Happy Birthday Ella

 Ella turned 5 on November 30.  She wanted everything pink and she is head over heels in love with anything that has to do with dogs.  She knows every dog on the street by name and pets all of them through the house gates.  She has made up an imaginary pink dog named "Sparkle" that sometimes takes shape in stuffed dogs and others in Ella herself.

Halloween

Halloween was quite an event here.  I don't particularly care for Halloween.  It is sort of the kick off, or the holiday to wade through to the better ones to follow, namely Thanksgiving and Christmas.  And it always seems to come down to the last minute.  I was up late getting the details of costumes together and handling last minute changes (Magdalene was going to be a flower then change to a bat) and meltdowns (Ella's mermaid costume was too small and I had to do some serious begging and bribing to get her to wear the witch costume, which was ADORABLE.)

Xander was Sensei Wu from Lego Ninjango.  I made a beard, but he was not quite brave enough to wear it.

 Went to school parties from 12:30-3:00 straight.  Juliet got to make a cookie with Ella at her Pre-K school party.

Magdalene was a bat posing here in front of the house before leaving to trick-or-treat.

 Juliet was a princess.

There I am, a fifties housewife, getting ready to hand out candy.  I had several thousand pieces of candy and it lasted almost an hour.  The streets are crowded with people in all shapes and sizes and decked out in all manner of costumes--something similar to carnival I would think.  Abigail was a flower and sold water bottles with her cousin Breann.  They each made about $150 profit for a couple hours of work.  Not bad.

Grocery Shopping

I have resorted to several methods of getting groceries these past few months without a car:

I have some delivered from a grocer who calls me daily to see what I need for the day.  I frequently bike up to the local store and get some basics to take home by hanging the bags on the handle bars.  And the other day, I pulled Juliet in the wagon up to the store and got a bigger haul.  She had a grand time.

Girls Camp

It has been too long since I posted anything.  I am soooooo busy.  With a husband working a lot and commuting an hour or so now that we moved up to the north of the island by the school, I barely have time to do much of anything but keep up with the kids and all the activities and the dramas in life.  For example, Maggie has fractured her wrist and her knee, with a cast and crutches, and 10+ hours in emergency rooms.

Abigail recently went to girl's camp in October.  It wasn't her first girl's camp.  She actually had the opportunity to go in Minnesota over the summer to a regional girl's camp that included eight stakes in the region.  900 girls and 100 leaders attend the "encampment" held on the University of Minnesota campus in Duluth, Minnesota.  She left early Monday morning and returned on Saturday afternoon.  There was no contact with the girls--only through cell phones with the leaders if there was an emergency.  I must admit it was strange going that long without talking to my daughter.  She basically knew none of the girls and was assigned a roommate at random. When she walked in the door that afternoon, she seemed older.  The first experience of really leaving the nest was successful.  She had a fantastic time and her only regret was that it had to end.  I was proud of her for going and making it such a great experience.  

Back in Singapore, she attended girl's camp in Indonesia on an island not too far from Singapore called Telunas.  Joseph volunteered to be an adult male/priesthood holder as they needed two and asked him if he would go.  I'm glad he could go and spend that time with Abigail and the other cute girls in our Singapore 4th ward.

Arriving at the camp Telunas in long boats.

My cute, but absentee globe-hopping husband.

Cliff jumping--that looks like a scaredy face.

 The ropes course.

The girls.  Abigail got to go with her cousin too--Ashlyn, first on the left back row.

Hello Cello

Joseph and Abigail had some fun with the cello and the camera.  I thought these were pretty cute.  Abigail has come quite a ways since she started cello a couple of years ago.  She is in Advanced Strings this year again and still takes private lessons weekly.  She recently upsized to a full size cello and we bought her a new, very nice German made cello.  She wanted to sleep with it the first night we had it.  

Zoo with Juliet

I love having time to spend with Juliet in the mornings.  She is such a sweet girl and so excited about discovering the world around her.  Last week we went to the zoo with Cami and Bryant.  She got to feed the giraffes and wasn't at all scared of them.  She sure loves animals.  

