Pinterest project!

It's a red letter day whenever I actually DO one of the things I've pinned on Pinterest. Today's project was a bit nostalgic for me because I created travel toiletries kits for my kids like the one I had when I was growing up.

Doing this involved buying two large washcloths ($1.43) plus two shoelaces (80c) then paying a very grumpy woman to sew some straight lines on them ($1.27). At first she refused entirely. I realized later that she accidentally left out one of the halves of shoelace I cut for Megan's kit. We'll make do until we get back from Thailand and I can get the black ribbon my friend Karen bought me yesterday. I don't want to deal with grumpy seamstress again.

End product:

 

Those Who Can't, Teach . . . or, Ooo, Can I Play Too?

I've been reliving my childhood this year, vicariously, through our homeschool co-op. When you start mentioning what you were involved in as a kid, people latch onto it, and suddenly, you find yourself teaching it!

Case in point: I just finished teaching drama this quarter to middle school kids. If I'd had any idea how much fun it would be, I would have signed up from day 1. Granted, it was facilitated by the fact that I had 7 out of 8 very willing, highly dramatic participants. But in the midst of it, I found myself reliving some of my best memories from age 5-15, filled with rehearsals, classes, performances. Today I had printed out scenes from what I hoped were their favorite movies for them to act. I was right, and scored some points by asserting that Lord of the Rings: Two Towers is not only a great movie, but the best of the three. What I didn't expect was the pull inside me that said, "I want to play Gandalf!" and later, "I want to be the White Witch!" (The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe). I'll admit I've taken advantage of a few opportunities to demonstrate things to them, but mostly I try to sit back and just enjoy them.

Exhibit B: Next week I start coaching soccer again for the little ones. I have to own that when I say I made varsity in my first season of soccer junior year, I have to add the caveat that we were most likely the worst soccer team in the history of high school soccer. We didn't score ONCE my junior year. We lost one game 0-21. No, that's not a typo (I will add though that that was my senior year when I didn't make varsity until after that disastrous event). So I had to wonder what I might have to offer them. But in watching them play, and in playing in the evening with our daughter (who plans to be the BEST soccer player IN THE WORLD when she grows up), the joy in me is being awakened, as are my dormant skills (maybe I'm better than I thought?).

The best part? After class today, the kids begged me to teach them again next quarter (I can't) and one of them said, "You are an AMAZING teacher!" Aww. So fun!

Plant status

Rest in peace my short lived friends! I'm sorry I brought you out of a nice cool nursery into the sweltering heat and sun of my garden where you bravely fought a losing battle for life. For what it's worth, you were beautiful, and I really thought for a day there that you were going to make it. Goodbye my four green plants, my four flowers in a variety of colors, and my four green plants with bright pink flowers. You may be joined shortly by two magnolia plants, I'm sorry to say. For those of you who have been repotted and placed inside, best of luck to you. I hope you muster the will to live.

But there is hope for the future of this garden! Today we took in five petunias. I have it on good authority that these will survive, and if our neighbor's yard is any evidence, I trust it. They have a number of petunia plants hanging in their backyard and I don't think they bought them yesterday. Our new flowers now sit over the ghosts of plants gone by, safely in their pots to give them a fighting chance at life (not to mention height). I thought these five would be enough to cover the length of the garden, but I think I might need 3-4 more. We're going to see how these do first. Live my little petunias, live!

Finding my green thumb

You know what grows quickly and has crazy roots? Bamboo! Guess what's all over my backyard? (If you can't guess this you really aren't following my train of thought here). Yeah, so even though we cut the bamboo down - not all of it, but some of it, to make room for something else - I'm discovering that the root systems are vast and the bamboo itself grows horizontally underground. So I bought a hatchet. I think I never knew until today that I really wanted a hatchet.

So far in my little plot of dirt I have planted two what I believe are magnolia bushes, four purple plants, two large green plants with white flowers (for lack of a better description), four pink flowering plants, four small green plants, two bushes, six little plants, and a jasmine tree. And I have four flowers waiting to be planted.

And so far I've managed to kill four purple plants, two large green plants with white flowers, and two of my little plants seem precarious. Someone tell me this is normal? The problem is, the extent of my plant vocabulary in Chinese right now includes, "Does this plant like a lot of sunshine and heat?" (literally, "Is it afraid of sunshine?") and of course any self-respecting plant seller will say, "No, it likes sun!" because their goal is to take my money.

