The Heavenly Man

Last night I started reading a book called The Heavenly Man, the story of Brother Yun, an incredible Christian brother in China. Within the first 20 pages I think I'd said, "Wow" or gotten chills all over my body more than a dozen times. The miracles which have marked his life, the total faith he has in God, the ways he hears from Him, are beyond imagination. I was humbled and awe-struck. When I stopped reading after about an hour and a half, my only response was to get on my knees before God in praise and confession. Oh to be used like this man! I know it cannot happen unless I surrender myself as he has.

If you haven't read this book (I imagine many have never heard of it) you should hunt it down. I guarantee it'll put some things in perspective.

My Life as a Musical

The Happy Hour is in full gear here tonight as Megan is singing herself to sleep. She does that if she's had a nap in the afternoon, because then she isn't tired. The tune of choice is "There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea."

This is not limited to bedtime. Megan sings her way through life, like she's in a musical and everything must be sung, instead of said. Even mundane things like, "It's time to eat our toast." She puts it all to the tune of Jesus Loves Me or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or some variation thereof. I like it. It adds a little fun to life.

My bed arrived today. We've worked out a solution for the old bed, but the new bed has a slight problem in that it's not really the right color. It's walnut, but we had asked for a lighter shade that shows the grain of the wood and isn't as red. We didn't get that. I went back to the store and begged the man for the display model which was exactly what I wanted. He wouldn't give, but he did order up another bed specifying my desires this time. With any luck in about three days time I'll have the right color.

Mystery solved

What leads a three year old to sing herself to sleep by the Hokey Pokey? I'm told by my friend Liz that it's because that afternoon when she watched them, she sang it for them. I confirmed this with the kids. It seems that Liz did all the singing though and my kids just watched, which I think was quite brave of her. Doing the hokey pokey feels a little goofy in groups but by yourself can feel downright awkward.

So, mystery solved. In other news, our new bed arrives tomorrow and we're having a bit of a time trying to get our landlady to take her old one back. We're told she had no storage space for it. Our response is, "Neither do we!" So we're hoping our real estate woman can work some magic for us.

Blast from the Past

You may remember the elevator dressing incident of November 18, 2004. If not, please read it in the November archives. It's got to be the funniest thing that's happened to me here.

Well, yesterday in the elevator I ran into the perpetrator. I think he recognized me by the embarassed look on his face. Interestingly, it seems he is either a Christian or just happened to be wearing a shirt with a blatant Christian message (I think it had John 14:6 on it). That's the first time I've seen him in nearly a year, which seems odd. Maybe he's been hiding from me.

Last night, in an unrelated event, I heard Megan singing herself to sleep with the Hokey Pokey. This is a bit of a blast from the past because I don't remember the last time we sang that song together. I think it might have been last fall some time when my friend Karen was teaching them music for homeschool. I have no idea what triggered that, but it sure cracked me up.

Another link

For awhile, our settings were such that pictures we posted went onto our website instead of our blog. Erik switched it this morning, but for a few pictures of our neighborhood, hit this link.

Checking out Ethan's stash

It was like being the states, with the loads of decorations everywhere! It looked like it was a requirement or something.

Batman

Mrs. Incredible

Ethan got the hang of it quickly

Some people had their maids give out the candy

Trick or treating with friends

from left: Ryan, Kirsten, Ethan, Avery and Megan

Happy Halloween

I'm not much for celebrating Halloween. It's a take it or leave it holiday for me. The thought of making my kids wear costumes when they don't really like dressing up, letting them see lots of stuff that's scary, and teaching them to take hoards of candy from perfect strangers isn't really part of my development plan for them.

But this year we were invited to a party in a part of Singapore called the Woodlands. It's where the American school is located so there are loads of expats there. We were told it's something you have to experience at least once. My kids have found costumes they did want to wear of their own will, so we gave it a shot.

Ethan was Batman and Megan was either Mrs. Incredible or Violet Incredible - she looks more like Mrs. Incredible with her red hair. I tried to convince her that she would like to wear the fairy princess costume we already owned, but she insisted on the Incredibles so I ran over to the Deepavali tent today and bought her a cheap one. She loved it. She was quite proud (pictures to prove it coming soon).

We had pizza at our friend's house and headed out. It wasn't bad at first, with more of the younger kids out. By 7 p.m. (we started at 6) the older kids were out without their manners (forgot those at home I guess) and our kids were getting bowled over. Ethan started asking how many more houses we had to go to, which was my first clue that it was time to go. Erik was going to come pick us up, but it was nearly impossible to drive in. I had to call a taxi. He hadn't heard of Halloween so it all seemed quite bizarre to him. He asked, "Can everyone go to any house?"
"Can!" I replied (how very Singaporean of me).

I asked Ethan if he had fun. He said no, then qualified it with, "It was fun until the end." Erik and I already sorted through the candy, threw away the worthless stuff, and kept a few choice goodies for ourselves. Did our parents do that to ours?

Spoiled

I'm sorry I haven't written much lately. It's not that I have been too busy, but that I've been busy doing nothing of interest I guess. Until Friday.

Erik and I recently came into some gift money, so we thought we would spend it on some last things for the apartment - a small console and a large mirror. Since our furniture is Asian style, we went on a tip from a friend to an area that specializes in that.

We thought when she said, "Dempsey Road" that it would be like a strip mall. Instead, it was a collection of one story stores clumped together ecclectically out in a wooded area. It was a bit of a walk to get from the entrance to the back stores. It felt a lot like wandering a camp where the cabins had been converted to furniture, carpet and idol stores (you get a lot of stores that sell primarily idols here).

Here's where the spoiled part comes in: Erik and I had to keep telling ourselves that the prices we saw on the furniture were not in kuai (Chinese money) but Sing dollars. We are so accustomed to being able to buy this kind of furniture at rock bottom prices that it was hard to believe anyone would pay that much for something. We couldn't bring ourselves to think about buying any of it, especially when I asked a man if a mirror could be smaller, and he said sure, because he has them custom made in China and sent here. We're kicking ourselves now for not buying more while we lived there.

We walked away with nothing, paralyzed by our cheapness, and also not finding anything that we wanted enough to take it home.

As a post note, in the afternoon yesterday I went to Novena Square, which is just a typical shopping mall close to our house. At a fun store called Picket and Rail, I found a large mirror that was exactly what I had been imagining, and a bed. Yes, a bed. We don't have a formal bed right now - just the bottom metal frame with a box spring and two mattresses on top (long story) and I saw one that I just loved. Everything in the store was on sale "less 20%" as they say here, and the prices were already really low. In fact, I'll be really local and tell you that we got both the large mirror (80x130 cm) and the bed for about $400 US. Now that felt like shopping in Asia.