Back in Singapore

To make a long story short, Joseph left Cargill and took a job with another metal trading company in Singapore called Coeclerici. We had our stuff delivered to Minnesota, kept it in the garage in boxes and then two weeks later shipped it out again for Singapore. We spent a nice summer in our home in Minnesota enjoying family, lakes, and our little bit of forest. We hope to keep the house and come back each summer. Minnesota is a great place to call home.

We are in a new place here in Singapore, in the Woodlands, just around the corner from the SAS, the kids school. It is about a 5 minute walk is all and great for them to sleep in a little more and just skip along to school minutes before it starts. We made the decision to put Ella into school there too in the Pre-Kinder program. Abigail walks her to school everyday and I walk to pick her up. We do not have a car as of yet. So four kids are all settled into their classes and we are finally getting down to a routine. Once Joseph starts work and our stuff comes, life will really seem like it has gone back to normal. I hope to have time to catch up on the summer blogging that I need to get done.


The first day of school at the Singapore American School, asa SAS.  Ella is so excited to go to school with her brother and sisters.  Abigail walks her to the PRe-Kindergarten campus each morning before heading to Middle School, 7th grade.  Magdalene is in 5th grade and Xander in 2nd.

Minnesota Summer

Unfortunately, we took a pathetic amount of pictures during the summer, considering all the things we did.  We started the summer in California and then headed to Minnesota.  We spent a lot of fun hours with Joseph's family, celebrating Don and Marilyn's 50th wedding anniversary.  These are the pictures taken with Joseph's ipad.  I need to add some of the pictures with his camera.

Canoeing at David Gordhamer's lakefront home.

Sharing Costco churros and lemonade with David and Daria's kids.

We got together with the Kraft family for a dinner.  It's currently an even dozen of cute kids.

 Joseph and I went to a session in the Saint Paul/Minneapolis temple.  The kids enjoyed some time on the grass outside.

Summer wouldn't be summer without some time in Grandma and Grandpa's garden.  Maggie loves to look for vegetables and berries to pick.

We stayed in our new home in Eden Prairie.  It was so lovely to have a home of our own, even though it was a little baren of stuff.  We had a chance to host "Decadent Dessert Night" with all of Joseph's family that live around Minneapolis.  What kid doesn't love a buffet of decadent desserts and an ultimatum that they all must be devoured by the end of the night-no limits.  We want to make it an annual event.

Minnesota is beautiful in the summer.  I love driving on the country roads and seeing the lakes, fields of wheat, farms, corn, silos etc.  With the purchase of our home, we officially claim Minnesota as our home outside our home in Singapore.

Abigail and Grandma enjoying dessert during the anniversary program at the chapel.

Happy Birthday Xander

Better late than never . . . here is the birthday post I've been meaning to do for awhile.

We celebrated Xander's 7th birthday (June 23) in California by visiting the lego store at Downtown Disney.  Xander loves legos and had a hard time picking out an item at the store with his birthday money.  He finally settled on a Technic rescue helicopter.  Man do these things have a lot of pieces to keep track of!  It was a fun activity for the whole family.


The whole family pictured in front of a race car store.

 Ella loved the princess themed stores there.

 There were five large rocks on the grass--perfect for a family with five children.

These five kids sure get along well and have fun together.  We are very fortunate.

Xander decorated his own birthday cake this year.

He got to celebrate with some of his best cousin buddies, David and James, who knew exactly what Xander would love--Ninjago.

This is a picture taken later in the summer in Minnesota when Joseph and Xander went to the air show near our Minnesota home.  He had a grand time exploring all the boy toys with his dad.  We are sure grateful for this little man in our family.  He is energetic and inquisitive.  He loves science and all kinds of facts.  I am constantly learning new, interesting things each day from him.  For example, did you know that women have something like 2000 more taste buds than men?  

