Christmas bus

 

The Christmas bus. Another favorite Singapore Christmas tradition. Our amazing friend organizes a tour down Orchard Road to see the Christmas lights and decorations. This year we filled two buses.

 

 

Noah sang songs and giggled the whole night in the back row with his Australian buddy.

 

My handsome date

  

and the babe.

Orchard Road is lined with glitzy mall after glitzy mall. Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Prada. They each have their own huge Christmas tree and decorations. I'm amazed that its a different theme every year.

Can you see the crowds? Just a normal Saturday night on Orchard.

We made a stop at Marina Bay for a ice cream sandwich from the ice cream uncle and his cart. Happy to be back in Singapore!

Christmas bubbles

Christmas bubbles. A favorite Singapore Christmas tradition.

The boys wear swimsuits. We bring towels and a change of clothes. We eat at Chili's (twice the U.S. price but sometimes you just need your American food). And when the snow starts Noah and Gage run out to the big Christmas tree dying of excitement. 

Once the snow really starts coming down Dave and I have to use our super parenting skills just to keep an eye on the kids. So I don't have as many pictures as I would like of Noah and his Santa bubble beard, or Gage laying down to make a snow angel. But even with the crowds, hundreds of cameras and the blaring Christmas carols 

somehow it is still magical.

7 months

This month:
Another international flight
She learned to sit up all on her own
Baby's First Christmas

wobbly

Gage lost his first tooth!

It was wobbly for about a week. 

At Grandma's house he said, "I'm going to sleep with my head under my pillow, like this. This way if my tooth falls out at night then it will already be under the pillow so the tooth fairy will find it and give me money!" 

G and G

I grew up with one set of grandparents nearby. Just over the river and through the woods. The nicest people you've ever met. 

I'm so glad we got to see them when we were in Washington. 

I love how a lot of things in their house are the same as when I was little. Like the clock in the kitchen, Grandpa's black chair by the bookshelf, or the cupboard in the dining room filled with cookies, nuts and licorice. 

Sybil's middle name is Mae, after this sweet Grandmother of mine. 

She took me and my sisters to feed the swans when we were little. I remember birthday presents wrapped in Sunday comics. Lots of days out on the river in Grandpa's yellow boat wearing an orange life vest and eating Grandma's muddy buddies. Family dinners. I remember playing with 70s barbies in the basement. Sour cream dessert rolls and homemade grape juice. Fetching ice cream from the extra freezer, they had every flavor. I remember Grandpa's stories about delivering classified documents about the Suez canal to the Pentagon. Grandpa's telescope in the backyard. Watching slides. Throwing toys down the laundry shoot. I remember Grandma reading me books and singing horsey songs to my baby sister, tree traw, tree traw. 

I sing that same song to Sybil. 

How lucky my kids are now to have Great Grandparents. I wonder what they will remember. 

WA

Noah and Gage have been around. They are lucky that way. 

To the mountains, the desert, the ocean, the jungle. 

Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere. 

To the East, to the West. 

But if you ask them where they want to go or where they want to live, 

They will tell you Washington. 

Gage always says, "in the big house in Washington." 

We drove up to Washington from Salt Lake to visit my family (making our favorite stop in Boise on the way). I love this road trip picture of Gage - neck pillow, puppy, blanket, Tacky the penguin, arm resting on baby sister. The boys did great on the drive. Audio books were a favorite this time. Thank you Millcreek library. And Noah was a life saver helping with Sybil.  

My sister Erin and her husband Tristan and baby Parker were there visiting also. Perfect timing. We spent two weeks there with my parents and my sisters Dana and Brinna. We relaxed, ate good food, visited with old friends and family and ate some more. And played games of course. What's a visit to WA without a lot of Settlers, Risk, and cards for dishes.  

Noah was in heaven. 

I was also so happy to see my grandparents. We had 4 generations of women in one room. How neat is that? Sybil her mother, her mother and her mother.

Thanksgiving

I hadn't spent a Thanksgiving at my parents' house since I was in college. 

It was good to be back. 

My sister and her family came from Georgia to be there too. 

We started the morning with a Turkey Trot. 5 kilometers along the river. 

Then some football. The Bares' turkey bowl.  

And then the feast. 

My Grandma's homemade grape juice lemonade made me swoon. Or was it my mom's apple crumb pie? 

Either way I know I'll have Tristan's turkey song stuck in my head for the next year. 

I heard Mr. Turkey say 

gobble gobble gobble.

Today it is Thanksgiving day

gobble gobble gobble.

People say it is so fun

but I think I'd rather run

and hide until the day is done

gobble gobble gobble. 

BOISE

How much do we love this family? We always have a blast when we visit Dave's brother, Ted and his family in Boise. The time always goes by way too fast and we always stay up too late laughing and I never take enough pictures. Emma is missing from this picture, but at least we got something!

sledding and family dinner

The other day it didn't stop snowing. 

Which was perfect. 

Because we spent the weekend in Santaquin with Dave's sister Liz and her family. And a pile of cousins joined us for sledding and family dinner. 

Does it get any better than this?