingrays and fish.

After underwater world, we took our picnic down to the beach and had some sun and sand time for a few hours. We remembered everything from the packed cooler to the sunscreen, hats and diapers, but unfortunately, forgot a camera. Big Bummer! Juliet experienced her first taste of a fist full of sand, and Ella wouldn't get out of the ocean. Singapore is a big port and so there are no waves to worry about. It was a hot, fun day at the beach.

Saturday, we went to Forest Adventure. I made sure I brought my camera this time. It is an obstacle course of sorts all in the trees spanning a nearby reservoir. There is a "grand course" for anybody above 56 inches (which barely included Abigail) and a similar but smaller scale kids course (which Xander was just tall enough for.) The kids all LOVED it and are begging to go back. (In fact it is at the top of their Christmas lists.) They moved from platform to platform high in the trees, completing each challenge while harnessed to a safety rope. The best part, they all said, was the zip line at the end. Abigail and Joseph got to zip across the reservoir.

Maggie is pictured below at the first challenge and the zip line at the very end of the kids' course.

Xander was super brave. He had kind of a nervous start, but quickly got the hang of it. No parents were allowed up--I just offered encouragement and took pictures from below.

Abigail and Joseph were together on the big course, which took 2 hours to complete.