Thomas, Signe & Konrad's visit

Here is a slide show, of our friends from Denmark's visit here this past week:

Check us out!

We have been oh so sociable with each other this week, ha ha! With two new DS in the house (Thomas bought one for his daughter Mikkeline too), we have been absorbed, to say it the least; Thomas with Indiana Jones and me with the New Super Mario. To our defense, Lucas have been playing his PSP and the other two have been on their computers - only Linnea and Konrad have actually been playing with each other! :)

{365:80} New fauna

New fauna.
This morning Nathan took our guests on the "Monkeyboat". That is, on an arranged trip around the water village, Kampung Ayer, and out into the mangrove forest to look for crocodiles, proboscis monkeys, monitor lizards and other exciting animals.
Today they spotted these fellas:



Otters.
I didn't come along today (since I have done the trip with all our previous guests, I thought I would sit this one out), but now I regret that. I haven't seen any otters before! Crocs - yes, monkeys - loads, lizards - big ones, snakes - check; but otters, no...
Maybe next time!

Boating... kind of.

We took our guests out on the boat today, but only for a very short trip. The reverse gear (?) on the boat played up again, so we had to get on, and then off, and then on again... So , Signe actually stayed ashore with Konrad (who needed to sleep by then) while the rest of us went out to enjoy a little "sailabout".
But Linnea fell asleep in the cabin straight away and slept all the way around - and even Lucas nodded off, quite unusually:



So all we did was to give Thomas a quick go at the biscuit -



- and then we went back to the Yacht Club and had a swim instead.
No, I'm still not convinced this boat was a good buy... (I do look good in my boat hat though, haha!)

{365:79} "Mr Lego"

"Mr Lego".
Of course, when Thomas is visiting, there is bound to be new Lego. Lucas was very lucky this time and got not just one, but TWO big Star Wars ships (and Linnea got some Belville Lego!), that of course had to be built right away!

{365:78} Jungle injury

Jungle injury.
This is how my leg looks like two days after my fall in the drain during the hash on Tuesday. Still ouch.

{365:77} Team work

Team work.
At the Empire, together with Konrad.

Pics from HongKong

Here is a slide show of just about all the photos I took on our short trip to HongKong, which is actually not many at all. Very unusual for being me.
I hardly took any photos at the wedding itself, because their hired photographers were so numerous and they took up so much of the view, that the rest of us didn't have a chance to get good shots. (It felt like a celebrity wedding with paparazzis everywhere, haha!) Hopefully they will put some of their pics on a website, as it would be lovely to have some nice snapshots as memento. (For example, I didn't snap any of the bride and groom together, the speeches or the twelve-course meal we had...). Well, here we go:

School work

One part of their "animal" theme this term has been to study the dinosaurs in Lucas' class. The other day they had displayed their work outside the class room, and they had all drawn a picture of a dinosaur and written a few words about it. Here is Lucas':




It says:
"Lucas 6. Dinosaurs attak and dinosaurs they eat meat. Som drick wooter." Very cute, although it must be wishful thinking about being six...

Brave

Linnea has gone very brave these last few months. It wasn't that long ago, she just bopped around with her floaties on whenever we went swimming, and didn't like to get her head under water, or even wet.
Now, she still wears the floaties if we ask her too (calmer for the parents), but she also likes to swim around without them. She jumps in from the side, does the cannonball, dives and carries on!




She can swim now, but is still not 100% confident, so we still stay close when she wants to go at it without the floaties. She hasn't really got the breathing technique just yet, but it wont be long!
Isn't it cool, at 3 1/2!?

We have decided to wait until after the summer holidays, and then put them into the Swimming Club at school. They do already go swimming in school once a week, but we can see that the Swimming Club is really making a difference for the kids attending it - so even though it's slightly on the expensive side, it might be worth it. At least, if we are not planning to take the kids out of school to go somewhere that term.

{365:76} Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
Today we had a "green" hash, since it's Saint Patrick's Day. Everybody wore green at the on-on and the hares were dressed especially nice for the occasion!
Apart from me taking a hard tumble (not seeing a stupid drain) and getting a huge bruise on my thigh, it was a nice run tonight.

Where is the volume control?

Every time I (or Nathan) try to have a sleep in, I wonder, when will my kids develop their volume control?

Lucas is actually quite good now. He is old enough to understand what you explain to him, sometimes even grasp the consequences of his actions etc. Whether he chooses to listen to you or not, well that's another story!
Sometimes I can get him to understand, that Daddy has been up late flying and would like to sleep. At least he avoids going into the bedroom waking him up, but the volume control... - again a different story.

