2008 in review - Part 2

Let's continue our trip of 2008!

April:

In April, I went with Lucas and his Kindy class to a vegetable market excursion. I have really enjoyed all the different trips they do in school.



Anna, Maria and I went to Singapore for the day, did some shopping, had some lunch with wine (because we could!) and went to IKEA of course:



Lucas had the Kindy mascot, Maisy, home for a week. She got taken around everywhere, it got documented and later scrapped in the school-book:



We went to Australia, to celebrate Granddad's birthday in the Hunter Valley with the family, and to tourist a bit around in and around Sydney. We also saw some Swedish friends of mine while we were there:









May:

Linnea had her first haircut:



Lucas had to make a trip to Ripas Hospital, after having drunk mosquito repellant. He was fine though, but better safe than sorry:



Team SWE attempted a climb of Mount Kinabalu. Unfortunately, as you might remember, we weren't allowed to go up to the peak, due to the bad weather... But hey, we had a great weekend anyway:





We were invited to High Tea at the Empire, with another Swedish delegation from Singapore.



June:

June was a really, really busy month. Linnea went to visit her Kindy she was going to start in this year:



The Swedish National Day was celebrated with kladdkaka, together with the Danes (...):



Anna and I got published, in the magazine SWEA, in Singapore:



We went all venetian, for the big Loan Service Summer Ball:



The whole family went to the cinema for the first time here in Brunei, and saw Kung Fu Panda:



We celebrated Midsummer with "Team SWE" and said goodbye to Maria and Andy, who left Brunei for new adventures in Germany:



We were in school to watch the Sports Day activities and cheer on Lucas:



I took part in my first scrap crop, and won a prize!



Nathan went along to the pet shop, for another school excursion:



The end of the school year saw a big celebration, with the kids singing beautifully for us:

Just an illusion

Over the holidays I have been in contact with quite a few old friends I haven't heard from in a while. Usually, when having a blog, it's a bit one-way - I know for a fact lots of people seem to read the blog, but I rarely hear anything about their life, your life - you who read this.
Apart from this time of year, which is really nice.

The past few weeks, I have got the similar kind of comment many times though, that have surprised me a bit. I keep hearing "You seem to be really happy out there" or "You seem to have such a good life", in different variations.

It's made me wonder, cause God knows life in Brunei is not all peaches and cream!
I started reading back a bit, and yes, it does really seem like we are just happy, happy, happy... It feels like that is an illusion, but why?
Is it simply because it's not really entertaining blogging about boring days so I only blog about the fun stuff? Do I subconsciously try to paint a different picture than the real thing, ignore the hard times? Maybe it's just that I'm not that personal that I let the more 'blue' thoughts come out? Or am I ungrateful, should I be happier? Because we do have a good life, and we are in the right place for us right now.

I don't know. I do know I find our life here very hard at times though. I miss my friends, a lot. I do feel very lonely out here, even in the middle of all these people.
Life is not just peaches and cream.

2008 in review - Part 1

It's that time of year again... it's incredible, where does time go?!? Another year has passed and we are soon to say hello to 2009. True to tradition, I always reminisce a bit in December, of the year that has been.

This year has been as busy as ever, with lots of things happening for us as a family and me personally. One of my own highlights was the climb of Mount KK in May. Even though we didn't get all the way to the top (not our fault) it was a great achievement for me.
It was also lovely to finally move into our house in July, and I have been enjoying making it a home these past few months - a work still in process.
Our long trip home to Europe this summer is also a nice memory of 2008. Five weeks full of family, friends and fun!

Here is our year in pictures; part 1 of our year in review:

January:

I started taking tennis lessons. Too bad, I haven't kept it up, it kind of went into a halt after the summer holidays and I never got it back on track:



Lucas celebrated his 4th birthday, with a big party at the Yacht Club:



Lucas burned his hand in an escalator. He still has a scar from this:



We had a lovely winter holiday in Sweden with Mormor and Morfar. It was snow, so the kids were ecstatic!