Thankfully, they haven't taken much of my money because plants are cheap. We'll see what continues to grow and what has just been brought here to die.

The great Lego project

Since we are getting ready to leave Singapore, I told Ethan he needed to assemble all his Lego sets, determine which pieces are missing, and which sets he may want to sell or give away. He rose to the challenge and decided to start with Sentai Fortress, which is his largest set.

His Legos used to be organized, but over time, because he tends to make creations from his imagination rather than following instructions, they were completely mixed up. Megan and I put ourselves to the task of sorting the larger pieces by color, and the smaller ones by type.

Here's our final project. After a week of sorting an hour or so every day, he's at least able to know where to start looking. He says it won't stay this way. We've told him we won't sort them again (although Megan might cave. She really enjoyed it).

Resolved

When I started telling people I was running the half marathon last year, I had that uncomfortable feeling that comes with making something public. I'm going to do it again. Right now.

They say that if you make your New Year's resolutions known, you are more likely to follow through on them. I don't know - I think I could still manage to drop them all, but we'll see if this works. So here goes:

My primary resolution is that I want to be more other centered. How's that for vague? What I mean is that I want to be more conscious of others' needs and more quick to respond to them. So because it's vague, I have started making a list of things I can do to develop this trait, such as: only asking questions in conversation, rather than talking about myself; offering to help when I am visiting someone else's house until they find something for me to do (assuming that I don't have to ask to the point where they just find something so I'll shut up); asking God daily to bring to mind people who could use help, prayer, encouragement; writing notes to encourage people in my life, etc. If you have any ideas on how to be more other centered, send them my way!

Resolution 2: become a runner. I can't really say I am a runner right now because I just ran that one race and then a few days a week after that. So to pursue this goal I am making a list of races throughout the year (hopefully one in each season) to give me a training mark. Why running? Well, more for the mental discipline than anything else - to push myself to do more than I think I can.

Last one: Develop my prayer life. I'm starting this one by trying to pray 15 minutes a day in January. Sound too cerebral to be spiritual? Yeah, kind of does to me too, but I figure God can use it, and I'm more likely to actually pray than if I say, "I'm going to pray more." The more specific you are with your goals, the more likely you are to actually accomplish them.

I have other goals, like finish this writing project for work, and get my pictures on istock photo, but I don't want to overload myself. What about you - what are you doing with 2009?

Fishing for dinner

Erik took Ethan fishing today at Pasir Ris, where they caught large prawns. Yeah, they call them prawns here. We've succumbed. They caught eight of them and brought them home.

Now, this could have been a really awkward situation if we didn't have a fantastic maid who cooks like mad. We showed her the prawns and said, "Can you do something with these?" and she calmly and competently whipped up grilled garlic butter prawns with rice and green beans. The green beans, I should mention, were amazing. I do not understand how she makes these incredible dishes with items that I could just as easily find in my house. It's not like she pulls out some secret ingredient from her room to make all our food taste better. She just knows how to cook so much better than I do. And that's ok. That's why she cooks, and I don't. I bake.

But how cool is it that we caught our food for dinner? Ethan was incredibly proud. Lisa got a kick out of how often he came into the kitchen to check on her progress. Pictures to come as soon as my computer is fully functional, which is entirely dependent on Erik and not me.

Thoughts from Miles 10-12

This is not fun.
Why am I doing this?
My feet hurt.
I can't believe I paid S$48 to do this to myself.
I should have worn my hydration pack.
Didn't that girl pass me earlier?
Don't walk - if you walk, you'll never start running again.
Ok, walk. Save it for the last kilometer.
I can't believe I'm still running. I've done 17K!
Oh good, there's another foreign man walking. I don't feel so bad now.
I'll be glad I did this. Think how good you'll feel crossing the finish line.
What if I just drop out of the race and lose my tracking chip in a trash bin?
Think positive Gina! You can do this!
Slow and steady wins the race right?
I'm never doing this again.

And on it went. I started out my race not far from the starting line. I thought this would be good - help me avoid the crush of people. Well, it did, but it's pretty demotivating when you take off and everyone around you (who has pushed their way to the front because they are actually fast) takes off and leaves you in their dust. I thought, "All 75,000 people are going to pass me." This of course wasn't true - many of those people I passed later in the race once they'd given it all out. My only regret was that I had use a bathroom at the 5K mark and there was only one! That took all of five minutes, but it was necessary.