Biding our time

We are in Minnesota, camping out in our new home on Welters Way, waiting

for some furniture to arrive. It was supposed to come next week but we just found out US customs wants to inspect it so we will not be sitting in couches next week, or better yet, sleeping in beds. We had a hot, hot Gordhamer family reunion, camping at Cleary Lake with temperatures that made Singapore seem comfortable. We celebrated Grandpa and Grandma's 50th wedding anniversary with some trips down memory lane. We played their favorite childhood games, enjoyed some of their favorite food and had a fun time acting out stories from their past with skits from all the families. All of their 7 children and their families, about 25 grandchildren were there. What a great occasion to get together and celebrate the fourth of July too. I took Juliet home after a long day out in 100+ temperatures while Joseph headed to the Casino with all the kids to watch fireworks with their cousins. Juliet fell asleep in the car and wasn't really ready for sleep when we arrived home. When the fireworks started, I could see a grand show from our front porch. I got Juliet up out of bed and took her outside to see them. When she saw her first firework her body went ridged and started shaking quite hard. She hopped out of my arms, ran up the stairs and said, "I wanna go to bed." So it was probably a good thing we didn't stay for the big show.

Nepal: Part 2

The second part of our trip, we took a small internal flight to Pokhara, northwest of Kathmandu and at the base of the Annapurna region of the Himalayas. We were excited to see the mountains, but our excited was greatly diminished when we landed only to discover that the same haze in Kathmandu was prevalent in Pokhara, preventing any view of the mountains. It was nice to get out of the big, noisy city though. Pokhara was definitely more cozy. Our first afternoon there, we hiked up to a peace pagoda and then up to Serankat, the highest point near

Pokhara at 5500 feet, hoping to see the sunset over the mountains, but again, the haze was too thick. We met an interesting kid though and spent some time talking with him. He was 12 years old, dressed in rags, and smaller than Xander. On the way down the mountain, we ran into a group of boys playing soccer with empty water bottles as balls. They were begging for our water bottle, so we quickly drank the rest and then tossed it into the fray to be kicked around with the others.

Playing the Tibetan game of goats and tigers with a shop owner. I wanted to make sure I understood the game before I bought it.

The peace pagoda. Not all that interesting.

Devil's Falls. This is right before monsoon season so the water level is pretty low.

Hiking up the hills to Serangkot.

There are so many interesting dwellings built on the steeped hillside.

The rest of our trip gets a little bit messy. We had quite a run of bad luck. Upon arriving in Pokhara, we learned that the country was going on strike Thursday, the next day. No taxis or shops would be open. Nepal is in the middle of writing a new constitution and some castes do not like how they are splitting the country into territories. So, we waited around Thursday without much to do and then had to walk to the airport. With our luggage. Once we arrived there, we waited around for hours, flights were delayed, then canceled. We were bumped onto later flights, etc. Then it started to rain. And our luggage went out on the bumped flight we were supposed to be on, but apparently it was overbooked. We had to walk back, without luggage, in the pouring rain. It was a little disconcerting, and then Joseph said, "Anna, look." And we turned around and

this is what we saw. The Himalayas. To say they are spectacular is an understatement. The rain had cleared the haze.

We woke up at the crack of dawn (luckily our rooftop room was still available for an unexpected extra night.) This was the view from the rooftop inn.

We walked again to the airport, as Nepal was still on strike, arriving for what was supposed to be an early flight. The plane was delayed in coming, several hours. When we all boarded and sat on it for an hour or so, they announced it had mechanical problems and we had to get off and wait for another plane from Kathmandu. The only good part about all this airport drama over two days, was that we met some cool people in the airport. And after spending 8+ hours together, we got a lot of chatting in. I am sitting with our Canadian friend and Indian family.

The valley steeps from the airplane flying out of Pokhara.

When we got to Kathmandu, we had several hours to make our connection to Singapore. After spending 5 hours in the airport, we heard an announcement that our flight was canceled. We would have to wait until the next day to get out of Nepal. By this time, I had the flu and was feeling really rotten with a fever and sneezing over and over again. We were bused to a hotel for

the night.

View of Mount Everest from the plane out of Kathmandu. Just stunning. I wish I could make it bigger, but I'm having blogging problems with Chrome at the moment.