February:

Lucas impressed us with swimming- and water skills we didn't knew he had:



We bought a Wii - great fun:



Our friend Anna turned 40 and had a fabulous party at the Empire:



I went to my first hash (now I'm up to number 23):



We started potty training Linnea, with great success:



March:

In March the kids went on their first hash, a bit of a trekk:



We went for dinner with the Swedish Ambassador, who was in Brunei with a huge business delegation. Since then we have met up with him several times:



Lucas celebrated Easter in school, with a bunny hunt in the Kindy playground:



We had to cancel our planned holiday to Bali, and rush to down to NZ when Bruce got injured riding his bike:



He was lucky, and recovered well - and we had a lovely week with the grandparents, celebrating Easter, going Easter egg hunting:

Christmas lunch at the Empire

We had a lovely lunch at the Empire today together with our neighbours Matt & Misuzu.





Apart from the fact that we are no longer allowed to bring our own wine there, it was fantastic!
They had absolutely everything to choose from, oysters, lobsters, sushi and other seafood, roast beef, roast lamb, turkey with all the trimmings; asian food, cheese table and TWO big dessert tables!





We ate and ate and ate until we could fit no more - and then we had a last piece of Christmas pudding!

A special tradition

You might remember the internet network I wrote about here? Every year we do a Secret Santa swop, where we randomly get someone allocated to send a Christmas present to. It's going on it's fifth year now, and I have been participating every year - it's really fun!
The whole month of November we build up to it on the forum, with different questionnaires and polls we invent ourselves, to try and suss out the interests and wishes of our secret santas.

This year, I got to send a present to a lady in Germany and I was in luck this year, because she shares my passion for scrapbooking, easy peasy! I put together a mixed package of scrapbook goodies and sent that to her. You can see it here.

I also got sent scrapbook stuff! My present came all the way from Canada, and apart from the scrapbook things for me it also contained some cute hair clips for Linnea and a Spiderman Activity book for Lucas - oh, and maple tea!





Thank you so much Nettan! And a special Merry Christmas to all my UFO-friends!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope it's a peaceful one for you so far!

The kids actually didn't wake up that early this morning, we got to sleep until 06.45, which is not too bad!
Coming downstairs, we discovered that Santa had been in the night, eaten his cookie and drunk his beer - and Rudolf had nibbled on the apple! Very exciting! And - of course, he had left us lots of presents!

So, we have just had the big opening-presents-extravaganza-chaos, and now it's calmed down again. Linnea is sitting with all her presents around her, watching her new movie "Dora and the Snow Princess" - and Lucas is "helping" Nathan build some of his Lego. Gives me a moment to show you some pictures from this morning:

We have been very pleased to hear a lot of "Oh, I love this!", "Thank you so much for my presents" and "I have got so good presents"! It's been so nice to hear the kids being grateful and happy for each present, even though there was so many!

The program for the rest of the day includes a Christmas Lunch at the Empire Hotel (last year we did the Yacht Club one, so we thought we would try the Empire one this year) and some Christmas drinks at the neighbours later on tonight.
I guess we also have to plan in some more "Lego-building-and-toy-playing"-time this afternoon!

Christmas Eve 2008

We had a lovely Christmas Eve this year too. The kids were up pretty early, and Nathan went to work in the morning - so I spent the morning finishing off the xmas cooking and wrapping the last presents. Malthe and Daniel came by for a short play which was really nice, made the wait a bit shorter for the kids.

We had tomtegröt (=santa porridge) for lunch, yum, and while Linnea had a sleep, Lucas and I watched the obligatory "Kalle och hans vänner"-show.

Nathan got back in perfect time, because just after his return we got a visit from Santa! (Yes, in Sweden he actually comes to every child to deliver the presents personally! Don't ask me about the logistics of that... that's just how it is!) It was lovely to see Santa, the kids were very happy for the presents and the rest of the afternoon was spent building Lego and playing with the new Skrållan doll and buggy; and the percussion buttons on the electric piano...

Then we had our Christmas dinner which was a bit of a mix of everything: we had ham that we had brought from NZ, marinated herring, meatballs, fresh homemade bread, yummy potato salad, brown cabbage and some vodka-cured salmon (first time I'd tried doing that) - mmm!