The run itself was beautiful, taking us along the east coast of Singapore. It was never too hot as even after the sun came up it was cloudy. Still, I didn't appreciate the misting machines. I was already quite misted with my own sweat!

I had heard the last few miles were easier to bear because that's where people have lined the streets and are cheering for you. Yeah, the only people watching until the last 500 meters were Pakistani construction workers. They didn't cheer. Erik and the kids came to meet me at the finish line, but somehow they missed me. No matter - once I came around that last corner and saw the finish line, I gave an extra burst of power, crossed it, and then went and hung on a fence so that the blood could drain from my head and I wouldn't pass out.

On the way home, I reflected that this felt a bit like labor - in the midst of it you wonder why you ever chose this, but the pain is quickly forgotten and the anticipation of another is not far behind. I've been pretty subdued since we came home - on top of being exhausted, my allergies flared up, and my body has decided to retaliate for the inflicted torture in a gastro-intestinal party.

Am I glad I did it? I am. It was a good first effort. I think I'll probably do it again someday, but before then I might drop down to a few 10K's. They say a half marathon is half the distance, twice the fun. Well then, a 10K must be a virtual fiesta.

Gone Fishin'

I don't know where Ethan developed this love for fishing, but he's trying to pass it off to his sister. I fear at some point I may actually have to break down and put a worm on a hook. For now I'll just let Ethan keep doing it for me, which he grew adept at doing yesterday in Siren, Wisconsin. He spent a happy day catching sun fish and throwing them back.

A few days earlier we celebrated a belated birthday for the kids where Ethan obtained his first fishing pole from Grandpa and Nai Nai. We went that afternoon but quickly got rained out. Good thing this is the land of 10,000 lakes.

Messing around with the camera

You know how they say we only use 10% of our brains? Well, I think most people use about 10% of the potential of their SLR cameras, and I am determined not to be one of them. The other day as the kids were playing outside, I messed around with some options on my camera. Below is my first venture into RAW format and monochrome. I've also been learning how to set my camera on completely manual and base my shutter speed on the light reading. It helps when you have a cute subject.

What we've been doing lately

Here's a random photo record of our last few days. Enjoy!

I had to snap a picture of this guy. Ok, how inclined are you to hire a man who appears to be blindly sautering his own fingers together? And look at all that stuff behind him that he's ruined! This is as bad as the moving company called "Hand Removal Service." Think people, think.

Ah, much better. Now there's a couple of cute girls if I say so myself.

What could be more fun that decorating a coconut? Ethan's den did this as part of their end of the year banquet. I love our multinational crew.

Ethan scored big time Thursday night by finding a Lego set for about 1/3 of the original price. He was up at 6:30 to put it together.

He did this whole project almost on his own. It's the biggest Lego thing he's built so far. He got stuck a few times but we navigated the problems together.

Ta da! It only took him the better part of a day, but he's prouder than proud of his new Lego creation. He talks incessantly about Exoforce Legos.

Ethan's latest trick is to balance on this ladder which is supposed to be connected to his bed. The screws are stripped so it never stays on. After we move we're nailing it to the bed!

You can't see them all that well, but Megan spent her Friday afternoon room time dressing her animals up "for Halloween."

When Megan should have been sleeping Thursday night, I found her making beds for all her stuffed animals on her trundle bed. She is one of the most nurturing and compassionate little girls I know.

Megan and her best friend Faith, waiting for chocolate waffles on their trusty scooters. I took my kids and my neighbor's girls across the street for breakfast this morning. Afterwards we played in the hot hot sun for an hour.

Ethan and his good friend Naomi, who will be leaving us soon, enjoying waffles at the hawker center.

Did I forget to mention?

April 15th was a memorable day, not just because it was Megan's 5th birthday, but because she learned to ride a bike on her own! She's already riding like she' s been doing it for years. Even her adrenaline loving father is a little nervous as we watch her whip around the courtyard. So far no major spills, just looks of amazement from the locals as she cruises through the market.

Her courageous riding has inspired three other kids from our complex to lose their training wheels this week too, so on any given afternoon you walk through the courtyard at your own risk. It's fun to see all of them riding. Family bike rides here we come!