Linnea on the other hand, doesn't get it at all. Actually she has been entering a phase (well, I sure hope it's a passing phase!) of not wanting to listen to anything we say, doing anything we ask her too, obeying the slightest or be good girl. She's quite the opposite mostly - she's stubborn, she gets so angry and grumpy when things don't go her way and she certainly doesn't agree with any of our rules...
Volume control? Nah, keep dreaming... maybe one day.

{365:75} The DS

The DS.
Linnea has been getting more and more restless for every flight we have done lately. She is not interested in much; not books, not her movies, not her toys... just has ants in her pants and is not very nice to travel with at all.
So, we thought it was time to introduce her to her own special toy: we got her a pink Nintendo DS in HongKong; with the Super Mario Bros game on it.
It was fun for a while, but as it turns out - at the moment it's the mommy who has most fun with it! (Hopefully she'll get into it eventually...)

{365:74} I do

I do.
On the Sunday, we took the ferry over to Central (another part of HongKong) and went looking for the H&M shop (which we found, hourray!). Had some lunch, ferried back again and got ourselves ready for the wedding.
I will write more about the wedding in another post, but here you can see our very nicely dressed kids trying to get a peak at the action.

{365:73} Taxi

Taxi.
It was a first for me and the kids going to HongKong. I must say I was quite surprised at how big it was, and how tall all the buildings were - I had imagined it more like Singapore, but it's like a maxed out Singapore, in a way!
The first day we took a cab to the hotel, and didn't do much more that day than go browsing the enormous shopping mall (Harbour City) and go for some ribs at an American restaurant, yum!

Go HongKong!

Hey people - HongKong is da shit!

We have now spent the afternoon with our Danish friends, roaming the biggest shopping mall in HongKong - it's twice the size of Bluewater (in the UK)!!! Over 700 shops - shopping heaven! All I need now is an unlimited credit card, haha!

HongKong is so big, there are so many skyscrapers and so much people, so much. I don't know if I could live in this hustle and bustle, but for sure - next time I'm going crazy shopping without kids and husband, I will go here!

Tomorrow it's the wedding, and we are all looking forward to that. Pictures will follow when we get back home.

Our little kleptomaniac

Linnea has developed a recent obsession with money. Not as in I-want-money-so-I-can-buy-stuff as such, but as in she loves coins (notes are rarely just lying around).

Everywhere we go, she is after coins - which can be a bit embarrassing sometimes as people tend to have their change lying openly just by the door or so and often when we come around, they will be missing afterward...
We have to search her pockets every night before putting the clothes to laundry. This morning she had even put some coins in the pocket on her swimming trunks! She mostly just keeps them like that, carries them around in her pockets or brings them out in the car, puts them in her bags etc.

The other day at school, they were gluing pictures of different things onto a paper, playing shop. There was pictures of different things you can buy at the shop, and of money to buy it with, to learn values a bit I guess.
But Linnea didn't stick the picture of the coins on to her paper, no - she folded it up and put it in her pocket! :D

If only she would take them and put them in her piggy bank, she would be a rich girl very soon!

Holiday!

It's here - the end of term, yay! The kids have been really tired this last few weeks, it has been very noticeable that the end of term has drawn closer and closer. Today was the last day of school and now we have two lovely weeks off, just to be together, in front of us! (No more school runs for a while!)

We are packing our bags at the moment, because we are off to Hong Kong tomorrow! Just for a few days, to attend the wedding of one of Nathan's old flying buddies, Brett. It's going to be an exciting trip - I have never been to Hong Kong before. (And - they have both IKEA and H&M there!)



We will be meeting up with Thomas and Signe tomorrow, who have come down all the way from Denmark for this wedding. Afterward they will be coming back to Brunei with us for a week! So I guess there will be a fair share of boating, swimming and beer drinking going on then..!

{365:71} Crazy

Crazy.
This is the crazy little girl of this family. She is so funny at the moment, she is really in a phase of playing up, performing, doing funny faces and coming up with all sorts of stories and mischief.

Something missing?

This morning Linnea came in for a cuddle just before we were supposed to get up. As usual when the alarm went, I told her to go and wake up Lucas.
She trotted off to his room, and soon I could hear her call out for me in a worried voice. When I came into Lucas' room, she was standing next to his empty bed with a troubled look on her face, and she said:
- "Mummy look, there is a piece missing!"

Yes indeed, a "piece" was missing (since Lucas had gone down to have breakfast on his own), I wonder if she has done too many puzzles lately? :)