In the evening, after the kids were in bed, we went around to some friends for Christmas drinks. We were at their place last year too, it's a nice tradition for the adults to all get together to have a bit of their own Christmas, and gear up for the next day!

God Jul! Merry Christmas!

Once a year, I use normal snail mail to send greetings near and far - I can't help it, when it comes to Christmas I'm traditional, and I love Christmas cards! Both sending and receiving!
But of course, I want to be able to reach ALL my readers - so here is an electronic one just for you:



A Merry Christmas to all - and Thank You for the Christmas cards that have reached us out here in the jungle too, they are decorating our new bookshelf very nicely!

Santa treasure hunt

The kids were a little bit bored this morning, tired of waiting for Christmas. So one of Santa's helpers came by today, and left a little note outside our front door. It was a drawing... of our fridge??
The kids went and had a look in the fridge, and there was another drawing, of the drawers in the office - and so it continued.





We went on a big treasure hunt that took us all over the house, until finally the kids found two presents under the guest bed.

They contained santa-outfits (although Lucas said, he'd rather have had a toy, ungrateful child...), and the kids happily dressed up and played Santas for a while, knocking on the door, saying ho-ho-ho and bringing presents.



They even had time to stop and pose for a minute, by the Christmas tree:

Patience, patience

Brunei is a country where you need huge amounts of patience. As I wrote the other day, it wasn't until this week got the two pieces of furniture we ordered over half a year ago f.e.
Today, some workers came by to correct our table we got some months ago. It was made far too high, and today finally they came to take those couple of cms off to make it more comfortable to sit at. Linnea was supervising it all:





They also gave both the table and the chairs a bit of an oiling, so now it looks really nice for the Christmas dinner tomorrow!

Dinner and theater

Yesterday we went over to next-door for an impromptu dinner, and play for the kids. The adults were sitting outside chatting away, enjoying a drink and the kids were playing nicely inside.

Suddenly we were ushered inside - to watch a show? It was four little girls, and Lucas. He had got the part of the ringmaster and his big line was:
-"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the kids Jungle Show!"
Then a tiger, a bunny, a butterfly and Minnie Mouse (Linnea) floated around the room for a little while, before they took their bows.
They were very, very cute! A real shame I didn't have a video camera.

Afterwards, Linnea came outside and whispered in my ear:
-"Mummy, did you see? We did a great big show!"

A rare moment

This morning Linnea got a Bamse ljudsaga ("sound story") in her package. It's a story on a CD to listen to, and at the same time you can look at the pictures in the book. A little signal will tell you when it's time to turn the page.



The calm moment didn't last very much longer than it took for me to take this photo though... cause Linnea didn't want to turn the page when she was supposed to, and Lucas got upset, and then the arguing was on again... Just another day in the Watson house...

Joy

I have scrapped! Big joy!



I bought these letters, plain and white, in NZ - and altered them into a Christmas decoration inspired by a project done by my sister-in-law at her scrapbook shop in Sydney. I'm pretty pleased, they turned out happy and joyful and are looking good in our new bookshelf downstairs!

A taste of the "real" world

The same day we came back from NZ, our amah went back to the Philippines on a two-week holiday. At first it felt a bit lonely, because we have gotten so used to having her around, we are so spoiled being able to have an amah. A few days into it though, I'm actually enjoying being in full control of my house!

We're doing dishes, cooking, tidying up and everything else; and I have done a major tidy-up around the house. I've cleared out the kids wardrobes from all the outgrown clothes, re-organized the kitchen cupboards and also had a huge go at the toys and the playroom where I went bananas with my new Dymo-machine! Now the whole house is labeled, so there are no more excuses for not knowing where things go!
I have also planned an easy Christmas dinner for us and I'm actually looking forward to the cooking! (Probably because I know it's not forever... ha ha!)

The only thing is of course, the kids are still off school, but without an amah there is no sleep-ins for us at the moment. It also means a bit more planning since we're now not having the built-in babysitter, but it's ok, it all works out fine. I hope she is having a lovely time with her family back home, and I look forward to having her back.